Star Light, Star Bright

It’s a cold winter’s night. Twenty minute fic challenge using the words Star and Candy.

Minnesota in December is cold—the kind of cold that takes your breath away sometimes and bites the tip of your nose. A December night in Minnesota is even colder.

Starsky watches his breath and Hutch’s as it puffs in the air like smoke lit only by the moon and stars.

They are standing in the stubbled field where corn had been this past summer. The lights of the farmhouse are far away—at least it seems so to Starsky but they beckon, reminding him of warmth and home and family. Hutch’s sister and her husband own the farm now—the farm where Hutch had spent so many summers as a child.

It’s Christmas and the house is filled with Hutch’s parents, his sister, her husband, and three kids. And Hutch and him.

Seven months ago, no one thought he would be alive to see Christmas and here he was. With Hutch, who stands tall and straight beside him, his elbow knocking against Starsky’s, his hair where it peeks out beneath the wool hat silver in the moonlight.

The snow is white—not the snow Starsky remembers from his childhood in New York where snow was churned up by tires and looked like dirty brown sugar. No, this snow is sparkly and pure white—like someone dusted the world with flour.

Starsky’s belly rumbles. Once his appetite finally came back after the shooting, he seemed to need to eat more than ever. Grazing, Hutch calls it.

He digs in his pocket for the candy bar he knows Hutch stashed there earlier. Hutch never bugs him about what he eats now and he often finds a candy bar or other treat in a jacket pocket—always there when he needs it.

He unwraps the bar, the sound of the wrapper loud in the stillness of the winter night. It’s a Hershey bar—plain chocolate and he bites into it and is transported back to being a kid with a nickel at the corner store.

Hutch nudges his arm and points upward. Starsky tilts his head back, feels Hutch brace him. Hutch still hasn’t gotten out of the fear that Starsky will fall like he did so many times in his recovery.

Starsky looks up into a sky filled with more stars than he knew could be seen. There are so many he can’t find ones he knows.. Orion is there somewhere wheeling about the winter sky, hunting. It’s a hell of a lot easier seeing constellations in the planetarium.

He watches and thinks he could stand here forever, with Hutch, in a cornfield, in Minnesota, on a cold winter’s night. Because at this moment everything he’s ever wanted and needed is by his side.

Hutch wraps his arms around him, pulling him close. He nuzzles against the tiny bit of Starsky’s neck not covered by a wool scarf, his nose cold, his lips warm.

Starsky sees a shooting star streak across the sky.

“Make a wish,” Hutch says, a low murmur against flesh.

But Starsky can’t think of one because all his wishes came true the day Hutch said I love you.