Title: In Which Cooper is a Man
Author: NeonHikari
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Pairing/Character: Violet and Cooper
Summary: Violet stuck her bottom lip out and glared petulantly at the ceiling." In the aftermath of 1x01, Cooper persuades Violet to let him check out the bump on the head, but a routine examination culminates in something neither person was expecting.
He tapped his spoon against the rim of his coffee mug. Noisily.
No reaction.
He started humming a song he'd heard on the radio that morning. Noisily. And off-key.
Still, no reaction.
He threw himself and his precariously full coffee mug down on the sofa next to her. Noisily. Whilst still humming.
It was like trying to annoy a Zen master, and Cooper for one knew that Violet, for all her deep breathing and psychobabble, was anything but.
"I'm getting the feeling that you want to find a appropriate outlet for all that pent-up frustration and suppressed rage, Coop." Violet commented, taking a sip of the scalding hot coffee to disguise the wince she gave as the throbbing in her head swelled with the effort of talking.
"Well, since you brought it u-"
"Then go and talk to Dell when he comes in tomorrow. He's younger than the rest of us and is therefore unable to smack you around the head and tell you to shut the hell up." Giving a self-satisfied smirk, Violet moved her coffee mug to her right hand and reached for one of the tabloids placed on the low table in front of her, intending to immerse herself in the melodramatic lives of Hollywood's latest starlets.
Unfortunately, her best friend had other ideas. "Speaking of getting smacked around the head …"
"Oh seriously, Cooper, are we really going to do this? It's hardly a big de-"
"She got violent with you, Violet! She knocked you to the ground! I personally think it's a pretty big deal."
Violet stuck her bottom lip out and glared petulantly at the ceiling.
"See, you know I'm right." He gave a wide smile and chucked her on the chin, narrowly avoiding the hand that swiped irritably at his arm. "That's the I-know-Cooper's-completely-and-utterly-right-but-I'm-Violet-the-big-badass-psychologist-and-can-therfore-not-admit-defeat-even-when-it's-staring-me-right-in-my-pretty-little-face look. I'd know it better than I know my own mother."
"Did you just compare me to your mother in some roundabout way, Coop? Because you know that's slightly twisted, not to mention unflattering." Violet licked her forefinger and turned the page, tutting as she scanned a headline about some skinny little socialite's pathetic jail sentence, and shifting herself away from Cooper who had turned to sit up on his knees and face her on the sofa.
"Deflecting the question? And here I thought you were above petty avoidance tactics like that, Vi." He signed and shook his head, hoping to bait her into doing something that would trick her into revealing how hurt she really was. Unfortunately, his comment didn't seem to be doing the trick.
"Well we both know that I'm not, Cooper. I know it, you know it, hell, even my clients know it. So why don't we just leave it at that, hey?"
Her harsh tone left him speechless for a couple of moments, and prompted Cooper to change his tactics. Sensing the need to re-prioritise his intentions, he proceeded to move up the sofa towards Violet, curling his legs beneath him and snuggling into her shoulder, invading her personal space in a way only best friends can without getting a slap or a restraining order against them.
"Go away, Coop." Violet murmured, eyes staring decidedly at a rundown of the hottest 100 animal-print scarves of the month that every woman should own.
"Don't wanna." Was all Cooper decided to say as he snuggled further and further into Violet, his left hands coming perilously close to that particular spot on Violet's ribs that, if touched by even the softest contact of a hand or anything else for that matter, reduced her to a writhing, giggling mess. Every. Single. Time. Without fail.
Frowning at Cooper's sudden stillness, Violet looked up from her magazine and moved her eyes very slowly towards the left, careful not to move her body any more than she needed to.
"Coop."
Violet."
"Do not even think about it."
"… …"
"I'm serious!"
"… …"
"If you don't move your hand right this second, our friendship will be permanently severed until the end of eternity, and then who'll bail you out when jailbait495 or perkyboobs69 starts threatening you with her personal collection of bread knives?"
Cooper mumbled something from the depths of Violet's sleeve.
"Didn't quite catch that, Coop."
"She was called LilMynx88."
"Oh for the love of … urgh. You know there is absolutely no hope for you, right?" Deciding that removing herself from the situation would lessen her desire to kidnap Cooper, stick him in the boot of her car and drive him thousands of miles until she found a suitable normal woman she could introduce him to, Violet quickly pulled herself out of Cooper's embrace and stood swiftly to her feet.
Bad idea.
As the room spun and her head groaned, the only thing that stopped Violet from crashing to the floor in a very undignified heap was Cooper's arms wrapped firmly around her waist, pulling her back down to the sofa with a soft thump. If there was any proof needed that she wasn't thinking straight at that moment, it was that as she waited for the world to right itself again, she couldn't help but think that Cooper had very nice arms. Strong arms. Manly arms. A flush spread across her cheeks that had nothing to do with her head injury or the temperature in the room.
"You don't look so good, Vi." Cooper remarked conversationally. "Bet you're wishing that some well-meaning paediatrician would come along and offer you a free physical, right?"
She managed to let out a quick instruction of "Die", but it was obvious that her heart wasn't in it.
Cooper took that as invitation enough for him to finally check his honorary patient for signs of concussion, and arranged her so that she was sitting with her legs crossed on the couch, her body facing towards him. Pulling a travel-sized flashlight from his shirt pocket, he started waving it around in dizzy little circles like he was so used to doing for his more stubborn of patients.
"Here comes the aeroplane…"
"Don't push your luck, buddy."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"That's a lie and you know it."
With a twist of his wrist, the light flashed on and he directed the light into Violet's right eye, playing the beam quickly up and down, up and down in an effort to lighten his friend's mood with his endearingly irritating behaviour.
"I am a qualified doctor, you know. I think I might be able to realise if that woman had loosened a few more screws in my head."
"Not if you had concussion, you wouldn't." He moved up onto his knees as he shone the pocket light in her left eye. "Just humour me, Vi. Look up. Look down. Look all around. Up in the air. Down on the ground."
"Coop, I'm not five."
"But I bet you'll still want a lollipop at the end of this, right?"
"Oh you can just kiss my ass, Nympho-boy." Violet leaned out of the range of Cooper's flashlight, hiding a smile that was threatening to spill from her lips.
Pouting, Cooper tucked the light back in his pocket and leant back on his knees. "Now, now. Potty mouths do not get lollipops."
Violet raised an eyebrow, knowing full well that Cooper was physically incapable of denying a child anything. Watching him interact with children was a privilege that Violet felt very lucky to have.
Putting both hands up and rolling his eyes to the ceiling, Cooper replied, "Well okay everyone gets a lollipop, but kids that use dirty language get stuck with the sticky green lollies at the bottom of the jar that nobody wants."
"You're such a softie, Coop." Violet laughed, sitting back down on the sofa with her knees crossed, facing her colleague and friend, a soft smile playing across her face.
"Be that as it may, no amount of sweet talking will distract me from the fact that we have not yet finished this little examination." Cooper pushed himself back up onto his knees and gently brought his hands up to both sides of Violet's head, pushing down so that he could examine the bump beneath her hair.
"Hmmm … interesting …"
"What?"
"I spy with my little eye, something that looks like … oh! … Could that possible be … dun dun duuunnn! A grey hair!!"
Violet flung her head backwards and clamped her hands to her head as if she'd be able to detect the rebellious strand of hair with just to powers of her fingertips.
Cooper Freedman! I do not have grey hairs!"
Smiling sheepishly and enjoying her reaction, Cooper soothingly pulled her hands away from her head and continued with his examination.
"No, guess I lied, but give it time. You've also got some split ends you might want to check out."
"You ever wondered why you couldn't manage to keep dating a nice girl for more than a day, Coop?" Violet asked playfully, enjoying the way his hands moved softly in her hair, her current state of contentment preventing her from mentally bitch-slapping herself for thinking thoughts like that.
"Hmmm … guess it's because none of them would be able to handle me being hopelessly in love with my best friend."
Laughing softly at his joke, Violet raised her head so she could meet hey best friend's eyes and … … froze.
Cooper was staring down at her with eyes so serious she thought for a moment that somebody completely different had somehow taken over his body. There was no trace of joking or teasing in his face, and Violet had the sinking feeling in her stomach that he was telling the truth.
Or at least she should have had a sinking feeling in her stomach. That was what was meant to happen. Her best friend had just confessed that he loved her, and right at that moment she should have been mourning the loss of their friendship and trying to think of a way to gently let him know there was no future between them, but in that instant, all she could think about was how very very strong and firm Cooper's arms felt as they rested lightly on her shoulders.
"Cooper …"
"Violet." Cooper replied as if they were having a neutral conversation about the whether, or what they thought of the new paint job in the reception area. He'd played this moment out in his head too many times to count; just like a kid would sit in his bed at night and dream of the day he scored the winning goal in a game of soccer.
Sometimes, in his head, they'd be in a candlelit restaurant, sometimes it was on a secluded beach. More often than not, they were lying in bed together, naked and happy, but never had he thought he'd blurt out the words whilst in the break room, carrying out an examination on Violet after she'd been knocked to the floor of a department store by one of her less-than-stable patients.
It wasn't a scenario that had ever sprung to mind, and yet, it felt right. It felt so right that he wasn't stuttering over his own words and he wasn't panicking at the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look that Violet was giving him right that second.
"Cooper …" Violet repeated the word like she'd never heard it before, like it had never left her mouth about a million times before. "You didn't just say that, did you?"
Lifting his shoulders and pouting his lips, Cooper replied lightly. "Well I'm pretty sure that I just did. Otherwise you wouldn't have that great expression of panic on your face right this second."
Violet shook her head. This was not happening. "No, look, what I meant to say is that you can't say things like that, Coop. You can't just-"
"Well no, actually, I think I can." Cooper cut her off suddenly, annoyed at her reaction. "I'm in love with you, Vi. I don't know what that means to you but to me, it's pretty much sucked so far."
"Cooper, I-"
"No. I have to finish this." He moved his arms away from Violet's shoulders and pressed them to the back on his head, linking his fingers together like he was trying not to hit anything. "What I also have to do is walk into work every morning and smile and joke with you like everything's okay, like I'm not wishing that you would just notice me, not 'Hey look, it's Cooper, my best friend," notice me, but notice notice me. I've got to hide the fact that when I'm with you, I'm wishing that you'd just stop talking about Alan for one tiny second so that I could just kiss you, right in the middle of the practice, and kiss you so that you'll just forget about all the crap he's put you through because, Vi, you deserve so much better than all of that and I …"
He brushed his right hand backwards through his hair, searching for the words.
"And I deserve for you to just … notice me. I deserve for you to notice all this stuff we have. All this chemistry and history and … stuff and whatever. And I know we've always had this thing where we joke around and listen to each other's problems and look out for each other but … I don't think I could keep on doing that if I knew that I hadn't at least tried to make you see what I'm seeing here."
All the feelings, the words, the emotions that he'd kept bottled up for months and years were suddenly taking this as an invitation to come out of the woodwork, and he started to change tactics, just so he could get everything out before Violet decided just to get up and walk out of the room. Out of his life.
"You know in those chick flicks where there's the girl and the boy, and they're best friends, then the other guy comes along with all the money and the motorbike and the great hair, and the girl thinks she loves him for a while before realising that he'd actually not so great, and that in fact it's the best friend that she's always loved? I mean, come on, I've watched about a hundred of them with you. Did you never once think that maybe that could be what's happening here?"
Violet bit her lip and avoided the intense gaze that Cooper had focused on her. She knew that if she looked up and met his eyes, he'd know he was right. All those nights, lying on the sofa with her head on his knee, watching some perky, blonde girl-next-door type and her nerdy-chic best friend kiss over some nauseating film score, Violet had allowed herself to entertain the thought of what would happen if she just turned her face upwards and kissed him. But the moment was always over before she'd even had time to talk herself out of it, and nothing had ever happened.
And Violet was thinking that maybe that wasn't such a good thing. Not if the way Cooper was looking at her, or the way her eyes were begging to glance up and look at his lips was anything to go by. Violet couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, Cooper was finally giving good advice about a relationship.
Sensing that she wasn't ready to speak yet, Cooper pressed on and tried to reach his big finish.
"You told me to be a man, Vi, and I am. I'm being a man in the chauvinistic, caveman way that I know you totally hate, but I'm thinking that maybe it's doing some good. I'm taking control of the situation; I'm making the first move because really, if I waited for you to get over Alan, and then realise you actually felt the same way about me, and then for you to finally pluck up the courage to say something, anything, we wouldn't be able to do anything about it because we'd both be sitting in wheelchairs drinking apple pie through a straw."
Violet felt her stomach clench as she realised that actually, he was right. He was seizing full control of the situation, he was taking away her right to choose not to see what was really there, and … she didn't mind. She didn't mind because in her heart and her head, she knew he was doing the right thing. He was being a man, and it wasn't totally pissing her and all her feminist principles off.
The adrenaline that had been pumping around his system and giving him the courage and confidence to say all the thing she'd been saying was starting to wear off, and Violet's lack of reaction to any of his words was starting to make him wish he'd just gone home to type dirty with slave4u900 or WhipMe360.
Psychotic strangers with porny internet names he could handle. Rejection from a slutty display picture he could just about accept. Rejection from Violet, though … he didn't think he'd be able to stand it. Not after he'd spent all that time getting to know her, getting to be her friend, from the babbling, newly-qualified psychologist with the untameable hair, to the quick-witted, honest, established psychologist with the hair that … well … hadn't changed much in years, but had become one of the things Cooper loved about her.
His voice quietened down dramatically as he spoke, and even he could tell that he already sounded defeated. "Violet? Could you please just … could you at least look at me? Give me a sign that you've heard any of this at all."
Scrunching her face and closing her eyes as much as physically possible, in a hope that maybe it would erase whatever tell-tale feelings were hiding in them, Violet slowly raised her head, trying not to see the body that she'd seen almost every day for longer than she could remember. The body that she'd never though about running her hands over, pressing her lips against, sliding her tongue down.
Until right that second.
Cooper almost wished he could take back his request that she look at him when he saw Violet's blank, expectant expression, but if their friendship had taught them anything, it was that whilst she might preach to her patients that being honest about feelings was the best policy, she played her own cards closer to the chest that almost anyone else Cooper knew.
He also knew that whilst she liked to think she could be cool and unreadable, Cooper had learnt to spot the betraying signs that told him clearly what was going on beneath her skin.
Taking in the hands clenched tightly in her lap, the faint blush on her cheeks, the dilation of her pupils, Cooper suppressed a smile. He might actually have a chance here.
Wrapping his arms around his knees in what he hoped was a more casual than defensive gesture, Cooper spoke quietly and softly, hoping that his parting words would follow Violet to bed tonight, even if he wouldn't be able to himself.
"I've played this out in my head more times than I can count, Vi, and every time we get to this point, I kiss you. Softly. Gently. Just … a touch of lips. Like we've done a billion times before, only this time, you'd actually realise how crazy that one little kiss never fails to make me feel." A slightly widening of her eyes told Cooper than he wasn't the only one scared here. "But I'm not going to." That wasn't disappointment in her eyes, was it? "I'm just going to drive home and spend the night terrified about how you're going to act in the morning, because firstly, there's a little part of me that's kinda worried that you'll slap me or bite my ear off or use some of those self-defence techniques you've been practicing if I try anything, and secondly, you need to get over Alan. If I start kissing you now, it's only going to freak you out and confuse you or whatever, and I don't think that I'll be able to wait for you to get around to unconfusing yourself."
The silence that followed his statement seemed to reverberate off the walls, but strangely enough it managed to bestow upon Violet the courage to do what she knew she should have done all along.
Leaning her body so far forward that her hands rested on the arm of the sofa behind Cooper, Violet bit her lip delicately and gave Cooper five-seconds of full, uninterrupted eye contact before she allowed her eyes to dip and rest on his lips. Her own lips soon followed and, light as a feather, Violet Turner kissed Cooper Freedman. Her colleague, her friend, and now, her something else. She didn't know what it was yet, but in that moment, with perfect clarity, Violet noticed Cooper. Really noticed him, as if she'd never seen him before.
The warmth of the breath, so close to his skin, was Cooper's only physical confirmation that she'd actually done it, that it was finally happened, that she'd really kissed him. Cooper wasn't sure what was happening, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant. Why was she kissing him? Why wasn't she crying or yelling or running or not kissing him? It didn't agree with his logic of the situation, but then again, Cooper didn't feel it was his place to argue with what was happening.
Pulling back, her hands still firmly holding on to the fabric covering of the couch, Violet met Cooper's eyes and spoke after what seemed like a year of silence.
"That wasn't the way I'd ever imagined kissing you, but it'll have to do for now." She kept her eyes steadily on his, trying to somehow convey the message that she knew her words wouldn't be able to do justice. "I'm not over Alan yet because I don't really think I've been trying. I don't want to be a little old cat lady, all alone in some big old house, and I think that by hanging onto what I had with Alan, I'm somehow kidding myself that I'm not going to be … alone. I haven't had any incentive to let go of him, of the memory of him, but now …" He eyes flicked momentarily down to his lips again, before flicking back upwards, the shadow of a smile turning up the corners of her mouth. "But now I think that maybe, maybe you've given me a reason to try to move on, to move forward."
The silence returned fleetingly, but then Violet gave a shy smile that reminded Cooper so much of the Violet he'd met all those years ago. "Guess now you're not going to be the only spending the night terrified of what work's going to be like tomorrow, right?
Cooper let the grin spread across his face as he watched Violet grab her bag and head out the door, the bump on her head forgotten for now.
When he was sure he'd heard the elevator doors close behind her, Cooper let the nervous laughter bubble up inside him and finally escape as he threw his arms up into the air and let out a victorious whoop.
"She's gonna think about me in bed!"
Author's Note: This was only meant to be a cute Cooper-looks-after-Violet-and-they-have-a-"moment" fic, but after the angst fest that was episode 1x05, I figured that maybe something a little stronger was in order. Hope you enjoyed it