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“You do weddings?”
“Not yet, but you never know,” Harry said, and this, this was good. He was acting like a normal person, and not like a weirdo who was perving on his roommate at all.
“My turn,” Jack grinned, pulling on the purple pig shirt and buttoning it. Harry really kind of wished he hadn’t. It was slightly too small, which didn’t detract from how it looked in the least. If anything, it made Harry’s brain fizz and spark even worse, because the snug fit meant the fabric pulled and clung to the curves of Jack’s torso in interesting ways that Harry normally wouldn’t notice, except it was Jack, and apparently that made all the difference.
Harry cleared his throat. “It doesn’t fit.”
Jack peered down at himself, and his nose crinkled. “It really doesn’t. It’d fit you though. You’re leaner.”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “When Ambrose did the dating thing, he was built enough that he could pull off ‘attractive asshole.’ I have to settle for ‘awkward and obnoxious’ but it still seems to work.”
Jack’s brow furrowed. “But I mean, you could pull that off?”
“What, awkward?”
Jack bit his lip, and the tips of his ears went pink. “No. You’re, um. You’re attractive. You’ve got a nice body, and you’re good-looking in a hot nerd kind of way, and it…it really works for you.”
Harry stared, open-mouthed, because what?
Jack bit his lip. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. And I’m not hitting on you, I swear. I just thought someone should tell you that you’re kind of hot, in case you didn’t know already.”
Harry blinked and tried to think of an answer. In the end he settled for “Thanks?” It came out more like a question, but it was the best he could manage right now.
It seemed to satisfy Jack though, because he nodded, then turned his back and stripped out of the shirt before handing it to Harry. It was warm to the touch, and Harry tried very hard not to think about the fact that it had just been pressed against Jack’s bare skin.
You’re being ridiculous, he told himself sternly. He’d seen plenty of half-naked men, what with living in a share house full of guys and Tristan’s constant parade of conquests. This was no different.
Except for the part where it was.
Beryl’s sour expression could have pickled onions as she rang up the shirt and the suit, but since Jack was the one paying and he was being disgustingly pleasant, she couldn’t really say anything, so she settled for glaring at Harry instead. Harry, for his part, was too busy mulling over the concept of finding someone attractive to engage with her for a change, and he was fairly certain that his disinterest annoyed her even further—but ironically, he was too distracted to enjoy it.
“Are you okay?” Jack asked as they climbed into the ute.
“Yeah, fine,” Harry lied. He stroked the bag in his lap. “Thanks for this. I might wear the pigs to dinner tonight.”
“You were right,” Jack said, grinning and pulling out into traffic. “Beryl was something else.”
“She likes you,” Harry pointed out, still frankly baffled by that fact.
Jack shrugged. “Yeah, well. Every parish has a Beryl. She’s lonely—that’s why she volunteers. But she’s also lonely because she’s objectively a terrible person. So you tell her she’s invaluable, and she’s putty in your hands.”
Harry felt something like admiration stirring in his chest. “I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or impressed that you possess biddy-wrangling skills. Mostly impressed, I think.”
Jack laughed. “I picked it up watching my dad do it for years.”
“You never mentioned he was a minister before,” Harry said.
“It’s not like you’ve mentioned your parents either,” Jack said, his tone suddenly clipped. His shoulders tensed and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“My dad’s a barrister and Mum’s a teacher, in case you were interested,” Harry offered quietly.
Jack sighed, the tension leaving him in a rush. He gave Harry a wobbly smile. “Sorry. It’s—people get weird when they find out, like they think I’m going to judge them by proxy, just because of what my parents believe.”
Harry could only imagine. “Are they…?” He paused, trying to find the words. “I mean, obviously they’re religious, but what, um? What flavour of religious are they?”
Jack’s smile was more genuine this time. “They’re not the ‘hellfire and brimstone’ variety, more the ‘soup kitchens and jumpers for the homeless’ type. Like, when I told them I thought I was gay, my mum just looked at me like I’d announced I was going to take up rhythmic gymnastics for a living, and asked ‘Why?’ Like it was something I’d weighed the pros and cons of, and decided to do for fun, not part of who I was.” He shrugged. “I love them, and they’re good people, but they’ve lived in a country town all their life, and that means they have a very specific worldview that’s set sometime around 1983, and anything that falls outside of that confuses the hell out of them. I mean, you’ve met them. You know what I mean.”
And Harry did. The impression he’d taken away from that one intentionally disastrous dinner with Mia was one of people doing their best to be polite while simultaneously being horrified to the core. Mia had hired him on the strength of them not coping with her current boyfriend being a tattoo artist, like that was even an issue nowadays, but at the same time, it didn’t sound like they’d cut Jack off for being gay or anything. “So, well-meaning but buttoned-up?” he summarised.
