Page 15 of Untouchable

But he also knows that he's going to have to let go of that in order to get better.

In order to let him help, he thinks.

Harp isn’t sure when he started to trust Parker.

He didn’t decide to trust after extensive vetting, per the norm. It had just happened. Besides, Parker has shown Harp that he’s trustworthy, hasn’t he? That he just wants to help? There's just no other explanation for why Parker stayed that day while Harp took a shower, even after Harp had been so rude—no other explanation for why he was willing to come back.

He saw Harp at something like his lowest and he waited, he stayed.

"If you were gonna work on it, then go ahead," Harp says.

Parker's professionally sanitary smile flickers for a second, like he wants to laugh but he just nods and holds the sheet for Harp.

When Harp reaches his belly, he realizes he'd been sucking in his gut for the entire duration of that interaction. He rolls his eyes at himself and leans into the cradle.

“I’ll go easy on you, I promise,” Parker says, laying his hand on Harp’s shoulder.

He sets to work, starting on the leg opposite Harp’s bad one. The pressure is even and slow and it doesn’t quite hurt. Yet.

Now that his hip is in play, Harp finds it impossible to relax, and a strange thing happens: he starts talking.

Harp spends a good portion of his mental energy when he's not in his home trying to figure out how not to get stuck talking to someone or doing something he doesn't like.

But now he has no choice but to be confined with someone for the duration of this session. Despite the fact that Parker has reassured him that what he’s doing doesn’t have to hurt, Harp is filled with bubbling near-manic anticipation of how much it's going to hurt when Parker reaches his hip—and against all odds, Harp hears himself start talking.

"So Parker, uh. What's it like touching naked strangers all day?" He's only a little muffled by the cradle.

* * *

“Well,to be fair, they’re usually wearing underwear,” Parker says. He wonders why Harp is picking now to strike up a friendly—if odd—conversation, but whatever. He can work with it. Harp is slightly more relaxed now, and Parker feels a warm swell of pride that he’s making progress.

“Semantics, c'mon kid. I wouldn't take you for a pedant. They're naked where you're touching them."

Parker doesn’t actually know what a pedant is. He bites his lip.

“Well, uh, it’s—it’s all part of the job,” he says, as smoothly and conversationally as he can while he’s running his forearm up the client’s thigh.

"You probably get the same questions a lot. Stupid people making conversation. I'm probably the eight hundredth person to ask you that."

Parker laughs a little, glad the conversation is moving in a different direction.

“I like it,” he says. “It’s one of the reasons I like this job so much—I get to interact with people all day, every day.”

"Jesus. That sounds repulsive."

“Must get a little lonely up here, though,” Parker says lightly. “I think I’d drive myself nuts with no one to talk to.” It’s always a careful balancing act, talking with clients—he has to stay conversational, but he can’t talk completely freely, the way he might talk to Mindy.

In truth, living alone, high up on the side of some cold, windblown mountain sounds so sad and lonely that his heart aches a little for the stranger on the table beneath his hands.

"I moved here for the company."

“Oh—I didn’t realize someone else lived here,” Parker says, kicking himself for making a stupid assumption, and worse, for feeling sorry for someone because of it.

When Harp laughs, it lifts his whole body off the table a little. "No, you had it right the first time."

“Oh,” Parker says, belatedly getting the joke. He’s glad Harp can’t see that Parker is blushing, embarrassed that he’s so slow on the uptake.

* * *

---