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Well, he's never been a friend of politics.
The room dims like a theater. It seems the Veteran Entertainment Alliance has seen better days, drawing smaller crowds and serving worse jello salad, but the vets don't care and the air swirls blue from cigarette smoke. There's supposed to be a ceremony. There's also a congresswoman, though it's anyone's guess as to why she's here. She starts talking at some point. None of it feels ceremonial.
He's in a different world, here. Charlie's world, he supposes—one where everything's political, no matter where you look.
Cooper is the man with his dog, the man from Calabasas, the sheriff in the Valley of the Gun. Good people, all of them. Sure, the sheriff drank too much some nights, Calabasas-Case rode a stolen horse, and Roosevelt had not liked it one bit when the script called for Cooper to play yet another fit of rage—but at the end of the day, they're just men. Flaws are overcome, credits roll, and each character shines as a model for many an upright American. That's his world.
Thing is, Charlie's getting to him.
Thing is, none of those movies are real.
Cooper's skin crawls as he listens to the congresswoman stumble over her keywords: she's not selling anything, and no one would be buying even if she were. This is all they have, he's coming to realize. A bunch of flashcard talking points against a room full of billionaires.
Representative Welch spills her notes by the lectern, and Cooper loves Charlie, he really does, but he can't do this.
"I'm gonna go hit the head," he tells him. It's a bad excuse. It's just that his wife's voice is saying awful things in his head again, echoes of that Vault-Tec boardroom, and he flees to the men's not for a piss, but to put a couple walls between himself and everything.
The man from Deadhorse is different from the heroes he likes to play. Hell, it's almost funny—like half of the folks here, Cooper's killed some of those commie sons-of-bitches himself. That line never tasted right, though. Didn't on set, and still doesn't whenever Charlie is looking at him, saying all this shit that only ever means trouble. Trouble that sticks to Cooper, too. These days, he's not sure if he ever knew his wife, but there is one certainty: those rumors will reach her desk, and between the two of them, Barb's always been the smarter one. She could find out tomorrow for all he knows, yet here Cooper is, running straight to Charlie because, ha, maybe he's not been stupid enough already. Feels like he's in space trying to tell up from down, or better, on direct collision course with the ground.
He doesn't know what the fuck to do.
So he goes for a piss.
There are two other guys in the restroom when Cooper comes in. Observing the rule of picking the farthest urinal, he veers left. It's calm in here. He goes through the motions, the quiet more of a relief than anything else, and allows himself a deep breath. The pattern is one from his army days, something meant to steady a soldier's hands in the field. Most of it's hooey; there's a point past which deep breaths won't help your bouncing leg, twitching eye, or the awful sleep you haven't gotten in over twenty-four hours, but Cooper keeps coming back to it. Force of habit, in a way.
"You getting any awards tonight?"
He has to glance over his shoulder to check if he's being talked to—yep, sure is. The guy by the sink is looking at him, and it's a very direct look.
"No," he says, turning away. "No, I'm just here for an old friend."
One habit Cooper never did pick up is entertaining such looks when they're thrown his way. Just not his thing, even before Barb entered his life.
"Corporal Charlie Whiteknife," the man says pointedly.
"Yeah. Yeah, Charlie." Cooper focuses on his stream, tracking the sound of dress shoes on tile as the third guy leaves without using the sink.
They're alone in the room now. It appears to be what the stranger's been waiting for.
"Rumor has it he's a bit of a pinko." The vehemence behind the word is comical, coming from such an urbane voice. It startles Cooper right out of the fog that's draped itself over him. "Is that right?"
"I wouldn't know about that."
So that's the way the wind blows. Journalist, Vault-Tec spy, government snitch? Whatever it is, they're getting sweet fuck all from him today. A simple 'no' often does the trick as far as typical restroom propositions go; 'no', of course, being a word that the needlers in the information-dealing business have trouble with. Cooper settles in for some bullshit.
"And what about you, Mr. Howard?"
"What about me?"
The man makes a noise that, under different circumstances, might sound genial.
"Cooper Howard. American veteran. Star of the silver screen…" He draws out his words, lets his voice tilt softly with them until it isn't soft anymore. "Pinko."
If this is one of Vault-Tec's dogs, then Cooper's already screwed, isn't he? He tucks himself into his pants, sifting through a gallery of viable responses. The nonviable ones beg him to sock the guy in the jaw, but that'd make for an even louder headline than any of this pinko tripe. Better to just get a move on.
"Don't believe everything you read," Cooper deflects with a smile that's dull on purpose. He gets his first good look at the man on his way to the sink: bowling shirt, pencil mustache, enough pomade in his hair to survive a nuclear blast. Same age as him, roundabout. Eyes like a damn cat, and Cooper's still not sure if he's about to be invited for a drink or not.
"Oh, don't get me wrong. I sympathize with the pinko point of view," says the man, stepping away from the wall. "They have grievances with traditional institutions. Entirely justified, if you ask me."
This turn is a surprising one from the mouth of a guy who spits pinko like he's the ghost of McCarthy himself, but it figures they'd get more creative with their approach over time.
The water from the faucet is ice cold.
"I didn't ask you," Cooper says, and any man with half a brain would know to stop right there.
"It's their solution to the problem."
A smoke. Cooper could use a smoke right about now. That, and a drink, and maybe a hotel room so he won't have to… no. No, that's stupid. He shakes the water off his hands, looks around for the paper towels—
"Oh. Here."
—and is promptly handed one from the neighboring sink. Cooper takes it, but he won't thank the man, won't say another word to him if he can help it. Part of him wants to bail. His pride gets in the way of that, though, and it's all he can do to keep himself from asking this guy who the hell he thinks he is.
Somehow, the fucker then gets it in his mind to come up right behind him.
"You back a body into a corner, they're liable to try anything." His warmth boxes Cooper in like a touch. "You back billions of bodies into a corner at the same time…" The man seems either intent on or ignorant of the situation he's creating, unconcerned about someone walking in, or getting some twisted kick from exactly that. "Tsk."
His own hands would be the safest place to look if Cooper were the type to be easily cowed. He is not that, however: the mirror is more interesting than his hands. It's there that their eyes meet, Cooper's frown sharing one reflection with the stranger's sphinx-like focus. The stranger's eyes, dark and knowing, have a pull he can't defy. This isn't lost on the stranger—he brightens, and he really is enjoying this, the creep.
"Everybody trying to solve the same problem at the same time with a multitude of solutions." This close to Cooper's ear, he sounds like Miss Williams in his intensity. "Messy, messy, hm?"
Cooper stares at the men in the mirror, all his affectations slipping under the stranger's expectant stare. It's like some people see right inside him, can find something there, some invisible lever they pull that makes him into their plaything. They have something, and when they say jump, he jumps. Wear this, promote that, kill Robert House, pretend for your wife…
Barb. He doesn't want to keep thinking of her. This man, whatever his deal is, has stepped out of line. A long-delayed spark of anger warms Cooper right back up; he's loose in a way he hasn't been all evening, and it's just what he needs to turn this whole thing on its head. He wears his best fuck-off smile when he rounds on the man.
"I take it you're not a vet."
The guy doesn't shrink, per se, but Cooper's all too happy to see him startle, those eyes losing their mystery as the man looks him up and down like it's slipped his mind that it's a Marine he's been bothering, not some soft touch from Hollywood. When he looks back up, Cooper can count the scraps of his composure.
"What gave me away?"
It's almost a thing of beauty.
"Because a vet would know better than to talk politics," Cooper says, tempted to tell the guy just what happens in the army if you tailgate a fella in the men's room, "when a man has his dick in his hand."
Holding the man's gaze just to amuse himself, Cooper sways closer. He'd like to see him flinch again.
Instead, he catches the stranger grinning.
An honest-to-god nutjob, that's what this guy is, standing with his hands folded behind him like the sun's shining out his own ass. Cooper's had enough. He splits, bewildered more than anything, but doesn't make it to the door before the stranger gets in the last word:
"'Til next time, Mr. Howard!"
He has the balls to sound pleased.
Though the evening may stretch on, it comes to an end eventually. It's given Cooper many things to think about—too many, he feels, because when he pulls into his driveway, the front door looks more like the entrance to a cave than anything else. Sitting in his car, he stares at it for a while. The lights are on upstairs. It's late, but maybe Barb is reading, getting ready for bed, or maybe, maybe, still trying to fit that teddy into the keepsake box.
He sits there long enough for the night to get under his skin.
There's been that dangerous talk again, the shit that Charlie can't stop saying, and tonight, he's even had a stage to say it from. He's smart about it, of course. He's got that easy charm about him that should really be getting him better roles. 'Nameless Indian' was a crass way to phrase it, but admittedly, there's only so much grace a man can give a character like Tallhand Mudlake when the script is working against him, the inappropriate headdress having been the cherry on top of Charlie's poor head. That movie, in the end, had been about Cooper's law-bringer and Johnny Morton's cattle rancher.
And what happens when the cattle ranchers are in control?
Down in LA, there is a boardroom where his wife shared a table with the who's who of those holding America's future in their hands. He heard their words. Every terrible detail rings in his ear like the silence after a bomb blast, and Cooper doesn't want to believe it because it's all fucking insane. They're planning to burn down the world in there. Robert House had been in that room, too; disaffected, and with the means to follow through. That's all Cooper should need. Miss Williams is right, and Charlie has the cooler head.
It's just one man. Just one man whose corpse will be found in his penthouse, whose fortunes will be picked apart, whose secret arsenal will be unveiled and secured. One man's finger off the big red button. One man's life for billions of others.
The light on the second floor goes out, plunging the driveway into deep blue darkness.
One man's life for Janey. That doesn't seem too bad, does it?
Cooper peels himself from the car and winces at the sound of the door falling shut. He stays still for a moment, holding his breath. The lights don't come back on. Though his hands are numb, he doesn't go for the front door, or maybe he just can't. Not yet. He rounds the corner instead, treads the lawn, walking all the way to the patio overlooking the garden to come to a stop there, shivering.
Audiences love The Man from Deadhorse. Cooper doesn't get it—who wants their sheriff to go around shooting people in the head? But it all comes together when you see the images coming out of Canada; you might even call it an honest depiction, weren't there so many people celebrating this scene with bright-eyed cheer. Deadhorse's villain didn't die for his crimes, no; he was nailed in the leg for those. For his thoughts, however…
Deadhorse's sheriff would've shot Charlie point-blank.
Charlie's lighter is heavy in his pocket. Cooper fumbles for it, then fumbles for a cigarette, too, lighting it with trembling hands. He barely feels his lips as he tucks it between them. A breeze rustles the leaves of his garden. It takes one, two, three drags of nicotine to gather his wits again.
At the end of the day, he recalls Charlie's words from on top of that podium, we just gotta hope that we bet on the right side. The side that protects the people you love.
The sliding door behind him opens. He closes his eyes.
"You had me worried," Barb says quietly. He can't hear her footsteps as she comes to stand next to him, only her bathrobe shifting against her nightgown. "Thought I heard a car, but no one came inside."
Another drag masks the seconds he needs to find his voice. "I didn't want to wake you."
"I was waiting for you to come home."
It hurts in a very real way when she reaches for his hand, and he feels her warmth before her fingers brush the edge of his palm. It's a stupid idea to flee from this. Then again, there's a lot on his mind—he lets his hand slip from hers as though he had not felt her gentle touch, bringing it up to steady his cigarette.
"Coop?"
"Sorry, uh…" A leaf blows off the jacuzzi cover down in the garden, its movement leading his eyes to Barb's. Damn it. "Just got a couple things to think about, is all. Need some fresh air."
Barb looks at the cigarette and hums.
"Charlie?"
Shit. Fuck.
"Yeah," he says, because that's not an outright lie. "Yeah. Brought up some old stories I thought I'd gotten over, you know. Don't think I can sleep just yet."
And now his hand's shaking again, so he drops it down to his side, hoping to still the tremors. Barb's eyes are like wells in the night. He'll fall in if he's not careful.
"I have business in town tomorrow. There's a new doctor who is easy on veteran prescriptions, I could—"
"Thank you, Barb, but it's fine." He's gone to grab her hand in a panic, and now that he's holding on to her, he doesn't know what to do. "I just need a moment, okay?"
He strokes his thumb over her knuckles just long enough to be believed, her skin searing him like a hot dish he can't afford to drop. When he does let go, he stuffs his hand right in his pocket, and Barb sends him a glance he doesn't dare decipher.
She stands with him for a while, staying until his cigarette is burnt halfway through.
"I miss you, Coop," she says, a flake of ash drifting down.
"I miss you, too," he returns. His throat is sticky.
"It'll be worth it in the end." They overlook their garden. Barb crosses her arms tight over her chest; the resolution in her voice is too familiar, and it breaks his heart. "I'll have to work just a little harder, and then—then I'll finally have enough time for you."
He can't reply. If he were to speak now, it would spill from him like a dam breaking, so he swallows smoke. Barb draws a shaky breath next to him.
"Don't catch a cold out here," she says, and in the depths of her gaze swirl those things he doesn't want to see: understanding, worry, and all the love no stranger could ever give to him. Then, she is gone, the patio door sliding shut behind her.
Cooper takes the cigarette out of his mouth and wipes his eyes.
It takes another smoke to even consider going inside. By the time he wanders in, his hands are so cold he can barely hold his keys right. Barb has gone to bed. The thought of tossing and turning next to her makes him consider the couch, but Roosevelt's already there, blearily raising his little head from the cushions.
"What'd I tell you about the couch, hm?"
Roosevelt's ears twitch.
"You only get on when I'm there, too," Cooper says softly, but it's no real reprimand. He sits down next to Roosevelt, lowball and bottle in hand, the glass warm against his frozen fingers as he pours himself a double and knocks it back. Roosevelt watches him repeat this process twice, then seems to decide he's seen enough. With a huff and what Cooper could swear is judgment in his eyes, his loyal friend leaves him on the couch, tail disappearing around the corner to Janey's room.
Not even the damn dog can stand him tonight. Cooper stares after him, caught somewhere between a buzz and a spiral.
Roosevelt's right, of course. What man needs courage to get in bed with his own wife? He puts the whisky and the glass away to head upstairs. It's just for sleeping, after all. He'll close his eyes and be gone.
Mercifully, Barb is asleep when he enters their room, and doesn't wake from his rustling in the en-suite. She's lying on her side, facing him, and even now she looks so tired that he wants to feel bad for her. He slips into bed like a thief. Staying close to the edge, he's afraid of her breath brushing his shoulder at the same time as he wants to curl around her, bury his face in her neck the way he's done thousands of times. The ache eats at him. The whisky, in turn, almost makes him brave enough to pull her close.
She's doing what she needs to do, he reminds himself. And because he can't let that happen, he'll do what is necessary. He'll keep them safe, and if he has to kill a man to see this through, well, then so be it.
The room spins. Staring at the ceiling, he lets unconsciousness pull at him, and the alcohol does its job.
He doesn't recall falling asleep.
He just finds himself in that restroom again.
"What gave me away?" the stranger asks once more, and the question is still as stupid as the first time. Only this time, Cooper isn't willing to be nice.
Now, because he knows the asshole deserves it, he shoves him hard into the wall. "You wanna know what it is?"
Though he looks like he might be easily pushed around, Cooper finds the stranger firm enough beneath his bowling shirt to justify the force, which is just as well. He's not a bully, never has been. Yet some grown men need correction later in life, and, so Cooper notes, most often those men are the ones who never saw a day of war themselves.
"Enlighten me," the stranger breathes.
When you share a space with a bunch of jarheads, you wisen up to violence real quick. Someone creeps on you in the bathroom; you either fight them or you fuck them, and if someone thinks they can strong-arm you around, you prove them wrong. This guy, on the other hand, lets himself be handled. Doesn't even raise his fists or anything, just stands there, lifting his chin instead of tucking it. His Adam's apple bobs under his skin, his neck open and smooth in this light—maybe, Cooper thinks, it had already looked this nice when he'd been awake. He must've been too angry to notice, then.
"Everything, buddy." Cooper leans in. "A vet would do none of what you did just now."
"I suppose you speak for all of them."
"I had you figured out from the start."
Slyness sparks in the stranger's eye. "Well, then, Mr. Howard—what makes you think I was posing?"
Cooper finds that he likes it. He likes it because he can wipe it off the stranger's face as he pleases, and it does please him greatly how that guile melts to fear. It pleases him that this is his dream, and that he has nothing to answer for: he grabs the man by the lapels and spins them around, marching along until there's a stall to thump him against. It gives a rattle that reverberates through the space between them.
"You gonna do something?" Cooper pushes his knuckles up against that soft neck, feeling the stranger's breathing where their bodies lie against each other. "You fight at all?"
He's choking the stranger now, not enough to put him to sleep, just enough to hurt. Instinct overcomes the pride of even the greatest men at some point. For the stranger, that point is now: he gasps, sweet in Cooper's ears, hands flying up to pry at his wrists with well-kept nails that won't scratch for shit.
"There you go, man. Was that so hard?" Cooper steps back, shoving the man into the open space between the stalls and the urinals. This is a great dream, Cooper decides as he watches the man stagger. There's steam in him that just wants a vent. Keeping it together for the cameras, the prying eyes, for Barb and Miss Williams—all that only ever puts more heat on his kettle.
It doesn't feel like he's pushing his luck when he advances on the man again. He doesn't need luck here. His world, true and only. One where he gets to mess with schmucks like these.
"Mr. Howard," the man starts, "is this really—"
"Do something about it."
It's very easy to feint up into the man's hair. Pretend to hit him in the solar plexus, then go right for the prize. The strands are full of product, but once Cooper has dragged his fingers through them, they stick out and fall in all sorts of fun new ways. Gone is the polish, gone is that veneer of superiority. This, even the stranger can't abide. He does try to do something, then, but he's clearly as much of a fighter as Cooper is a politician.
Until something cracks against Cooper's brow.
White spots dance like television snow before he remembers where he is, staring at the man in front of him. His first thought is how solid that hit was. His second is nothing short of euphoria. The stranger, still shaking out his hand, backs himself into the very same corner he first addressed Cooper from. Why? The man can clearly throw a punch; his knuckles bleed from the truth of it. His eyes are so wide now, blown and dark and deep—and what's in there?
Cooper throws himself into them. Black and white, white and black, hit by hit. Fist meets liver in a shot that would make even those Soviet boxers blush. Such a hook would fold anyone, let alone this unlearned man.
Breathless, the stranger slides down the wall, Cooper leaning over him, feeling for a moment as though he's about to follow. Forehead braced against cooling tile, Cooper blinks the blood out of his eye. His vision swims away from him. Triple images become double before they sharpen into one, and the shape of the slumped man between him and the wall lights a fire in his gut. He isn't prepared for the sudden weight against his thigh, the stranger's listing head coming to rest there, heavy and alive. Hot gasps soak through the fabric of Cooper's pants. Riled, Cooper grasps the man's jaw—he's got him now, the arrogant bastard.
The man raises his head for him. His eyes are alight, knowing something Cooper doesn't, though no longer daring to talk back.
Cooper knows what he wants next. They both do. All that pressure seeks a vent, after all, and he can't stop himself from moving. Just a little further. Just a little yes from his tongue, a small bit of forgetfulness, his sighs misting up the tile. Smooth heat, rough going. It's exactly what he needs, and he ruts into it.
He closes his eyes.
Opens them.
Gray seeps through the curtains, tricking the mind into a time before technicolor. A breath shudders from his lungs at the loss of something that was never there. Heat, gone. Pressure, still on. His hand is beneath the blanket, and it's beneath his bottoms, too. He pulls it away as though stung.
Dread creeps in: five in the morning, reads the bedside clock. Barb, thank god, is fast asleep. Cooper aches in a way he can't take lying down, and he's off to the en-suite before he can think to do anything else.
Surrounded by tiles—ochre, not teal—he gives himself a moment. Mostly, there's disbelief. He remembers being a farm boy, maybe sixteen, seventeen years old, spotting a girl from out of town walking by the fence, never to see her again. He'd had dreams about her, anyway, even after she'd been gone. More than that, he remembers the time after he met Barb. She's always had a way of being on his mind.
But this? No. Not at his age, not with this strange, cryptic asshole who most certainly had been spying on him. Cooper stares at the state this stranger has nonetheless left him in. Willing it to die down does less than nothing; he only gets angrier, only sees that smug face more clearly.
A noise wafts through the bathroom door. It's the sound of the bedsprings whenever Barb shifts on the mattress, and his urgency sharpens. He's leaking like he's thirty years younger and fresh from deployment, and his first dumbass instinct is to finish the job, get this shit out of his head before it chases him anywhere else. Resolute thoughts of nothing morph into the stranger, again.
What else is he to think of?
The bed creaks once more. Cooper knows how Barb is: she starts tossing an hour before her alarm, no longer asleep but not quite awake, meaning he has some time to act. Kept safely in his head, there's a museum's worth of things he's done with Barb to get him off for a lifetime—Cooper had never been left wanting with her. His wedding ring flashes under the bathroom lights. Now, no memory will hold up, a pit opening in his stomach when all he hears is his wife's stony voice in that boardroom.
Heat comes in waves, rippling through him once the stranger shoulders his way to the front of Cooper's fantasy. Glimmering eyes, knowing looks, a mouth in just the right place to drive a man wild. Makes no sense. Cooper's never been into guys. But that man could be here on the floor right now, just like the dream, the only difference being the color of the tiles.
The ring flashes again.
Fuck this.
Dizzy, Cooper shucks his pajamas and flees to the shower, wrenching the temperature all the way down. Might as well jump into Eagle River. His lungs contract on their own under the icy spray—it works as intended, but doesn't wash away the awfulness sticking to him like tar.
"Cooper?"
He almost hits his elbow on the shower handle.
"Yeah?"
"Do you know what time it is?"
Water rushes off his body and cracks against the tub's porcelain, cutting into the quiet of the morning.
"… Yeah. Sorry." The thought of Barb's tired face makes him turn off the shower. "Go back to sleep."
Beyond the bathroom door, she huffs out a noise of acknowledgement. The bed creaks again. Cooper is numb all over when he dries himself off, and not just from the cold. His sleepwear taunts him. He folds it so the wet spot won't be quite as obvious as it is now, the sight of it turning his stomach.
Why?
Why now, of all points in his life?
What makes you think I was posing? The stranger's voice teases, and though spoken by a ghost in a nightmare, Cooper gets stuck on the line. The fucker had a point. Cooper will forget about this, all of it, the glint and the warmth and the sweet, painful rush.
He's got a spy to report to Miss Williams.
He's got a man to kill.