Page 73 of Untouchable

Parker swallows hard, trying to articulate what he’s feeling, trying to find any kind of words that could come even close to communicating the immense gratitude he feels for Harp.

“The—the stuff you said,” he says finally. “It was really nice to hear. I’ve never… had that before.”

And, goddamnit, his eyes are pricking with tears again, and he takes a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling, willing them to subside.

* * *

Harp considers Parker very carefully,reminding himself of everything he’d sorted through on his walk this morning.

"Then I'm glad we're friends," Harp says. "You deserve to hear the truth from someone who has had the chance to observe you from a distance at length with a completely neutral, objective point of view."

A point of view I'll obviously never be capable of again, Harp thinks. He's already noticing a hundred things about Parker that hadn't held his attention before now.

“Well, I mean, I didn’t say I believed you,” Parker says with a laugh. “But. Yeah. Thanks. And Sorry. And—I’ll stop apologizing now.”

He claps a hand over his mouth to stop himself from talking and then looks past Harp.

“So, um… is that bacon?” Parker asks after a moment.

Harp snorts, hoping Parker is done apologizing, and passes over the bacon. It's hard to remember what he thought of Parker before he talked quite so much.

He wants to eat breakfast together and talk about nothing of consequence and enjoy the snow with his friend—but Harp knows that's a pipedream and eventually the real world will come creeping back in. He freshens up his coffee and settles down at the table. He assumes Parker needs to call his friends and his work and figure out what the hell is happening in the world down from the mountain.

Parker takes the bacon and his coffee and they sit down at the little table. Parker stares out at the snow absentmindedly and begins eating.

“I’m, uh, assuming they don’t plow the road up here?” Parker asks, and Harp snorts.

“They only go as far as the turnoff from Devil’s Gulch,” he says. “After that we’re on our own.”

Parker opens his mouth to say something, but Harp lifts a hand to stop him.

“Don’t even think about apologizing or trying to sled down or something. You can stay as long as you need.”

“Well, I should probably check in with a few people,” Parker says, smiling. “But I wasn’t working today anyway, so… I guess this was a pretty good day to get stuck.”

* * *

It’shard for him to wrap his mind around the thought that Harp might have actually been fine with how the night had turned out. No passive aggression. No guilt trips. No favors being levered. Just… kindness, no strings attached.

He feels his eyes prick with tears once more, but this time, it’s because he’s happy.

When Parker checks his phone for the first time since the previous afternoon, he finds he has a long string of lurid text messages from Mindy, alternately demanding information and conjecturing in very explicit detail what she assumed they were up to. He can’t help smiling, though.

>>PARKER: your the worst

She texts back immediately.

>>MINDY: well?????

>>PARKER: shut up nothing happened

He chews on his lip, because it’s far from the truth. Nothing happened between them sexually, and, from Harp’s perspective, it had probably just been a strange night with a new, rather unstable friend. But to Parker… last night, even the low moments, had been something special—impossibly romantic, unbelievably tender. The snow, the homemade meal, standing outside in the cold air as they admitted they cared about each other.

Mindy’s texting him more, but it’s too much for him to handle right now. He can barely process his own thoughts, and a barrage of messages isn’t helping.

>>PARKER: love u lots but gtg

Parker puts his phone away, blushing—he’s 99% sure there’s no way Harp could have seen what Mindy had said, but better safe than sorry.

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