But Not Today

The after effects of Bellamy’s poison affects Starsky and Hutch in devastating ways. Will Starsky’s residual symptoms and Hutch’s guilt bring them closer…or put a wedge between them.

Originally published in the 2006 SHareCon Zine.

It was pain that woke Starsky out of an uneasy sleep. A gripping, gotta go/can’t go cramping in his gut that had become all too familiar. The intermittent misery had moved into his belly within hours of the late-night injection Vic Bellamy had delivered, and, even though an antidote had been discovered and his life no longer hung in the balance, it liked to revisit the old homestead periodically.

Dr. Franklin had explained it to Starsky — in words of two syllables or less — that the compound Jennings cooked up and Bellamy injected into him had excited certain nerves, damaged them even, although not permanently. The continuing bouts of pain and excessive sweating, etc., were just his body taking its own sweet time healing. Nothing to worry about. Just a nasty side effect.

The medical mumbo jumbo meant little to Starsky. All he knew was that he continued to suffer. Without warning, some demon would slit open his belly, grab up his entrails in a red-hot fist, and squeeze. When it hit him in the hospital, they gave him a shot. Pumped a few more drugs into his confused system that had eased the pain. Unfortunately, the same drugs had also seemed to pop the top off his skull and pour hundred-proof bourbon straight into his brain. They also made him want to puke. With the side effects in mind, Starsky had refused the prescription he was offered when he had been discharged this afternoon.

Right about now, Starsky was almost ready to sell his soul to be high and puking if it would pry his guts loose from the demon and let him breathe. Maybe this would teach him not to be so stubborn. But, miraculously, the pain was fading on its own tonight. Not deserting him completely, but ebbing enough that Starsky could take a cautious breath and open his eyes.

The dark shadow in the doorway, back lit by an eerie, flickering light, shot Starsky’s heart into his throat and lodged it there. Terror froze him for a moment, long enough to realize this wasn’t a nightmare revisited.

“Goddamnit to hell, Hutch. Don’t do that to a guy!” Starsky growled when he recognized the shadowy specter as his partner and the flickering light as the changing scene on the television screen in the living room.

“I’m sorry. Oh shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I… I… ” Hutch stammered. He stood hesitating in the doorway, dressed only in his boxers, and looked poised for flight.

Starsky took pity his stuttering friend. “S’okay, Hutch,” he muttered, while doing his best to swallow his heart back down behind his breastbone where it belonged.

“I thought… thought I heard a groan or something… and… and –”

“Come on over here and sit down before you fall down,” Starsky interrupted the jumbled apologies with the gruff invitation. Even ten feet away, in light uncertain enough to play tricks on eyes less sleep-deprived and tearing with pain than his, Starsky could see Hutch was shaking. When Hutch hesitantly crossed the room and sat gingerly on the bed, Starsky changed that descriptive to quaking.

Starsky found a grip on the taut muscles of Hutch’s forearm and squeezed gently. Maybe it really was hardest on the ones left behind. That had to be especially true for someone like Hutch, who could hold it together so well while the crisis played out. He somehow packed away his emotions and kept his brain ticking away with the precision of one of those expensive watches Starsky loved. It made sense that, when the crisis was over, all that icy-cold, iron control would have to slip.

“Scared you, did I, buddy?” Starsky asked, pitching his voice low, into that deep range that he knew from both training and experience stroked itself onto over-stressed nerves and offered a blessed calm. It worked with scared kids, hysterical witnesses, and probably wild dogs, but, most important of all, combined with the grip on his arm, it almost always soothed Hutch.

“Sorry,” Hutch apologized with a weak laugh that seemed to stick somewhere between his larynx and the back of his tongue. “Didn’t mean to give you a waking nightmare. Sounded like the sleeping one was bad enough.”

Starsky had opened his mouth to reassure his worried partner when that demon returned — with a friend. A startled yelp left his throat and his fingers tightened involuntarily into a bruising vice, while his legs pulled up uselessly to protect his vital organs from the attack from within. He felt the solid smack as his knees slammed into Hutch’s hip, knocking him from his perch.

“Starsky! What the hell? What’s wrong?”

Starsky could hear Hutch’s frantic questions, but couldn’t gather enough breath to reply. All he could do was hang on to the solid lifeline of Hutch’s strong arm while the pain tried to tear him into bloody little pieces. Drawn and quartered presented itself in his reeling brain. A gory image from some history book he had read. Lifeless words on a page that now had agonizing substance and texture. It would pass, Starsky chanted soundlessly, just as long as he held onto Hutch.

“That’s it! I’m calling an ambulance.”

Starsky heard the words, processed their meaning and the frantic, near-hysteria in Hutch’s voice, but couldn’t respond until he was robbed of the slim thread of Hutch’s strength. His eyes sprang open, as hard muscle and bone was torn free of his grasp, and he saw Hutch with the phone in his hand.

“No!” Starsky gasped, feeling as if some of the agony was expelled along with the protest, enough at least to leave room for one quick breath to mumble an attempted reassurance. “S’okay. Gimme… just… a minute,” he panted, pushing out measures of pain with every word and drawing in calm with each gasp in between.

The battle between unreasoning terror and trust waged itself over Hutch’s dimly lit features as he stood indecisive, the receiver still held in his hand.

“Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try the number again.”

The tinny whine of the recorded voice seemed to break Hutch’s trance. His gaze moved from Starsky, to the receiver in his hand, and then returned to Starsky. “Starsk?” he murmured softly, as if he feared a louder tone might summon anew whatever had just visited so unexpectedly.

“Hang up the phone, Hutch,” Starsky crooned, in possession of his tongue again as the pain settled down into a warning throb deep in his belly. It wasn’t over yet. He knew that much from the nights in the hospital when he had tried to tame it on his own, but manageable for the moment. A breathing space that, hopefully, would be long enough to let Hutch know what was going on.

“I’m okay, Hutch. Honest. Just… just a little more of Aunt Rosie’s chicken soup,” Starsky tried to tease his friend, and, incidentally, coax him into hanging up the phone.

“Your call cannot be completed –“

With a frown of irritation, Hutch dropped the receiver back into the cradle and then stood there, big hands curled into fists as if he was trying to resist the temptation to snatch it up again and demand somebody do something.

“It’s okay,” Starsky repeated his earlier reassurance, but didn’t try for that calming tone again. His throat felt a little raw, and he didn’t think he could quite manage it. He attempted a smile instead, hoping Hutch could see him better than he could see Hutch, and pried his fingers off his belly long enough to pat the mattress.

“Okay?” Hutch echoed doubtfully, took a step, hesitated, and then slowly lowered himself down onto the bed as if he expected it to suddenly close around him like the jaws of a steel trap. “You screamed.”

“Screamed?” Starsky protested, rounding up a disbelieving grin and corralling it on his face. “Guys don’t scream.”

“Screamed,” Hutch insisted, and then suddenly leaned forward to snap on the bedside lamp. “And you’re white as a sheet,” he added, eyes narrowing from more than the subdued glow of the lamp as they traveled over Starsky. “And sweating. Damnit, I knew Franklin was letting you out too soon. Four days ago, you almost died, and those stupid, over-educated jerks –”

“Easy, babe,” Starsky crooned softly, interrupting the complaint before it could escalate into a full-blown, Hutchinson tirade. The fiery glow in his gut was threatening another eruption of flame, and he had to make sure Hutch understood what was going on before it hit. He had no desire to find his bedroom full of paramedics for the second time in less than a week. Once had been more than enough.

“It’s just a side effect of Jennings’ little present,” Starsky explained, wrapping his hand around Hutch’s arm again, knowing he was getting through to his shaken friend when the smooth flesh slid through his fingers until they were palm to palm, fingers entwined in a supportive grip. He smiled a little, this one feeling easier on his face as he remembered the way Hutch had unhesitatingly taken his hand in the squad room. “Franklin says they’ll disappear eventually. Maybe a few more days.”

“Days? You mean you’re supposed to suffer like this for…?” Suspicion that was really certainty tightened Hutch’s features. “You’ve been hurting like this all the time? In the hospital? And those masochistic sons of bitches did nothing?” he growled.

There was nothing quite like having his own personal White Knight. Starsky squeezed Hutch’s hand to acknowledge the loyalty, reminding himself that he was going to have to let go before the next spasm hit him. Hutch was strong. Starsky, more than anyone, had reason to know and appreciate the strength of Hutch’s good right hand. But Starsky was no weakling himself, and the bones of the hand could be fragile.

“They gave me a shot,” he admitted, forcing himself to release Hutch’s hand as tendrils of fire began to spread out from the hot coals in the pit of his belly. “No more drugs,” he insisted when that free hand immediately reached for the phone. “I’d rather ache than puke.”

“Stubborn bastard,” Hutch muttered affectionately, his hand settling on Starsky’s shoulder, giving him a patch of welcome warmth to focus on instead of the gathering storm inside him.

“Part of my charm,” Starsky panted, trying to keep up the banter, to let it distract him from the pain. The hand moved to his hair and ruffled it, massaging his scalp in an echoing stroke to the way his own fingers dug into the cramping muscles below his waist.

When he came out of the latest spasm, Starsky discovered that, whether by his design or Hutch’s, his head had somehow found its way into Hutch’s lap and that big, strong body surrounded him as if it could keep him from harm. Another memory. An island of support within the sea of pain and fear. A safe haven in a filthy, litter-strewn alley.

“Gonna have to nominate you for the amateur Florence Nightingale award, babe,” Starsky threatened as he retreated back to his damp pillow.

“I’d have to decline the nomination,” Hutch joked feebly, but Starsky could see the distress his pain was causing his friend. “It’s not like I’m able to do anything to help.”

“Think you might’ve already done it,” Starsky admitted, cautiously stretching out his legs, waiting expectantly for the pain to grab him again. But it looked like the demon might have gorged his fill for tonight. Even the throbbing threat was disappearing. “I think it’s over. Why don’t you go try and get some sleep.”

The sharp headshake and the mutiny on Hutch’s face made his opinion of that suggestion abundantly clear. Starsky had to admit, were their positions reversed, he probably wouldn’t be eager to abandon Hutch to his fate and seek what little comfort there was to be found on Hutch’s lumpy sofa. Watching your partner’s back didn’t end when you signed off shift. At least, not for him and Hutch.

“Don’t you have to work tomorrow,” Starsky asked nevertheless.

“Not until 3:00,” Hutch reminded him. “Besides, if it wasn’t for me….”

Starsky stiffened beneath the hand that, even after he had retreated from Hutch’s comforting embrace, had continued to knead the pain-tight muscles of his back and shoulder. Those fingers weren’t kneading anymore, but stroking at his sweat-damp skin. Starsky shrugged away the caressing touch. He had been waiting for this. Dreading it. Guilt. Hutchinson guilt that seemed to have a hair trigger and a range longer than the cannon his partner carried. He had known from the minute Hutch had walked into the emergency room that, if Starsky survived, they were going to have to deal with it. Like an ostrich, Starsky had chosen to stick his head in the sand and hope that Hutch would have the sense to do the same. He should have known better.

“Forget it, Hutch,” Starsky warned in his best ‘subject closed’ tone of voice, hoping to put this off, indefinitely if he could, but at the very least until he could trust himself to have the strength not to let Hutch’s guilt lead them into actions they would both regret.

“I can’t forget it, babe. If I hadn’t left you that night, none of this would have happened,” Hutch whispered.

“Guess it’s about time I hit the road,” Hutch said as the closing credits of the late night movie rolled slowly up the screen of Starsky’s television.

“No! Wait!” Starsky objected, too fast and too loud, he realized when Hutch, half way to his feet, paused to cut him a questioning glance. Nervously, Starsky switched his own gaze to the television, found nothing there to even pretend deserved his attention, and looked around frantically for inspiration. There was none to be found in the familiar furnishings of his apartment. He already knew that. He had been silently begging them for encouragement all night, but each inanimate object had remained stubbornly unhelpful.

However, if his outburst had earned him Hutch’s suspicion, it had also gained him a few minutes delay in the threatened departure. Hutch sank back down on the couch, but held his peace until Starsky was forced to give up on the visual inspection of his home and meet the inquiring pale gaze. Starsky winced. Hutch’s eyes always got a little lighter when his suspicions were aroused. Some of the vivid blue paled out and left behind the icy reflection of the cop who was never far from Hutch’s surface.

“You want to tell me what’s going on, Starsk?” Hutch asked. “It’s a little late to start playing twenty questions tonight.” One hand waved vaguely toward the clock in the kitchen that neither of them could see.

“Going on?” Starsky asked, as innocently as he could. Not a very convincing act, it seemed. Hutch’s eyes had narrowed, zeroing in on the lie like a heat seeking missile. Starsky dropped his gaze to the wide “v” created by the open buttons on Hutch’s shirt, realized this wasn’t any safer view, and switched to a study of his own hands where they lay in his lap. “Nothing’s going on.”

“Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t the only cat on a hot tin roof around here tonight,” Hutch challenged. “Come to think of it, you’ve been acting funny since I picked you up this afternoon. You didn’t even complain about taking my car.”

“Told you. Think I’ve got a bad spark plug,” Starsky repeated his lie of the afternoon in a mumble that he could hear held even less conviction than it had the first time he had told it. Damn Hutch, anyway. If he was so transparent to his partner, why couldn’t Hutch just read his mind and save Starsky the trouble of lining up sentences in his brain in some sort of coherent order and then transferring them to his tongue, ungarbled by nerves that had been strung tighter than piano wire since he had awakened this morning with a decision finally made.

“Then you invite me up after shift,” Hutch continued laying out his case. “Promise me beer and food. Only there’s nothing in your refrigerator except half a can of flat coke and a jar of mayo with an expiration date that passed while Johnson was still in office.”

Starsky heard the couch creak, felt the warmth approach well before Hutch’s hand settled on his shoulder where it squeezed and then patted in affectionate reassurance. “Come on, buddy. Spit it out. I haven’t seen you this jumpy since… I can’t remember the last time. Whatever it is, you can tell your Uncle Hutch.”

That was exactly what Starsky had decided in the shower last night. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t tell Hutch. Hutch would understand. But….

Starsky forced himself to abandon the fascinating sight of his fingers trying to strangle each other, raised his head, and let Hutch have the windows to his soul. Silently, he pleaded with Hutch to read his mind while the words he needed ricocheted around inside his skull.

“Starsk?” Hutch prompted gently, the deep crease that always signaled worry appearing between his eyebrows.

There was no help for it, Starsky just didn’t know how to dissemble, couldn’t sneak up on a subject in his bare feet. Resignedly, Starsky accepted the limitations of his own nature, opened his mouth and let his confession blurt out. “I love you,” he said, immediately wishing he could snatch even these three words back. He wanted to say them again because they were the truth, but rinse them of the challenge his tone had made of them. This unexpected discovery he had made, examined, and worried at until he knew he had to share it should be offered in the same gentle wonder with which they echoed in his heart.

Surprise mutated to relief and then into puzzlement that lingered on Hutch’s face until he seemed to realize that Starsky had said all he had to say. “I love you, too, buddy,” he echoed encouragingly.

There was a part of Starsky that wanted to hit Hutch then, right between the eyes that could read in a minute when Starsky was coming down with a cold, but stared at him now in mute incomprehension. But it wasn’t Hutch’s fault that Starsky was suddenly throwing him a curve ball from way outside the baseline of their friendship, so Starsky sighed instead.

Hutch needed some more words, and Starsky didn’t have any. Maybe it was time he let actions speak for him. His gaze fell to Hutch’s mouth where a half smile lingered, emphasizing the fullness of that upper lip that, just recently, had taught Starsky all known meanings for the word temptation.

Laying one on him, without warning of some kind, seemed just a little too crude. Starsky searched his mind for some other, less dramatic, way to let actions speak louder than words. He found it in the hand that continued to rest on his shoulder. Carefully, he gathered that offer of comfort into his own hand, lifted and turned it as he brought it to his mouth. He met Hutch’s eyes again, saw dawning comprehension a moment before he pressed his lips firmly into the soft, moist flesh of Hutch’s palm.

“If I had stayed,” Hutch continued, reaching out again, looking so wounded when Starsky evaded his hand that Starsky had no choice but to lie still, let that hand fall on his shoulder, shiver beneath the brief journey it made to lie flat-palmed against his neck. “If I had –”

“I said forget it, Hutch,” Starsky demanded again, but there was no conviction left in his voice, just a desperate plea that Hutch not put irresistible temptation in his way when he feared he didn’t have the strength of will to resist it. “You think I want a sacrificial lamb in my bed.”

“It isn’t like that,” Hutch insisted, earnest in his belief, the way only he could be.

“You said no, Hutch,” Starsky reminded him, desperately hanging on to that memory to help him reject Hutch now. “Less than a week ago, it was no. You were nice about it, but I got the message. You love me, babe, but you don’t want me.”

“You think I don’t know my own mind?” Hutch protested, his voice gentle, his hands less so as they found a grip on Starsky’s shoulders. “Think I’d offer to sleep with you, want to sleep with you, out of guilt?”

Suddenly, Starsky found himself no longer having to resist temptation quite so hard. He could accept the hands that drew him up until they were pressed together, held chest to chest by the same strength he had clung to only a few moments before, the embrace completed when he slid his arms around Hutch and rested his head on the smooth, cool skin of his shoulder. It was the safest place in the world Starsky knew of, and he was more than willing to live there for the rest of his life. Someday.

But not today.

Gently, Starsky eased back, demanding with his silence that Hutch look at him, hear him and believe him just as he had the night Starsky confessed his love.

“I love you, Starsk,” Hutch whispered, the despair of defeat already coloring his voice.

“I know you do, Hutch. But you’re running scared right now. I’m your best friend, and I know how freaked out you are that you nearly lost me.” Smiling softly, Starsky laid his fingers over Hutch’s lips as they parted in protest. “You’re my best friend, too, babe. Right now, you’d do anything for me, but what kind of friend would I be if I let you?”

“You’d be my lover,” Hutch promised, his lips moving against the silencing fingers in a caress that, with only a little imagination, Starsky could almost feel against his own lips.

“Tempting as that is, babe, I don’t want to trade in one to get the other,” Starsky explained, hoping Hutch would understand, from only the imperfect words Starsky had to give him, that this was his greatest truth.

“You don’t have to,” Hutch insisted with the tenacity that had saved Starsky’s life. “I’ll always be your friend.”

“Not if I take advantage of you now,” Starsky insisted in his turn.

Hutch’s lips pressed into his fingers for a moment, a brief kiss before the big hand encircled his wrist and drew his hand away. Mesmerized, Starsky watched those lips come closer, tasted the tongue tip that peeked out to moisten them. Closer. Closer. The warmth of panting breath sighed between Starsky’s parted lips before he found the strength to turn his head.

“Cut it out, Hutch,” he demanded, the pain of denial eddying into the desire that possessed him, making his heartache sharper than the agony of the aftermath of the chemical cocktail that had invaded his body. “I’m not Superman.”

“You don’t have to be,” Hutch promised, but when Starsky pushed him away, he offered no resistance.

Hutch understood. Starsky could see it in his face now, in the slump of his shoulders and the curving of his spine. All his partner was doing was fighting the inevitable, just as he had fought the certain death Starsky had faced. Refused to believe it because to believe was to invite it. It had worked for him against Bellamy and Jennings, and, Hutch, in his stubbornness, would continue to wage his war on Starsky’s resistance. Wage his private war of temptation until Starsky’s own desire and love defeated him.

“Compromise?” Starsky suggested, and couldn’t help but smile at the caution that took up residence on Hutch’s face.

“What compromise?” Hutch asked suspiciously.

“Six months,” Starsky blurted, frantically making it up as he went along because, even only half-healed, Starsky’s body wasn’t at all in agreement with his heart. “In six months, if you still feel the same way, then….”

“Then what?” Hutch asked.

“Then I’ll be here, Hutch. Six months from tonight,” Starsky bargained.

“You’ll believe me then?” Hutch asked so forlornly that Starsky had to take him back into his arms.

Starsky hugged the man he loved hard enough to pull a grunt out of both of them, and then pushed him away, forcing him up off the bed and an unsteady step back. “I believe you now, Hutch. There’s just too much at stake, for both of us, not to be sure,” he said, and then forced humor into his voice, demanded that Hutch take another step back on his own. “Now go on and get some sleep. Dobey won’t appreciate it if you fall asleep over the daily reports tomorrow.”

When Hutch hesitated, Starsky turned his back, punched up his pillow and lay down, pulled the sheet up over his shoulders and waited. After a moment, he heard a step, but was uncertain whether it approached or retreated. A moment later, a floorboard creaked, the one that always creaked when he stepped on it, the one just inside the bedroom door. With a soft sigh of relief and regret, Starsky curled around the fresh pain, this one in his heart instead of his belly, and closed his eyes.

~~~

“You sure you two don’t want to come back for a drink,” Hutch offered, but that the invitation was made only for the sake of politeness was as apparent in his voice as it was in his face.

Starsky slipped his arm around Nancy’s waist and drew her into his side, grinning at the perfect picture of blond on blonde his partner and new girlfriend made. There was just no denying it — Hutch and Gillian Ingram made a nearly blindingly beautiful couple. It would be almost too good to believe if it wasn’t for the adoration in Hutch’s eyes, mirrored by the devotion in the woman he held beneath a possessive arm.

“Hell, no. Nancy and I have better things to do than watch you two make goo-goo eyes at each other,” Starsky dismissed the invitation as he knew Hutch was depending on him to. “Isn’t that right, Nancy?”

Right on cue, Nancy giggled obligingly. “I think they’re cute.”

“There, you see that, Starsk. We’re cute,” Hutch teased.

“Did somebody forget to tell you cute isn’t in this year,” Starsky scoffed, and waved his free hand as if shooing them away. “Nice meeting you, Gillian.”

“Nice meeting you, Dave,” Gillian started to say before Hutch began dragging her away toward his car. “We’ll have to do this again sometime.”

Starsky watched them go, the smile fading from his face as Hutch gallantly opened the passenger door for his lady and then hurried around to the driver’s side. The door was barely closed behind him before the Galaxy’s engine coughed to reluctant life and the squash pulled out of sight, quickly becoming lost in the traffic on Main Street.

Nope. No doubt about it, Starsky thought, letting disappointment lay claim to him, if only for a moment. Hutch was in love. Head over heels, forget your own name, love. Forgotten, too, was a compromise. Tonight was the night. Six months. And Starsky was still waiting.

“Dave, are you listening to me?”

Starsky tightened his arm around Nancy, content to let disappointment disappear, courted acceptance, but found that his stubborn heart wasn’t quite ready to give up just yet. Waiting still. Unwilling as yet to believe he waited in vain.

“Of course I’m listening to you,” he told the sweet girl who demanded nothing more from him than he had to give, somehow sensing that his heart was already given elsewhere. “You just said you think we’re cute, too,” he guessed, and dropped a kiss on her pouting lips.

Maybe he should have taken Hutch up on his offer all those months ago. Taken what he could get and let the devil take the hindmost. But something told him he had made the right decision. For the time, and for both of them. Someday, he believed, had to believe, the time would be right for them.

Some day. But not today.