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Something about driving west at that time of day, into a blinding pink and orange sunset, makes Harry think of Cooper. Most things do.
It’s only been two years, but he feels like he’s aged five, maybe ten. He’s lost weight, his grey hairs have tripled in number, his smile lines are the only ones that haven’t deepened. Albert told him how terrible he looked on his last visit, some months ago. Among other things. Albert hit him back that time.
Existence these days is coffee and whiskey, only sometimes in the same cup. Sleepless nights, a racing pulse. He should take better care of himself, he tells himself in his near-weekly fits of rage and self-loathing; if he keels over from a heart attack that won’t do anyone any favors, least of all Coop, should he ever wander back into town. But still he carries on the same. He pretends not to notice Hawk quietly amending his shoddy reports at work, ignores the way hushed conversations regularly stop in their tracks when he enters a room.
But this is another of those “fresh starts” he keeps promising himself. After this he’s getting his shit together, quitting drinking, focusing on work, letting himself feel joy again. Letting himself feel anything but anger and apathy. Maybe this time it’ll stick. He’s forty-one years old next week, and while the number holds no particular significance to him or anyone else, it’s as good a time as any to turn things around. Or something like that.
He reaches the city just after eight-thirty, right in that perfect window after the rush hour traffic has dispersed, but before the night crowd has begun to come out in earnest. The motel he’d found on the last trip will do, a decent balance of cheap but clean enough. A quick shower to wash off the hours on the road, and he’s off for a drink and whatever else he can find that might occupy his mind for a minute.
The place is nondescript from the outside, no neon sign blinking the name in the window. No window. The unusually cool May evening has Harry feeling underdressed without a jacket, but he shrugs off even his flannel shirt once inside the stuffy warmth of the bar. In his t-shirt, jeans, and Stetson, he attracts the attention of two men around his age at a nearby table, but he just smiles politely and heads for the bar, leaving them to return to their conversation. No way he’s getting into any of this without a drink or two first.
It used to be beer when he went out, but now he wastes no time or pretense, goes right for liquor. He keeps his eyes on the glass in his hands as he takes it down slowly, the sharp edges of his thoughts finally eroding after the long day of travel. At least he hasn’t gotten bad enough to start drinking and driving, not like that. Things could always be worse.
Midway through his second whiskey he peels himself up from the bar enough to glance around, to admit his presence in the room. It’s getting busier, comfortably crowded but not packed. People are even starting to dance in the corner to the 70s rock playing from the jukebox.
People. Men. It’s nothing but men in here, a fact that Harry has adjusted to with shocking ease over just a few visits. If the person he was three years ago could see him now, he would…well, he wouldn’t know what to do. Sitting in a Seattle gay bar, not just tolerating attention from strange men but welcoming it—hoping for it, even. Harry had managed to pack that part of himself tightly down where it rarely saw the light of day, rarely had to be faced. But then Cooper came in and cracked him somehow, and after that Albert, who broke him open entirely. But now that’s over.
He’d been outlandishly drunk, upset about something or other. He doesn’t remember what all he said, but knows it was rough. Albert had said a lot of things in return, his usual snappy tirade of insults, most of them unmemorable to Harry in his intoxicated state. When Albert called him a “pathetic closet case,” Harry swung at him. Of course, he’d been slow and clumsy and missed the target of his face, the blow landing on his shoulder as he’d ducked away. The subsequent events are a blur in his memory—a fist bruising over his cheekbone, Albert shouting at him to “get your shit together already,” the front door slamming so hard the house shook, the empty bottle Harry threw against the wall lying in shattered pieces to be the next morning’s problem.
They still haven’t spoken since that night. It’s his own fault, Harry knows, but mending things would mean apologizing, which would mean making himself vulnerable to the reprimand he knows he deserves.
Another idle glance around the room, and—
Harry’s heart drops right through his stomach.
It can’t be…him, can it? It’s not, there’s just no way. The man is on the far side of the room and Harry’s vision swims as his heart goes haywire, so it’s hard to tell for sure. He realizes he’s standing, doesn’t remember getting up. Careful as he can with shaking hands, he tosses back the rest of his whiskey and coughs at the burn. His eyes remain locked on the lean figure against the far wall, dark hair slicked back over a head bowed just enough into the shadows, finer features impossible to make out from this distance. Impossibly square jaw. Harry’s entire being jitters with adrenaline, and he moves, pushing past people who barely seem to exist. His breathing is rapid and shallow, his throat aching with the urge to scream, or cry, or throw up.
It’s not him. Of course, it couldn’t be, it wouldn’t be. That would be absurd—here, of all places, and now, of all moments. But stranger things had happened with Cooper. This isn’t him, though. The nose isn’t right, or the chin. His eyes are dark. And when he cracks a smile at Harry, his teeth are long, crooked. More human. But god, he looks so much like him.
“You lookin’ for a ride, cowboy? Or are you the one giving ‘em?” His voice has the slight rasp of an older man, though he looks to be about thirty, thirty-five at most. A smoker, surely.
“Whatever you want, man.” Harry’s voice comes out remarkably steady, to his relief. He has the distinct feeling that if he doesn’t pursue this, he may actually die.
“I’m Dale,” the guy says with a nod, and Harry’s knees buckle.
“What?”
“I’m Dan,” he enunciates, a little louder.
Fuck. God. “Harry,” he says, attempting a smile.
“Okay, Harry.” The guy, Dan, turns to face him, stepping in close, and hooks a finger into the waistband of Harry’s jeans. “My place is right around the corner. You comin’ with me?”
Harry swallows, nods, and follows him out the door. They barely speak on the walk over, but he didn’t expect they would. His voice isn’t right anyway, the accent, the cadence off. Dan briskly leads the way, one block over and up, and Harry trails just two steps behind, overwhelmed by the strength of the resemblance from this angle. He’s wearing a leather jacket and tight black jeans, something Harry would never have thought to imagine Cooper in until now, but god, he can see it clear as day.
The apartment is on the second floor, above a storefront, one of those old-style city buildings that exist to Harry only in movies and not places like Twin Peaks. He barely makes note of the surroundings, busy staring at the back of the other man like his life depends on it. Once inside, standing still and cut off from the sound of the city, he can feel the tightness that’s settled in his chest. Dan switches the light on and Harry wishes he’d turn it back off—it only serves to illuminate all the ways in which he isn’t Cooper. But Harry closes his eyes when they press into each other all the same.
He tastes like cigarettes, which reminds Harry not of Coop but of Albert, which is enough small comfort for the moment. He sheds his leather jacket and tugs at Harry’s flannel, gripping at his arms once they’re free. They kiss clumsily, hungrily, Harry gasping as he drags his tongue along the back of the man’s teeth, searching for anything familiar, searching for the man he never got to have.
Harry dips his head down to taste the skin of his neck, under his jaw, fingers clawing desperately against his shoulder blades—
He’s back in the Bookhouse, clinging to Cooper like it’s the only chance he’ll ever get. And how could he have known that it would be? He should never have let go. It was the only time they ever touched like that, and even then he marveled at how easily Coop had pulled him out of his bender, after everything with Josie. He’d thought that was rock bottom, but now…in two years he’s found bottom ten times over and there’s no more Cooper to pull him back up.
His breath hitches, and the man (he can’t bear to think of him by any name) grinds hard against him in response, until a muffled sob forces its way through Harry’s lips against his skin.
“Uh, hey?” The other man tries to pull away, but Harry holds tighter, his body suddenly three times heavier, weaker. The man wrenches himself out of his grip. “Dude, are you good? Are you on something?”
But Harry doesn’t answer, he can’t—his throat is so tight he can barely breathe for fear of dissolving into tears completely. He manages a quick glance at the grimace being leveled at him, and shrinks instinctively back. What the fuck am I doing here? This man isn’t Cooper. No one is, not anymore.
“I think you need to go,” Dan says carefully. Harry nods and sees himself out.
A drizzling rain kicked up in the few minutes since they’d gone inside, and it only comes down harder as Harry stumbles the few blocks back to the motel. Of course, he thinks bitterly, but at least it limits the number of other people walking, saves him even a shred of remaining dignity as he tries to hold himself together. But it’s washing over him, flooding his system, an unstoppable deluge of anger and grief and pain.
He barely knew Cooper, that’s the thing, isn’t it? It was so little time they spent together, and Harry fell so fast and so hard for him. There were times he was almost sure Coop felt the same, but still Harry waited to make a move, certain there was time. Certain that he wouldn’t vanish, out of the blue like that, possibly forever. But still those limited memories replay constantly in his mind, all the little ways he could have done things differently, brought them closer, kept him from doing what he did in the end.
It’s only what-ifs, there’s nothing else, no way to go back and reclaim those moments. Can’t change the past. Can’t go back. Oh god, the knowledge of it overwhelms him.
And then there’s the things he doesn’t know, things he can’t know for sure, and those are even more impossible to bear. There are things he can’t bring himself to say aloud, but still, he wonders. Deep down, he thinks he knows. Even Doc Hayward doesn’t seem to have pieced it together, and he’s the one who saw him there.
Harry knew something wasn’t right when they last spoke, too, he and Cooper, or…well, it had to be Cooper, didn’t it? But he was so wrong, the light gone from his eyes, his voice. Doc might not have noticed that, sure, but Harry had spent the last month studying the man’s every move, enamored. Obsessed. He usually tries to shove away thoughts of that last interaction, wholly unequipped to process what it was—or who it was. But if it wasn’t Cooper, then…
The keys prove a challenge to Harry’s cold and clumsy fingers, and he drops them twice before managing to let himself into the motel room. It’s just as dark and cold as the outdoors, but at least it’s private. Lonely, as he slips out of his boots and into bed in his wet clothing.
His body trembles and heaves with sobs, all the tears he’s been forcing down for two years, two miserable years, choosing anger instead because it’s somehow easier to stomach than acknowledging the depth of the pain. He lets it happen now, overwhelmed by the sheer force of it, wringing him out from the inside in terrible waves. It’s a pain he can’t begin to describe, let alone grasp and pull from within himself, the impossible pain of wondering whether they would have truly loved like he thinks they could. It may have been his only chance at finding it, and now it seems he’ll never know, he’s become too broken for anyone else to try. Albert tried. But Harry broke that too, and he can’t get it back.
Maybe he can. He’s the one who needs to apologize. And he needs to change, somehow. All of this, whatever it is, it’s not a life.
When he finally regains his breath, he reaches for the phone on the beside table, can’t bear to put it off another moment. His fingers punch in the number instinctively. Miraculously, as if he was somehow waiting for the call, Albert picks up on the first ring.