Galatea(1/8)

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Spoilers: None. You can imagine this sometime during the second or third season. Your choice.

Disclaimers: The characters and situations of the television program "Charlie's Angels" are the creations and property of Spelling-Goldberg Productions and Columbia Pictures Television, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. However, I retain the rights to the plot. You may download and distribute this story as long as my name stays on the by-line.

Rating: R (for implied sex, nothing graphic… sorry!)

Summary: In response to this month's challenge to write an Angels fanfic from the "significant other's" point of view, I penned this while I was in bed with the flu.

Acknowledgments: This is for Marc, the vanishing point of my devotion. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love watching her sleep, this warm, dusky woman. Even now, with her back turned to me, I derive a certain voyeuristic pleasure at the sight of the languorous angles of her spine. In sleep she is vulnerable, unguarded … open in a way that she would despise if she were conscious. Her breath speaks of a golden eternity, and everything it touches seems to be kissed by promise. Foolishly, I place my hand in its path, and the feel of it is as intoxicating as she is. Straddling the border between ticklish and arousing, her breath caresses my skin.

Every now and then she stirs, her eyebrows seeking each other's company in vexation. Sometimes she cries out in her sleep. Never a name, not even anything that could be considered a word; only a small sound, so plaintive it touches me. I reach out for her, to hold her, to cradle her in my arms… to attempt to assuage whatever emotion runs rampant in her dreams. She only turns away, as if I had disappointed her in a way she couldn't articulate.

I am left watching her back, her even breathing, her hair on the pillow and on her soft shoulders smelling of a vague and elusive sweetness.

If you have ever felt lost or betrayed by the passage of time, if you have ever felt jaded by the loss of something you had thought was constant, if you have renounced your fate in a "someday" or a "forever", then watch the woman you love sleeping beside you. Imagine that, completely without warning, she will wake up and stretch her grateful arms to the sun. Imagine watching her stretch every morning, for the rest of your life.

If you have ever felt that love was simple, if you have ever thought that - once it was found - affection, tenderness, and desire could be maintained indefinitely; if you have ever been certain of a relationship; then reach out for the sleeping woman beside you and realize that she has no knowledge of your existence. That in sleep she returns to an unnamable bliss without you. A happiness you neither provided nor can partake of.

If you have never felt confused and yet drawn to the object of your ambiguous devotions, then sleep beside Kelly.

Kelly.

Her very name makes me shiver in anticipation. The sound of her voice makes my soul leap, and the cadence of her heart matches the ticking in my chest. The fierceness of her love, the sheer strength and expanse of it, strangles the flow of words and of thought. The walls she builds around herself, those flippant verbal molotovs she throws into the spokes of our conversations, the stubborn insistence and manipulation that will either break or bend you to her will… they drive me to the extremes of frustration and even to hate.

I can only sigh, hold her when she lets me, be there when she needs me, and sometimes… just sometimes, have her nestled in my arms as she is now.

I kiss the limbo between her nape and her shoulder, where the morning sun crosshatch delicate shadows. She stirs slightly, as if shrugging off a fly. I wrap my arm around her waist and mold my body closer to hers, and she turns in my arms, her face now only one word's distance from mine.

How strange that my life has come to this… sifting through a myriad of meanings and memories, searching for the right word to bridge that immeasurable space between her life and mine.

Her eyes began to open to the early light, they fluttered slightly. Then her hand rose up suddenly, blocking the unexpected sight of me, so close, so soon.

My despair must have been plain, as she tried to amend her tell-tale reflex by placing her hand on my cheek.

"Hi." I whispered, the hurt still crouching in my throat. "Remember me?"

"Hmm… vaguely." she smiled, her eyes amplifying the humor. Her voice was low and sleepy. "What time is it?"

She reached beyond my shoulder to take my watch from the night table. A sense of impending loss made me draw her closer.

"It's too early." I said. "You can sleep in a little more."

Her lips touched mine in a kiss so tender, brief, irrelevant. She sat up and rubbed her eyes wearily. I ran my fingers through her hair, untangling the sleep from her curls and letting them flow around the banks of her shoulders.

I loved looking at her, her skin the color of soft cream, a tube of white gouache mixed with a dollop of lemon yellow. The dip of her waist could only be mimicked by a French curve. The muscles on her back should be drawn on parchment with red chalk, the way Leonardo made his studies, with captions carefully written backward to preserve his secrets. Secrets that endured like the Mona Lisa's smile.

"Stay." I said simply, caressing her back.

"I can't Alan." she replied. "You know how Bri hates to be kept waiting."

I smirked. "Just tell her you spent the morning in bed with a terribly irresistible man."

"As opposed to spending it with a terrible one?" she asked, half in jest.

I sat up and turned to face her, trying to keep my tone light. "Have there been a lot of terrible men, Kelly?"

She blinked in surprise, and I could imagine the struggle seeping out of her precisely drawn lines; the door to her soul slamming shut with a solid, clanging, finality.

"No one I couldn't handle." Kelly said with an abrupt shrug. She bent over to pick up my shirt and put it on. At once, I felt strangely bereft, as if reality had intruded once more and was about to bring her into a sordid, possibly dangerous world.

Apparently unaware of my anxieties, her arms reached for the ceiling and I heard some vertebrae crack as she stretched. With one hand she gathered her hair, pulled it free from beneath the shirt and let it drape over her back.

In the light from the window she gleamed like a translucent and ethereal goddess. The waves of light created a breathtaking silhouette through my white shirt.

"Don't move." I said, hurriedly picking up my sketch pad and charcoal pencils. Her laugh was deep and throaty as she saw me scramble about my bedroom floor, unmindful of my nakedness.

"Alan, I have to get going."

"And I have to draw you. Don't move." I repeated, pulling the charcoal pencil across the pad in an imitation of the curve of her arm.

"Alan…"

"It'll only take a minute." I insisted. "You can show this to Bri and blame me for being late."

Kelly angled her head so she could make out the outlines on the pad.

"Er… I don't think so." she said lightly."Not this sketch."

I grinned. "And why not?"

"Alan!" she laughed. "I can't show them that. It's…"

"Erotic, isn't it?"

"Oh, shut up." she said, her cheeks coloring slightly.

"Are you done?"

"Yipes. That's one of the things you don't want to hear in bed."

She slapped my chest playfully. "Can't you be serious?"

"When I am, you freak out." I reminded her.

"Oh, yeah." She shook her head.

"Just promise me you won't exhibit this one."

"Sure." I replied. "I'll put up the other ones where you're not even wearing a shirt. That'll bring in some buyers."

She gasped. "What? When did you start drawing me in the nude?"

I grinned at her. "Every man has his hobbies."

"I'm serious." she said, whacking me on the shoulder. "I mean, we haven't really had enough time to… well… not often enough, anyway. I'm always so busy."

"Yeah, tell me about it." I said in complaint. "No wonder Charlie likes to maintain anonymity. Doug and I would beat the stuffing out of him if only we knew who he was ."

Her eyes flickered from a dark deep green to obsidian. "You know that we have to see every case through. Sometimes that means I have to work all night, or go out of town, or study for days to develop a believable cover. Charlie doesn't set those standards, I do. I have to be the best at what I do. You know that. It's just my job. It has nothing to do with you and me."

"It has everything to do with you and me." I said softly, gripping the pencil too hard. The fine line I had wanted was now an unholy smudge. "Look, forget it, you'll be late."

I tossed the pencil to one side and closed the pad with a snap. "Go take a shower. I'll make us some Eggos."

"Ooh, you're such a gourmet." she laughed.

I simply nodded and pulled on my boxer shorts. Yawning, I waddled out to what passes for a kitchen in my apartment. Inspecting the fridge, I deemed the milk fit for consumption and opened up the box of waffles. I approached the toaster with reverence. If it died on me now, Kelly would have my head. She always complained about how my appliances became temperamental at the worst possible times. My utter lack of mechanical knowledge didn't help matters much either.

Silently, I contemplated placating the toaster by putting in one Eggo at a time. If Kelly saw me she'd snort in derision at my barbaric superstitions and throw in the waffles. I decided to be brave and risk it. While I was waiting for the distinct PING from my toaster, I started going around my apartment, picking up things that Kelly would plan on taking to work. Soon the table was set, the toaster was kind, and the Eggos were sitting quietly in their plates, when I heard the bathroom door open with a crack.

"Alan?" she called.

"Just a minute." I closed my duffel bag and gathered her things in my arms. Positioning myself at the appropriate blind spot, I waited for her.

"Alan, I just need my watch. I put it with the rest of my jewelry on the-"

My back turned away from the door, I held out my hand, the watch and earrings already nestled in my palm.

"Oh. Thanks." I waited another minute.

"Ooh, Alan. My toothbrush is in the overnight case in my bag, near the airbrush." she called out in a loud voice.

Smirking I held out my hand again. "It was beside the turpentine. And the green Crest is in the medicine cabinet. I got you some the last time I was at the supermarket."

A muffled thanks came over the sound of splashing water. I smiled indulgently.

"What, no moisturizer? No make-up?"

Clad only in my towel, she stepped out of the bathroom. Eyeing the stack of toiletries beside me, she raised her eyebrows in an elegant query.

"This is why you take so long to get ready, you know." I observed. "Why don't you just drag your entire bag into the bathroom with you?"

"Probably because I'm so used to just grabbing all my stuff…the way I do at my house." she retorted.

I traced the curve of her collar-bone, extrapolating the line to its logical conclusion beneath the towel. She slapped my hand away playfully.

"You walk around naked grabbing your stuff?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she smiled.

"You do these things while I'm not around?"

"Alan," she grinned, "if you were around, I'd be grabbing something else."

I smiled and pulled her into an embrace. Her kiss was intoxicating, it always was, and my hands moved to untie the towel. She broke the kiss and stepped away from me. My arms loosened but did not release her.

"I'm going to look like Chewbacca if I don't set my hair and blow-dry it."

"You could roll your hair up into cinnamon rolls," I chuckled. "I know I've got some crazy glue here somewhere."

"Alan… I'm going to be late."

"I know." I said softly, letting her go back into the bathroom. I forced some lightness, some degree of enthusiasm, into my voice. "Think you'll get an interesting case today?"

"You mean, am I going to get an out-of-town case today." I heard her begin to brush her teeth. I waited for her to finish, slightly annoyed that her investigative habits were intruding on us so early in the morning.

"I don't know, Alan," she said, tapping her toothbrush against the sink. "Charlie screens all the cases… at this point anyway. Give it a couple of years and things will change. We'll have some say in them."

"You mean you'll have some say." Her smile was wide, her ambition like a saint's halo in medieval stained glass.

"I know we haven't had enough time to ourselves lately," she said, suddenly turning serious. "But maybe we'll luck out. Sometimes we get a three week stretch of process serving and background checks."

"Sure," I scoffed, "and maybe I'll redo the Sistine Chapel. We can summer in Italy."