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It was phrased as a statement rather than a question and was over as soon as it began. Anyone who wasn’t closely listening might have missed it.
“Harry, you find me attractive.”
Harry Truman was always listening. If he didn’t have an iron grip on the mug in his right hand he might have dropped it and watched it shatter on the hardwood beneath his boots. He looked at his friend as puzzled as he could manage to avoid confirming or denying the sentiment. “Sorry?” He asked simply, feeling dumb, ears ringing too loud with the sound of unshattered glass in his clutches. If he pretended to have missed it he could get lucky and not have to hear it repeated.
From his spot in his hotel bed, Dale Cooper beamed a ray of sunlight. With a fair bit of strain he sat himself upright against his pillows, his hand gingerly cradling his newfound wound against the cloth of his bandages. It hadn’t yet been twenty-four hours since the agent took a bullet to the gut and Harry feared what might transpire if he were to let Cooper out of his sight. He had intended to drop by for a quick check-in and deliver a cup of coffee– not requested, but then again, it didn’t need to be– and instead found himself perched on the foot of the bed now tangled in what he could only describe as a predicament.
“How long has it been?” Cooper tilted his head to one side softly. The smile did not leave his face even slightly while he spoke with a certain gingerness that he rarely used alone with the sheriff. Harry had watched and listened as he spoke to dozens of people like that, namely girls and women, always cursing himself for wishing that someday it might be him.
Harry had never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Despite his face growing warmer than the coffee against his palm, he shifted and cleared his throat. His eyes fell to the floor, then he looked at Cooper, still smiling. He looked away again. “Body language?” Harry asked. He hardly recognized his own voice; it seemed to have shrunken three sizes.
Cooper didn’t laugh at him. He did nothing but continue to smile at his friend, and after a quick sip of his own coffee off the night table in his room, he shook his head. “Not quite. It’s in your eyes.”
“That so?” Harry could feel his fingers trembling. He smoothed his free hand against his thigh, suddenly uncomfortable with the dampness left behind on his pants. When he felt a slippery sensation against the ceramic he forgot he was holding, he leant over to set the mug carefully on the floor. It was quickly becoming harder and harder to convince himself that he wouldn’t end up shaking like a leaf the next time Cooper opened his mouth. “Knew I was due for an eye exam,” Harry said quietly.
Cooper lost a soft chuckle past his lips. “You look at me like I may as well be the only man alive. You were the first thing I laid eyes on when I came to this morning… I’ve never seen someone look so concerned.” The grin on his lips morphed to something more rounded, more malleable. “You don’t look at Josie this way.”
Both of Harry’s hands now fought to soothe themselves over the curve of his knees. There was no girl on Earth that could make him nervous the way Agent Cooper made him nervous, and without a woman around to blame the butterflies on, Harry cleared his throat once more, helplessly. He licked his lips carefully and opened his mouth to speak, only to close it with a small and defeated noise. “Well, you aren’t Josie,” he finally settled on.
Cooper gave a little nod. “I noticed that.”
Harry couldn’t help but smile. He lifted his head and turned to look his partner in the eye, surprised to be met with one of the more softer expressions he’d ever seen on that face. The warm light of the lamp illuminated Cooper’s face in a way the sun wasn’t able. His perfect, slicked back hair was loose by a few strands after the day’s events and they hung haphazardly over his forehead. The covers on the bed were pulled up to Cooper’s waist, but with the absence of a shirt, Harry could see the white wrap around his torso just above the blanket. Cooper’s shoulders shone with the same light that splashed against the wall behind him. On a good day it took a lot to render the sheriff incapable of thinking with a clear head. On a good day he wasn’t sitting with Cooper in such a vulnerable way, having this very conversation.
“You’re a good-looking man, Coop,” Harry finally vocalized. His voice still felt foreign in his own throat, more gravelly and strained than normal. “Sorry for starin’, though. It’s not my place.”
Harry startled with the feeling of a touch that did not belong to him on his arm. He met Cooper’s gaze and felt it deep in his chest. It squeezed his ribs tight around his heart and he gasped softly at the sensation. Among everything else he felt embarrassed; he’d been careless and unprofessional on a serious case and had possibly ruined his relationship with his special, special colleague. Did he really look at Cooper like some lovesick kid?
“You know, Harry, you aren’t too bad yourself.” Cooper’s touch disappeared from Harry’s arm only to reappear on his shoulder, his grip tighter this time. “I fear I would be lying were I to say that I don’t feel affection for you, too.”
The pounding in Harry’s chest showed no signs of calming. Without giving it very much thought, he crossed his arm over his chest and rested it gently on top of Cooper’s hand. His thumb moved across the skin back and forth, more so to calm Harry than Dale. After a heavy sigh through his nose, Harry nearly choked, “I like you a lot, Coop.”
“How long?” Cooper repeated the earlier inquiry with no real push for an answer. He could work it out for himself if he really tried to, or even wanted to, but over the days he found that there was something rewarding about pairing Harry with sentimentality.
Harry just shook his head. “I couldn’t say. Since day one, I think. I don’t really remember coming to the realization, it just was sort of… always there.” Harry cleared his throat a third time for good measure. “I guess,” he added quickly, now feeling as though he were on display to the whole town.
A small squeeze to his shoulder reminded him that it was not the whole town watching, only Cooper. He smiled wide enough to bring out the slight crinkles by his eyes, something Harry had observed after his first sip of joe in the morning. Cooper beckoned his friend in closer with a small wave of his hand, and Harry obliged by shifting up his seat on the mattress.
“Do you want to kiss me?”
Harry found himself leaning in closer than he realized he was, but there was no aversion to the proximity of their faces. Cooper was gazing at him with an unreadable expression; mathematically he guessed it would boil down to two parts uncertainty, one part desire. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
With little fanfare, Cooper bridged the small gap between their mouths with a swift motion and pressed his lips to the sheriff’s. After the initial surprise, Harry felt himself melt into the other man as naturally as water freezes. The hand that Cooper had held Harry’s shoulder with found its way up to the back of his head and urged him even closer, his fingers entwining effortlessly into the sheriff’s curls. It was only after he heard a quiet groan that he realized Cooper had leaned forward too far to kiss him, his free hand wrapped around his torso where he’d been shot.
All without breaking their contact, Harry came even closer and gently pushed Cooper back against his pillows to take the pressure off his wound. One of his still trembling hands cupped the side of Dale’s face and the other came to lie softly on top of the bandage in the area of his injury. The tips of Harry’s fingers brushed against Cooper’s bare stomach, eliciting a small noise of both surprise and satisfaction. His fingers tightened in Harry’s hair.
They stayed in that very position for a good few moments and continued to kiss at one another’s mouths until Harry broke away for a breath. He peered down at the agent, who seemed dazed but happy as ever. Dale’s eyes fluttered open to return the look given to him, which Harry met with a smile and a quiet laugh.
“You may have to make a habit of this,” Dale suggested, squirming just slightly at the feeling of Harry’s hand so gentle on his stomach.
“Of what, sneaking in here late at night to canoodle with a man from the Bureau?”
“Of bringing me coffee, Harry,” Dale replied, teeth visible in the smile he flashed before carding his fingers back through Harry’s curls and nudging him downward for another kiss.