Amateur Surgery

Missing scene for Deckwatch–blood connects them in so many ways.

Written for Keri T.

“How’d you do it, Hutch?” Starsky asked when he plunked two beers down on the table at The Pits.

“How’d I do what?” Hutch asked, grasping the beer. His fingers trembled slightly until he closed them around the icy cold bottle. Focus on maintaining the status quo-don’t show emotion. Not in public, in front of everyone.

“You dug a bullet out of his friggin’ leg.” Starsky had intensity, anger, enough for the both of them.

“And you blew him away,” Hutch tossed back. Cruel, but the absolute truth.

Starsky took a long swallow, those dark blue eyes on Hutch, seeing him the way no one else did. He didn’t deny the accusation, didn’t shrink from the responsibility.

Not the way Hutch did. If he were a better man, he’d be with Laura now, comforting her after such an awful day. Instead, he’d let one of the uniforms take her statement, given her a perfunctory hug, and practically run from Hannah’s house like the chicken that he was. All because of–

“All that blood,” Starsky said flatly. The Rolling Stones blasted something loud on the jukebox, almost drowning out his words.

Hutch caught his breath and pretended to cough. Starsky could read his mind. Certainly not the first time.

“Hector got what he fucking deserved,” Starsky continued, his voice going ever softer without losing one iota of the passion. “A girl in every port? We’re gonna have to deal with the FBI, you know that don’t you? At least they’ll take it off our hands–can’t imagine all the paper work.”

Hutch drank beer, staring at the suddenly empty bottle without remembering finishing it. “I’ll get another,” he said in a rush. A decent man wouldn’t have to drown in a keg of beer to deal with the–

“Guilt.” Starsky skewered him with those laser eyes again. “It’s all over your face.”

Hutch scrubbed at his cheeks as if he could hide from his partner. “I just want more beer,” he said lamely, standing.

“You got some soft-hearted thing going on, that maybe you could have turned the whole thing around, saved him somehow.”

“Now, listen here!” Hutch erupted, stabbing a finger under Starsky’s nose. “I’m the one who signaled you, gave you the count. You think I didn’t know what would go down?” The anger seemed to burn away the blame he was heaping on himself. Starsky was playing him as skillfully as a musician.

“You did,” Starsky held up his bottle to clink with Hutch’s. “Mozel tov. I ain’t going all eye for an eye, Even if it’s in all the Holy Writings. It was our job, protect the innocent, bring in the criminals.”

“Another one?” Hutch asked, keeping his voice steady. Starsky was right on every point, so why did he feel so dirty?

“Still got half a bottle, but suit yourself.” Starsky settled back in his chair, sprawled–legs outstretched–with the coiled readiness of a lion on the watch.

Diane knew her business. She had two uncapped cold ones sitting on the bar exactly when he walked up. No need to remind her brand or to add the total to their bill. Hutch would pay Huggy, they all knew the barbs about the debt were just banter between pals.

“I couldn’t‘ve done what you did,” Starsky started in the moment Hutch sat down.

“All that blood.” He actually shuddered.

“Starsk, you’ve seen blood–” Practically bled out in front of my eyes, his treacherous brain supplied, “dozens of times.” He drank more, craving that looseness a couple of beers gave him.

“My own is one thing.” Starsky ran his finger through the wet ring on the tabletop. “Sticking my finger into somebody else’s–digging out a bullet. How’d you do it?”

I don’t know, he wanted to say. His belly spasmed, threatening to expel what he’d just sucked down. He could still smell Hector’s sour sweat, the purulent scent of infection from the wound, and the thick odor of blood.

“I thought of you,” Hutch said instead, taking Starsky’s hand. Didn’t matter that they were in a bar full of people.

Starsky’s fingers closed around his to stop the trembling, and Hutch had an intense flashback to the week before. He’d grasped Starsky’s ankle, grateful beyond measure that he’d found his partner before that psycho Fitzgerald killed him. There’d been blood streaking the cracked window of Starsky’s cab, and Hutch had gone cold. Feeling Starsky’s trembling, his aliveness, had been the only reason he hadn’t finished Fitzgerald off then and there.

“Huh?” Starsky grunted, twisting his hand so they were palm to palm. He knew.

Hutch knew he knew, just as Starsky was aware that they had to talk about what happened, or it would fester.

He wasn’t quite ready to go into why he’d been so–fucking scared a week earlier. Far more scared in those few minutes between seeing Starsky’s blood on the window and finding him. Far more aware of Starsky then, this morning, and now, than of Starsky’s potential lady friend KC, or his own spurned amour, Laura.

Couldn’t go there. Not yet. Not here. He wanted to, but somehow it seemed too soon. There would be a time. Hutch was more sure of that than he was of a anything else in life.

“Remember last year, when that guy had a semi-automatic, treed us beside a brick wall, kept shooting for about five minutes?” Starsky’s hand was warm, real, and solid in his.

“Logan,” Starsky said instantly. “Drug dealer. Terrible shot.”

Hutch ran his forefinger along a scar below Starsky’s thumb. “Shards of brick were flying everywhere. One dug in right there.”

“Yeah.” Starsky pulled back his hand, examining the triangular mark. “Bled like a sonofabitch. Got the grip on my Baretta all sticky.”

“You finally put a bullet in his arm, we scooped him up, and took him in,” Hutch recounted, finally feeling an ease, relaxation making his limbs heavy as lead. Damn, he was tired. And he’d barely started the second beer. The third was going to go wanting.

“You dug out the splinter. In the interrogation room,” Starsky finished for him, making a funny little hooking gesture with his finger, as if yanking something out of the flesh of his thumb. “It was in deep.”

“For a splinter, yeah.” Hutch pinched his fingers together in the shape of the tweezers he’d used then, and on Hector today. “Not so much different than a bullet in a calf muscle. Wasn’t into the artery like we thought. Just–” He inhaled and exhaled, blowing out the negative, the horror of it. All the blood.

Hannah had been such a calming spirit beside them, a balm on his soul when he needed it most. He’d been so aware of Starsky hidden a few feet away, and done what he had to do.

Taken out a bullet. Protected those who needed protecting.

Kept Starsky safe.

“Thanks,” Starsky said. “In case I didn’t say it before. Cause I hate that shit. Blood.”

I hate it, too, he thought, catching the smile spreading across Starsky’s face. The kind that lit up his eyes like stars. As much as I love you.

“Finished?” Starsky asked, standing. His single bottle was empty. “C’mon over, I can dig something out of the freezer, cook it up bloody and rare.”

“That I like,” Hutch agreed, and set down his beer.

FIN