Page 20 of Untouchable

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The nightbefore their appointment one week later, Harp can't sleep.

It has... nothing to do with the appointment. For sure. He's just restless. The weather has been wacky and the older of the two horses keeps looking stiff, even when he pastures them both regularly. There are always fifty things to do at the cabin, and more than that to get ready for winter. It’s certainly that keeping him up and not the appointment.

At midnight, when he still isn't sleepy in the slightest, he decides to turn the night of certainly crappy sleep into a project. He's been holding a big brisket in his fridge to start up the next night, but he might as well set it up now to cook overnight.

Harp is happy to have something to occupy his time, measuring out the rub, searing the big cut of meat and then setting it up to cook low and slow in the oven, fighting off the dogs and then treating them to morsels of other things that he snacks on as he stays up to tend to the brisket.

Harp watches the sun rise over the mountains from his kitchen. The cabin is situated on a big piece of land—Harp technically owns the whole valley and most of the mountains surrounding it—and the undeveloped wilderness is pristine other than the criss-cross of dirt roads he’d carved across it to tend the edges of his property. It’s more land than one person needs, of course, but exactly the right parcel if you’ve got money to burn and don’t want neighbors.

As the sky grows lighter, the clouds look lit by flame—a deep purple changing to brilliant magenta and orange reflected in the streaky clouds.

No matter what happens to him, the earth keeps turning. Nature continues inexorably, cyclically, and Harp has never lived anywhere like this, like Colorado, where the land seems to be its own creature, indifferent to the lives of the people who settle there. Even if Harp’s life has turned out different from what he wanted, what he thought he would have, there is still solace to be found in Storm Mountain, in the endless march of life.

It'll still be hours until Parker gets here.

Knowing he shouldn't, Harp rests his eyes. Just for a minute.

* * *

That Thursday starts off badly,and only goes downhill from there. Parker sleeps through his alarm—a very rare thing—and as a result, he feels two steps behind himself the entire morning. He skids into his dentist’s office fifteen minutes late for his biannual cleaning, then races across town to Rocky Mountain for his morning appointments. He can’t catch a break there, either—he spills the coffee Mindy brought for him down his scrub top and has to borrow one from one of the other therapists. His second appointment runs long, and he’s stuck spending his lunch break furiously catching up on paperwork and intake forms. As a result, Parker is halfway up the mountain before he realizes the only thing he’s eaten today is the half of a granola bar he swiped from Mindy’s desk.

Between that and the strange cadence of the day, he feels lethargic and spacey, and he’s in a daze when he gets to the client’s house. He only takes one wrong turn this time—he’s slowly learning—but he’s still late, and he dashes to the door, massage table and equipment in hand, preparing to stammer a breathless apology. As soon as he knocks, he hears Bo somewhere inside the house, barking wildly, and he can’t help smiling.

Small but mighty, he thinks.

He waits a while and then knocks again, louder this time. He waits some more, and begins to grow concerned.

* * *

It takesHarp almost thirty seconds to piece together what the hell is going on. He's not in his bedroom, Bo is barking, something is burning, and someone is outside on the porch, calling his name.

"Oh, goddamnit." His appointment. It looks late as hell outside—the angles of the light are all wrong. Harp stumbles as he stands up, his hips stiff from sleeping awkwardly on the couch. He catches himself, gets steady, and steps to the door.

The temperature has dropped since this morning and Harp doesn't realize he hasn't even buttoned his shirt until he's blasted with cold air. Parker gapes at him.

He reaches for Parker's table, just wanting him to come inside already so he can get the door shut against the cold and check his brisket. The thing is probably burned to a crisp.

"C'mon. It's freezing."

Parker looks shell-shocked as Harp yanks him inside the house, pulling the door shut behind Parker before dashing into the kitchen to grab the brisket.

“Is everything okay?” Parker calls from the front door.

"Other than me being a fucking mess of a human being? Yeah, sort of," Harp says. He turns on his heel and returns to the living room, realizing that he hasn’t explained himself at all. "Can you make yourself comfortable in here for a minute? I'm afraid I burned the shit out of my brisket in addition to... not preparing... for anything."

He catches Parker's eyes trailing to his belly and realizes his shirt is completely open from when he fell asleep. He answered the door half-naked. Wonderful. Loathing himself, Harp fumbles to button his flannel up. Parker just blushes.

* * *

It’s mercifully warm inside,especially compared to the icy breeze that had been knifing through his thin jacket while he’d been standing outside knocking.

Parker sets his equipment down in the front hallway, where Petunia noses it curiously. He follows Harp further into the house. There’s a small kitchen table, and Harp had said to make himself comfortable, but Parker settles for hovering in the doorway like a creep.

“I can… come back, if you’d prefer,” Parker says, regretting the offer as soon as it’s out of his mouth. He doesn’t mind house calls, but Harp’s place isn’t exactly convenient to get to.

"No, that's insane," Harp grumbles. "You're already here. If I have to trash the brisket, I'll trash the brisket." He waves his hand absently.

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