Galatea (5/8)

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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

Summary: Part 5 of the Significant Other fanfic. Sabrina and Alan finish their talk and Doug invites Alan to go bar-hopping. He comes home to find Kelly waiting for him.

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Sabrina finished organizing my papers and turned to a pile of sketches and canvasses she had left on the floor and gingerly placed them on the shelf behind my desk.

"He's quite a guy." she said, nodding at the door Doug had just passed through.

"Yeah." I replied. "He's a character, alright. He's always been… insistent. You just had to have fun. Class clown, good friend. That's basically what everyone had to say about him in college. But he has a serious side too, he just doesn't show it very often."

"He and Kris make a good couple." Sabrina observed.

I nodded. "Doug needs some stability. He's been burned pretty badly. Dating was such a holocaust for him. You know the crowd he runs with… they're too fast, too superficial. He likes to have fun, but he needs to have some meaning in his life."

"Don't we all?" Sabrina replied softly.

Our eyes met, and I hurriedly placed an empty paper in front of her. I took a tech pen from my pencil caddy and handed it to her. She looked at me in confusion.

"A pen?" she asked.

"You doodle all the time when you're talking on the phone." I explained. "Let's start from there."

"Can't I just lecture on Art History, great painters, form, color, how each artist puts himself in his paintings, how they reflect mood and personality… you know?"

"No, you cannot bullshit your way through it. You have to know how to draw too… even the basics will do." I explained patiently. "How can you teach art if you have no idea what you're talking about?"

I placed my hand in front of her, palm up. "Draw my hand."

She groaned a little, complaining that she wasn't any good at this, but proceeded to sketch the whorls of my fingers. I watched as my hand took a two dimensional shape.

"Okay." I directed. "Now you have to shade it. Highlights at ten o'clock and shadows at four."

The lesson went slowly, not because Sabrina wasn't skilled or attentive, but because she was such a perfectionist. Soon several sheaves of paper with my hand were strewn on my desk.

"Okay, stop for a little while." I said.

"I haven't got it yet." she complained. "It's okay. I'm not tired."

"Yeah, but I am." I shook my hand this way and that to wake up the nerves in my wrist and restore blood flow.

Sabrina gave me a sheepish grin. "Hey, I can't help it. Besides, you have lots of rough drafts… like these."

She took out a weathered blue sketchpad. I pressed my lips together as she flipped through it. Dozens of unfinished Kellys stared up at me. Some pages only had her eyes or the tips of her fingers. The momentary tenseness in the delicate line of her jaw, the intricate details and empty spaces of her eyes, the concentration that radiated from her like the rays of a sun, the shyness and the longing… the memories that stayed with me for days, all were captured in pristine condition. The sketches were eerie and immediate even to their artist.

"You should really finish these." Sabrina said softly. "She'd love them."

I shrugged.

"So, what's the score?" She asked, closing the sketchpad.

I held my wrist, twisting it in several directions. A distinct snapping noise came from my ministrations, and it comforted me. "Huh?"

"I said, what's the score?" she repeated. "I know you. Both of you argue to win."

"It's not a contest, Bri."

"Isn't it?" She asked softly. "What's the problem?"

"Doug thinks I'm the problem."

"What do you think?"

I remained silent, thinking how tedious it all was, how banal my complaints would seem to her. Sabrina sat there, waiting for me to talk, not budging a hair till I said something.

"It…bothers me…that she's skittish." I finished.

Sabrina nodded. "You're not exactly making it easier for her, Alan."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that ever since Sylvia…" she made quick gestures of indecision in the air. "You've been clingy. "

"I don't understand." I said.

"Oh Alan, lie to me, but not to yourself." Sabrina said. "You drive people away. You ask too much of them, too soon. Don't make the same mistake."

"I'm trying not to." I reached out to grab both sides of the desk. My voice had risen slightly, and I took a deep breath to tamp down the frustration. "I'm trying not to make the same mistakes. That's the entire point."

"But you've been trying too hard. You're strangling her." Sabrina whispered, placing a comforting hand on mine. "Don't live your life thinking that every woman is going to disappoint you the way Sylvia did."

I arched my eyebrow a notch. "Look who's talking."

Sabrina removed her hand abruptly, and I was about to apologize when she spoke again. "I guess I needed to hear that."

"Maybe we both did." I amended. I took the sketchpad and opened it, searching for the drawing I had begun this morning. Tracing the line of the tricep that had widened into a smudge, I felt bereft and melancholy.

"When did it get so complicated, Alan?" Bri whispered, uncannily echoing my thoughts. "Was it because nobody told us that marriages could fail?"

I shook my head. My parents marriage had been an incomplete thought. Just a succession of nights staring out at each other through markedly different lives and beliefs. It was almost merciful when my father was killed in Vietnam. I think my mother took her first breath when she heard about it. I had resolved that my marriage would be different. That I wouldn't let it fail.

"I hate failure." Bri said with a quiet finality, again thinking along the same path. "I always have. I've always driven myself to be the best. Now what has it gotten me? Of all the things to fail at, marriage must be the most painful and the most humiliating."

I sighed. The movies of the 50s had given us an impossible ideal to live up to in the turmoil of the 60s. No one had told us that there was a fine line between "to have and to hold" and "to have to hold." None of us ever stood a chance, but Bri had managed in the aftermath. She always had, and she always would. It was the one unchanging thing, the constant… Sabrina's dependability and quiet strength. At least I had always thought so, now I wasn't so sure.

"Are you and Bill okay?" I asked in concern. "Really?"

She started nodding her head, to banish my worries… but she stopped and sighed instead. "Sometimes it's easy to forget, isn't it? But other days… once I look around and everything reminds me of him. Once Bosley was wearing Bill's brand of cologne, and I felt…"

"It haunts you." I agreed. "She haunts me too."

"Sylvia?"

I shook my head. "Kelly."

"You're in love with her." Sabrina stated.

"I know."

"Does she?" asked Bri.

"Of course." I said, a little cranky. "Why do you and Doug always ask the same things?"

She ignored the question and posed one of her own.

"Does she know why you're being so…" She trailed off, trying to be delicate.

"Paranoid? Annoying?"

"Whiny," she finished, unable to come up with a better word at present. "Did you tell her about Sylvia?"

I had been pinned down and I knew I had to answer honestly or be silent. I chose the latter, not even daring to look Bri in the eye.

"You should." she said simply. "You should tell her everything."

"I can't." I answered softly, amazed at how quiet the whole world had become. "I wouldn't know how or where to begin."

"Tell her anyway." Bri replied. "If you don't, you'll walk around with an emotional erection for the rest of your life."

Apparently, Doug's idea of living it up translated into club-hopping till the sun came out. We must have had every shooter ever known to man. Zombies, Kamikazes, Sex on the Beach, Blowjobs… you name it. When we had finally crashed at Benny's at four in the morning, I felt stupid and knowing at the same time, just as I had in college. Then I threw up, and just felt stupid.

As usual, we had ogled girls and tried to outshoot each other at pool in between drinks. For someone who ran a bar, Doug had a relatively low tolerance for alcohol… relative to me that is. He had lost about a hundred dollars to me in 8-ball and was now passed out on the only couch in the back room of Benny's.

"If he pukes on the leather, he's going to have to buy the exact same couch." Benny warned. "I like that thing. Lots of close encounters… you know what I mean?"

I nodded and vomited on his Italian loafers.

I wondered, as I rode a cab home, if Doug had hustled me. Doug had always been the better pool player. It had taken me a while to realize that he had also always been the better friend. I wondered if he had thrown the games. I wondered if I was as self-absorbed as Bri and Doug said I was.

I sighed and paid the cab driver. Stretching my arms to embrace the world, I tilted my head back as I stood in front of my apartment building. The buzz of alcohol was in the back of my teeth and the cool tones of daylight had begun to diffuse evenly through the world. It looked as though sudden rain had cleansed the air and left raindrops gleaming in the cracks and crevices of the building's brick facade.

I wanted to draw the flutter of each curtain, to paint the way each pane of broken glass skewed the reflection of the clouding sky, the dried leaves sitting precariously on the window sills, the intricate patterns of condensation on the glass.

I wanted to draw the light. I wanted to be the light: shining into everything, passing through barriers or being reflected off them, illuminating the waking world. Giving dimension, structure, peace in the knowledge that the world was solid, real, and explainable.

I lurched up the stairs to my apartment, and fumbled with the key at the doorway. The sight of Kelly's prone form on my couch made me stop in my tracks, dropping my duffel bag to the floor with an ominous thump.

Ever the light sleeper she bolted upright at the sound, ready to face any intruding presence at the door and defend my stock of linseed oil and magic markers.

"I was beginning to worry." Kelly chided me softly, apparently too sleepy to vent the worry she claimed she was feeling. "Why didn't you call?"

"I didn't know you'd be here."

"Didn't Sabrina drop by the school yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Well, didn't she tell you we were leaving today? We had eighteen hours to get into character."

"Something like that." I drawled.

Strange, subtle emotions flickered over Kelly's face that I couldn't read. I felt the strain of my own secret hinges and leaned toward her. Kelly stared back at me, as if memorizing my face, and then wrenched her gaze away.

"I thought something might have happened." she admitted, her face reddening, her mouth an embarrassed grimace. This wasn't easy for her to say. She waved an arm awkwardly at her own words, wary of my intimacy. The sharp images of my sketches, those portraits of Kelly that looked nothing and everything like her, came flashing into my mind.

I closed my eyes and leaned on the door's frame, the facets of Kelly were spinning and strobing in my head. I felt her cool arms encircle me and guide me into the living room, her leg kicked the door shut behind us. I lay down on the couch, flat on my stomach and cursed myself for going out when I could have spent time with her.

But then I felt glad, glad that I had kept her up. Glad that I had kept her wondering. I realized that I was wishing she would get angry. Suspicious and jealous, shrill and demanding, anything but silent. Anything but indifferent.

I heard her puttering around the bathroom and the kitchen, possibly looking for something to sober me up. I made an effort to sit up and managed to find a take-out menu and the worn out nub of a number two pencil. There was an idea in my head like too many cups of coffee.

I called her name. I must have sounded plaintive enough or desperate enough, because she appeared at my shoulder almost instantly. I wanted to whisper softly into her ear, but the alcohol slurred the meaning.

"What?" she asked, coming closer to me.

"Draw my hand." I repeated. Draw my hand, Kelly. Put on paper what you can't put in words. Draw my hand.

"Draw my hand." I said again.

Kelly tilted her head, as if pausing to assess whether this was part of a drunken game or not. I repeated the request as sincerely as I could, trying to impress its importance with every syllable.

Slowly, she took the pencil. It ranged across the paper like a child's first steps: hesitant, then resolute, then hesitant again. At first I couldn't understand what she was doing, but then I saw the intersections and curves of the lines of my palm. Kelly was engrossed in an odd, chaotic pattern of crosshatching when I leaned my head on her shoulder. The last thing I remembered seeing was the outline of my hand, and the facelessness of my fingers.

It was noon. The take-out menu lay on the coffee table, and my hand's twin bore a caption: directions to take two glasses of tomato juice and a "real" breakfast written out in her precise handwriting. There was no indication of when she would be coming back, only an admonition to take better care of myself and the mysteries of her signature.

She was gone. Again.

I sighed and studied my hand on the menu, the effect of the red Chinese characters signifying sweet and sour pork and roast pigeon cropping up against the horizon of my palm. The long-ridged bones that fanned from my wrist were still faceless, no shadows or lines hinted at sadness, anger, subdued joy, or the possibility of laughter. Only the intersections remained, the life line and love line in a fierce battle for territory. Their shadows were intense, and the Chinese characters brooded in their wake.

I wondered what it all meant.

Galatea(4/8)

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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

Summary: Part 5 of the Significant Other fanfic. Sabrina and Alan finish their talk and Doug invites Alan to go bar-hopping. He comes home to find Kelly waiting for him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sabrina finished organizing my papers and turned to a pile of sketches and canvasses she had left on the floor and gingerly placed them on the shelf behind my desk.

"He's quite a guy." she said, nodding at the door Doug had just passed through.

"Yeah." I replied. "He's a character, alright. He's always been… insistent. You just had to have fun. Class clown, good friend. That's basically what everyone had to say about him in college. But he has a serious side too, he just doesn't show it very often."

"He and Kris make a good couple." Sabrina observed.

I nodded. "Doug needs some stability. He's been burned pretty badly. Dating was such a holocaust for him. You know the crowd he runs with… they're too fast, too superficial. He likes to have fun, but he needs to have some meaning in his life."

"Don't we all?" Sabrina replied.

Our eyes met, and I hurriedly placed an empty paper in front of her. I took a tech pen from my pencil caddy and handed it to her. She looked at me in confusion.

"A pen?" she asked.

"You doodle all the time when you're talking on the phone." I explained. "Let's start from there."

"Can't I just lecture on Art History, great painters, form, color, how each artist puts himself in his paintings, how they reflect mood and personality… you know?"

"No, you cannot bullshit your way through it. You have to know how to draw too… even the basics will do." I explained. "How can you teach art if you have no idea what you're talking about?"

I placed my hand in front of her, palm up. "Draw my hand."

She groaned a little, complaining that she wasn't any good at this, but proceeded to sketch the whorls of my fingers. I watched as my hand took a two dimensional shape.

"Okay." I directed. "Now you have to shade it. Highlights at ten o'clock and shadows at four."

The lesson went slowly, not because Sabrina wasn't skilled or attentive, but because she was such a perfectionist. Soon several sheaves of paper with my hand were strewn on my desk.

"Okay, stop for a little while." I said.

"I haven't got it yet." Sabrina replied. "It's okay. I'm not tired."

"Yeah, but I am." I shook my hand this way and that to wake up the nerves in my wrist and restore blood flow.

Sabrina gave me a sheepish grin. "Hey, I can't help it. Besides, you have lots of rough drafts… like these."

Sabrina took out a weathered blue sketchpad. I pressed my lips together as she flipped through it. Dozens of unfinished Kellys stared up at me. Some pages only had her eyes or the tips of her fingers. The momentary tenseness in the delicate line of her jaw, the intricate details and empty spaces of her eyes, the concentration that radiated from her like the rays of a sun, the shyness and the longing… the memories that stayed with me for days, all were captured in pristine condition. The sketches were eerie and immediate even to their artist.

"You should really finish these." Sabrina said softly. "She'd love them."

I shrugged.

"So, what's the score?" She asked, closing the sketchpad.

I held my wrist, twisting it in several directions. A distinct snapping noise came from my ministrations, and it comforted me. "Huh?"

"I said, what's the score?" she repeated. "I know you. Both of you argue to win."

"It's not a contest, Sabrina."

"Isn't it?" She asked softly. "What's the problem?"

"Doug thinks I'm the problem."

"What do you think?"

I remained silent, thinking how tedious it all was, how banal my complaints would seem to her. Sabrina sat there, waiting for me to talk, not budging a hair till I said something.

"It…bothers me…that she's skittish." I finished.

Sabrina nodded. "You're not exactly making it easier for her, Alan."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that ever since Sylvia…" she made quick gestures of indecision in the air. "You've been clingy. "

"I don't understand." I said.

"Oh Alan, lie to me, but not to yourself." Sabrina said. "You drive people away. You ask too much of them, too soon. Don't make the same mistake."

"I'm trying not to." I reached out to grab both sides of the desk. My voice had risen slightly, and I took a deep breath to tamp down the frustration. "I'm trying not to make the same mistakes. That's the entire point."

"But you've been trying too hard. You're strangling her." Sabrina whispered, placing a comforting hand on mine. "Don't live your life thinking that every woman is going to disappoint you the way Sylvia did."

I arched my eyebrow a notch. "Look who's talking."

Sabrina removed her hand abruptly, and I was about to apologize when she spoke again. "I guess I needed to hear that."

"Maybe we both did." I amended. I took the sketchpad and opened it, searching for the drawing I had begun this morning. Tracing the line of the tricep that had widened into a smudge, I felt bereft and melancholy.

"When did it get so complicated, Alan?" Bri whispered, uncannily echoing my thoughts. "Was it because nobody told us that marriages could fail?"

I shook my head. My parents marriage had been an incomplete thought. Just a succession of nights staring out at each other through markedly different lives and beliefs. It was almost merciful when my father was killed in Vietnam. I think my mother took her first breath when she heard about it. I had resolved that my marriage would be different. That I wouldn't let it fail.

"I hate failure." Bri said, again thinking along the same path. "I always have. I've always driven myself to be the best. Now what has it gotten me? Of all the things to fail at, marriage must be the most painful and the most humiliating."

I sighed. The movies of the 50s had given us an impossible ideal to live up to in the turmoil of the 60s. No one had told us that there was a fine line between "to have and to hold" and "to have to hold." None of us ever stood a chance, but Bri had managed in the aftermath. She always had, and she always would. It was the one unchanging thing, the constant… Sabrina's dependability and quiet strength. At least I had always thought so, now I wasn't so sure.

"Are you and Bill okay?" I asked. "Really?"

She began to nod her head, to banish my worries… but she stopped and sighed instead. "Sometimes it's easy to forget, isn't it? But other days… once I look around and everything reminds me of him. Once Bosley was wearing Bill's brand of cologne, and I felt…"

"It haunts you." I agreed. "She haunts me too."

"Sylvia?"

I shook my head. "Kelly."

"You're in love with her." Sabrina stated.

"I know."

"Does she?" asked Bri.

"Of course." I said, a little cranky. "Why do you and Doug always ask the same things?"

She ignored the question and posed one of her own. "Does she know why you're being so…"

"Paranoid? Annoying?"

"Whiny," she finished. "Did you tell her about Sylvia?"

I had been pinned down and I knew I had to answer honestly or be silent. I chose the latter, not even daring to look Bri in the eye.

"You should." she said simply. "You should tell her everything."

"I can't." I said, amazed at how quiet the whole world had become. "I wouldn't know how or where to begin."

"Tell her anyway." Bri replied. "If you don't, you'll walk around with an emotional erection for the rest of your life."

Apparently, Doug's idea of living it up translated into club-hopping till the sun came out. We must have had every shooter ever known to man. Zombies, Kamikazes, Sex on the Beach, Blowjobs… you name it. When we had finally crashed at Benny's at four in the morning, I felt stupid and knowing at the same time, just as I had in college. Then I threw up, and just felt stupid.

As usual, we had ogled girls and tried to outshoot each other at pool in between drinks. For someone who ran a bar, Doug had a relatively low tolerance for alcohol… relative to me that is. He had lost about a hundred dollars to me in 8-ball and was now passed out on the only couch in the back room of Benny's.

"If he pukes on the leather, he's going to have to buy the exact same couch." Benny said. "I like that thing. Lots of close encounters… you know what I mean?"

I nodded and vomited on his Italian loafers.

I wondered, as I rode a cab home, if Doug had hustled me. Doug had always been the better pool player. It had taken me a while to realize that he had also always been the better friend. I wondered if he had thrown the games. I wondered if I was as self-absorbed as Bri and Doug said I was.

I sighed and paid the cabbie. Stretching my arms to embrace the world, I tilted my head back as I stood in front of my apartment building. The buzz of alcohol was in the back of my teeth and the cool tones of daylight had begun to diffuse evenly through the world. It looked as though sudden rain had cleansed the air and left raindrops gleaming in the cracks and crevices of the building's brick facade.

I wanted to draw the flutter of each curtain, to paint the way each pane of broken glass skewed the reflection of the clouding sky, the dried leaves sitting precariously on the window sills, the intricate patterns of condensation on the glass.

I wanted to draw the light. I wanted to be the light: shining into everything, passing through barriers or being reflected off them, illuminating the waking world. Giving dimension, structure, peace in the knowledge that the world was solid, real, and explainable.

I lurched up the stairs to my apartment, and fumbled with the key at the doorway. The sight of Kelly's prone form on my couch made me stop in my tracks, dropping my duffel bag to the floor with an ominous thump.

Ever the light sleeper she bolted upright at the sound, ready to face any intruding presence at the door and defend my stock of linseed oil and magic markers.

"I was beginning to worry." Kelly chided me softly, apparently too sleepy to vent the worry she claimed she was feeling. "Why didn't you call?"

"I didn't know you'd be here."

"Didn't Sabrina drop by the school yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Well, didn't she tell you we were leaving today? We had eighteen hours to get into character."

"Something like that." I drawled.

Strange, subtle emotions flickered over Kelly's face that I couldn't read. I felt the strain of my own secret hinges and leaned toward her. Kelly stared back at me, as if memorizing my face, and then wrenched her gaze away.

"I thought something might have happened." she said, her face reddening, her mouth an embarrassed grimace. This wasn't easy for her to say. She waved an arm awkwardly at her own words, wary of my intimacy. The sharp images of my sketches, those portraits of Kelly that looked nothing and everything like her, came flashing into my mind.

I closed my eyes and leaned on the door's frame, the facets of Kelly were spinning and strobing in my head. I felt her cool arms encircle me and guide me into the living room, her leg kicked the door shut behind us. I lay down on the couch, flat on my stomach and cursed myself for going out when I could have spent time with her.

But then I felt glad, glad that I had kept her up. Glad that I had kept her wondering. I realized that I was wishing she would get angry. Suspicious and jealous, shrill and demanding, anything but silent. Anything but indifferent.

I heard her puttering around the bathroom and the kitchen, possibly looking for something to sober me up. I made an effort to sit up and managed to find a take-out menu and the worn out nub of a number two pencil. There was an idea in my head like too many cups of coffee.

I called her name. I must have sounded plaintive enough or desperate enough, because she appeared at my shoulder almost instantly. I wanted to whisper softly into her ear, but the alcohol slurred the meaning.

"What?" she asked, coming closer to me.

"Draw my hand." I repeated. Draw my hand, Kelly. Put on paper what you can't put in words. Draw my hand.

"Draw my hand." I said again.

Kelly tilted her head, as if pausing to assess whether this was part of a drunken game or not. I repeated the request as sincerely as I could, trying to impress its importance with every syllable.

Slowly, she took the pencil. It ranged across the paper like a child's first steps: hesitant, then resolute, then hesitant again. At first I couldn't understand what she was doing, but then I saw the intersections and curves of the lines of my palm. Kelly was engrossed in an odd, chaotic pattern of crosshatching when I leaned my head on her shoulder. The last thing I remembered seeing was the outline of my hand, and the facelessness of my fingers.

It was noon. The take-out menu lay on the coffee table, and my hand's twin bore a caption: directions to take two glasses of tomato juice and a "real" breakfast written out in her precise handwriting. There was no indication of when she would be coming back, only an admonition to take better care of myself and the mysteries of her signature.

She was gone. Again.

I sighed and studied my hand on the menu, the effect of the red Chinese characters signifying sweet and sour pork and roast pigeon cropping up against the horizon of my palm. The long-ridged bones that fanned from my wrist were still faceless, no shadows or lines hinted at sadness, anger, subdued joy, or the possibility of laughter. Only the intersections remained, the life line and love line in a fierce battle for territory. Their shadows were intense, and the Chinese characters brooded in their wake.

I wondered what it all meant.