Work Text:
“Come on, Cooper,” Tut goads. “Just one night! Everyone else is going. David’ll even pay this time.” Cooper’s lips quirk into a smile as he looks toward David, expecting him to protest at having been volunteered, but David just gives Cooper a hopeful smile.
Cooper winces. He really does want to go, and he feels bad letting everyone down, but… “It’s our anniversary,” he denies, shaking his head. “She’s been too busy to talk these last few months, this’ll be our one chance.”
Garrett and Ben share a look. “Has she said she wants to spend the day together? Or planned a time for a call?” Ben asks carefully.
Cooper feels his eyebrows draw together, his arms crossing as he starts to feel a little defensive. “No, but it’s our anniversary. Of course she’s going to want to talk to me, y’know? She doesn’t have to say that.”
He hears a sharp intake of breath from beside him, and looks to his left to see David looking oddly devastated. “Coop,” he says, gently. Like he’s talking to an injured animal—frightened and backed into a corner, at risk of snapping at any moment. “She hasn’t called you in over a month. She doesn’t even text you back. She’s not going to call you.”
Cooper freezes for a second, falling behind as the others keep walking towards Garett’s car. “What?” He asks, a frown pulling at his lips. “But she’s my girlfriend,” he insists, lost. Of course she’ll call. He had been planning on her visiting, had even bought her a bouquet of flowers that will now most likely die before he can give them to her, but she hadn’t ever texted to talk about booking a flight. Still, surely she’ll at least call. It’s their two year anniversary.
Tut, Ben, and Garrett give him pitying looks, and he doesn’t quite understand what for. Ben gives David a pointed look and David turns towards him. “Cooper,” he starts, still looking heartbroken. “It’s been two months since you two talked. She’s ghosting you, man.” He puts his hand on Cooper’s shoulder in support, but it does nothing to stop the way Cooper’s face falls.
“What?” He asks again. It’s not that he doesn’t believe them. He trusts all of them—they’ve become really close throughout filming—and he knows they wouldn’t lie to him about something like that. Especially not David. But he doesn’t understand. Things were going really well when he left to film The Long Walk, and she had just gotten busy, she told him so herself. If she wanted to break up, surely she would’ve told him. Right?
“I’m sorry, Cooper,” Ben winces. Cooper shakes his head automatically, it’s not Ben’s fault, but it must come off as denial because Garrett pushes him forward a bit.
“You’re coming out with us tonight,” Garrett decides, pushing Cooper into the back seat. “We’ll go to a bar instead. Do the whole breakup thing.”
David takes the middle seat, letting his arm rest around Cooper’s shoulders. “You will be feeling better in no time.” Cooper’s lip starts to tremble as he tries not to cry, but he leans into David’s touch anyway, closing his eyes.
Cooper’s many things, and naive is absolutely one of them. He sees the best in people, and it’s something he’s proud of about himself. But he’s also learned that that optimism can make him blind, and it’s gotten him into a lot of awkward situations. Not realizing he had been dumped by his girlfriend of two years wasn’t even the only time it had caused him to be blindsided in his romantic relationships.
But he’s also self aware, and adaptive. He knows he doesn’t always realize when someone wants him to fuck off, or is being a dick to him. So when he remembers, he makes a conscious effort to be less charitable towards other people.
So when David is suddenly all over the internet, doing interviews with and complimenting Tom fucking Blyth, Cooper doesn’t think much of it at first. He doesn’t use social media much anyway, so he only comes across it from YouTube clips, and none of them seem particularly outrage, if a little overly close.
Then he looks up the reaction to the trailer on Twitter.
Honestly, he only did it because he’s proud of his boyfriend. He wanted to see other people complimenting David, because David worked hard on Wasteman and he’s glad people are recognizing that.
He’s much less glad when he sees what a certain subsection of the responses are like. He agrees that David and Tom did look weirdly overfamiliar, but he hadn’t necessarily thought it was flirting. But looking at the replies, it seems like pretty much everyone else did.
So he tries to be objective. Cooper thinks the best of everyone, and David’s his boyfriend, so he’s especially charitable to David. Is that why he doesn’t think David and Tom were flirting in those clips? Was he just being oblivious?
But he doesn’t think David would do that to him. David is kind, and selfless, and just such an intrinsically good person that Cooper couldn’t imagine him cheating on someone.
Unless Cooper missed something, he thinks, stomach sinking. He thinks back to that night on set for The Long Walk, and how it took him two months to realize his girlfriend broke up with him. Is that happening again? Did he miss something important? Did he fuck it up without realizing?
His breathing starts to become unsteady, and he sits down, pulling up his texts with David. They’ve slowed a bit in the last few weeks, but they’ve still been talking every day. Cooper relaxes a bit until he realizes that almost all of it has been about work, and planning for The Chaperones.
The Chaperones. Shit, maybe David had dumped him, Cooper hadn’t realized and had kept texting him, and David only responded because he didn’t want it to be awkward while they were filming?
His heart feels like it’s pumping out of his chest. Panic attack, he realizes distantly, and tries to start his breathing exercises.
Without thinking, he calls David. David’s usually able to help calm him down when he has panic attacks. Except then David picks up and he hears David’s voice and remembers that usually, David isn’t the fucking cause of his panic attacks, and he gasps out a sob.
“Cooper?” David repeats, voice much more concerned this time. “Are you okay? Can you tell me what’s wrong?” It’s an actual question, not a request, and Cooper wants to cry. So he does.
“That’s okay,” David assures him when realizes Cooper isn’t going to answer. “Can you tell me five things you can see?”
Cooper tries to blink through the tears enough to make out his surroundings. “Cup of water,” he starts, a little proud of himself for getting it out between sobs. “Light bulb. Fridge. Script. Pillow.”
“Good,” David praises. Cooper likes his accent, he thinks distantly. It’s calming. “Four things you can touch?”
“My phone,” he says, feeling the cold screen against his cheek. “Um, I’ve got a, uh, a blanket. My shirt. My socks.”
“Three things you hear?”
“Your voice,” Cooper answers automatically, then stops. “I’m good now, I think,” he says after a moment, sniffling.
“What happened?” David asks softly. “Is everything alright?” Cooper feels, all of the sudden, like an asshole. He shouldn’t’ve called, if David really doesn’t want to talk to him then he shouldn’t’ve worried him like that.
“Sorry,” Cooper whispers, biting the inside of his lip. “I shouldn’t have called.”
“What?” Even through the phone, he can hear David’s frown. “Of course you should have. You needed help, I always want you to call me when something like that is happening.”
“No, I—“ Cooper’s face heats up and he looks down in shame, suddenly feeling like the world’s biggest idiot. “I didn’t realize.”
“Didn’t realize what?” Cooper loves David, but for a moment, he really hates him for making him say it.
“I didn’t realize that we weren’t together anymore,” Cooper forces out, bracing himself for the conversation to get awkward.
“What?!” David says again, much more forcefully this time. He sounds confused, mostly, but also a little bit panicked. “What are you talking about? Of course we’re together.”
“But…” Cooper trails off. “Tom. And we haven’t been talking as much, and it was all about work, and—“ and suddenly, Cooper feels like an idiot for an entirely different reason. Because now that he’s thinking about it, there really wasn’t any reason to think they were broken up. He had just been trying to make sure he wasn’t too optimistic, but he overcompensated and now he’s made a mess of things for no reason. “Oh,” he finishes weakly.
“Coop,” David says, voice softening. “I’m sorry we haven’t been talking as much. I didn’t realize, and I’ll try to be better about that. But we’re still together. I promise.”
“Sorry,” Cooper mumbles.
“It’s okay,” David says reassuringly. “Just, next time call me before you get to the point of having a panic attack, okay? I want to help you. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Cooper says, a smile crossing his face despite himself. “I’ll see you soon.”