Irritation (Twin Peaks, Cooper) 1/1

[drpeppergrinder]

Oh oops I wrote another Twin Peaks thing, no series knowledge required tho. This is just a silly little oneshot with Cooper and Albert, meant to take place pre-series. Albert = “lacking in some of the social niceties.” Gordon Cole = their supervisor who is hard of hearing and yells every sentence he’s ever said. Cooper = adorable oddball detective with a heart of gold who I’ve yet to tire of writing, I don’t know how to stop and it’s beginning to concern me

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Washington, D.C. Federal Bureau of Investigation January, 1984

It’s happened way too many times within the last hour. He likes the guy, sure, but Agent Cooper could be annoying even at his best, which today he clearly was not. There are many traits Cooper has that Albert can objectively acknowledge are positive traits while also being very annoyed by them. The recently graduated Special Agent was gregarious and confident and excessively polite and all of that seemed to make Cooper's handling of the cold he currently has into the perfect storm to get thoroughly under Albert’s skin.

He’s tried to keep his silently building resentment to himself, aside from a request for Cooper to stop saying “excuse me” afterward every goddamn time, which, thank god, he did, but Albert’s resolve is definitely waning and if the incessant sniffling weren’t enough, the—

“HehYESSHHue! ESSHHoo!”

Cooper lifts his face from the handkerchief he’s steadily destroying to pant himself into the inevitable final episode of the trilogy nobody asked for.

“ErrRISSHHue!” He appears momentarily lost when he looks up finally with a couple ameliorating sniffles, folds the handkerchief several times and puts it back in his pocket, then grabs a tissue because apparently he needs to alternate between them. Albert can’t quite figure out the method to this latest example of Cooper’s madness and he’s trying not to pay attention to it in the first place.

“Agent Cooper...”

“snf! Albert.”

“Exactly how many times do you plan to sneeze today?” he asks, doing his best not to look up from the lab report he’s filling out, though he’s already forgotten whatever it was he’d been writing.

“Some very large number divisible by three,” Cooper says, tending to his nose with the tissue, then throwing it away in the pedal bin beneath the desk they sit on opposite sides of. Apparently the bin has a very squeaky pedal all of a sudden and it certainly doesn’t make that noise when Albert uses it himself so he suspects Cooper is stepping on it too hard but god what the hell was he writing?

It’s definitely less than ten minutes later and might be as few as five when Albert is interrupted by Cooper sneezing again. And again. And…?

Albert tries very hard not to stop what he’s doing to wait for the third very attention-getting sneeze he knows is coming but does briefly glance at Cooper, who is once again parted-mouthed and panting over the handkerchief (maybe he only uses that to sneeze into? And the tissues are reserved for mopping at his face afterwards? What is this weird strategy — whatever Albert doesn’t care)

“Hh! ...HihYIIIHHHoo!”

Well that was very high pitched, and there are glass objects on this desk that Albert would prefer if remained unshattered.

Cooper catches his breath and grabs another tissue. His face has felt very tingly all morning and evidently even sneezing himself dizzy isn’t providing anything more than temporary relief from a relentless itch that his airways can’t resist continuously attempting to scratch. Somehow his nose seems to be bothering Albert even more than it’s bothering him. He does feel moved to at least acknowledge the frequency.

“Goodness, sxf! I can’t stop sneezing.”

“Yeah I’ve noticed, it’s impossible not to notice.” Albert gives him a measured look Cooper isn’t sure what to do with. “It’s very distracting.”

“I know it is Albert, I’m not doing it idtentionally.”

Albert looks up finally, holding a pen it looks like he wants to shove through his own hand. “Can you not stifle it?”

Oof, that sounds terrible. “I cad, snf! if the situation calls for it but—”

“I’m calling for it, I’d like to actually get some work done today.”

“—it’s not very pleasant.”

“Of course it isn’t but we do it anyway so we don’t bother everyone in shouting distance.”

“I’ll try,” he says with a liquid sniffle, gosh his nose will not quit running either, “but I can’t make any promises.”

The next time he takes an audibly deep inhale and wrestles the handkerchief back out of his pocket to unfold it from some oddly complex origami-like shape, Albert catches Cooper’s eyes before they flutter closed to deliver a silent reminder. And Cooper does manage it, mostly, still in an apparently unflappable set of three.

He crumples into himself, resisting the urge to open his mouth and instead grits his teeth tightly, pursing his lips lest sound escape, making a sort of swallowed guttural noise in the process.

“Hng’NT—HNtsch!” Oh this is very hard, “HNt’xxsshOO!”

He looks as if a bomb just imploded in his face and took casualties, his features slow to unwrinkle themselves. Blinking, dazed, wiping at his eyes with a newly plucked tissue. “Damb, that last one got away from me.”

Does he absolutely need to talk about it??

“Practice makes perfect,” Albert mumbles.

“snf! You do this every time you sneeze?”

“I sure do.”

“It’s awful.”

For a blessed stretch of fifteen or twenty minutes Albert is finally able to focus enough to complete a full autopsy report from his pile with minimal interruption save for Cooper’s sniffling, which is at least occurring in a consistent enough pattern that it begins to fade into the ambient monotony of phones ringing and papers shuffling. Their temporary shared use of this desk was not ideal, but thus far they had spent very few days in the office at the same time — usually missing each other when Cooper was out on assignment or Albert was in the lab — more of a joint custody arrangement than a simultaneous cohabitation. It’s not as if Cooper had asked for it, but nor did he seem to mind it very much, which meant that Albert would have to doubly mind it for the both of them.

The period of relative peace is broken much too soon by the noisy clattering of a dropped pen and the tremulous suspense of hitching breath. Stifling cannot be good for a person, Cooper decides, and it’s very inefficient at alleviating irritation. Also seems to leave him more congested afterward — definitely an inferior method.

“HNndt—Hd’tsch… IDZ’txxxshh!” He feels like he’s gone cross-eyed. “Holy sbokes, s’df! Snff! I’m gonna give myself an aneurysm.”

“That’s very dramatic.”

Cooper can’t help but smile. He honestly finds Albert endlessly amusing even when he’s being rude. Perhaps especially when he’s being rude.

“Well if you’re gonna whine about it every time, just sneeze in the very distracting way you always do then, Cooper.”

“Thank you, I will.”

And of course he does, at far too frequent intervals throughout the morning. Albert isn’t sure a colleague sneezing has ever gotten on his nerves quite this much. What strikes him the most about it is how Cooper can press his face into a cloth and somehow still not muffle a single decibel of the sound. He must be doing it wrong somehow. And why is he not embarrassed about it, does he really not mind the volume? Albert would handle things differently, is all, if he had to sneeze a trillion goddamn times like this. One would think, at the very least, someone feeling like they’re about to sneeze but then losing the urge could do so silently, but even that is accompanied by comments like:

“It codtinues to elude me.”

Albert is privately debating the merits of permanently stapling his hands over his ears.

Cooper’s initial strategy to combat the brain fog clouding his own concentration is with obscene amounts of coffee. But as the morning drags on, he comes to envision the graph of caffeine’s efficacy in terms of its positive cognitive effects as a downward facing parabola moving along the x-axis of his growing fatigue over time. He’s probably already crested the peak of its doomed arc by 11:00 AM at cup number four.

Then when he’s on his way back from the kitchenette with that fourth hardly-hopeful cup he’s arrested by an irrepressible prickling and oh no this is not the time nor the place for his breath to get shuddery like this and he’s definitely not going to make it back to the desk before this happens and this is extremely hot coffee oh goddamnit—

He’s forced to cease walking and perform a controlled collapse into his crooked arm, bringing the mug closer to himself in an attempt to have more influence over its balance which, “hehYISSHHue!” turns out to be a huge mistake because “hrrISSHHyuu—” he’s just “IIIHHH-shuue…”

Spilled very black coffee all over a very white shirt and scalded his hand in the process. Luckily he’s had a spare in the bottom drawer of the desk for the better part of the four weeks he’s been here and honestly it’s almost impressive it took him until now to need it, considering how much coffee he drinks and how much white he wears.

Aside from staining his clothing and tempting him with diminishing returns, what the desperate guzzling of caffeine is succeeding at doing is making his hands shake and inspiring many restroom visits for excessive urination. Which does, at least, give him opportunities to blow his nose where Albert can’t hear him and thus maintain a fighting chance to escape a neck wringing. Whether emotional or physical remains to be seen. He’s pretty certain Albert is exclusively bark but this sure is riling the guy up.

Truth be told Cooper really would prefer if he were less symptomatic himself. He’s nursing several symptoms at this point and his nose, while definitely still the main issue, is no longer the only one — now accompanied by a pressurized headache and the hot-stomached hint of a coming fever. He’s so rarely ill it’s almost as if it’s necessary for it to be especially bad when he does fall victim to a virus, because he can’t recall ever having a cold that could be described as anything less than severe, but alright that’s quite enough feeling sorry for himself, he’s already falling behind on the work he wants to get through today. Office days aren’t his favorite way to spend his time but it’s certainly better to be sick in the office than out in the field. Though clearly not as far as Albert's concerned.

As far as Albert’s concerned, by midday Cooper has gone from the primary focus of his frustration to just one of the many annoyances of this particular Wednesday, as he sits in a chair that’s definitely slowly disfiguring his spine, filling out a report of his forensic findings on the body of a Mr. Daniel Jonson whose surname really should have an ‘h’ but doesn’t so he keeps writing it incorrectly with pens that keep running out of ink and a mind that keeps veering off course. While Cooper continues sneezing too often for Albert’s liking, at least he stops accompanying it with further comment, either on Albert’s account or because Cooper just doesn’t have the energy. He does look a little like a kicked puppy but thank god something’s shut him up.

Just after lunch — which, he really should have known better than to think anything could possibly suppress the kid’s absurd appetite — Albert watches out of the corner of his eye as one of the new secretaries hesitantly approaches in the periphery.

A timid voice breaks the younger agent out of a sniffly stupor. “Um, hi.”

Cooper spins over his shoulder, oscillating from drowsy to pleasantly surprised. “Oh gosh, Diane—”

Albert doesn’t mean to look up but he does anyway as the blushing young woman hands Cooper a box of tissues and says, “I thought you might need these, or… I know you need these, to put it straightforwardly.”

“You’re ad angel, tha—” Cooper breaks off to cough into his elbow in a way that sounds like many syllables despite being only two exhales. He clears his throat and continues with a broken-voiced, “Thank you I meandt to say.”

“Aww, you really don’t feel well at all, do you?” She asks, voice softened by sympathy as if she’s talking to a kitten or a puppy or a baby.

“I’ve certainly bed better.”

Just as Albert is about to get a cavity from the sugariness of this exchange he’s being subjected to observe, Diane finally says “Well, get well soon, okay?” And turns to leave as Cooper thanks her again.

Terrible idea. Watch her become his secretary.

A dopey smile flashes over Cooper’s face as he swivels back around. He sets the fresh Kleenex box down next to the old one and pulls a tissue from the latter, revealing it to be the final tissue, eyes widening at the timing of the gesture. “Idcredible.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Albert cautions, “You haven’t been assigned a secretary yet, it might be her.”

Cooper glances again toward the direction of her departure but she’s out of eye sight.

“Is that already… something?"

Cooper grins from behind an infatuation-shaped tissue. “Albert, I doh’t know what you mead.”

“I barely understood that.”

“slff! I know sorry. Some of my nasal cod—snf!—consonants keep becoming voiced plosives.”

Another obnoxious habit of Cooper’s is assuming his expansive random assortment of very specific factoids to be universal knowledge.

Albert exhales impatiently, “And what does that mean, in plain English?”

“I’mb getting stuffy.”

He blows his nose as a follow up, to which Albert looks vaguely disgusted and perhaps sensing this or maybe feeling somewhat embarrassed anyway Cooper mutters a sheepish “sorry” afterwards.

As soon as he throws away the tissue a familiar sensation teases at his breath again. He shoves a hand into his pocket to grab the handkerchief but drops it out of reach under the desk and he panics when he starts for the tissue box and realizes it has yet to be opened.

He really doesn’t want to direct this particular sneeze into his sleeve but he has no choice but to sling an arm over his face and bury his face into his elbow as it crashes over him.

“Heh’ESHHyue!” He peeks out from over his arm, not daring to bring his face away, fumbling desperately with his free hand to rip through the perforation in the cardboard box as his chest inflates with unsteady breath, the raw force of need tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Albert takes notice of his struggle, grabs the box himself and tears it open as Cooper winces and bobs forward into his arm again with an even wetter-sounding “EXSSHHue!”

Albert slides it back across the desk to Cooper, who tugs out a tissue with velocity enough to tip over the box itself in his panicked haste, frantic hands cupping it over his nose and mouth and spinning himself slightly clockwise in his chair into an expulsion with such downward force that his elbows reach his knees.

“EhyyYEISHH-shoo!!” He blinks back the resulting blur of tears, hesitating to bring the tissue away because it feels like his face won't come back together if he does. A flurry of sniffles as he examines the damp inner arm of his sleeve looking like he wants to cry and makes an exasperated noise.

“It was a noble effort.”

“I appreciate your assistance,” he sighs, wiping dismally at the sleeve of a shirt he really really doesn’t want to continue wearing. Apparently he needs to start keeping multiple spares here. No more sneezing into sleeves, he’s far past the… liquid volume of output for that to be an option any longer.

Back in the bathroom for what must be the eighty-first time today, Cooper douses his whole arm in water from the elbow down and scrubs soap into wet cotton that feels uncomfortable against his skin. A glance in the mirror confirms his rising temperature is outwardly visible in the form of blotchy redness spreading up his cheeks and a quality of glassiness to his eyes. He turns the tap to cold and takes a moment to gently bring handfuls of water to his burning face because he feels a little bit like some secret process of internal combustion has set him invisibly aflame.

Cooper returns to the desk with a soggy sleeve and swallows back a sigh. His head feels rather murky, sinuses unpleasantly warm and full, bottom-of-the-coffee-pot sludgy, the bitter taste of illness on his tongue. Coffee as metaphor for head cold. How very apt. He sits down to open a folder and stare at it until he can sort through the fugue state of fever to remember what it was he was doing, which actually didn't even involve this particular folder at all.

Albert takes in the absolute mess of a threadbare agent coming thoroughly undone before him. Cooper has a tissue more or less permanently pressed to his nose and is doing everything one handed. He gives off the distinct impression of a sad bowl of soup. Whatever this is hit him fast and hard.

“Agent Cooper,” Albert says finally.

It seems to catch Cooper off guard and instead of saying “Albert” he just pulls his head up with a distracted and weary “Mmm?"

“This is pitiful.”

He looks at Albert through heavy-lidded eyes and just sniffles.

“You’re sweating, do you have a fever?”

“I’b sure I do,” he says, taking a lethargic moment to blot at his forehead.

He’s been looking wobbly whenever he gets up from his chair and in spite of himself Albert’s starting to become a little concerned. "You sure this is a cold?”

“I get fevers every time I catch cold, snf! I don’t get sick very ofted but when I do…” he issues a short whistle.

“Give me your arm I’m checking your pulse.”

Cooper rolls up his sleeve and extends his bared forearm across the desk so willingly it takes Albert by surprise. Some people just make good patients but agents typically don't. Maybe he’ll grow out of it. Are they learning bad habits here? Maybe, who cares.

“What’s your resting heart rate normally — around sixty or seventy?”

“I think sixty, yes.”

Albert takes Cooper’s wrist and presses two fingers against the vein beneath the thumb bone as he observes the ticking hand of his wristwatch for half a minute, counting the surging beats of quickened pulse.

“You’re at one ten,” he says, voice dipping into seriousness. It’s definitely a mixture of the fever and the insane amount of coffee Cooper’s been chugging as if it’s the elixir of life, but that’s quite high for a usually healthy twenty-six year old.

“Stop drinking coffee. Switch to water, you’re probably getting dehydrated too.”

Cooper nods mutely, bringing a tissue back to a weepy nostril with his other hand.

“You can have that back now.” Albert makes a shooing hand motion indicating time to get your germy arm off my desk.

Even having only felt the heat of Cooper’s skin for less than a minute Albert suspects it’s probably a high grade fever — further evidenced by the facial redness and the sweat marks beginning to seep down past his wilted shirt collar. The kid probably feels even worse than he looks, and he looks about as sick as a muzzled dog whose tail hasn’t wagged all day.

Cooper peers back at him quizzically. “Albert is that… symbpathy I’b seeing?”

“Only because you look so miserable.”

“And his heart grew three sizes that day,” Cooper muses, earning an accidental smirk, “Adbittedly I do feel awful.”

“You poor bastard,” Albert says, redirecting his attention to his paperwork or at least attempting to. Cooper’s chuckle turns instantly into a cough.

“You should probably go home. I bet Gordon will let you leave if you ask him.”

“Eh, I’b still pretty green here, I’m not sure I wanna make waves.”

Albert makes a ‘fair enough’ head nod. He’d probably feel the same.

“If I were in the field right now I’d say something—”

—it has not escaped Albert’s notice how often Cooper uses the phrase ‘in the field,’ because it’s so transparent how proud and excited he is to be able to say it, and Albert’s torn between envy of Cooper's still very much intact starry-eyed optimism, and belated embarrassment that five years ago he himself probably made some older agent roll their eyes at his own awkward attempts to shoehorn jargon into conversation—

“—but the worst that could happen here, s’df! is needing you to carry me to my car at the e’d of the day.”

“If you think I would you truly are delirious.”

Albert spends a good few minutes contemplating paying Gordon’s office a quick visit to suggest he send Cooper home. Not because he’s annoyed, or, not just because he’s annoyed, but because someone this ill simply shouldn’t be working if they don’t strictly need to be, and especially not when that person is new and starry-eyed, and when Albert might be giving off the impression that Cooper needs to be more like him when technically, no he doesn’t, not yet.

Strangely enough, maybe there’s a part of Albert that feels such optimism should be preserved for as long as it can be. This baby agent who unhinged his jaw to eat a sandwich he ordered to ridiculous specificity as if he was the President of the United States. This kid who sneezes and makes no effort to quiet himself, like it’s never occurred to him to do it any other way. Maybe it’s too early for Cooper to have to sit here and stifle and hesitate to give someone his naked arm.

But ultimately Albert doesn’t have to do anything, because soon enough Gordon Cole appears, the man himself, into the work room and makes his way to their desk specifically. Gordon’s ears must be burning. Well, they probably always are.

“Coop, I can hear you without my hearing aids!”

Cooper lifts a hand and says, “Gordon I—” which is as far as he’s able to get before quickly flashing three fingers and diving headlong into the handkerchief to sneeze thrice in a rising meter and he really would rather be doing pretty much anything else right now than counting down on his fingers the number of times he’s going to sneeze for the Deputy Director of the FBI but that’s exactly what he’s doing.

He’s never been blessed quite so loudly in his life.

Gordon looks over his sniffling young Agent, who he’s never before known to have one hair out of place but now wears a halo of disarray. Coop looks absolutely exhausted, poor kid’s barely able to sit up straight and still working clearly to the best of his currently very limited ability.

Gordon shoves a palm roughly to his forehead and Cooper blinks reflexively at having another person’s hand on his face and not quite expecting it. Does feel nice though.

“And that’s a fever! Go home! I don’t want to see you here until you’re back to ninety-eight point six!”

“That bight take a couple days.”

“What?”

Cooper clears his throat to try again louder, but a cough is poised to crackle in his lungs and he can tell if he tries to speak it won’t go well. He puts one hand to his chest, the other balled into a fist near his mouth.

Albert takes over. “He said that might take a couple days!”

“What??”

Cooper flips to a blank page of his notebook and starts writing in capital letters as Albert hopelessly repeats a sentence whose context Cooper knows Gordon’s going to be confused about given the lag in his reception of the sentiment.

Albert raises his voice even more. “He said that might take a couple days!!”

“What might take a couple days??”

Cooper sniffles miserably and holds up the notebook, which says I TEND TO REMAIN FEVERED FOR ROUGHLY 2-3 DAYS.

“Two to three days huh?” Gordon says, patting Cooper on the shoulder roughly enough that it provokes another cough, “Then I'll see you on Monday!”

Cooper starts to say thank you but thinks better of it and instead just gives Gordon a thumbs up he returns heartily along with a booming, “Feel better, Coop!”

He walks away leaving Albert and Cooper exchanging smiles in a rare shared moment of weird victory.

“Well thank g—”

“Heh’YIIHHue! IIIHHHoo!” Cooper’s eyes are closed but he can see the face Albert’s making just the same as he concludes this one last interruption, “HihJIISSHHyoo!!”

He sniffles, clears his throat, and says, “…‘Scuse me.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

[silentdreamer789]

Magnificent. Please continue being obsessed with writing this forever!

[angora48]

Love it!! The Coop-Albert relationship is such a delight, and you've captured both characters so well. I can 100% imagine that this was what their dynamic was like when they first met. All of Albert's snarky observations are terrific, Cooper sneezing in threes is awwwww (I love the part when Albert asks how many times he plans on sneezing today and he replies, "Some very large number divisible by three,") and I get a kick out of Albert analyzing Cooper's weird rituals (like alternating between the handkerchief/tissues) while repeatedly insisting to himself that he doesn't care. Also, LOVE the bit where Cooper is impressed that he pulls out the last tissue in his box right after Diane has brought him a new one - that's so Coop!

Great writing, this was a lot of fun and you have a great handle on these characters!

[starpollen]

I don’t know the fandom but this is lovely ☺️👍🏻