I Dreamed I Was…

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He wrapped himself around his partner — always his partner, no matter where they were and what they did and who they became — and Starsky laughed and hugged himself with sheer joy.  Hutch dreams…

 

Most updated version here: http://community.livejournal.com/starskyhutch911/127815.html

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“Lookit this.”

Hutch took the proffered paperback and raised his eyebrows at the title.  “Lucid dreaming?”

“Yeah, I thought it sounded like one of those hokey new age things you’d be interested in.”

Hutch’s eyebrows puckered into a frown.  “Oh, really.”  He started to chuck the book back, but he had to admit that the idea did sound somewhat intriguing.  He’d heard about lucid dreaming — dreams where one was aware it was a dream.  Supposedly, lucid dreams could be extremely vivid, and the dreamer could eventually learn to gain some control over them.

He dug for his wallet.  “All right, how much?”

“Nada.”  Starsky made a zero with thumb and fingers of one hand.  “It’s a sample from the publisher.  I just paid shipping.”

“Since when are you getting books from…” — he checked the spine of the book — “…Good Senses Press?”

Starsky shrugged, his back to him as he arranged the new shipment of comic books on their wire rack.  “They sent me a catalog, and I thought, why not?  You can be my test reader.  If there’s something you like, I’ll get some in and see how they sell.”  Done with his task, he brushed his hands off and came back to Hutch’s side of the counter with a box of books.  “Here,” he said.

Hutch shuffled through the volumes, some hardback, some paperback, all stamped with the Good Senses logo, which looked suspiciously like a stylized marijuana leaf.  “I don’t know…” he said.  “I’m not so into that stuff anymore.”

He still tried to eat healthy, but he hadn’t done yoga or even thought about some of the more esoteric stuff since a long while before… well, before.  He’d only taken up meditating again when he’d thought it would help Starsky.  Starsky had complied with much grumbling, but it did calm and focus him, Hutch could tell.  Hutch still sat down with him for an hour every Wednesday evening.

“What on earth?!”  Hutch pulled out a copy of the kama sutra.

Starsky laughed.  “You can keep that one.  Happy Groundhog Day.”

***

Hutch was floating.

He wasn’t flying.  He didn’t have wings or jets or so much as a parachute.  In fact, he realized, he didn’t have a body.  He was just floating above the ground, weightless and soundless.  Free and full of power.

Ah, he was the sunshine, he realized.  He looked down and saw Bay City spread out beneath him.  It looked unlike the dirty, crowded metropolis he knew but was rather a small town full of quaint cars and happy denizens.  He cast his rain of energy and warmth down, looking with pride on the trees and grass that he was helping to grow, and the people whose day he was helping to brighten.

One particular upturned face caught his eye.  The dark curls and the full, smiling lips were unmistakable.  Hutch consciously poured an extra bit of warmth onto that appreciative face.

Like a camera zooming in, he tightened in and shot himself down to Starsky.  He wrapped himself around his partner — always his partner, no matter where they were and what they did and who they became — and Starsky laughed and hugged himself with sheer joy.

***

“I think it worked.”

“Hm?”  Starsky gave the door one last jangle, assuring himself it was locked properly.  “What worked?”

They took the leisurely two-block walk to Starsky’s studio apartment.  “The lucid dreaming.  I was reading it before bed last night, and I had this… amazing dream.”

“What was it about?”

“You were in it.”

“Yeah?”  Starsky sounded excited and curious.  Hutch smiled, loving that note of childishness that he had missed so sorely in the first months of Starsky’s recovery.  He’d known he should be glad enough that Starsky was alive at all, but for a while, they had both been bitter that Starsky couldn’t be what he once was.

Starsky had gotten over it first.  Hutch would never forget the day he told Hutch he’d bought a business, and he was quitting the force for good.

“You were laughing,” Hutch told him.  “I was the sunshine.  I made you happy,” he said.  He suddenly felt shy and a little ridiculous.  What a stupid thing to say in the light of day.

“You sure do,” Starsky said, without a trace of embarrassment.

Hutch stopped walking.  He stood right in the middle of the pavement and looked at his partner.  Starsky looked just the way he had in the dream.  On impulse, he pulled Starsky into a hug and just held on.

Without an instant of hesitation, Starsky wrapped his arms around him in return.

Hutch felt powerful and weightless and full of light.

***

Hutch was stiff, but not uncomfortably so.  He seemed to be missing his elbow and knee joints, was all.  Curiously, he rotated his arms, testing his range of motion.

His surroundings came into focus around him.  He was standing in a field of corn, golden and full, ready to harvest.  It was the kind of field you could run through, whooping and shouting, the kind you could kiss a girl within, the both of you giggling the whole time.

He sauntered down the row, swinging his legs forward at the hip and his arms like pendulums at his sides.  The sound of rustling filled his non-existent ears as he walked, and he realized what he was — a scarecrow!

He jumped up and down, testing his wooden legs.  A flock of black crows startled into the sky at his movement.  They cawed in annoyance as they circled for another landing.  On a whim, Hutch chased after them, yelling and waving his straw arms.

The crows scattered and left, obviously confused by the unusually aggressive scarecrow guarding this field.

Flushed with satisfaction, Hutch looked upon ‘his’ field with a proprietary eye.

One stalk of corn seemed to glow extra bright.  Its wisps of silk were shiny and sleek.  Its round kernals were almost ready to pop out of their layers of green husk.  Its stalk was strong and full of life, shielding the fragility that lay inside.

His sense of play suddenly leaving him, Hutch approached the corn stalk and took up a position in front of it.

He knew he would guard Starsky with his life.

***

“Didja dream about anything interesting again?”

“No, not this time.”  It hadn’t been ‘interesting’ so much as… melodramatic.  Hutch winced just thinking about it.

“Lieutenant!”

Starsky groaned along with him.

“I guess there’s never such thing as being off duty,” Hutch said ruefully.  “What is it, Stuart?” he asked his assistant.

“Captain Dobey needs you to look these over.”

Hutch took the reports and scanned them quickly.  A couple of personnel matters, plus a brief about the Lang murders that wanted his opinion.  “I’ll have them on his desk by Monday.”

“Have a good weekend, Lieu.”

Hutch touched his brow.  “You, too.  Say hi to Anna.”

Stuart blushed in pleasure.  “I will.”

“The kids like you,” Starsky observed once they were out of earshot.

“Stuart’s twenty-seven years old.  He’s hardly a kid.”

“You know what I mean.  All the rookies look up to you.”  Starsky got into the passenger side of Hutch’s car.  He’d come to the station on foot and via bus.

Starsky had sold the fixed-up Torino for the capital he’d needed to purchase what became The Nook.  Business was reasonably good, but it’d be a while before Starsky could afford another car, and it’d never be another flashy tomato.  He’d told Hutch he’d probably get a van, something practical for the shop.

“They’d look up to you too, if they realized who you were.  Dobey and I talk about you all the time.”

Starsky grinned.  “So I’m like the ghost of Squad Room 27?”

“Don’t say that,” Hutch snapped.  “You’re not the ghost of anything.”

“Hey, hey, just kidding, okay?”

Hutch put the car in gear, feeling sheepish but unwilling to apologize for the spike of emotion.  He drove a few minutes before asking, “Do you ever feel like…”  He tried to think how to word the question.  Starsky didn’t interrupt.  He’d grown more mellow, more patient.  Hutch was only just starting to get used to it.  “Do you think I’m ever overprotective?” he finished.

“Of me?”

Hutch shrugged.

“Sure.  I guess.”  Hutch hunched his shoulders.  “But I don’t mind.”

“You don’t?”  He cut a quick glance at Starsky.  He was looking at Hutch, and his body language was relaxed and open, not like someone lying to make Hutch feel better.

“Of course not.  That’s just the way you are.”

Hutch wasn’t sure how to take that.  So Starsky put up with his foibles.  Well, that was to be expected.  Starsky was one of the most forgiving and take-it-as-they-come people he knew.

“And…”

Hutch perked up.  “And?”

“And it makes me feel kinda good.”

This time when Hutch looked over, Starsky was facing the window.  But Hutch could see that he was smiling.

***

Hutch hummed to himself as he worked busily, rolling the white bundle round and round, spinning it until it was dizzy.  He finally had it wrapped tight.  No chance of escape.

He bit down, and his victim shuddered silently.  As he began to suck, the living bundle under his legs squirmed and writhed.  It finally emitted a sound, but strangely not of pain.  It sounded like… surprise, or almost pleasure.

Hutch continued sucking, excited by the noises his victim was now making.  He wrapped all eight of his legs around him and reveled in the pulse of life that he could feel with his sensitive foot pads.

Starsky was never going to leave him.

***

“Not hungry?”

Shuddering, Hutch pushed his plate away.  “No.  You can have it.”

Starsky took his pizza slice.  “What’s the matter?”

“N- Nothing.”

“Uh-huh.”  Starsky was clearly skeptical.

Wanting to clear his head, Hutch stood up to go to the kitchen.  “You want another coke?”  Starsky grunted an affirmative.  After fetching two cans out of the refrigerator, Hutch took the opportunity to run one along his forehead.

Maybe this lucid dreaming thing was a bad idea.  Maybe it was showing him sides of himself that he never should see.

“Hutch?”  He jumped at the touch to his shoulder, nearly dropping Starsky’s can of pop on the ground.

“Here,” he said, handing it over.  Starsky took it but remained where he was, frowning at him.

“You all right?  You’ve been jumpy all evening.”

He started to say, ‘I’m fine’, but the words wouldn’t come.  He and Starsky had always been close.  Since the shooting, they ran near to telepathic some days.  He could no sooner lie to Starsky than to himself.  He sighed.

“I, uh, had a weird dream last night.”

“What about?”

Hutch opened his coke and took a swig, stalling for time.  “I was a spider.  And, and you were a fly.  And I was, um…  I had you all wrapped up and I was…”

Starsky started chuckling.

“What!”

“Let me guess.”  Starsky covered his mouth but hoots of laughter erupted every few seconds.  “You were — haha — eating me?”

“It’s not funny.  What does that say about me?”

“That– That you — ahaha — have an unholy desire to suck — heehee — the juice out of me?”  Starsky was laughing uncontrollably now.

“Starsky!”

“I’m–  I’m sorry.  It’s just that…”  Starsky was wiping tears from his eyes now.  He leaned over, bracing one hand on Hutch’s shoulder.  Despite himself, Hutch felt himself responding to Starsky’s mirth.

“All right, give.  What’s so funny?”

Starsky finally gathered himself together enough to stand upright again.  “I noticed you’ve got a bookmark in the kama sutra,” he said, laughter still lurking under his words.

“You sneak!” Hutch spluttered, caught between mortification and irritation.  “I was just–  It was–  Well, you gave me the darn thing!  Anyway, what has that got to do with it?”

“You dreamed about sucking me dry!”  Starsky exploded into guffaws again.  Hutch swatted him on the head, but Starsky barely noticed.

“You’re impossible!”

But Hutch felt better.

***

In the way that dreams were, he could see even without eyes and feel without nerves.  A warm head rested on him, snug and heavy, sinking into his receiving softness.  He realized with amusement that he was a fluffy feather pillow.  He cradled the sleeper, whoever it was, tenderly, enjoying the feeling of providing comfort to someone.

And then, as the dream revealed itself, unwinding its details a layer at a time, he discovered the identity of the person whose sleep he was watching over.  Well, of course.

“Starsky,” he murmured affectionately, even though he had no mouth, no lungs, and presumably no emotions in his cotton and down body.

Starsky snuggled closer.

***

“Do you sleep well at night now?”

Starsky popped up from behind the counter, where he’d been pulling out packs of old receipts to organize.  He did his own accounting and balanced the books at the end of every month like clockwork.  Starsky was determined to handle everything like a pro, and he was succeeding.  Hutch was proud of him.

“Huh?”

Hutch, leaning on the counter, flipped absently through a detective novel.  “Do you sleep okay?”  He glanced up, and Starsky was giving him a look.

“Yeah,” he replied.  “Why?”

“Do you–  Do they still bother you?”  He reached out, but hesitated with his hand outstretched.  For a long while, Starsky had suffered from pains and stiffness, especially when he’d first started his physical therapy.  Hutch had given him nightly massages before bed, and those had helped him to sleep better.

The normal boundaries between them had come back when Starsky got better.  At least, he had assumed they had.  Starsky and he never talked about these things.  They had always just drifted close when they needed it and drifted comfortably apart again when the need was over.

The thoughtful look that had never left Starsky’s face deepened.  He stepped forward and took Hutch’s hand.  Deliberately, he placed it over his chest.  “I’m okay,” he said.  His eyes were deep and serious.  Then he smiled, and Hutch smiled back.  “I’m fine now, Hutch.  I don’t even remember ’em anymore, most days.”

He could feel every fiber of Starsky’s flannel shirt.  His fingers tingled.

“Uh, excuse me?”  Two teenagers stood just inside the open doorway.  “Have you got any Twix bars?”

When Hutch made to jerk away, he felt Starsky hang on for just a split second longer before letting him go.

***

Hutch woke up with the sun in his eyes.  He looked out the window at the rolling fields of corn, and he knew he was dreaming again.

He got out of the big bed and wandered through his dream house.  There was wood paneling on the walls, and photographs littered the living room.  He walked through the bright, cozy kitchen and opened the door out onto the patio.

Starsky was there, reading a newspaper.

“There you are,” Starsky said.

“Here I am,” Hutch said, unaccountably pleased.

Starsky held up a hand, and Hutch thought maybe Starsky wanted help getting up.  Instead, Starsky pulled Hutch toward him, until Hutch was leaning down and his vision was filled with Starsky’s eyes, crinkled up with a smile.

“G’mornin’,” Starsky said.

The dream Starsky tasted like popcorn and fresh-mown grass.

***

Hutch woke up, feeling warm and full of delight.

Oh.

It’d taken a week of dreams, but he’d finally figured it out.

Hutch showered meticulously.  He trimmed his moustache with extra care, and he shaved extra fine.  He chose a nice pair of corduroys and the white shirt that he liked.  He said a cheerful “See you later” to his plants, and he whistled the whole way to Starsky’s apartment.

“Hutch?  It’s seven in the morning.  What’re ya doin’ here?”

Hutch smiled and whistled some more as he stood in the middle of the one room.  He turned around, looking at all of Starsky’s things.  Would they need four bedrooms, or would three be enough?

“What’s going on?”

Hutch almost laughed at Starsky’s look of confusion.  He’d forgotten.  Starsky didn’t know yet.  He held out a hand, and, a look of bemusement on his face, Starsky took it.  Hutch pulled him in.

The real Starsky tasted like salami and cheese.  He tasted like fights about what to have for breakfast, and languid nights by the fire, and picnics on the pier, and a lifetime full of dreams.

Starsky drew back first.  He blinked his eyes rapidly, as if he were just waking up.

“Oh,” he said, and his eyes crinkled up just like Hutch knew they would.

 

END.

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Chapter End Notes:

I Wish I Was…

(David Soul)

I wish I was the sunlight

Gently reaching out in space

And I wish you were the chilly morn

So I could warm your face

 

And I wish I was a spider

‘Cause I’ve got a web to weave

And I wish you were a captured fly

So that you’d never leave

 

But I’m just a man

And you are just a girl

Though we walk hand in hand

We’re too much of this world

 

Oh, and I wish I was a scarecrow

‘Cause I’ve got a scare or two

And I wish you were a stalk of corn

With me protecting you

 

And I wish I was a pillow

‘Cause I’ve got some softness too

And I wish you were a weary head

Alone, just me and you.