Page 289 of Untouchable

He feels as though he’s saying goodbye.

Goodbye to the shoulders he perched on, unstable and graceless, trying to get a cellphone signal on the ridge of Storm Mountain. Goodbye to the arms that had wrapped around him in the warm water of a bath at The Stewart. Goodbye to the hands that had chopped and diced and cut as Harp prepared a meal for them to share on a cold winter evening.

Maybe, Parker thinks idly, by the end of the session, they won’t be able to talk at all. Maybe they can simply part ways and Parker can travel through the harrowing switchbacks for the final time, down the mountain, away from him forever.

“I’m going to have you turn over now,” he says softly as he holds the sheet in place.

By the time he gets to this point, he’s stopped thinking of the person on the table as the client. Somehow, in this removed, meditative state, he can think of Harp again, and, by the time he reaches Harp’s hip, that snare of pain and tension and discomfort he’s carried for half a decade, Parker is simply focused on helping Harp, on trying to lessen his pain, if only for a little while.

* * *

Panic swellsin Harp's chest because this means they're getting close to the midpoint of their session, that he's going to have to say the hard things he's prepared all day to say to Parker.

It means that the massage will be over, and maybe this was all a bad idea, and maybe this is the last time Parker will ever touch him.

Harp has to fight not to seize up as Parker reaches his hip—but it's different this time. Harp trusts Parker—trusts his knowledge of the human body, trusts that he wouldn't do anything to Harp that would hurt him, trusts that he wants the best for Harp. When Parker begins to break down the tension settled over his hip, it hurts—but for the first time, Harp can feel himself simply letting it hurt.

He knows how much better it will be afterwards.

He knows how much the hurt is worth it.

It has to hurt before it gets better,he reminds himself. You are strong enough to let it hurt.

Harp counts his breaths as Parker works through the dense knot of pain.

* * *

“Good,”Parker murmurs. “You’ve made progress.”

He’s talking about Harp’s muscles and Harp’s emotional reaction, because while he can feel Harp tense, Harp is no longer flinching and squirming underneath him, trying to avoid Parker’s hands. Parker can actually do the work now, and the muscles themselves are loosening slightly. There’s still a long way to go, and Parker thinks about the things he’ll pass onto Harp’s next therapist. How Harp needs a long warm up period. How his occipitals are always tight. How he tenses up during assisted stretches unless talked through each step.

He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but he’s just so goddamn proud of Harp, for doing the work, for getting better.

"Only because of you," Harp says.

A sharp spike of pain hits him like an ice pick, and Parker takes a deep breath, trying to find that meditative state once more. He’s going to need to get back there if he wants to keep himself from crying before he reaches the end of the massage.

It’s a strangely bittersweet feeling, he thinks, as he finishes on Harp’s hip and moves to long, smooth strokes to warm up his back. He loves, loves, loves Harp, but maybe that means he has to let Harp go. Maybe, he thinks, Harp was only meant to be in his life for a season—an impossibly short, impossibly vivid season, where all the colors of his life were supersaturated, where every moment felt charged with wonder and possibility. Where he’d felt deeply and hurt deeply and been scared out of his mind, and had emerged stronger than ever.

And though his heart aches, Parker finds himself smiling as he remembers all that has happened—Harp teaching him how to roll a joint. Parker waking up on Harp’s couch to the smell of bacon and coffee. Harp coming into town, wedged into the too-small chair at The Salad Shack. The weekend at The Stewart. Harp holding Parker’s hand as Parker told his mother he wouldn’t be home for Christmas. So many moments, so many memories, as though three years of living have been neatly puzzle-pieced into three months.

* * *

He's pushedhimself to do so much because of Parker—to face fears that he never thought he'd be able to face, and to even conquer some of them. Parker doesn't know how much of a difference he's made in Harp's life, but Harp wants to change that. He hopes he'll have the chance.

The closer they get to the end, the harder it is for Harp to imagine that he's doing the right thing, that the ideas he's prepared will be enough, that he'll ever be enough to deserve someone like Parker.

But damn it, he thinks, if he's going to lose Parker then it's going to be because of something he did all on his own—not because of Gil, not because of Parker's family, not because it's easier to let someone go than to change yourself to become worthy, to be better.

Harp is thankful that he's face down. He's not sure he could take looking at Parker's face now without just blurting everything out, without saying or doing something stupid.

* * *

Parker hopeshe can keep this strength with him once the session ends. He feels at peace with things now. He needs to move forward, to not be afraid of being alone. He won’t make the same mistakes he did with Cole, staying with someone because he thought tolerance was the same as love, because he feared no one else would ever think he was worth loving.

And he’s grateful to Harp, or the Harp he thought he knew. But, unlike with Cole, he’s not going to stick around with a partner, hoping that wonderful rose-tinted honeymoon version comes back some day, if only he can say the right thing, do the right thing, let them walk all over him a little more.

He wishes Harp well. He hopes Harp finds a therapist he can trust. He hopes Harp no longer sees going into town as a terrifying, monumental ordeal. He hopes Harp eventually finds someone who can be the person he trusts, who doesn’t ask so much of him, who isn’t constantly needing things from Harp. Hell, he even hopes Gil finds peace in Portland.

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