Page 41 of Untouchable

Or if something stops him first.

Parker frowns as he yells for Bo and fights his way through the underbrush. He’s glad he’s here, glad he’s helping—he can’t stand the thought of Harp up here, alone and hopeless, searching for a dumb and tiny dog on a vast mountaintop.

He goes down a little hill, and he can no longer see the road or Harp or the cabin or anything remotely related to civilization. It’s just him and the blue of the sky, the low rushing of the wind in the trees, the brutal peak of Storm Mountain’s highest outcropping.

“Come on, Bo,” Parker pleads. “Just—come back, okay? Please?”

And then he hears it—a single high, insistent bark, ringing out over the little clearing. Parker’s heart leaps. He calls out again, and, from there, it takes him only a few minutes to see Bo’s hind legs and tail sticking out of a gopher hole. He’s barking madly, but he’s also stuck, unable to get any closer to his prey due to his fat little belly. Parker can’t help laughing with relief as he gently extracts Bo, who looks almost outraged as Parker scrambles up the little hill and through the trees, not even noticing he’s getting dirt all over his scrubs.

“Harp!” Parker calls. His voice echoes back to him, and he’s struck again by just how isolated this place is. “Harp, I found him!”

* * *

Parker emergesfrom the trees holding a wiggling Bo against his body. Harp breaks into a run, relief flooding him, cooling his anxiety. Not only have they found Bo—has Parker found Bo—but they have him now without a chase.

Bo must be heavier than Parker expects because he falters as Harp gets close. For a moment, Harp thinks that Parker is dropping the wriggling dog and so he rushes forward. He misjudges and they collide gently, Parker taking a step back and half tripping.

"Whoa there," Harp says dumbly, reaching for Parker, keeping him on his feet.

He pulls Parker forward and Bo is sandwiched between them for a moment as their cheeks almost glance together, cutting the air a centimeter apart. Parker smells like toothpaste and human in a way that's oddly welcoming and reminds Harp that although Parker has touched him many times, Harp has never really touched back.

Then the moment is gone and Harp has Bo hefted over his shoulder, squeezing the dog gently and leaning into his familiar weight.

Everything is okay,he thinks for the first time since Bo escaped.

“Look at him,” Parker says. “He’s not even sorry.”

Harp balances Bo in one arm and hooks his lead into the collar around Bo's neck with the other.

It takes three tries. Despite the relief he feels, his hands are still shaking.

He turns back to Parker and sets Bo on the ground, free to roam again now that he's tethered.

"Will you walk back with me? I'm going to be too shaken up for a session if I don't have a minute to calm down," Harp says.

Shit. He should've come up with a different excuse. Motion sickness or something. He sounds pathetic when he says it like that.

“Yeah, of course,” Parker says. “Er—my car, though—”

"Leave it. I'll drive you back when we're done. I'm the only one out here for miles."

Parker pauses and looks around, as if to test the veracity of the statement despite the fact that he’s seen for himself that there’s nobody and nothing around to bother his car.

“Okay,” he says after a moment, smiling. They start up the road, Bo trotting along, alternately pulling on the leash and twining himself between Parker’s legs, nearly tripping him.

“Why am I not surprised it’s you that got out?” Parker says, grinning down at the little dog, who is utterly unrepentant.

The steady pat of Parker's running shoes on the dry-packed dirt road helps Harp feel grounded. Bo is safe, Parker isn't mad, and there's no reason to linger on the jelly-bones feeling of nervousness.

"Am I going to—is all this going to make you late for something?" Harp asks, feeling sheepish that he had to ask for an escort to walk him back home but glad for the time to get over feeling shaken up.

* * *

“Nah,”Parker says, shaking his head. “This is my last appointment of the day.” He looks around. This late in the year the sun is already low in the sky. The mountains loom, and he feels safe, enclosed. The mountain doesn’t feel lonely anymore, he realizes. When he’d first come up here, he’d assumed that Harp could only feel isolated and abandoned, way up here with no one else around. But Parker is coming to appreciate the solitude of the place, and after walking through the trees alone in search of Bo, he realizes that the mountain itself has a personality to it, as though there’s some low thrum of energy pulsing from the ground, the trees, the rocks, the sky.

It’s hard to remember ever feeling sad for Harp, living up here alone. Now he sees the land as Harp must, as a sacred and special place. As home.

Parker breathes in, sniffing the crisp air, taking in the silence and the stillness of it all. “It’s actually kind of nice to get outside. I was doing stupid administrative stuff all morning, and I was going crazy.”

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