Thank you so, so much; this is absolutely stunning. It’s gorgeously, lushly written, and it evokes the spirit of The Return--even more mythical than the original run, and weighted with tragedies and lost time—and finds something appropriately dreamy and beautiful in all that. Sensual, haunting, and hopeful.
And it feels like I could get drunk on the language of this, honestly. There are so many exquisite turns of phrase here, and the poetry of it all really feels like it captures that Lynchian sense of everything being suffused with meaning. It’s so rich and decadent that I can’t even come up with an appropriate Trick or Treat candy comparison. It’s like… flourless chocolate cake with berry accents for sharpness and just a little bit of cream to highlight everything. Which would be such a ridiculously delightful thing to get in a Trick or Treat bag—and which I’m ridiculously delighted to get here. (And I promise not to deploy another overwrought food comparison. Only one per comment.) I’m really in awe.
I’m going to try to pull lines I particularly like without just coming up with the whole fic… but I really could come up with the whole fic. Every metaphor and image is just so vivid and well-chosen.
After the scream hit, Cooper was alone in the blackout at the end of the road. Laura had cried out into the night, and the night could not hold her: this much he had seen before.
Those last few words are just such a resigned, sad gut-punch. It’s like the Giant all over: “It is happening again.”
until he turned up a slip of paper that was still faintly warm with a perfume of pink rose and clove bud, the bloom and the burn of Audrey Horne in front of an early fire at the Great Northern.
This is just such an absolutely beautiful way to evoke the spirit of Audrey.
Her eyes were closed, but the set of them was easier than he’d seen them before, too slack and tender for death. She wore a satin negligee in a shade of white that Cooper could only remember from the filmography of Jean Harlow or the phenomenon of the tuberose, and her hair was combed wide over the pillow. Out towards the window, her black velvet dress was folded over a chair in front of a vanity table, and deep in the velvet, there was a sheen like motor oil through moss, the darkest thing in the room.
And a perfect, haunting look at Laura—I love that first line. And I really adore the way you use color in this fic. Again, it feels perfectly of a piece with the series itself, and I particularly love the way Cooper draws instinctively from old movies when he’s trying to describe this, first with Jean Harlow and later with “gray as a rose on panchromatic film.” Sheer beauty; sheer brilliance.
And by the light of the window, Audrey Horne stood in the castle of a giant and listened to the long rolls of the ocean, the surf that broke like nightshade on the rocks outside. She had her eyes closed, and her arms were folded around herself, her hands stroking restlessly into the occasional fine tremors of her own muscles. Cooper ached at each tremor he saw, the way a rock must ache left out at sea. “Audrey,” he said, at last. Her eyes opened, pale and wide. “Shit,” she said, tight-wire over the surf. “Special Agent?”
This is so gorgeous. I love Audrey’s restlessness and fragility in this story, and the pain of their separation; she has that strain of harshness and brittleness from The Return, from all this time that’s been spent the wrong way, and yet she’s still recognizably the Audrey that Cooper knew. And their rapport is pitch-perfect—I love the little bit of flippancy that she injects even without breaking the mythical stride of it all.
“Yeah,” she said. “For—for a while. I was at the Roadhouse, and then I was here. I heard you know how that goes.”
The simplicity of that—and her follow-up—is just beautiful and spare, both funny and (in the case of “Yeah? Well, so did I”) heartbreaking.
Under the shadow of the curtain, he leaned down to kiss her. Past the tremor of her lips, she had a taste that could have been lilac wine, or smoke, or bruised juniper. Like the burned-out nights she’d waited for this, or like the sediment of her dreams. She swayed in his arms, and he held her to him with a hand spread wide over the small of her back. “I wanted that too,” he said, low over her mouth. It was a relief, at last, to let this be about love.
The sensory details of all this are so gorgeous and specific. I also love the threads of velvet on Audrey’s cheeks and in her eyelashes. Again, just perfect.
And the actual sex scene is scorching hot and portrayed absolutely beautifully: the detail of Laura’s hand, her being so wet she shines in the light, the narcotic taste of Audrey… It’s such a potent mix of lyricism and eroticism, and completely successful on both fronts. Again: I’m in awe.
I can’t believe that I’ve been lucky enough to receive the first Cooper/Audrey/Laura fic on AO3, and even more than that, I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to have it be so lovely, so in-tune with the show’s own fairy tale elements, and so perfect all-around. Thank you so, so much. <3333
Ahhhhh, I'm so glad that you liked this! I really loved all your prompts, and I loved (and was terrified by!) trying to write something that captured some of the emotion and the mythical feeling of s3. I especially loved trying to include some of Audrey's s3 physicality, and the whole ambiance of the castle by the sea, so I'm really glad you enjoyed them too! (Also, writing characters who know they're in black and white is 10/10 fun, would recommend.) I'm so happy that you liked this as a fairy tale take on the show, and thank you so, so much for this lovely comment. <333333
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scioscribe Fri 01 Nov 2019 03:24AM UTC
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