Work Text:
“What the heck are you doing, Captain?”
Al blinked, his cheek cold against his desk. He sat up, rubbed his eyes and looked quickly under his desk to make sure no bottles were in sight. “I’ll have you know I’m this close to getting a star.” Then he looked up at the speaker, a tall man in a pale blue sports shirt tucked into khakis.
Sam was standing in Al’s office. His shock of white hair had fallen into his face and he was waving a sheaf of paper in Al’s face. “Star or not, can you explain this?”
“Explain what?”
“I asked you to check my references for that neuroscience paper, didn’t I?”
Al took the manuscript and flipped through it. “Yeah, it looks fine. What about it?”
“The titles aren’t abbreviated, and I think you got the years on some of these wrong. And didn’t you check the journal’s rules?”
“Oh sure, yeah, yeah…” Al carefully moved the drawer, trying not to let the glass bottles inside rattle. Now that Sam mentioned it, the guidelines for that journal hadn’t popped up lately. Al thought all those journals had the same rules anyway, so why did it matter?
He must’ve said so out loud, because a loud angry grunt from Sam made him look up. Sam was scowling at him, big eyebrows meeting over big nose.
“...what?”
“No, they aren’t. Some journals need you to reference the articles one way, and others need you to do it a different way. Do you even have those rules with you, Al?” Before Al could react, Sam marched over to the drawer and yanked it open in an almighty crash of glass.
Al grimaced. Why hadn’t he thought to get the ones in plastic bottles instead?
Sam held up a bottle. “Really? I’m here trying to get this project off the ground by writing an article that’ll prove that I can do this, and you’re still pulling this crap?”
Al stammered as he tried to close the drawer, ignoring Sam’s hand trying to keep it open. “Listen, Sam, listen, I’ll find the damn guidelines and redo them, I swear, just close the drawer and walk away, just let me double-check those goddamned references… Sam! No!”
Sam didn’t listen as he walked out with an armful of bottles. He returned with a large trash bag and a wooden stick.
“Sam! Wait! We can talk about this!”
“There is no talking anymore, Al. We’ve been over this before.” Sam cleared Al’s drawer of bottles and threw each of them into the bag. At each clack as the bottle landed, Al winced.
He was nearly as red as the red parts of his candy-cane-colored shirt in embarrassment, but internally, his mind was going. There was that one gas station in Alamogordo that was open late, wasn't it? After Sam let him go for the day, surely Al could sneak there and get more. He’d keep them in the car, and Beth and the girls would be none the wiser.
Sam said, “Do you have any more stashes around here?”
Al twiddled his fingers and chewed on the inside of his cheek, refusing to look Sam in the eye. If he had to be honest, he would admit that even he didn't remember where everything was hidden.
“Didn't we already go through this at Star Bright?” Sam sighed in disgust and picked up the stick. As he prodded each of the ceiling tiles, he said, “I thought Beth was helping you get over this. I need to talk to Donna about this too.”
Al stared at his lap. This hadn't been fun at Star Bright, and it wasn't fun now either.
A ceiling tile proved to be heavier than usual, and Sam reached up to take the tile down. He tucked the bottle that'd been hidden inside under his arm and peered up above for more. “I need a flashlight, but we can check later…”
Al sighed a breath of relief and looked up.
Sam sighed. “First, let's work on what I needed you to do. Do you have the Periodical Title Abbreviations book? Go get that and bring it to my office. I’ll meet you there after I take this out.”
After Sam was safely out of sight, Al counted four across, five down from the corner on the ceiling tiles and took out three pint bottles. He quickly hid them behind a bunch of books, a place Sam hadn't figured out yet, then took the book of abbreviations off the shelf.
In Sam’s office, a pot of coffee was already brewing. Al sat down in the spare chair, book clutched to his chest. He knew what Sam was saying, but Sam didn't understand. Sam had grown up with both parents and both siblings all of his life. Sam never had to fight for his life, being comfortably ensconced in an ivory tower from the age of sixteen on. Sam didn't understand what it meant to scratch out a survival, how even the smallest private things helped against the horror that was life.
Sam returned, minus Al’s coping mechanisms, and poured them each a cup of coffee.
Al peered at the cups warily. “What do you have in mind, Sam?”
“We’re doing this right.” Sam pulled out a narrow but long table and put it between their chairs. “Come on, Al. We’re powering through this and finishing this before midnight. I’ll find the right years for everything and you use that book to help me find the right abbreviations. Then you’re retyping out the abbreviations correctly, like I asked you to three days ago.”
Al sighed and took a sip of the coffee. This was going to be a long night.
As Al copied out abbreviations of various journal titles, Sam was highlighting various titles and checking them against the copies he had in his reference files.
At one point, Sam said, “Hey, Al?”
Al looked up, bleary-eyed from squinting at the book. “What is it?”
“Want to order some pizza?”
“...it’s that late already?”
“Do you want some food or not?”
Al’s stomach rumbled. “Sure. Just get me one with peppers and mushrooms.”
“I need to stretch my legs a bit.” Sam walked out of the room to order, and Al walked ten steps behind him. If Sam used the phone near the entryway to their interim office, then it would be easy for Al to sneak to his office and have a nip.
Unfortunately, Al cursed under his breath in Italian when he saw Sam go into Al’s office to use the phone there. He went back to Sam’s office and sulked over the book. Why couldn’t they have assistants here like they did at Star Bright? At least Al was able to get away with more back then, and if he slipped up, he could turn on the old Calavicci charm to cover up.
Sam did have a point, though. Why hadn’t Beth been helping him? Al stretched his thoughts back. That’s right, when Star Bright wrapped up, Sam had gotten them this office so they could focus on getting started on what he called “Project Quantum Leap,” his time travel idea. Sam had needed to do a lot of extensive research, needing a lot of Al’s help to keep track. During Star Bright, Al had obeyed his wife’s wishes for the girls and gone to AA every week. But with every night he didn’t come home because of so much work, it got easier to avoid AA. And with every time he avoided a meeting, Al had found himself more and more tempted.
Not to mention he wasn’t sure about this whole idea of Sam’s. Wasn’t time travel a silly idea? If he could time travel, he’d make sure he didn’t get shot down in 1967. But there was no way to do that.
Al said so when Sam came back with the pizza, half what Al wanted and half pepperoni.
Sam frowned. “I don’t know if we can actually change anything, Al. I think we’ll end up getting to be witnesses to great events of history, but past that? I don’t know.”
Al sighed as he chewed on a bite of pizza. “What if you could change anything in history, Sam?”
“Like what?”
“What if you changed it so that I was never a prisoner of war?”
“Then where would you be? Would you be here as a captain at all?”
Al considered this. True. Vietnam had done wonders for his reputation. “I probably wouldn’t.”
“So why change it?”
“If I hadn’t been a prisoner of war, then I wouldn’t have this baggage to deal with. I wouldn’t have to worry about my stash. I wouldn’t have to worry about the girls, you or Beth catching me drinking. I’d be in a better place.”
“If you weren’t a POW, would you have had children with Beth anyway?”
Al stared at his plate. “I don’t know. I said I didn’t want any because we moved around so much. But I knew I wanted them when I came back.”
“There you go. What if I changed that, and you lost the girls?”
Al blinked back some tears at this. “I can’t imagine that, my life without them.”
Sam smiled and tilted his head at Al. “Why don’t you think about that? What if your girls lost you, what if Beth lost you because you were drinking and did something reckless?”
“Beth nearly lost me once before...”
“I know. I’m sorry, Al, for all of this. Listen, after we get this thing knocked out of the park, we can kick back and relax. You could go on a vacation with your family, actually get a chance to see them. Donna’s been talking forever about what we’ll do when I’m done with this article.”
“Sorry for what?” Al squinted his eyes at Sam.
“Keeping you like this.”
“This is our impossible dream, remember, Sam? It’s worth it!”
“Not so worth it if you’re relapsing, Al. You need help. Tell you what… if this article goes through, and if it’s enough for that huge grant we’re shooting for, then you’re my co-director on Project Quantum Leap with one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Go to AA every week and keep up with it. I can’t have any more of your drinking, Al.”
Al nodded solemnly. “I understand, Sam. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
They finished their dinner in silence. Then Sam marked which titles had which abbreviation on the draft of the references. Al opened up the document for the article’s references on the word processor, and started typing. He had to finish this, for his best friend’s sake.
A few hours later, Al finished and Sam looked over everything. “Looks like it’ll be good to go in the morning.” He set it up to print and the dot matrix printer whirred as it pushed out the corrected references.
“Glad that’s done.”
“Wait,” Sam said. “There’s one more thing. We need to search this entire office.”
Al groaned. “For what?”
“Your stashes. Come on, Al, don’t look at me like that. We need to rid you of your drinking once and for all.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to search my house too…”
“No, Beth can take care of that. She told me before where your usual stashes are, including the ones in the ceiling tiles.” Sam fished out another trash bag.
Al sighed, but let Sam lead him back to his office. Once inside, Al took out the bottles from behind the books, then he looked all over his office, Sam with the trash bag behind him. As he looked, Sam thought out loud about ways Al could improve over what he was doing before.
“Do you have any more stashes in the rest of the office, Al?”
“I don’t think so.” There was probably at least one hidden in the potted plant in the hallway outside, but Al wasn’t going to think about that one anymore.
After Al threw the last ones into the bag, a row of airport bottles that had been taped underneath his keyboard, Sam said, “And what are you going to do from now on?”
“I'll go to AA meetings, even if I have to leave work early. I’ll be accountable to you and Beth both. I need to get sober for my girls.” Al sighed. “This won’t be easy.”
“I know it won't, but you've got all of us to help. Come here, buddy.” Sam grabbed Al in a tight bear hug.
Al smiled and hugged Sam back. At least he had his best friend. As long as he had Sam, everything would be fine.