26 Solving for the prompts? :3c
“You’re going to jail for this.”
John started, looking around to see where the voice — strangely casual for its harsh words — had come from. He’d been certain he was alone at his little bench, tucked away in the corner of the park with his book, but he had forgotten there was another smaller path coming out of the trees behind him, connecting them to the other half of the park. He heard the man speak again before he came into view.
“You are. You’re going to jail. And I’m not going to do anything about it. They’re going to come and accuse you of theft and I’m not going to cover for you.”
His words were firm but slightly condescending, as if explaining something to a particularly stubborn child, and it wasn’t until finally he stepped out of the trees that John understood what was happening.
The man — the broad, hairy, unquestionably handsome man — had perhaps the largest, fluffiest dog John had ever seen with him, a tiny plush rat clamped delicately in its large jaws.
“Are you listening to me?” asked the man, still looking very seriously down at the dog. “You’re going to do hard time, Bear. Years, maybe.”
The dog, unsurprisingly, did not reply.
John let out a shocked little laugh before he could stop himself, and the man finally looked up, noticing for the first time that he and his dog were not alone.
“Well, shit,” said the man, fixing John with a grin that made his insides feel as if they were about to turn to jelly. “Look at that, Bear, you’ve got a witness to your crime. Now I’ll have to turn you in, can’t make this nice gentleman an accomplice.”
“I could be an accomplice,” John choked out, despite never having been an accomplice to anything in his entire life.
“Yeah?” asked the man, looking John up and down, taking him in from his sweater-vest to his freshly polished oxfords and smirking. “To what, tax evasion?”
John wanted to protest, but he hardly could, not when his boss quite literally had been arrested on charges of tax evasion not two years earlier.
“What’s he done, then?” he asked instead.
“Stolen this rat from one of the other dogs at the park,” said the man. “It’s so small and she’s so big I didn’t even realise ‘til we’d left already.”
“I walk through there,” said John quickly, words coming out of his mouth before he even had time to consider them. “On my way home. If you like I can put it on a bench or something. Maybe they’ll come back for it.”
“Oh, I can—” the man began, before pausing, seeming to consider something. “Yeah, alright,” he said finally, squatting down in front of the dog. “Guess you’re not a narc after all. Drop it, Bear.”
“High praise,” said John, and the man’s smile came back again as he caught the rat that Bear deposited gently in his hands.
“I’m Sol, by the way,” he said, getting back to his feet, stepping towards John, closer than he needed to reach out and hand him the slightly damp toy. Their fingers brushed as John accepted it. “We’re here Mondays and Fridays usually. If you want to let me know how it goes.”
“Sure,” said John, not quite understanding what he meant by it. It was only a stuffed rat. Why would John need to let him know how it goes?
It wasn’t until Sol and Bear had said their goodbyes and walked away that the realisation hit John that Sol might have been flirting with him. It wasn’t until John had dropped the rat on a bench and made it all the way back home that he allowed himself to accept that he didn’t think he would mind if Sol had been.
