A/N: For L.


I say a prayer with every heartbeat - W. Houston

~oOo~


Flashes of light, blurs of colors as though filtered by glass. All red and black and white. More red than anything. It burns an image in the blood behind Audrey's eyes before she sees his face, as a portrait in oils he appears from the dark.

He's older, but she doesn't mind. Just so long as he's near. Just so long as it's really him, her Special Agent.

The room is moving before her, like waves of heat, bending the statue of Venus, bending the lamps and chairs. Shaking her. And she thinks she's dead, her body feels so far away.

She's smoke in the room.

The light is now red, blinking on and off, saturating the ends of her hair, changing them to neon rods. She is warm. So, so warm and her head leans back. Back to the chair at One-Eyed Jack's, Jean Renault, Blackie and all the drugs traveling through the veins of her arms, up and down, all throughout her body.

But then his hand is on her cheek, he's sitting beside her, whispering in her ear.

Oh, what he says...

She closes her eyes, and it's something else entirely. There is a fire to him, a fire, unlike any she's ever known before. It engulfs her. Sends all consciousness outside, carried by the wind to the far off boughs of trees. She's there now, here now. All over.

She's lost in the choking scent of the room, lost in him, what he makes her know. To know in ways she's never dreamed of. She can feel her eyes moving upward, her closed lids fluttering. The heat on her neck from his body, from his mouth.

His nails catch on the threads of her sweater.

One of his knees is on the chair as he leans toward her in the softly changing light. His face is unseen as his mouth moves lower down her neck, her clavicles, her chest. His pitch-black hair, the loose and confined, is all she can see of him as he moves over her. She loves the smell of him, of brylcreem, coffee, an underlying musk.

Audrey's hands slip under his suit jacket, her lips open. Her fingers wander the small of his back, and she keeps them there. Holding him close, never wanting to let go.

The room is black, so black as the light dies. There is music from somewhere behind the curtains. Soft, morose music she can barely hear. Something about it makes her want to cry, as if the song is about something she should know but doesn't. Or maybe she does. But Agent Cooper's kissing the palm of her hand as he clutches her wrist, she can't remember. She can't think. She still feels where his hands lingered moments before, awakening thrumming pulses.

The music seems to fade.

There is a glow behind the red curtains, a circle shining through from the other side. It was there the entire time, but she is only now aware of its presence.

It was as if she were passing through a black cloud, her feet touching steps she couldn't see, keeping her alive. This had to be a dream.

"Is this a dream?"

"I'm awake," he says, "and so are you."

"I know."


~oOo~