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luluwquidprocrow · 2 months

Text

oh if you knew what it meant to me

albert & diane

gen

2,128 words

It’s the wrong side of midnight, and he’d planned to leave the airport, stand in the parking lot for as long as it took to smoke out the memory of Leland Palmer’s scalp from his brain, and then get a cab. But he’s dead with exhaustion after the flight (and everything else) and Diane Evans and her fucking car are the best things he’s ever seen in his life.

my fic for @tildytwo for @countdowntotwinpeaks' wonderfulxstrange 2024 exchange!! albert coming home after the end of the palmer case.

title from daydreaming by dark dark dark

He sees Diane in the parking lot, smoking under a streetlight by her blinding red Mustang. She’d told him once it was vintage, and he said that vintage wasn’t going to help her out a bit if the car didn’t crumple when some beige sedan asshole t-boned her out on the highway. No airbags at all. He’s unsure about the seatbelts. The trunk is barely going to fit his suitcases, he knows, alongside the hideously pink tool kit he’s sure is still in there. It’s the wrong side of midnight, and he’d planned to leave the airport, stand in the parking lot for as long as it took to smoke out the memory of Leland Palmer’s scalp from his brain, and then get a cab. But he’s dead with exhaustion after the flight (and everything else) and Diane Evans and her fucking car are the best things he’s ever seen in his life.

Diane startles when he gets close, her cigarette smoldering between her fingers. “You look terrible,” she says, as if it’s a revelation.

“I didn’t ask for the opinion of the local peanut gallery,” Albert says.

“You’re getting it anyway,” Diane says. “Sure you weren’t the one that took three bullets to the chest, Albert?”

“Oh, very funny, madam secretary.” Does he really look that bad, he wonders. He feels that bad, like he’s dragging himself six steps behind where his body really is. Three trips in two weeks to the Mayberry R.F.D. death trap in Washington state will do that to you. Or at least it should. Dale Cooper and all his charms aside, Albert had no plans to stay for a placatory funeral in a town that was getting a track record.

Were they giving that girl a funeral too. Or were they only having one for the father of the year. Albert scrapes around in his brain for her name—she deserves that much. Madeline. What about Madeline Ferguson, her blood still stuck on Albert’s hands. His fingers flex around the handle of one of his suitcases. Coop had said she was from out of town. Did her parents come back for her? Or was she getting buried there too, in the same yawning grave Coop was staying behind in? The thought burrows inside his stomach, another knot of background concern adding to the rest of them. In a few years, if not already, he’ll have a nice shiny ulcer to show for all the nonsense the bureau’s put him through. Fuck, he is too tired for this.

Diane takes advantage of his dazed stupor and gets his suitcases away from him. Albert was right, the toolbox is still in the trunk and still pink; his suitcases barely fit but Diane works the same feat of magic she does on everything else and gets the trunk to close before pushing him into the passenger seat. Miracle of miracles, it does have seatbelts.

He twists the radio dial back and forth until Diane gets in and smacks his hand away. She puts on a top 40s station, because her compassion is obviously limited, and reverses neatly out of the parking lot and navigates through the maze of airport traffic onto the highway. Albert keeps an eye out for sedans as a matter of principle. They’re the sort of car that creeps up on you this time of night, even with Philadelphia still alive around them, pricks of light burning like match heads.

“Oh!” Diane twists an arm behind her around to the backseat, digging for something with a reckless abandon that has the Mustang veering sharply over the road.

“Jesus, Diane, the road—”

“Keep your shirt on, Rosenfield,” Diane laughs. She shoves a thermos into Albert’s chest and then gets both hands back on the wheel. “There. I brought you coffee.”

“At what cost,” Albert mutters, but he unscrews the cup and the lid. The fact of the matter is that Diane makes coffee to die for, and he could use the warmth.

“You’re welcome.”

Then she’s silent for a whole verse and chorus of twangy guitars as someone sings about standing, and Albert knows it’s coming. He downs a gulp of coffee like a shot and his jaw starts to tighten up.

“He didn’t come with you,” Diane says.

“What gave it away,” Albert asks, “the lack of chipper humming in the overall ambience or the fact that I got your coffee?”

“I did make it for you, dipshit,” Diane insists. “I listen in on Gordon’s calls, I knew he wasn’t coming, and I thought you could use it. I just—” She takes a quick drag of the cigarette still tucked between her fingers. When she exhales, the smoke chases itself in circles. “—it didn’t sound good, why you went there again. And I thought, maybe he might’ve come back with you anyway.”

“No such luck,” Albert says. “He wanted to stay for the funeral.”

The corner of Diane’s mouth pinches in. She doesn’t say it, but both of them are thinking it. They’re intimately acquainted with Coop’s—Albert has spent a long time trying to figure out how to put it. He takes another drink. It’s not sentimentality, per se. Attachment isn’t quite right either, although it wouldn’t be wrong. It’s a show of commitment, of a deep-seated determination that sits somewhere in Coop’s marrow. An unending desire to be the one that helps.

Albert can’t begrudge him the idea, not all the way. You were supposed to feel something, otherwise you were in the wrong line of work if you did this without it being able to knock the breath out of you on occasion. But Albert has a different idea of what it means to respect a case and the people involved. And it hasn’t almost gotten Albert killed. Punched, sure, but like he said, he can take a punch and he’ll take one again if it means he can try and do his goddamn job like he’s supposed to.

He wants to say, well, Coop will be back soon enough. Funerals don’t take forever. Coop has never known where to draw the line but even he has to admit one exists, even in a town like Twin Peaks. But fuck, Albert had encouraged him. Just catch this beast before he takes another bite. And Harry had asked later—Where’s Bob now?

Albert lets his head hit back against the seat, the taste of the coffee sour in his mouth, the ache of a migraine starting behind his eyes. Blue roses never sat easy, but this—he’s been awake too long as it is.

“He’s impossible, isn’t he,” Diane says quietly.

“That’s one of the words for it, I guess,” Albert says.

The two of them share a glance—Diane makes it blessedly quick and puts her eyes back on the road where they belong. Yeah, they both know about that, too. They have their own attachments. They wouldn’t be in this car if they didn’t.

Diane drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “Are you hungry?”

“I had lunch.” Or something like it, probably a million years ago. He had the least offensive donut he could find in Harry’s office, which was an overly glazed monstrosity. It stuck on the way down.

“Uh-huh,” Diane says. Her tone is not encouraging. “And?”

“And nothing. I had lunch, Diane, I’m fine.”

“And, that was what, at noon? We’re getting something.”

“Diane—”

“You keep it up and I’ll get you a kids meal, Albert.”

“Excuse me, I am not a—”

“With a small french fry. With a fucking juice box.”

“Fine!” he shouts, which definitely sounds like a fucking child. Diane grins in satisfaction, and she keeps it on her face all the way off the highway exit and to the nearest blindingly bright drive thru, cheerfully ordering two hamburgers from an acne-faced kid in the window who’s chewing gum loud enough to break the sound barrier of Albert’s patience.

“Would you like fries with that?” the kid asks.

Diane hesitates, drawing out the moment and Albert’s absolute last nerve until she says, “Yeah.”

Albert manages to pull his wallet out when Diane gets her own, but she gives him such a look like she’s going to ram it down his throat if he even so much as opens his mouth to offer to pay. It rankles him, but then Diane’s flinging the bag of food at him and driving around to park facing the road. There’s a balancing act between the thermos and the hamburgers and the fries and Diane’s ginger ale and her cigarette, but they manage. Albert unwraps his hamburger, exchanges the onions for the saddest lone pickle slice from Diane’s, and sinks his teeth into the whole thing. It really is the greasiest thing in the world. He hates how good it tastes right now.

The radio crackles with static, only bursts of some recent subpar Chicago song coming through. Cars shoot by, one another another with the lights starting to blur. Albert rubs his eyes and says it. “I feel like I left him there.”

Diane picks at her french fries. “I don’t think either of us could’ve dragged him away,” she concedes. “Not if he didn’t want to leave.”

“He’s got all the self-preservation skills of a deer in headlights,” Albert says. “And he’s not even going to notice if he gets hit. Next thing I know he’ll put down roots there.”

Diane shifts in her seat.

Motherfucker. “Don’t tell me,” Albert says. “Don’t do it, Diane. I’m asking nicely.”

“Too late. He wanted to know about his real estate opportunities in his pension,” Diane says. Then—“I told him it was misfiled and I couldn’t find it. I thought, even Dale couldn’t be serious about that. But—”

Albert’s free hand curls in on itself against his knee. Son of a bitch, it stings. He should’ve stayed and sat through the most pointless funeral so he could pull the hooks out of Coop himself and take him home. He should’ve punched Harry back. He should’ve looked him in the eyes until he saw what Coop saw in there. He should’ve finished Laura Palmer’s autopsy. He should’ve taken them all back with him when he had the chance.

He wonders what his own pension options are. Albert is by no means going to walk right after Coop into his hell du jour, but he’s got enough sense to know where it is and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t stay close enough to drag Coop back the next time.

“You think he’d do it too,” Diane says, her voice low. She turns and faces him, and Albert can see the lights in the parking lot hit on the circles under her eyes. Her cigarette has burned out now. They’re the only ones left in the world for a second, two people waiting to see who loses it first.

So they make a choice, between the two of them. Next time.

He has to get his head back on straight. Albert clears his throat a few times, unclenches his fist. “I think Dale Bartholomew Cooper is going to give me a goddamn coronary,” he says. “Unless this burger does first,” he continues, taking another bite.

“Bartholomew?” Diane repeats, raising an eyebrow. “You’re not serious.”

“Oh, I am. As serious as the coronary.”

“Bartholomew,” she says it again. “Oh, it’s so terrible I kind of love it.”

“You’ve been his secretary for how long and you didn’t know that?”

Suddenly, a smile breaks over her face. She starts giggling. “Did you know—did you know he didn’t know my fucking last name until last year?”

It startles a laugh out of Albert. It’s the sort of unbelievable thing that becomes believable, with Coop. They keep laughing to the end of the hamburgers. It’s a damn novelty to still be able to do it. Maybe there’s enough hope left for the three of them yet. Next time, by the piercing guitar coming through the radio, Diane dumping the rest of her fries into Albert’s container, Albert drinking Coop’s coffee, Coop’s tapes waiting in Albert’s suitcases in the trunk.

“Thanks,” Albert says.

Diane grins again. “Yeah, I thought you knew how to say it. Let’s get you home before you self-destruct from the strain of it.”

Albert rolls his eyes. It’s a while yet to his place, and even longer back to Diane’s after. “You want me to drive?” he asks. It’s a pointless offer, since it’s her car and she came to get him, and it’s the Mustang, but he feels obligated.

But Diane laughs. “Shut up, Rosenfield. You can get me back later.”

Albert doesn’t think so. He lets her drive the rest of the way home, watching for sedans. None come close.

#twin peaks #wonderfulxstrange #countdowntotwinpeaks #tildytwo #albert rosenfield #diane evans #the title is growing on me. i could not think of anything else. and it was the first thing i wrote down #when i was listening to my peaks playlist while planning. bc this song is on it and i thought it hit something here #but if you knew what it meant to coop.........but if you knew what it meant to albert...........but if you knew what it meant to diane.....#song with twangy guitars and singing about standing -- stand by r.e.m. the subpar chicago song -- you're not alone #the piercing guitar -- paradise city by guns n roses #all of which were in the top 40s in early march 1989.#(i don't think albert would know r.e.m. or guns n roses but i DO think he would know chicago. classic chicago.)

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