A/N: Post-series, Cooper is BOB. A few months have passed since the events in the finale. Audrey survived the explosion and BOB as Cooper is the master of emotional manipulation. Or at least he is in my imagination.
Hearts on Fire
Delicate rain touches glass panes and a soft storm rumbles low outside. Deft piano strokes hum an easy jazz tune inside. A dark night and a pretence of soul. The illusion is fading.
Here the Great Northern stands, a wooden monolith of divided hearts and minds. Of souls that wander.
Hers is a heart that yearns but has bled dry after months of nothing. Yields none of what she thinks it's supposed to. Beats soft beneath her breast and waits. Patient drum.
She crunches ice between her teeth. Drinks alone at her bar. Amaretto with a slice of lemon and a cherry bobbing hopelessly.
She's feeling blue but wearing black. The dress with straps is sheer but reveals nothing. She's careful about things like that. She's feeling romantic but really it's maudlin and maybe the difference is nothing. She'd be damned to know romance is dead.
When he enters he's silent. Adept at it, cunning wiles attached to the patient hunt. Takes the stool beside her and the bartender comes from nowhere. When he orders a whiskey she pretends not to care. She doesn't look up from her drink, pushes the cherry by its stem around the rim.
"Should you be drinking that?" he asks before he feels whiskey against his lips.
"It's my hotel. I can do what I want."
The words slip harsher than intended.
"Big talk for someone so young."
He smiles into the edge of his glass. Feels delight at the thrill of some forbidden chase. The game he's begun to play with her that she maybe started.
"Keep reminding me." She drowns the words in liquor.
"We've been missing each other."
A suggestion of lapsed intimacy, his voice carries with it some darker tone but Audrey's immersed in the reflections in her drink. Lonely eyes turn from blue to green. Her hair in dark curls frames the picture of melancholy contemplation. When she takes the glass to her lips she sees her own mouth devour smooth liquor.
You've been missing, she wants to say but instead says, "I've been here."
"Touché."
She does look at him then and a spark re-emerges from a dark place within her. He's staring back with familiar eyes. A half smile shows no teeth. Buttoned down white shirt folds up his arms and there's something different about the part of his hair.
A fire burns in her and Audrey looks away. Her periphery spies him throw back his drink and finish it. Order another. The bartender obliges then slips out into the empty room.
"You're usually a glass of milk kind of guy. What happened to that Agent Cooper?"
"Audrey," silky voice intones as he sweeps a hand over his glass, "there are many things you don't know about me."
He sees himself through an auburn looking glass, whiskey distorting his face as the liquid undulates. His round face stretches and contorts, grows long and angular. Sleek black hair now a tangle of matted grey. Half smile becomes a toothy grin.
"You lied when you said you had no secrets."
"I protected you," he says seriously, and maybe he means it but he can't be sure.
"From what?" she says softly.
"Me." Quietly he replies but the thrill swells up again and his trap is set.
Her searching eyes try to reach the part of him she once had and a great sadness falls on her. Hard liquor burns her throat when she sips it down but it grows a fire in the pit inside her. It flares and her heart aches.
When she looks at him again she all but whispers a strained lamentation. "Where have you been?"
He thinks he should console her. "I was sorry to hear about your father."
He studies her. Her eyes are tired, porcelain face a mask of exhaustion. He knows he's worn her down.
His eyes slip over fading scar tissue she's tried to cover with strategic curls across her forehead. The beginnings of an angry red mark peek out above the cut of her dress on her chest, a cross-stitch of skin. She's had to be fixed, stitched up. He reaches out a hand to brush away the curls, to better see where she'd been hurt, and she closes her eyes at the sensation. When she looks at him again she looks with a pained regret that he doesn't understand but wants to. She expels a breath and with it her look changes to one of determination. She moves away from his touch.
He knows Audrey Horne is a survivor.
She turns from him, implores her drink and finds herself feeling drunk. She bites the head off the cherry and rolls the stem between her fingers.
He watches her and hears when new footsteps hesitate near the room's threshold. He knows it's Annie before he turns to see her. When he looks back to Audrey she's finishing what's left of her drink while the cherry stem lies in a knot on the bar.
She's aware again of the piano strokes and the rain beating against the window. A crack of thunder. She sees Annie hover. Quirks a smile with a green heart.
When she turns back to him his eyes are on her. Again he reaches out to her but now presses his lips to her forehead, imprinting himself on her. A mark. Final look to remember her flushed skin. A thrill runs hot through him.
He turns from her, claims Annie and moves her through the threshold. They disappear.
Audrey stays to listen to the fading piano pulse of the room as uneasiness creeps inside.
The illusion is fading.