Page 186 of Untouchable

“I’m… glad you thought that,” he says. He hesitates for a moment. “Y’know, I was… I was pretty upset after that first session. Because it clearly had been so bad for you, and I… I felt bad. For knowing that you needed help, that you’d asked for it, but that I couldn’t give it to you. I pretty much had to pick my jaw up off the floor when you requested me again—well, I mean, you remember, I thought it was a mistake.”

He draws a deep breath.

“Why?” Parker asks finally. “Why was it so important that I stayed?”

* * *

"Because I let you in,in the first place,” Harp says, organizing his thoughts even as he talks. “And you saw me at my worst—or, well, it felt that way. You weren't freaked out enough to leave, you weren't rude to me when I came out. Not everyone treats me like that—and especially not when I'm having a moment or whatever." Harp shrugs. "It was important to me."

“It makes me sad,” Parker says, suddenly more passionate. “Thinking about people treating you like that. You’re the kindest, most generous, most thoughtful person I’ve ever met and—you…you talk about yourself like you’re some kind of monster. It makes me sad that that’s how you see yourself. That people have let you think that.”

Harp nods. He feels detached from what Parker is talking about—so far from it that he can agree, that yeah, yes, this assessment does sound pretty sad.

"Our families have both taught us things about ourselves that are lies," Harp says, realizing it's true as he says it, even if it's still impossible for him to internalize it about himself. "It's hard to pick and choose the parts of yourself that you believe to be inherently true."

“Oh no,” Parker says with a smile. “Does that mean all that nice crap you say about me is right? Gross.”

Before Harp can respond, Parker sneaks a quick kiss.

“And, for what it’s worth,” Parker says. “I think that, if your family can’t see how great you are, then—then they can… suck it.”

"Agreed," Harp says, returning to his plate to stab a bite of food. "It's hard to forget the things they teach you, though, even if you recognize that they're utter assholes who never should've had kids in the first place."

* * *

Parker’s temptedto make a joke about his own parents, how they should have stopped at two like they’d planned all along, but nothing about it feels funny. The punchline, after all, is that he wouldn’t exist—and maybe Harp is having a positive effect on Parker, because for the first time in as long as he can remember, he feels unapologetic about his existence.

Parker chews quietly for a little while, ruminating on all of this.

“What are they like?” Parker asks. “Your parents, I mean. And your… non-Gil family?”

"Young and dumb," Harp says. "My mom is only 62. It's bizarre to think about now. And I don't know my sisters very well. We were never really close to begin with, and definitely not after Walt."

Parker wants to comment that 62 doesn’t sound very young to him, but he’s pretty sure Harp won’t appreciate it.

“Can I ask something?” he says, cutting a scalloped potato into increasingly smaller pieces. “Walt… died, right? What happened?”

Harp sighs. "He drowned when he was a kid."

It’s notat all what Parker had been expecting—he’d been picturing a childhood illness, long hospital stays and endless tests and beeping monitors and sitting in tense silence in waiting rooms, each moment ripping out another seam in the stitching that kept a tight-knit family close together. This is so much different, though—unexpected and horrific, a sudden shattering, the sun rising, lives fractured and lost before it falls once more.

“I’m so sorry,” he says quietly, nuzzling his head against Harp’s shoulder. “How old were you? That must have been awful.”

* * *

"We'reall two years apart except Gil—so I was 17, Walt was 15, and the girls were 13 and 11."

It's not exactly easy to talk about it—it'll never be easy—but he can answer Parker's questions truthfully enough.

“Are you okay with me asking stuff like this?” Parker asks. “Er, what I mean is—I’d like to know about it, if you’re okay with telling me. But if it’s painful to talk about or you don’t want to do it right now, I can… not.”

"It's not as hard to talk to you about it as I thought it would be," Harp admits. "It's not something I like to talk about, obviously, but it's not an... insignificant part of my life, I guess."

“That makes sense,” Parker says gently. He moves to put his now empty plate on the bedside table and snuggles back into Harp. “What happened?”

And so Harp lays it out for him, for Parker, the first person who, in the end, had ever gotten the full story of what happened from Harp's point of view.

Despite being the second oldest in the family, Walt was the sweet baby. He was everything Harp was not: slender and slight and beautiful and easy to talk to, easy to love. His sisters loved the way Walt allowed them to dote on him, the way that he would play along with anything, no matter how girlish or outlandish. Their parents loved how well-spoken Walt was, delightful when company was over and always forgiven for his precociousness. And Harp had loved him intensely, too, in only the way that one can love and latch onto their first, closest sibling, their first ally and enemy and friend and peer, their first great responsibility.

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