Words Made Flesh

Sometimes they did sleep apart.

One of the “shorts” to go with “Faithful to Thee, Cynara.” The other two are “Dreamland,” and “Cup of Decaf.” These stories were part of the Starsky and Hutch Slash Virtual Season.

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”
–Leonard Cohen

Sometimes they did sleep apart.

Today–stretching into tonight–they’d been at a stake-out where they had been too close to ignore each other, too focused on the watch and the boredom to talk, after a while, and too on-duty to fool around. It was an irksome combination, and they’d agreed they could use space and quiet tonight.

They hadn’t even seen the suspect clearly enough for a court ID.

Never mind, Hutch told himself. Nothing to worry about. Their relief would see him, or they’d see him tomorrow. He wouldn’t get away.

And meanwhile he needed to sleep, run tomorrow morning, have a good breakfast, so he wouldn’t snap Starsky’s head off for nothing at all.

He lay in bed, not checking off item number one on his list. Looking up at dim smudges of headlights sliding along, refracted from street to windows to walls to ceiling. Missing the warmth of his partner even as he felt relieved to not have to deal with him every single minute of the day. Yesterday, really, he corrected himself. The red numbers on his alarm clock read 12:07.

He rubbed his palm against his bare hip, knowing how he could get to sleep but weirdly reluctant.

Hell with it. What was he waiting for? It was even money that if Hutch asked Starsky tomorrow, he’d say he had jerked off, too.

Hutch started slow. This was the hand he’d burned, years back, and the skin bore a faint dark tattoo over his palm and onto his fingers…and a shallow starburst of scar lines, though Starsky said he couldn’t feel them. That bothered Hutch in ways he couldn’t speak of, had no words for.

Now he let the ridged skin abrade him as he reached down his own leg to find where the lines were like stretch marks, all that was visibly left of the surgery he’d had after being pinned under his car. He sometimes stood in the shower and traced those marks, looked at their rosy tracks like letters in an alphabet no one could read. If he concentrated, he could tell where the screws were that held his bone together. There. And there. He brushed his fingertips back and forth and around, tickling lightly, fixing the image in his mind as he stroked his cock with the other hand and felt it begin to fill.

Good…good. He breathed deeply, listened to the work of his lungs. No other breathing. Faint traffic noises. Wind from the ocean.

On his forearm, on the inside near the wrist’s soft hollow and twisting around, was the seam of the cut he’d gotten in the hospital garage while Starsky lay in Intensive Care. On the other arm was where Diana had stabbed so fiercely and so uselessly, a thick outline along his biceps. Here on his chest, the faint pucker and ridge of the bullet scar near his heart, so near. Starsky had kissed him there once, when they’d been talking about scars. Briefly, gently, not as if he really needed to.

At times like this, Hutch thought that he could still feel the tiny indentations where the stitches had been. They weren’t visible–he’d checked in the bathroom mirror. He could see the splayed damage of the entry wound and the neat line of the surgical incision, silvery pink that flushed redder than his other skin under hot water. It seemed more sensitive, too, though he knew that it literally had fewer nerves. He liked to look at it.

Back and forth, end to end, he stroked the mark of his danger and the doctors’ care. He thought of Starsky’s scars–more, larger, rougher, newer. Those marks Hutch fingered, pressed his palms over, smoothed and kissed, licked and rubbed his own against as they spooned naked to sleep.

He held in his mind the regrown hair over the entry scars on Starsky’s chest, the new directions it grew, the way its texture differed. Softer? Or just shorter? Hutch couldn’t tell exactly, though he focused hard on it, tried to recreate the sensations as he stroked, pumped, tickled himself…and here was the oldest, most precious scar, his circumcision…. Starsky’s tasted different from the rest of his cock, Hutch swore. He could feel it in his mouth. He could feel Starsky under his hands, against his body, skin, hair, scent, taste–

—Scars—

He jolted, felt the spurts of semen leave him, spatter, dribble down onto his hand. His eyes were screwed so tightly shut that yellow spangles and shapes swam there, and then he relaxed all at once, sighing.

He couldn’t make Starsky understand. They’d talked enough about the scars–Hutch had said over and over that they were fine, they were beautiful, they symbolized his partner’s survival, his bravery, everything Hutch loved most about him. And Starsky thought he was being humored, a kind of medicinal praise. He didn’t get it.

Hutch loved the scars. They spoke to him, said “life” and “love” and “sex.” They turned him on.

He thought, only a little facetiously, if Starsky hadn’t had any, now that might have been a problem.