Page 127 of Untouchable

He wants to be with Harp.

You’re doing it again,a little voice in the back of his mind pipes up. You’re looking past red flags. This is Cole all over again.

He pushes the voice away.

* * *

"I did assume,"Harp admits. "A lot. You're right—I assumed that it would change how you felt about me entirely. I guess I also assumed that whatever happened was..."

Harp feels dried out from throat to navel, like he's disintegrating.

He'd never even imagined Parker short and frustrated, but of course he is and of course it happens.

If Parker has no patience for him, then Harp can try to make it brief. He's only been doing it for the past decade or so.

"I haven't slept with someone since before you graduated high school,” Harp says, backing up and starting again. “And I haven't been with someone—the way we were together this weekend... Ever, I think. I told you I cared about you. I let you know what a big part of my life you’re becoming. We connected physically and emotionally in a way I never have with a man before. Do I have to explain why this is a lot for me? So much more, apparently, than it is for you?"

* * *

Parker pauses for a moment,digesting this. When Harp puts it like this, Parker does understand. And he realizes how unfair to Harp he’s been. Parker realizes he’s assumed that, just because Harp is older and has been married, Harp has experienced all of the same things in relationships Parker has. Which, once he recognizes it, is absolutely absurd.

It’s dark by now, and he wraps his arms around him as he looks out over the glittering lights of Mink Creek.

Harp has a whole world of experience, has entire decades of a life that Parker knows nothing about, and it’s not fair to Harp to demand that he share every last moment of it whenever Parker wants. When Parker thinks back to his own first, fumbling relationship—furtive and awkward and sweet, in the way that high school romances are—he remembers how intense and unfamiliar and overwhelming everything had been.

“You’re right,” he says at last. “I don’t know what it was like for you. To have been married. To… never have been able to really be with the people you wanted to be with. To… have all of this be brand new. And, I mean, it is a lot for me, too. But—yeah. I’m sorry. I get that this is… not easy. And sometimes I forget that… not everyone thinks exactly like me.”

"I care about you a lot, Parker,” Harp says. “I don't know if I made myself clear. No, I know I didn't make myself clear, because when I look back at the morning that you left, it seems so cut and dry to me which means that... I'm sure I left it a mess," Harp says.

Parker laughs weakly. It feels good to hear Harp say that, as though the words are slotting into the jagged edges in the wounds and smoothing away the pain.

"Something happened in between meeting you and kissing you and I didn't even understand what it was until you were leaving that morning,” Harp continues. “I saw how much better my life could be with you in it—and I started to want that. And not just that, because it's not just about what you can do for me, you know? It's about who you are and I—I should have said all of this that morning. I want to be something positive for you, Parker, and sometimes you manage to convince me that it's possible and sometimes I can't figure a way to make it work, because all I can think of is the ways I'm going to screw you over and ruin our friendship and..."

He trails off.

"I can't think of someone more wrong for you, despite what you think you want," Harp says at last.

The wind is picking up, and Parker realizes he’s shivering. He goes back inside, leaving his half-cooked dinner abandoned in the kitchen, and crawls into bed, pulling the comforter over his head. He is suddenly exhausted. It’s as though Harp is so concerned with hurting Parker that he can’t see he already has. And for Parker, pain is just pain. He feels everything, big and small, so deeply, that there’s hardly an order of magnitude of difference between how he feels after two days with Harp and how he felt after Cole had abruptly ended their five year relationship.

Finally, he responds.

“Harp,” he says. “Can you just—can you just, like, remove me from the equation for a moment? I mean, like—well, okay. What I mean is—can you tell me what you want? In an ideal world. Where… I’m never going to get hurt and everything will work out perfectly.”

"I can't remove you from the equation, Parker. You're all that I want," Harp says desperately. "You. That's it."

“You already have me,” Parker says, his voice taking on a pathetic quality. “I mean like, what does that mean?”

He stops himself—he realizes he’s being unfair to Harp again. This is new to Parker, the idea of someone so authentically wanting him—not just his looks or his body, but his whole self. But it’s even newer to Harp.

“Okay,” Parker says softly, trying again. “I want you. You want me. I… I’m not very good at going slowly, but I can—I can try. I just need you to tell me what going slowly lookslike.”

* * *

Harp is so confusedthat it's almost hard to stay upright where he sits in the kitchen. The axis of the earth keeps changing. At the outset of the conversation, he thought Parker never wanted another thing to do with him—and from the tone of Parker's voice at first, which registered ten times bolder in Harp's mind than Parker's actual words, Harp had seemed right on the money.

And now he's so plainly saying "I want you, you want me," like it's some... assumed fact and not the most unlikely statement that has ever been presented to Harp.

Something occurs to him, sharp and painful.

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