Work Text:
“This town has changed you. Breathe.”
Albert grits his teeth and swallows back a hastily strung together profanity. Changed? Him? When he reaches out he grasps at air, Special Agent Dale Cooper is gone, long gone in the trees. He can't meet Coop halfway. Halfway is straying too far already. Come back. Come back.
Look now, he's angry. At Albert, after some quality words he's shared with the hotel management about the responsiveness of their waiters – when it comes to his meal, sure, but with an aftertaste of calling a fucking ambulance when there's a man bleeding out on their precious wooden floors. Angry at him. Not at the layers upon layers of hypocrisy that only pull aside to reveal a trail of abused teenagers and to unload a gun in his chest. At him. Fine! It's a start!
If he's all that can keep his partner on edge in this rotten rattrap wearing a cardboard mask with 'rural idyll' written on it with a sharpie, so be it.
Albert gives him his emptiest smile and hopes against all hope that the Coop who can recognize it is still awake in there, somehow, and will take notice.
“I've got to keep up, don't I.”