#mean beans

Jack runs his fingers, almost lovingly, over a box in his pocket, and by now, he knows its shape by heart, the soft velvet it’s covered in and the cool metal of the hinges. About the length of his palm and half of it in width, irritating in its size that doesn’t exactly fit into any of the pockets without being a constant reminder and irritating because it still just -sits- there.

One missed opportunity after another, even though he’s been keen to get rid of it and get it out the evening it has been delivered.But then Rhys comes home in a bad mood so Jack only shoves it deeper into his pocket.The longer it’s there, the more at home it makes itself, the harder it gets to find the right words, to pick the correct phrasing out of the jumble that only expands over time.It’s not that he’s hesitant, the answer to his unspoken question having always been there. From the first guarded ‘okay’ to the warm breath of a ‘yes, Jack’ against his skin.It was a long time coming and he figures Rhys already knows where that road leads but then again, the man does nothing, passively letting Jack have enough space to figure it out for himself but also doing that annoying thing of his where he makes Jack come to him first. A sick, sadistic bastard, that’s what he is, irking the one man he shouldn’t, by trying to have him chase after himself.

Jack thinks he likes him all the more because of that.

Jack thinks that’s also the reason he decks him square in the face when he’s halfway through working up the courage only to have Rhys say something stupid and ruin everything. He also thinks that he shouldn’t be the only one shouldering the responsibility that came with the box and so he’ll need to come up with a way of making Rhys, unwittingly of course, share his burden.