Wonderful

Rating: Not above an "R"
Pairing: Cooper/Rosenfield
Spoilers/Timeline: Takes place right after Leland Palmer's death.
Feedback: If you enjoyed this in any way, then yes, please. Fanfic writing is like cybersex. I don't do it to improve my typing skills. *g*

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WONDERFUL
by DBKate, 1999
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His cigarettes were still soaked.

SA Albert Rosenfield bit back a frustrated growl and tossed the useless pack onto the cheap half-assed "desk" the management at the Great Northern Hotel had so kindly provided him with. It had been a night to remember all right, filled with revelations, suicides, demonic possessions and a station house sprinkler system that just wouldn't quit.

How wonderful.

Of course, all this was par for the course on one of Cooper's cases and Rosenfield had agreed to perform the autopsy almost before the Palmer corpse had cooled down to room temperature. His suit was still wet beneath his scrubs as he'd worked, feverishly, until just before dawn when he'd finished the last bit of paperwork and stumbled back to his hotel room for a hot shower, no doubt facing another frantic workday guaranteed to be fueled by nothing more than bad food, rotten coffee and the endless enthusiasm of one Special Agent Dale Cooper.

Yeah. It was all just -so- wonderful.

So, what was the cause of Leland Palmer's death? As a forensic pathologist, Rosenfield knew the medical terms well enough. Massive brain hemorrhage due to self-inflicted blunt trauma force -- otherwise known as banging your head against a steel door until your skull turned into a bowl of Captain Crunch, thank you very much.

Sounded simple enough, but then again, was anything in this god-forsaken roadkill dump called Twin Peaks that simple?

No. Not by a long shot.

Seems that ol' Leland had been under the possession of an invisible entity named "Bob" when he'd molested, then murdered his own daughter, along with at least two other girls. According to Cooper, this "Bob" was a killer of souls as well as bodies, releasing both only through death.

Or something like that.

Oh, it all made perfect sense, Cooper patiently explained to him the night before as Rosenfield lit one cigarette after the other, trying desperately to smoke himself into some sort of oxygen deprived plane of understanding. He'd wanted to take a long drink from the flask he'd begun to carry to most of Cooper's cases but didn't want to deal with the frown that Cooper would inevitably bestow upon such behavior. Besides, it was much better to save the contents of that flask for a better time.

Like the morning after a two a.m. autopsy of a demonically possessed serial killer named Leland Palmer.

Rosenfield shut his eyes and rubbed them ... futilely. He was aching, both inside and out. It was bad enough that Cooper was getting more entranced with this insane case by the minute, but it was much worse that another rift was forming between them, one that grew right along with Cooper's enchantment with the town and its inhabitants.

And grew in direct proportion with Rosenfield's hatred of the place.

Well, maybe hatred was too strong a word. Rosenfield made it his business not to hate, anyone or anything. Hatred was the root of all the things that he'd devoted his entire life to overcoming. He could have gone anywhere, done anything, with his Yale cum laude degree and subsequent training. But he chose to use it in his own personal crusade against evil, a crusade in which love, not hatred, was the right answer -- the only answer.

But right now, love was giving him one hell of a migraine.

Had it really been ten years since the day that Dale Cooper put down his coffee cup in that tiny motel room just outside of Philadelphia and ran the back of his hand over Rosenfield's cheek, in a gesture of affection so surprising that the cigarette had fallen right out from between Rosenfield's trembling fingers?

Had it really been that long since they'd tumbled onto that miserable lump-ridden bed, entwining themselves as best they could around each other's bodies, then around each other's souls as the night wore on, oblivious to the fact that the surveillance tape had run out hours before and the bank robbers they'd sought to nab were long gone?

Or had it all been one of Cooper's famous dreams, one that he'd convinced Rosenfield to come right in and hallucinate with him.

"Come on, Albert," he could almost hear Cooper say, beaming at him with that ridiculously brilliant smile of his. "It's simply -amazing- in here. And the coffee ain't bad either."

Yeah, the past ten years had been amazing all right. Amazingly insane.

And, yet, at times, it had been amazingly wonderful as well. But now, exhausted to the point of delirium, his flask empty and the wet pack of smokes on his desk far past the point of no return, Rosenfield wasn't sure he could continue this way any longer. He wasn't growing any younger, or any prettier, and life was beckoning him to return to the folds of whatever normality he'd ever dared to cherish.

A life that consisted of a quiet meal in a top French restaurant, a glass of fine wine by the fireplace and a good book ... maybe even one that didn't have pictures of murder victims staring back at him with their lifeless milk-white eyes, daring him to try and find their killers.

A life that promised no more hayrides through one-horse towns to get to a makeshift morgue set up in some elementary school infirmary. No more stinking corpses assailing his senses at four a.m. No more listing blindly on the wrong side of nowhere, choking down inedible grease-covered slop morning noon and night with Cooper siding instinctively with any moron that appealed to him on the basis of sheer inanity alone.

No more sleepless nights spent wondering if Cooper thought about him one half as much as he thought about Cooper. Worrying about him. Wanting him. Needing him.

Rosenfield felt a bit of exhaustion-inspired hilarity bubble up at that thought. Needing Dale Cooper was like being addicted to potato chip collecting. Sure, you could do it, but when the men in the white coats came to take you away you'd better not look too surprised, fella.

But there was no denying that he needed Cooper. Even after ten years of trailing after a man whose idea of a good time was taste-testing baked goods and automatic drip sludge from the bottom of any coffee pot in sight, Albert Rosenfield couldn't honestly say that he could live happily without him.

Because, for all Cooper's eccentricities, for all of his quirks, for all of his flights into pure insanity, no one had ever understood, accepted or loved Rosenfield more. Trusted him without thought, shone with pride every time he introduced him, stood up for him fearlessly, often at the price of his own reputation, occasionally at the price of a right hook to his jaw.

"I don't give a damn Albert," he'd once said, after they'd been chased out of some backwater burg at dawn by four hulking deputies and two large police dogs. "-You're- my partner and that's the final word on the subject. Now, if you'd reach under your seat, you'll find that thermos of coffee I confiscated from the station before we were so rudely evicted. If they complain, we'll tell Gordon it was evidence. Agreed?"

Rosenfield had agreed ... grudgingly. And in doing so, lost whatever was left of his heart to the man in the driver's seat next to him, drinking the last bit of sludge stolen from the burnt coffee pot of yet another backwoods sheriff's station.

And, surprise, surprise ... the night that followed had been wonderful.

Cooper was beautiful, there was no denying that. Beautiful, brilliant and passionate, and who was he to complain. He'd never find another like him, he should count himself blessed, but damn it ... the man was impossible.

And, damn it all to Hell ... wonderful as well.

The phone by his beside started to ring, and he knew without picking it up who was on the other end of it. It was Cooper, probably already in the hotel dining room, waiting impatiently for him to join him for another heady discussion on the modus operandi of murder, the nature of Zen, the mysteries of evil -- and of love.

If he were lucky, very lucky, maybe they'd find time that evening to discuss the latter in greater detail, winding around each other warmly, even just falling asleep together, allowing him for one night to forget that they were anything but partners, allowing all rifts to close and drifting off into a place where all things were bright, shining ... and wonderful.

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DBKate

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