Yeah, definitely the way I take Harold with Grace is that he enjoys the fact that he can achieve 'being the awesome het boyfriend who does feelings and things'. I think he *likes* her, for sure, he likes that she's relatively straightforward and not conniving and neither about to be murdered or to murder someone - in the world he's got involved in, it must be nice to have someone who can just spend hours discussing random things with him. I think, following the breakup, he probably feels guilt about having lead her on, exacerbated by the fact that he was lying so much all the time. I think one reason he might stalk her so much is to try and convince himself she's fine and he didn't do too much damage, rather than wanting to see her per se.
And then he thinks, well maybe this is what love is like, this nice simple fondness. This is what normal people get to feel, this low key, low stress sense of 'actually, I could stand to share a house with this person' and a vague confidence that they'd help with cooking and be quite fun vacation companions.
But on the other hand, he's heard that love is harsh and crazy and painful, and he's seen evidence of that, and what he's felt for Nathan and what he's learnt to feel for Reese? That isn't nice or simple or gentle. It's wracking and complicated and involves a lot of feeling dreadful and then spikes of feeling just *amazing*, just better than he thought anyone could feel without pharmaceuticals.
And he doesn't like it, or get why human beings have to be so messy and contradictory. And he still longs a little for Grace, with whom he could be perfectly in control of himself.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: 2x08, "Til Death"
Date: 2014-04-03 02:41 pm (UTC)And then he thinks, well maybe this is what love is like, this nice simple fondness. This is what normal people get to feel, this low key, low stress sense of 'actually, I could stand to share a house with this person' and a vague confidence that they'd help with cooking and be quite fun vacation companions.
But on the other hand, he's heard that love is harsh and crazy and painful, and he's seen evidence of that, and what he's felt for Nathan and what he's learnt to feel for Reese? That isn't nice or simple or gentle. It's wracking and complicated and involves a lot of feeling dreadful and then spikes of feeling just *amazing*, just better than he thought anyone could feel without pharmaceuticals.
And he doesn't like it, or get why human beings have to be so messy and contradictory. And he still longs a little for Grace, with whom he could be perfectly in control of himself.