Keeping Awake

by Tiriel

NC-17, m/m
Pairing: Cooper/Rosenfield

I don't really know what this is yet. It's closer to songfic (yeah, yeah, I know) than anything I've done. I'm really supposed to be working on three other stories that are half-done, but this is what's coming out of my head tonight. What can I do? Oh, yeah, that's right. What's this about? Somebody's got insomnia. Kind of a fill-in for a blank spot in the Dale Cooper autobio book. Distinctly pre-series.

Disclaimer: The characters of this story don't belong to me...they came from the twisted minds of David Lynch and Mark Frost (and I mean that respectfully)-I'll put them back when I'm done. Please don't sue me, all I have are student loans.

Warnings: Serious nicotine use. Lots of angst, and a little bit of smut. Sniffle alert.

Thanks to Aithine and Little Miss S for looking this over in the light of day and telling me that it wasn't utter crap.

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Keeping Awake
by Tiriel

There are some things that just aren't meant to be. That's what I keep telling myself. Maybe someday it'll actually help. Maybe someday it'll sink in deep enough that I'll finally believe it. Maybe someday I'll stop wishing things were different. Maybe, but probably not.

That's the bitch of being in love. If you really love someone and are really in love with them, two distinct things that don't go together as often as most people think, then there's only one way to get them out of your system. Unless the jerks of the world have a meeting and elect that person their king or queen, unless it's a completely clean break and you're able to hate them properly long enough to kill the longing, you never really stop wanting them. You never really stop wondering if maybe, just maybe, things could have been different, or if maybe things could still be different someday.

To this day, even though I know it could never have worked out, not in this lifetime, there are moments when I still long for the first man I ever fell in love with. I think about getting in the car and driving through the night to the place where he lives, with his wife, in another state, in another timezone, just to drive past his house and hope for a glimpse of him. Nothing more, just a glimpse. In contrast, the next man I fell in love with fucked me over so badly that if I did drive to his house in the middle of the night, it'd be with a sniper rifle. So those are the choices. Love or hate. No middle ground.

You can try to manufacture the hate, come up with reasons, excuses, summon up anger or at least indignation, but it won't work. Not the first time, and not the thousandth time. To kill the love, to end something so rare and precious, it has to be genuine. Heartbreak is necessary, but not sufficient. It has to be hate. And a small part of you is glad, perhaps, that you can't. As if holding on to that love, unrequited, painful as hell, but still beautiful, as if holding on to that somehow makes you better. Maybe it does. And it's always with you. Sure, sometimes you forget for a while. Not every night is like this one. But then something reminds you, and you're there all over again.

Nobody who knows me would ever believe it, but as a kid I had a serious fairy tale habit. Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, that was just the tip of the iceberg. I hit the library and devoured all of it. Then I started over. One thing that always stayed with me in a weird way was this moment from the story of Rapunzel. I had such a clear mental image of what it must have been like for the prince to see her let down her hair from that tower for the first time. This glorious cascade of beauty and light coming down towards you, and it's *for* you. That's what it felt like when I realized that I was in love with him.

I'd thought that it would never happen again. That the scattered abysmal failures of my youth had been my only chances at love. When I discovered that I was wrong, the light reached into corners and spaces in my heart I'd thought were lost, closed off forever.

Now it's like trying to pretend that I'm not waiting for a phone call that I know will never come. Every damn day as I work my way through another pot of coffee, another pack of cigarettes, another bottle of aspirin, another package of antacid. Every damn night as I lie here and try to sleep.

I never told anyone, but after her, during the six months when he went away from the world, he called me from time to time, late at night. I always wondered if he was drunk. But in those days, he was down so deep that it was hard to tell. The conversations always began the same way.

My greeting as I answered the phone would be "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Does it matter? You weren't asleep."

He said it every time, and every time he was right.

"Not this time, but I might have been."

"Never. You're the only person I know who sleeps less than I do."

"So now that you've dialed the Insomniac's Hotline, how may I help you?" I'd reach for a cigarette at that point, intentionally letting him hear me light up.

"Smoking is bad for you, Albert. You should quit."

"Thank you, Coop. I must have been out sick the day we covered that in medical school. I'll quit right away." Of course I never would. Hearing that simple expression of concern for my health, I could almost believe he cared about me the way I did about him.

Then he'd launch into the topic of the night. Usually what we talked about had nothing to do with her or with work. As much pain as I knew he was in, as much as I worried those months about his health, his safety, his sanity, in an odd way, I miss those nights. We had some great conversations. It was somewhere during those months that I realized. If I could have five minutes, just five minutes of conversation with him every day for the rest of my life, I would be happy. Not content, not pleased, not fine, but truly happy. I knew at that moment that I was lost. I was in love with him.

There's something about talking on the phone in the darkness, late at night. It makes it easier to say anything. It's like it's not real. So one night, when he drifted down a darker conversational path than usual, about how it had all been his fault and he hadn't deserved her love or her trust, I told him.

"Do you believe me to be a reasonable human being with good instincts and judgment?"

"Of course I do, Albert. But what does that--"

"Then there's the flaw in your reasoning."

"What's that?"

"I love you. You deserved it from her. You deserve to be loved and trusted and--and cherished. You do." I heard the soft click of the telephone and cursed myself loudly, believing I'd gone too far.

I did eventually sleep that night. When I woke up, he was there, sitting on the edge of my bed, watching me.

"Breaking and entering is still a crime. I could probably shoot you and get away with it." I retreated into sarcasm, as usual.

"In that case, I guess it's a good thing you don't sleep with a gun," he said. Then he took off his clothes. We didn't speak again that night.

It's kind of like a wonderful dream. You try to remember it, hold on to every detail, but pieces of it slip away from you. Sometimes I wonder if it was even real, any of it. I don't know, to this day, if it was his way of thanking me for six months of randomly spaced late-night phone calls, if it was a pity fuck, or if he wanted it for some reason or reasons of his own that he just never saw fit to share. Our first and only night together.

He got into bed with me, removed the clothes I'd fallen asleep in, rubbed his beautiful smooth skin all over mine. I was afraid to close my eyes. I didn't want to miss a second of him and I half-believed he'd disappear if I did, like the hallucination he had to be. I was both relieved and disappointed when he turned, offering himself to me. It's hard enough living with the memory of making love to him. At the time, I thought I was going to become some kind of freakish story they tell first year med students--another alleged case of spontaneous human combustion, or the tale of the guy whose heart burst in his chest because he was so full of happiness and love, that kind of thing--it was so perfect. If it'd gone the other way, if I'd been laid open before him physically like I already was emotionally, it would have killed me. The memory, if not the act itself. Maybe he knew that.

My hands trembled when I touched him. He shuddered, and it reminded me of the way people describe the shudder of a racehorse. His whole body shook when he came. He was so beautiful. I tried not to make any noise, not to break the spell.

He stayed in my bed, in my arms, for a little while afterward. Then he got up, putting a finger gently to my lips to silence me as I opened my mouth to speak. He dressed, leaned down to kiss me, for the first and only time, and then he was gone.

I hoped he would come back, hoped he would call, hoped he would visit me again in the night, but I knew he wouldn't. Two days later, he came back to work. Maybe, just maybe, it was that night, or even that kiss, that broke the spell and helped heal the handsome prince. As much as he'll ever be healed, anyway. He'll love her till the day he dies. Just like I'll love him until the day I die. Because I can't hate him, and I don't want to. Instead, I stay awake, and I think, and I smoke. I know that the phone isn't going to ring, but I still stare at it sometimes in the night. Sleep is a mixed blessing. I know that he'll never appear in my bedroom again, but I still look every time I wake up.

I accept his friendship, offer mine in return, and I'm grateful for that. And I still get those five minutes of conversation on a lot of days. It's just not the last five before I go to sleep, that's all. I know that he sleeps through the night now. I know that he'd only have to ask, and I'd do anything for him. Even quit smoking. But he won't ask for anything from me. Not ever again. I know all these things as certainly as I know that this is my fate, if there is such a thing, to watch and to remember and to dream and to keep awake.

The End

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"Oh, I'm near to sleeping, I'm keeping awake.
Oh, I'm near to sleeping, I'm keeping awake,
hearing your voice in the house, in the house
hearing your voice in the house."
-The Innocence Mission, "Keeping Awake"

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Tiriel

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