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He asks her one day, eyes bright with a goofy grin stretched wide, if she knows what type of bird is roosted near his window. High school is as as dull and unchallenging as the people within it, and the only thing that would have made it worse would have been actually paying attention in class. So no, she couldn’t identify the bird—though she does make a special trip to his room to see it. He leads the way down halls so familiar she could walk them backwards with her eyes closed, but passing through them with his steady companionship, she isn’t sure her feet are even on the ground.
Hanging half out the window, Audrey notes beautiful crimson and azure plumage and a husky song and knows if she asks her father about a bird nesting under his eave, he’d kill it. He’d have it killed is more accurate. The scratchy song soothes her so much that when Special Agent Dale Cooper wedges himself out the window with her, the careful right angle of her knees buckles. Her hips tumble and she would have slid out of position had Special Agent Dale Cooper not crammed himself through the small frame, too.
She despises the fabric on her arm that prevents her from feeling the texture of his suit against her bare skin, but she revels in the rapid staccato of her heart and the clean, heady scent she’s breathing. Special Agent Dale Cooper is seemingly unaware that her throat has closed around silly words like I love you and please never leave, and the moment stretches out like that—him with his mouth agape and wonder clear on his beautiful face and her watching Special Agent Cooper experience a world she had never stopped to see.
“Diane, this case continues to confound me at every turn, even now at its conclusion; I find that the best way to center myself before meditation is sitting by the fire in the Great Northern lobby. It’s quiet, peaceful, and the coffee refills keep a’comin’. Today, Sheriff Truman and I—”
Audrey sucks in her breath as she rounds the corner into the lobby. Special Agent Cooper’s voice is pitched low, but she now spends all of her time at the hotel straining to catch his voice or a flash of impeccably pressed black. There are bubbles in her stomach, and she’s unsure whether to approach or hide. She desires his attention yet is afraid of his steady gaze. After the bedroom stunt—which she recalls with intense pride— and after the One Eyed Jack’s fiasco—which she remembers with deep fear—she had joined him for breakfast.
“Audrey, can you discern the type of this beautiful rock I found at the falls yesterday?”
On first glance, it’s a rock. Grey and smooth and just like the thousand others out in the yard, but in Special Agent Cooper’s hands, her mouth is dry. She furrows her brows, staring hard, but her focus is hijacked by how finely manicured his nails are, the calluses beneath the rock laid in his palm, the veins pressing against the cream of his skin—she is itchy all over, a swooping sensation settling somewhere deep.
“I-I’m not sure,” is all that she can scratch out, and his goofy gaze shifts to hers like lightning. His eyes are intense and intelligent, and she is sure he must know that she’s shifting her hips across the table from him, fighting for rational thought.
He speaks with a measured but swift pace, “To be so young, Audrey, why do you hide your emotions behind your sexuality?”
Just like that. He asked her that at breakfast, surrounded by other patrons in her daddy’s hotel. She wants to rage against being called not only young but so young, further evidence that her Special Agent Cooper is only interested in her as a friend. She knows he’s attracted, but nearly everyone is. That’s nothing special. She wants him to lie in bed at night, thinking about the things they discussed that day and to recall how she had gained his respect—she wants to be his peer, not just a line in his case report. She wants it so badly—so much more than that puppy Daddy never bought her or the affection of a real family, and she feels like she’s going mad. On the days she doesn’t see him, the food she eats is less satisfying, the coffee bitter and more acerbic on her tongue. She wants so badly that sometimes she has to clench her fists tight within her napkin or else she will grab those damnably strong hands.
He’s waiting for her answer, and she doesn’t have one.
“I don’t know,” she says to her twisted napkin. He is quiet for a long time, eating slowly and enjoying his coffee. He’s almost finished when she finally speaks.
“Nobody has ever taken me seriously. I was a kid, which no one gives a second to, and then I was Ben Horne’s spoiled little girl, still young but old enough to scold, but now—” she is finally looking at him. His suit is crisply pressed, and he’s chosen a checkered tie for today, the knot snug against his throat. A fork rests in his hand, a forgotten bite of a griddlecake still speared, and his eyes are liquid coals. He’s listening, intently, and she wonders at the warmth in her chest so different from the butterflies and heat flashes he usually elicits.
“—but now, people will take me seriously if I smile or flirt.” She looks down at her hands again, unable to face the kindness in his handsome face as she admits, “The only reason I got the job at the perfume counter was because I told the manager that I’d tell Daddy he took a pass at me if he didn’t.”
“Audrey—” the reproach in his voice in unbearable, and with sudden tears, she defiantly meets his gaze.
“I know, Special Agent Cooper, that what I did was wrong and that every step I took put you in more trouble.” The tears are spilling down her face. “I just wanted to help you.”
She wanted to excel at his own game of covert investigation and for him to be impressed, to think of her not as so young but as mature for her age; instead, she thinks she’s only worsened his opinion of her.
He’s silent again, finally eating that last soggy bite and draining the dregs of his coffee.
“Audrey, I admire your bravery. The information you procured was pivotal for determining the real killer, but the risk you put to yourself, I cannot condone.”
“You put yourself in danger all the time,” she says, a whine in her tone that she cannot shake.
“I am a federally sanctioned agent of the law; I have been trained for these situations, and I operate under a set of guidelines and with integrity.” He is so earnest, and it cuts deeply to see that her admission has shaken his perception of her. She regrets her honesty, wishes she could pull the words out of the air and shove them back down her throat. He does not reach out for her like she yearns, but he sits with her until the tears have dried and the flush has receded from her face.
“Do you think poorly of me now?” The question spills from her lips without consent, but it’s there now, lingering sourly between them.
“I confess that I find your behavior morally ambiguous, but seeing that he was involved in the business of procuring young girls for One Eyed Jack’s and that he hit you,” his voice lowered in pitch, just for a moment, while his eyes blazed, “I find myself unable to object.”
She’s not sure where they are currently—she and Agent Cooper—so she hovers in the doorway, unseen. She leans against the frame, lost in the cadence and melody of his debriefing with Diane, content just to be near him.
And then everything changes. The suit is replaced by flannel, and it isn’t that she loves him less, it’s just that he’s suddenly less approachable. She catches rumors and snatches of conversations, and she surmises that his own troubles have found him, rather than Twin Peaks’. But Daddy needs her and then Jack is there wanting her so openly in all the ways she wishes Agent Cooper would—and she finds herself distracted from her agent for the first time since his arrival.
They have a passing moment one morning when she tells him she hopes everything works out for him soon, and he smiles fleetingly at her. The dismissal hurts her, so she kisses Jack that afternoon.
And then the bank blows up with her inside and Agent Cooper returns from wherever he went without Annie Blackburn. He leaves town while she’s still lost in a coma. When she wakes, there’s only rage and deep, deep heartbreak.
After the physical therapy and her father’s recovery, she makes the rounds.
Sheriff Truman won’t tell her anything except that Agent Cooper went home at the conclusion of the case. She backs Deputy Andy into a literal corner, and he confesses then that Annie Blackburn died the night of the pageant. She doesn’t try Deputy Hawk—his eyes are too wise, and she’s afraid of what he’ll see in her. Lucy Moran at the front counter slips that Agent Cooper’s forwarding address is based in Philadelphia but won’t say anything more. These are the people who knew Agent Cooper the best—yet they still let him leave them, and she does not understand.
She enrolls in college after all, despite Daddy’s pleading. She’s nineteen and all alone in Philadelphia. The first moment in her dorm had pulled longer and longer until she felt she might be rending in two. There’s Audrey Horne of Twin Peaks, and she’s still there somewhere, but now there’s Audrey Horne of the University of Philadelphia. She’s empowered by this new identity, but she still cries once the door shuts behind her parents. She finally feels as young as Agent Cooper says she is. She has not laid eyes on her special agent since the pageant, and her heart aches.
She dreams at night, between the homework and the organizations she’s already running, of looking him up in the phone book and giving him a call. She imagines the pleasure in his voice and the surprising invitation he’ll offer once he learns she’s so close. She dreams wildly, the thoughts ranging from romantic to filthy, and she tells herself that she loves him, but she wonders how well she actually knows him.
She never calls, never beats down the door of the FBI office that must be somewhere on these streets because she’s learning the control of a woman. A girl had climbed naked into Agent Cooper’s bed that night, and as much as she had wanted him, she would be horrified now if he had taken her then. Only a junior in college and she’s already disgusted by the seniors taking advantage of fresh-faced girls, just a few degrees shy of eighteen. Her own distaste for her father deepens with time, as much as she still desires his approval. He’s proud of her 4.0 and her clubs, but he ends every call asking when she will be home, and she doesn’t know how to tell him that she came out here for Agent Cooper but stayed for herself.
Audrey has friends now—not many, but good ones, and she has mentors and goals, so when she sees the flyer for a seminar about the FBI, she snatches it off the bulletin board. Her eyes pore over the lines, reading them until she recites them the entire walk home. She arrives to the lecture twenty minutes early, and he’s not there. Why would he be, she says to her silly heart.
But the talk is illuminating and inspiring, and she enrolls in a CPR certification program the next day. She’s already thinking about her resume, the letters of recommendation she’ll ask for, and the deep satisfaction of meeting Dale Cooper again, agent to agent.
She graduates in the spring, twenty-three and young. The entire visit, her father doggedly talks business and that cleared office at the Great Northern. He’s angry when she tells him she’s already moved into an apartment in Philadelphia, that she’s sent her application for consideration at the FBI academy. Benjamin Horne storms out of her congratulatory dinner, followed by her timid, complacent mother. The night of her graduation she sobs into her pillow and wishes for Agent Cooper. She has not seen him in four and a half years, but she recalls the sweet compassion of a man deep in his own troubles who still stopped for a few kind words. He’d changed her irrevocably.
She had been a wild girl, spinning out of control and headed for nothing more than living off her father. She still stops to listen to a beautiful bird sing—at first because it dredged memories of a solid arm against her own, but then eventually for the simple joy of it. Precious, ugly stones are kept in a box in her nightstand, each tied to a memory of her own making. She quit smoking when she realized she only did it to look older. She no longer tries to take her coffee black, but instead fixes it how she likes it: with sugar and cream. She is more than the girl Agent Cooper met nearly six years ago. Audrey hopes he would be proud, but she mostly focuses on how much she is proud of herself.
She repeats this mantra when the rejection comes in the mail, citing a need for more relevant work experience and demonstrated ability to act under pressure. She doesn’t tell anyone—out of pride, mostly, but she instead enrolls in a forensics internship at the FBI, and it’s there she meets Special Agent Albert Rosenfield. She didn’t know him from his visit in Twin Peaks, and Agent Rosenfield hadn’t cared to notice her either.
Audrey hates him at first.
“No, you blundering buffoon, if you fill the NMR tube all the way, the machine cannot run properly, and you’ve wasted the precious commodity that is your evidence,” he snarls at her, snatching the thin tube from her grasp. She is astounded. It’s her first day, and Audrey Horne is not accustomed to being yelled at. Her father spoke harshly, cut deep to her feelings, but this level of rancor because of a rookie mistake? What an asshole, she thinks sourly as the syrupy, hot embarrassment courses through her.
“Agent Rosenfield, I apologize, but you did not mention that.” Her face is flushed with anger and hurt pride, but her voice is strong. The other new intern frantically looks at her, eyes wide with terror, but Rosenfield pauses as he carefully extracts the liquid from the tube.
Instead of yelling, “Miss Horne, there is a line on most NMR tubes that indicates the level at which the sample should be loaded. Strive to hit that line. If you go over, use a syringe like I am currently to recover as much of the sample as you can. Be aware that you will lose some liquid in the syringe, so this method is only used by idiots who can’t hit their mark the first time.”
“Thank you,” she murmurs quietly as she begins a second attempt. She still misses the line, and he still calls her a dunce for it, but he does adjust the angle of her hand while he does so. The poor guy who starts with her never comes back from the first weekend. In the following weeks, Audrey watches five more run out in tears. Albert Rosenfield may be a genius at what he does, but he cannot keep interns.
She has been there for five months when Rosenfield gets a call to go into the field and asks her to go with him. Audrey is breathless with excitement and pride when Rosenfield holds a vertical palm towards her and speaks. (The motion is so much like Agent Cooper that her heart stutters in its rhythm.)
“Listen up, Horne, you’ve got a real knack for lab work and you’re good at connecting them to the case, but being out in the field is a different ballgame—hell, a different sport altogether, and I need you to keep your shit together. I’m not going to pretend with you; this is a test. If you fail, you work in the lab for the duration of your internship,” he paused. “If you pass, I might be inclined to bring you out to more cases.”
At his impatient plea to “get her ass back here before the plane takes off,” Audrey runs to her apartment rather than take a cab. She shrieks the moment the door shuts behind her, dancing and jumping through her apartment as she prepares for Texas weather.
Audrey is good at labwork, and she's good at piecing clues together within the case, but she finds that she is not naturally good at gore. She and Rosenfield arrive at the small Texas county coroner’s office. Despite the short trip from the car to the county building, she’s still sweating as they clamber down the stairs to the morgue.
“I’m going to perform secondary autopsies on the victims this afternoon. Call Agent Parker and tell her that I will have the results of my examination by 5 PM,” Rosenfield smiles wide at the dumbfounded deputy and promptly shuts the door in his face.
Two figures are laid out on metal tables, white sheets pulled over their frames. The abdomens of the bodies are slightly bulged, evidence of the time between death and discovery. She is readying her supplies— a tape recorder (bought as a freshman to record lectures and to think of Agent Cooper), a small notebook with two pens, and the case file—when Albert whirls on her.
“I’m not going to ask for help on this first body; I just want you to watch. I will make you help me on the second one.”
She nods jerkily, her initial excitement fading as the sheet is lifted off the husband and the ghastly remains of his face are bared to her eyes. For a moment, she thinks she’s okay, until she glances at Rosenfield and realizes he’s speaking. No sound reaches her ears, and as her gaze slides back to Mr. Trescadero’s head, she feels the floor disappear from beneath her feet. It reminds her of falling way back at One Eyed Jack’s, and she senselessly sits down where she had stood.
With her head between her knees, the noises of the room slowly leech into her: the hum of the examination lights bright above, the rattling of the refrigerators, and Rosenfield continuing his work without any regard for her. Part of her hates him for the lack of concern, but that’s just him. It’s a test. If she wants to be an FBI agent after this internship, she’s going to have to be able to see this kind of horror without fainting.
So she shakily stands, gritting her teeth and pushing down bile. Instead, she rallies at some solidity she finds inside, and though it’s with a tight grip on the metal gurney, she meets Rosenfield’s gaze over the body.
She’s just applied for the second time to the FBI academy when Albert walks into their lab. She’s loading an agarose gel as the door opens, and she calls out, “Hello, Albert!” without turning.
“Cm’here, Horns, I have someone I want you to meet,” he says, and then quietly confers with his visitor. She’s chucking her gloves when she finally faces Albert’s companion and her world halts.
He’s older. It’s been seven years since they first met. She knows that at twenty-five she must look very different, but other than a few more wrinkles and maybe a deeper downward pull to his lips, her very Special Agent Dale Cooper looks exactly the same. A crisp black suit, a tight knot at his throat, and an assured, calm gaze that breaks the moment he recognizes her.
“Agent Cooper,” she asks, she says, she cheers. Her voice cracks on the last syllable. The heady teenage infatuation is long gone, dispelled with age, but what’s left is something small and warm and so, so scary now that he’s standing in front of her, mouth hanging comically open. She doesn’t even know how to comprehend this moment. She had always imagined that she would initiate their reintroduction, and every line she had planned only worked if she had control of the situation. At the very least, as she watches his throat work with no sound, she’s confident that Agent Cooper isn’t either.
Albert breaks into the moment, confused and annoyed (the latter is his default), “Do you guys know each other somehow?”
Agent Cooper is the one to speak, finally, “Albert, do you remember the case from Twin Peaks?” At his nod, Agent Cooper continues, “Audrey’s father owns the Great Northern, where I stayed for the duration of the case.”
She always thought that when she first saw Agent Cooper again, she would probably give him a big hug and maybe a kiss on the cheek. Instead she smiles warmly, the shock melting into a happiness that sparks through her body. “Agent Cooper, it’s really great to see you again.”
He smiles, toothy and glad. She’s missed his honest expressions so much more than she realized, and she is breathlessly caught.
Albert coughs, “Well, I brought Agent Cooper to introduce him to my best intern since she’s so interested in becoming an agent, but I’m frankly not sure what to do upon the stunning realization that everyone in this room seems to know one another.”
Audrey grins as she says, “Albert, I’m your best intern because I’m the only one you couldn’t scare off.”
He nods and then smiles—just for a moment.
“Well, this is weird. Audrey, let me finish that gel while you talk with Coop and catch up or whatever irritating, assuredly emotional drivel you want to exchange.”
Albert brushes past her into his office, and she is left alone with Agent Cooper for the first time in five years.
“Hello,” she says again, unsure what to say despite wanting to ask him about everything he’s done since he left Twin Peaks and wanting to tell him about everything she’s done, too.
“Audrey, can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Cooper is standing slightly akimbo, legs awkwardly splayed and his arms crooked. He looks mostly the same, but she is seeing him with different eyes. There are lines around his brow and shadows there, too. He is just as handsome, perfectly filling his suit, but she wonders at this tiredness.
They’ve settled at a booth, facing one another in an airy coffee shop a few blocks from the lab. Cooper’s eyes are running over her face, and he starts to talk when she asks, “How have you been, Agent Cooper? What have you been up to?”
“I’ve been working. It was… a form of escape at first from the memories and emotions I thought I could leave in Twin Peaks, but I had a dream two years ago that reminded me that I could not abandon my heart just so I would not feel pain. I’ve been striving since then to live by that edict. It has been unimaginably hard.”
The same staccato rhythm to his speech, the same moment of silent pleasure at that first sip of coffee—he is clouded with such nostalgia, yet she feels as though he has been with her always. That she should have to tell him what she has been doing since Twin Peaks is laughable—for had he not been on her mind and in her heart every day the last seven years? She wants to tell him that, and perhaps she would have at eighteen or twenty-one, but at twenty-five she will not.
“I have always respected the honesty you have shown everyone around you, as well as yourself. When you met me, I was so deeply hiding that I couldn’t imagine how you could be so open. You’ve been a great inspiration to me through the years.”
She is embarrassed to find tears pricking, so she bites her tongue and meets his gaze. He is silent, watching her.
“You’re very different, Audrey. Seems you did grow up.”
Laughing, she tells him, “I did warn you.”
Her acceptance comes in the mail a few weeks after Cooper’s reintroduction into her life; starting in the fall, she’d be in the academy. But it’s summer still and she works for Albert until then, so when they’re swamped in the lab one day and he gets a call, he asks her to go to the field alone. It’s very minor work, he tells her, and she’ll be with Cooper—Cooper. Her heart thuds dangerously fast.
She has not seen him since their coffee, but she does have his card secure in her wallet for whenever she could work up the courage to call him. She hadn’t yet, had hoped to soon, but now they were on a plane together, seated close and flying back to Washington. Not to Twin Peaks, thankfully, but to a string of home invasions that might be connected to the murders of her first field case.
Audrey knows that most of their time together before now had been spent selfishly on her part. She’d taken his already strained time to talk about her problems, stolen sleep from a tired man—she has lots of regrets about how she treated him. She had thought that he would sweep her off her feet and take her away to a world of intrigue, and she had been so caught up in her fantasy that she never needed to know him. She got the big picture—that he was kind, funny, and weird, but she didn’t know his thoughts or habits or secrets like she wanted to now.
She’s unsure how to express this without sounding desperate, so she doesn’t talk. Instead, she finally asks him about all those things she wishes she’d known.
“When did you first start drinking coffee?” “What did you major in?” “Where did you grow up?” “What did you really think of me?”
It’s the last question after hours of conversation, and it slips in before she’s realized she’d asked it. He’s always been so good at getting secrets from her, even hidden questions.
He smiles softly, eyes cast far away. “Audrey, I thought you were a very intelligent, very beautiful young woman. I knew that you had a crush on me, even before you were naked in my bed,” he chuckles quietly and then laughs all the harder when she blushes a perfect crimson.
“I was very proud of that move at the time, but now I realize what an awful position I put you in. I’m very grateful it was you and not someone who might have taken advantage.”
She can’t quite look at him while she says this, the first of many half-apologies regarding their past. He coughs suddenly, his neck mottling pink.
“I appreciate the gratitude, though it’s entirely unnecessary. I expected you would feel this way once you’d grown and attained distance from the situation, and though I was,” he pauses here and seems to rally some strength, “tempted by your charms, I could not have lived with myself afterwards. It is very gratifying to me that you do not hold any grudges for the unfortunately necessary rejection.”
Audrey laughs loudly, “Only you could have been face to face with a naked woman in your bed, practically begging for it, and thought only of how she would feel years from then.”
It’s quietly said, but the words are loud and electrifying: “It was not the only thing I thought of.”
She’s choking on recycled air, baffled pleasure buzzing beneath her skin, when his own questions begin.
Audrey is shivering in the July breeze, cropped hair stinging her face. They’re standing outside of the latest home, and she is nervous. Their first case together—just the words are enough that she swallows a shrill scream, and she doesn’t want to leave the state with ruined opportunity. She’s good at this, and she loves it for so many more reasons than the man beside her. But her heart still thuds wildly when the barest pressure on her back urges her forward, Cooper’s hand falling away as she strides confidently up the steps.
She’s never seen him at work before, she realizes—only brief glimpses at the breakfast table as he puzzled over the information she had given him or stolen moments watched from afar. The speed of his conclusions and the depth of his perception shocks and excites her, even as much as it dismays her. The hope she’d held all these years that he’d be impressed by her investigative prowess dies in the living room that day.
Every clue Audrey has almost puzzled out, he arrives there first. She feels like a glorified evidence bag, holding all of the crucial pieces and offering nothing else. Her tone as the day progresses wears thin, and in spite of the raw pleasure at working with him (finally!), she’s heartbroken. She had built this moment in her mind, year after year, and the reality has failed in every aspect. Cooper must notice her mood, but he refuses to comment on the situation. Whether out of respect or professional pride, Audrey is unsure.
She is only too happy to retreat to the police station while he questions the neighbors. She almost calls Albert, has walked halfway to the phone before she hears him barking: “What the hell do you think you’re calling me about this for? So you’re sad that Special Agent Cooper, after years on the job, is better at investigating crime scenes than you? Grow up and get back to work before you’re on lab duty the rest of your fucking internship.”
The pieces of evidence are laid out on a conference room table, and she’s meditatively circling, eyeing the information from new angles. Audrey is trying to connect fibers—black, coarse, polyester: likely from a duffel bag—with the Texas murders. Halting, she recalls from last October how the bedcovers had had an odd depression at the foot of the bed, like something heavy had rested upon them. The contents of the house had never matched whatever made the impression.
The owners of the house here in Washington had been at a dinner party the night of the invasion—they’d arrived home tipsy and had taken the downstairs guest bedroom rather than their master bed. The faint blush and the cast eyes had indicated the cause of their haste, and Audrey and Cooper had shared a moment of mirth, lips faintly twitching. She wonders abruptly if there would be the same indentation in their master bedroom—a plan for a murder waylaid by the occupants being elsewhere and unexpectedly awake.
There is adrenaline threading through her veins, and Audrey has just grabbed her suit jacket to leave when Cooper flies through the door.
“Audrey, I think I’ve figured out the connection—”
“Me too,” she blurts.
He pauses with his mouth still open, blinking. “Well, ah, please, go on.”
“The murder that Albert and I investigated last fall had a similar entry—a window jimmied open with unique tools—and a similar profile—young married couple, no kids, no pets. We already suspected these cases were connected from these details, but I remembered that in Texas, I noticed an indentation at the foot of the master bed where the murders occurred. At the time, I didn’t know what it might be, but the fibers we collected today from the entry window were likely from a black duffel bag. I can’t be sure without examining the master bed of the Larsons’, but I suspect that there will be an indentation the same size and shape as the one from the Trescadero’s. Now I know it’s not a great lead, but I think—”
She’s stopped by his palm held toward her. When he speaks, his voice is fast and excited, eyes bright, “Audrey, I had the same thought as I was heading to the station; I was just coming to get you so we could go back to the house.”
They babble the entire, dark ride over the fortune that she’d taken the picture at the Trescadero’s and that he’d seen it in the evidence file, how the elderly neighbor had seen a man with a bag walking down the street that night. Her bad mood is wholly erased when they enter the master and discover the indentation.
It’s brought back altogether when something hard and heavy knocks into the back of her skull. After that, it’s fleeting images and snatches of sound as the world spins round once again.
When she wakes, it’s to a dull, throbbing pain. In the first flutters of her eyes, she spies Agent Cooper and thinks for a moment that she’s still in the hospital from the explosion. She smiles all the same, vision blurry from medicated sleep. He’s sitting beside her, a book open in his lap, and he hasn’t noticed her revival yet. Her sight focuses on the deep shadows beneath his dark eyes and the creases to his suit.
“Hiya, Agent Cooper,” she breathes, voice rough.
He starts quickly and the book slides from his lap with a thunk.
“How are you feeling, Audrey?” His hands are fluttering about, unsure, before they land on the edge of her bed, knuckles tight. He is upset and concerned—she can see these emotions so clearly on his expressive face. He normally looks so boyish, but tonight he seems much older than his years. Her heart still lurches, and her face heats as his eyes slide over to the monitor, a silent betrayal of how much he affects her.
“I’m okay,” she says quietly but with gaining strength, “Are you okay? What happened?”
There is so much anguish on Cooper’s face that her hand slides over his clenched fists automatically. His fingers are warm, the skin white and taut, and a palm engulfs hers so quickly that her breath is caught.
“Am I okay, Audrey? Physically, I am unharmed, but internally, the pain I feel at having allowed you to come to harm is deep. You were placed under my care here in the field as a junior agent, and I was so caught up in our breakthrough that I did not think to clear the room. Because of that, you were hurt. The intruder had returned to the scene to hopefully destroy any evidence, clearly not realizing we’d already connected him to the Texas murders. He panicked when we came into the room with him and attacked from the closet where he’d hidden. After he hit you with the steel toe of Mr. Larson’s work boot, he and I grappled, and I was able to subdue him. He’s in custody currently, waiting for further questioning.” He pauses briefly and then adds, “It’s currently around 3 AM.”
The information had poured quickly out of him, and she processes the details slowly, clearing the medicated fog.
“The house had been cleared, and there was a deputy posted at the front door. Have you ever had this happen before, where the culprit returned to a guarded crime scene?”
Cooper shakes his head, but he hasn’t released her hand either.
“I’ll always check from now on, that’s for sure. I’m fine, unless there’s something you’re not telling me. So I appreciate your concern, but please don’t feel guilty.” She smiles goofily at him, “A little hit on the head is nothing on being blown up or shot in your hotel room.”
His lips weakly turn up at the corners, his eyes still hooded with guilt.
“You realize this is the second time you’ve saved me, Cooper? I’m afraid to start keeping tally,” her tone is teasing and light. If he must feel guilty, then he will. She cannot change his heart tonight, and despite the ache edging boldly into the forefront of her consciousness, she’s elated. They’d connected the cases—as partners—and apprehended the culprit. She remembers the Trescadero’s, her hands full of their ravaged insides, and she hopes this conclusion brings them to peace.
“When can a girl get outta here?”
“The doctor’s set to release you in the morning pending no complications upon your waking.”
Audrey nods tiredly, pain radiating from the back of her head. “Go to the hotel and get some rest then, I’ll be fine here.”
She doesn’t want him to go. His hand is warm and soothing, his presence a balm after many years of missing him, but Cooper’s eyes are so tired. The lines about his face are deeper with exhaustion, yet: “I’m quite all right here, Audrey. I haven’t had much time to read, so I’m enjoying the opportunity.”
“Cooper, at least go to sleep. Take the bed,” she points to the empty hospital bed across the room. It's another half hour, but through bleary, happy eyes, Audrey finally watches him ease into bed.
Albert yells at Cooper for returning his intern damaged, though Audrey doesn’t know that. She concludes her internship at the beginning of August and slides into the rigorous routine at the FBI academy with some difficulty. The first is that she misses Albert and the work they did together. The second is that Cooper isn’t ignoring her as much as pulling away from her. In the few months he’d been back in her life, they’d grabbed coffee a few times, met at the forensics labs infrequently, and gone to the field once. They didn’t even see one another every other week yet she still feels the shift upon returning from Washington.
Her first month at the academy is so busy that she doesn’t realize she hasn’t seen him since a week after Washington. He’d been quiet and subdued, but still happy to see her as he dropped off the final pieces of evidence for her attention. It’s now a Friday night, an invitation from Ruth tempting her out of the apartment, and yet she’s still where she collapsed on her couch an hour ago. She hefts her hips up, fishing her wallet out of her back pocket.
Inside, a card from a very special agent and a scribbled home phone number. She dials it with sweaty palms and a knot so large in her throat that he’s said hello twice before she can respond.
“Hi there, Cooper.”
He’s quiet on the line, breaths heavy in her ear. “Audrey, it’s nice to hear from you. Are you all right?”
She laughs, thinking of the week she’s barely survived, and tells him about it. “How was your week?”
His voice is lighter when he speaks of his own experience in the academy, tells her of his week writing reports, that mandated seminar he’d attended, this amazing new bakery on 5th avenue—their conversation stretches into the night. She’s reclined on her couch, her tight professional wear long unbuttoned as the sound of his voice relieves the tension built from a hard week.
“What do you do on your weekends, Agent Cooper? In Twin Peaks, I only ever saw you working on the case.”
“When I have the luxury of a weekend off, I let myself sleep without an alarm, enjoy a fine cup of coffee, read a book, go for a walk. I try to let those days be slowly appreciated.”
Innocently, laden with intent, “You don’t take your girlfriend out on the weekends?”
Instead of a laugh, he sighs. “There has been no one since Twin Peaks, Audrey.”
The comfort of the conversation leaves with all the grace of a balloon popping; in the shocked aftermath, Audrey’s heart aches.
“No one?”
When he doesn’t respond, she poses another, “Have you been back to Twin Peaks since?”
“No.”
“Have you visited the Sheriff or any one from town?”
“No.”
Her face is flushing, the pulse elevating. The emotion beating its fists against the cage of her heart is anger.
“Have you ever called them?” Her voice is cool where it had been soft.
He hesitates now, “…no.”
She’d always thought his leaving without saying goodbye had been particular to her, perhaps a testament to their growing distance or his fragile state, but she’d never imagined he would have left the friends at the sheriff’s office without another call or visit. She’d been so angry with them for letting him leave, yet now she is furious with him.
“Why?” She wants to ask him why he never bid her farewell, but more than that to know how he could stand to abandon those friends. She hadn’t seen many of their interactions, but she’d known they had been close, particularly Sheriff Truman and Cooper. She’d felt such heartbreak at being left behind, even with their limited interactions. How must they have felt when the years stretched without a single call.
Audrey interrupts his quiet, stumbling excuse with “What the fuck, Coop?”
He splutters and falls silent. His guilt and discomfort are radiating over the line as much as she hopes her rage and indignation are, too.
“Audrey, this is really not your concern,” his words have picked up some edge.
“Hell yes it is. You can’t just come into people’s lives and make them care about you and then fuck off when you’re done with them.” Her words are sharp, but they come out warbled because of the tears burning down her face. She wants to slam the phone onto its receiver, but she’s not young enough so instead she tells him, “I’m hanging up now,” and returns the phone home. She cries there on the couch, something bitter and old loosening in her chest.
She hadn’t given him her number during their conversation, so she does not expect and does not receive a call back. The next few weeks pass in such as blur that when her dream of a loud, insistent drum slides into a steady knocking on her front door, Audrey doesn’t even know where she is. When she finally crawls from her covers, she swings the door wide without a glance through the peephole. Let the Jehovah’s Witness see her gravity-defying hair and her pink baby doll—maybe they won’t return if they think she’s a sinful witch.
Instead of terrified missionaries, she meets the shocked gaze of Cooper. He’s holding a tray with two coffees and a paper bag and has just opened his mouth when she slams the door shut.
“What the fuck did you do that for??” She hisses to herself, lurching towards her coat closet before taking a stumbling step to her room and finally reopening the door. He’s not moved, jaw still agape.
“Hello,” she says, forcing her hands not to fidget and failing to cool the embarrassed flush from her face, “What can I do for you?”
Cooper hasn’t spoken at all, his eyes quickly trailing across her form and then darting to a point beyond her head.
“I was hoping I could talk with you, perhaps while we strolled with coffee.” His gaze finally meets hers, so earnest and so hopeful. She’s conflicted, recalling the rage that has settled to a pitiful hurt, but quickly pulls him inside when a neighboring door creaks open.
“I understand that you’re likely still upset with me, but I hoped for the chance to discuss the matter.” She’s still standing there in her nightgown, showing far more skin than the time she wore only his bedcovers, and damn it all, her hardwood floors are chilly in the October morning. His gaze drops for a second and frantically meets her eyes again, a pink flush rising from his shirt collar. Something turns a flip in her belly, and she examines Cooper. He’s wearing his brown overcoat and beneath it, a red sweater with khakis. It’s a decidedly casual look compared to the usual suits, and Audrey’s heart flutters.
“Uh, why don’t you let me change, and we’ll talk?” She gestures vaguely toward her couch, praying fervently as she dresses that the bra she’d shed last night is lost deep in the cushions.
She’s sipping her coffee—laden with cream and sugar in spite of Cooper’s horrified inhalation at the sheer amount of both she’d added—as they walk through her neighborhood. It’s a chilly day, but the sky is a crisp blue and the leaves whistle across the street in the breeze. She’d been too busy to take note of the beauty in the changing scenery, and now she’s reveling.
“Growing up in Twin Peaks, I never really saw the leaves change; it’s one of the things I love most about the city.” Her voice is dreamy, remembering fall days on campus spent with her friends and a certain black turtleneck.
“I hope you won’t be offended, but I got your address from your personnel file.” He is uncomfortable, taking long pulls from his coffee as he stares pointedly ahead.
“It’s all right. What did you want to talk about?” She already knows, but she’s not sure she’s ready for what he’ll say.
“I called Harry Truman yesterday,” he tells a mailbox. Her steps falter, and he’s so pointedly not looking at her that he doesn’t realize she’s stopped.
“How did that go,” she asks, her free hand catching the sleeve of his coat to slow his stride. Where her palm touches the outside is cool, but the tips of her curled fingers are warm against his skin. Her brain is trying to focus on his words, but it seems she’s forgotten what those noises mean.
“He was understandably upset with me, though he did acknowledge that he could have called me at the bureau. I explained my attempt at forgetting the stage of so much pain and apologized for forgetting that it was also the home of many fond memories.” He glances down at her, “Those include you, too, Audrey. I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye, and I’m sorry I never tried to contact you.”
He sighs, breaking eye contact and staring back down the sidewalk.
“I told you when we first had coffee that I’d had a dream that led to my decision to live with an open heart, yet I fear I have acted in error. How can I claim to act daily by this edict when I’d closed myself off to the people inside it?”
With a boldness that would have been thoughtless at eighteen but is now hard-earned at twenty-six, she releases his coat sleeve and entangles their hands. His skin is dry, hard calluses rubbing against the smoothness of her own palm. His footsteps stutter, a single stride disrupted and then restarted smoothly.
There’s something bubbling in her throat, clawing its way through clenched teeth.
“I don’t know, Cooper—”
“Dale. Audrey, call me Dale,” he interrupts swiftly, watching a dead leaf release from a tree and flutter to the ground. His gaze cuts quickly to hers, that startling intensity shocking her all over.
“I don’t know, Dale,” she restarts only to pause, tasting a syllable she had never dared to speak on its own. To do so had felt rude, more inappropriate than slinking into his room by way of a stolen key. Blood is rushing loudly behind her ears, dampening the noises of the street as she begins again.
“I don’t know, Dale, but how much guilt can you feasibly carry? When I first met you, you always seemed a little sad. Now I look at you and see a haunted man. I ask about your weekends, your love life, and you tell me that there’s just you; it’s, it’s like you’re going through the machinations of being alive without actually letting yourself live.”
It’s impolite to dissect someone like this, especially on a public street, but he routinely flayed her open at the breakfast table, so it feels a bit like coming home. She’s itchy all over, a warmth blooming low as she watches his jaw drop in surprise. Audrey thinks her wires got crossed in the dining room of her father’s hotel all those years ago, that introspection and cross-examination are now tightly entwined with out-of-control arousal. That, or it’s his damn sweater.
He left with her number, but she is still surprised when he calls her that Saturday with a hopeful request.
“A new bakery has opened on 9th street. Would you care to join me?”
And the next, “There’s a marvelous exhibit at the Woodmere, if you have any interest?”
The following, “A little bookstore on South is hosting Lindsay Redding. Could I accompany you to her signing?”
“Do you have any interest in seeing a movie with me this evening?”
The weeks tumble by, bookended by requests and offers.
Until finally, “I hear the dinner service at 1810 Ridge Avenue, apartment 214B is tolerable.”
The sweet smell of sautéed onions and garlic billow from his apartment when he opens the door, but it’s Dale in a white button-up, the sleeves rolled up his forearms, that makes her hunger. His black slacks hang off trim hips, and his hair is mussed, dark strands falling against his forehead in disarray. He gestures her inside, and the air catches in her throat as she brushes past him, the barest impression of a taut abdomen against her arm.
She has been naïve and careless and spoiled, but Audrey has never been stupid. From her periphery she can see Dale’s throat work when she presses against the bar overlooking the stovetop, leaning low to smell the risotto he’s stirring. She knows there’s a clean line of sight down the neckline of her dress, knows gravity is working with her. Lingering there, she rolls her head up slowly, catching his eyes as they drag upward. Her skin is on fire, and there’s an empty clutching beneath her belly. He seems as dazed as she, blinking rapidly as he begins stirring with renewed vigor.
They speak softly over dinner, and she keeps her portion light. It’s delicious and precious in the way that all home-cooked meals are to her, made all the more special by the man sitting across from her. He still makes her skin itch and her hips shift beneath the edge of the table cloth, still touches something warm and large that is growing in her chest.
“Audrey, I hope that it is clear that I consider you a dear friend. I cannot tell you how happy I am that we were reintroduced—,” he pauses, considers with a smile so honest that her heart is racing, “how happy I have been since you re-entered my life.”
His sentence ends as though there were more to say, but he remains silent, gazing at her with soft dark eyes. Her finger is chasing a drop of wine around the rim of her glass, circling slowly.
“You know, I thought I was in love with you back in Twin Peaks.” She speaks gently, a hint of reproach in her voice. “I didn’t know what love was, not really. I thought it was grand gestures and swooping in your stomach; I didn’t care about your favorite author or want to hear about your personal philosophies.”
She’s reaching wine-stained fingers across his small table, holding his tight. His face is carefully neutral, and she’s talking faster now, “Anyway, what I mean to say is that I think world history is boring and that you need to go to therapy. I asked you a while ago what you did with your partner on the weekends, and I--,” her left hand is clenched tight in her lap but the one holding his is soft, “I know now, right?”
She asks with some wonder, like she still can’t be sure that this conclusion isn’t the wrong one after all, but the smile that breaks across his face wipes away all the years they spent apart.
With legs that are shivering and unsteady, she stands and finally, finally, she lunges forward. His lips are petal soft, and she breathes in his gasp of surprised pleasure. Audrey presses rapid kisses across his mouth and jaw, leaning over him. The kitchen is ungodly hot, the air thick and stifling. All she wants is to shed her dress, to rip every fiber from Dale’s body. But he’s still sitting, and so she’s tugging, roughly pulling him into her.
His mouth is hot against hers and his hand is splayed low on her hips. The other is curled around the back of her neck, holding her firm against his kisses. She licks the seam of his mouth and lets out her own gasp when he nips her bottom lip instead. He trails down the column of her neck, gently sucking and nipping in turns that have her knees buckling.
And then he’s lifting her, hooking her legs around his waist. She’s higher than she wants to be, but the realization that only a few scant layers separate her wet center from him has her moaning. He’s still kissing her neck as he carries her through the apartment, past closed doorways and into what must be his bedroom. She only has enough time to notice that it smells dizzyingly like him before he’s pressing her flat against his bed.
She wriggles low, hitching her hips and twisting her legs until she’s flush with his obvious arousal. Even through the pants, he must be able to feel the raging heat and the dampness at the apex of her thighs. Audrey drags her hips against him, reaching her arms up to hook around his neck and pull him down into another kiss. With her own bite against his lips, she slips her tongue into his mouth.
They’re both breathing heavily, puffed exhales that are wet against each other’s cheeks. She realizes she’s trembling when she can’t steady her hands enough to unbutton his damned shirt, and he has do it for her, speedily untucking and removing the article. The white undershirt is gone and the pants are being shed when the bunched dress finally clears her head. Dale falls back upon her as if magnetized—his hands unhooking and peeling off her bra while hers skate the waistband of his boxer briefs.
He is so beautiful, and he has been worth the long years’ wait. A loud gasp stretches into a tremulous moan as he begins sucking on a nipple. His eyes are amused, crinkling happily at the corners, and she shudders at the overstimulation of his continued attentions. Her legs are spread wide, canting at the perfect angle to rub against the ridge of him. She is impatient to feel him, and so she shoves at him, pushing him onto his back.
There’s a flush that’s spreading down his chest and across his belly, hiding behind the dark hair that leads to his underwear. With fingers that feel barely like her own, she pulls the waistband down and over him. His dick is throbbing in time with his quickened heart rate, and her mouth is watering, her panties so wet that she might be dripping onto his bed. Leaning forward, she takes him into her mouth, and he groans loudly, shoulders falling lax against the bedspread.
He tastes like he smells, muskier and with a hint of salt from his leaking pre-cum. He’s large in her hand as she covers what she cannot fit past her lips, and she has barely set a rhythm when he pulls her away, flipping them so that once again she is on her back. He’s hovering over her, his wet cock still glistening from her saliva, and she’s sure that she will combust if she doesn’t have him inside her. His dark hair is completely mussed—did she do that? She can hardly remember, but when he slides her underwear down her hips, her hands rise to her mouth to keep from moaning out loud. They smell like him, and she cries out anyway. As soon as he has flung her underwear away, her legs fall open.
Dale stares down at her, eyes trailing across her entire form, and this is exactly how she wanted him to look at her all that time ago. He could have fucked her then, and everything would have been different. But then his rough fingers slip between her slicked folds, and all rational thought is abandoned. He’s not even rubbing her, just exploring. Yet it feels like she might already tip right over the edge. He leans forward and licks a stripe up her cunt, and she’s babbling, some nonsense that she can barely hear over the roaring in her ears. He’s feasting then, a mixture of sucking and soft nipping interspersed with a circular pattern that has her gasping. Her hands are stretched high above her, wrapping tight against the curve of the headboard. His finger nudges inside her, a welcome intrusion but one that leaves her feeling barely full.
“Please,” she gasps out, and he doesn’t stop.
Instead, he adds another finger and starts curling them upwards, matching his ruthless pace on her clit. Black spots are tumbling across her vision, and she’s dangling over a precipice, begging for it. When she falls, it’s with a high-pitched shriek and bucking hips. Even after she has crested, he’s still licking furiously, and it’s too much, much too soon—she shies away from him, still panting as he chuckles.
His mouth is covered in her, and she would be embarrassed if she weren’t absolutely greedy for him. With grasping hands, she pulls him to her and tells him, “I’m clean and have an IUD.”
“I’m clean, too,” he whispers into the kiss, and by mutual agreement, she reaches her shaking hands to guide him inside her. She’s so wet that he slips, sliding up to nudge her clit and making her lashes flutter heavily. Finally, he catches in the opening of her cunt and eases in. The stretch is magnificent—it has been a while, and his fingers had only highlighted how empty she was without him. Every nerve ending is alight, and she’s watching his blinks turn heavy as he sinks to the hilt.
“Are you all right, Audrey,” he asks, his breaths hard in her ear as he rests his head against hers.
“I’m perfect,” she says, thrusting back and setting the pace tortuously slow. Every drag of their hips sets sparks across her spine, and she’s dizzy, she’s ravenous.
“I love you,” she tells him with an easy confidence, giddy with how his thrusts stutter, “I love you, and I want you to fuck me, Dale Cooper.”
He groans in her ear and rears up to kiss her hard, “And I love you, Audrey Horne.”
The rhythm they begin is brutal, their hips crashing into each other, and they’re both panting, reaching. It’s too good to last, and she knows it when he pivots her hips up and starts hitting that spot that makes stars dance behind her lids. With a trembling cry, she falls, and he follows soon after, groaning. His thrusts slicken and slow until they’re clutching at each other, heavy breaths sticking and unsticking their clammy stomachs together. Audrey giggles, and tells Dale, “If I’d known what I was missing that night, I don’t think you’d have been able to make me leave.”
He huffs a laugh, “I don’t think I’d have had the strength to even try, Audrey.”
Gently, he pulls out of her, and heads to the bathroom. She lies in the darkness, watching the fluorescent light spill across the room and basking in the lassitude until he returns with a warm washcloth.
Later, she will eat leftover risotto from the pot, sandwiched between the counter and Dale. For now, though, Audrey nestles into the nook created by Dale’s shoulder and his ribs. Her stained fingers rest gently over his heart.