Page 46 of Untouchable

“What?” Harp asks.

“My table. Back in my car.”

"Shit," Harp says, frowning even though he's secretly pleased that they don't have to end their walk on such a sour note. "Let me put Bo inside and we'll loop back to your car."

“You behave this time,” Parker says sternly to Bo. Harp smiles and shakes his head as he walks across the porch.

* * *

That voice comes back unbidden.

So Harp’s gay.

He tells himself to stop.

Was he telling you that to make you feel better? To reassure you? Because he is interested in you?

He tells himself it doesn’t matter.

He came to lunch.

He tells himself he practically twisted Harp’s arm to get him down the mountain.

But the way he smiled at you today—

He doesn’t have a good rebuttal for that.

He shakes his head as Harp comes back down the stairs.

“I can’t believe we didn’t even think of that,” Parker says, rolling his eyes and laughing at himself. “Well, that I didn’t think of it—I guess that was my bad.”

"I'm sure when I came up out of nowhere freaking out, you weren't exactly thinking about our appointment. And then I just tell you to abandon your car on the side of the road because I want to take a walk..."

“Well, it was a Bo-mergency,” Parker says seriously. “And… I dunno. It’s nice up here. I don’t mind.”

Harp laughs appreciatively and they fall back into an easy pace side by side down the curling road back to Parker's car.

* * *

Harp wantsto talk to Parker to fill up the space between them as they walk—an instinct he'd tamed a long time ago. If people are uncomfortable with my silence, Harp has always thought, then they can come up with something to talk about.

But with Parker he wants the conversation to keep going. It doesn’t feel like a burden or an imposition. Harp genuinely wonders what’s happening in Parker’s head, what he must think about when he’s not talking.

They round the corner and Harp sees movement, throwing his arm in front of Parker before either of them knows what he's doing.

There's a handful of pronghorn a few meters off, crossing the valley.

Parker starts to say something and Harp keeps him pressed back against the shoulder of the road, shushing him quietly, getting him to make eye contact, and then pointing to the animals. They haven't seen Harp and Parker yet as they make their way down, lit by the dramatic shadows of late afternoon.

* * *

Harp’s armcatches Parker square in his chest and points to something—a herd of… something, some kind of large deer, maybe, in the little valley. Parker claps his hand over his mouth, delighted. The animals are gorgeous—stately and serene, and Parker wonders if they’ve ever even seen humans before. This high on the mountain, it seems unlikely.

“What are they?” Parker whispers. He says it as quietly as he can, but his voice seems to ring out through the silence.

The creature at the lead hears Parker and turns. The white hair on his rump puffs up and he snorts at the two humans, the one behind him stopping and doing the same. They've been seen, but the animals aren't scared.

"They're pronghorn," Harp says softly. "They're not dangerous."

---