The Ride We’re On

It was the first time Hutch got into his car, in the dark, that Starsky fell in love. It just took him time to realize it.

This fic was inspired by the beautiful song Magnolai Street by Catie Curtis which I discovered through the wonderful fanvid of the same name by Laura McEwan (raynebow68) found here: https://youtu.be/SrDfpOMJvsE

Seriously–go watch it!

Starsky started the drive up the long road to the Bay City Police Academy. It was dark—he’d lost track of time at Al and Rose’s what with all the goodbyes and the well wishes. He took a deep breath at the cool air coming in his open window. Someday he was going to have a car he really loved—not one of Uncle Al’s hand-me-downs. For now, though, this was enough.

He slammed on the brakes as he caught sight of someone trudging along the dark road wearing dark clothes—why on earth no one had thought to put street lights along the tree-lined lane was beyond him. It gave him the creeps. If he was going to be a Bay City police officer, he figured it would have made way more sense to have the academy in the city somewhere. Or at least not in the middle of what seemed like nowhere. He briefly wondered if there were bears roaming nearby. He’d bet his meager savings there were snakes somewhere out there.

His headlights caught hair so blonde it was almost white, and, for a minute, Starsky thought he was in one of the horror movies he loved so much. But then he noticed the suitcase and the duffel bag. A fellow cadet? The man turned at the sound of squealing brakes and stared—frozen in the light like an animal about to be run over.

Starsky leaned across the bench seat. “Need a ride? You a cadet?”

The man looked at him and smiled—all white teeth and blue eyes in a face pale as moonlight. “Thank you. My wife, uh… Yeah.” The man blushed.

“You can put your stuff in the back,” Starsky told him.

When the guy got into the car, he hunched forward, his long legs crunched up in the too small space, and rubbed his hands together in front of the heating vent. Starsky turned up the heat without thinking.

“Name’s Dave Starsky,” he told the man.

“Ken Hutchinson,” the other man said. “Some of my friends call me Hutch.”

“Nice to meet ya, Hutch,” Starsky said as they shook hands. He felt warmth curl like smoke in his belly at the touch and the answering smile. He didn’t know it yet, but that was the moment he fell in love.

“You ready?” Hutch asked as they went through the doors of Memorial into the sun of a September day.

Starsky tilted his head back to look up at Hutch, who was wearing sunglasses that shaded his eyes.

“Yeah. Yeah I am,” Starsky told him. Hutch smiled down at him, squeezed his shoulder gently—Hutch seemed afraid to touch him most days now, as if Starsky were going to break.

Humpty-Dumpty, Starsky thought. I’m all put together again, babe. A bit cracked but not broken.

Hutch nodded and then trotted off to get the car. Starsky sat patiently—he’d learned patience over the past months, even if he was eager to leave Memorial behind.

“You take care, Dave,” Melinda said. She was one of his favorite nurses, a grandmotherly type who never kicked Hutch out if she was on night shift, who shared pictures of her pets and didn’t tell him ‘I told you so’ when he ate something that didn’t agree with him in those first uneasy weeks on the road to recovery.

“I will,” he told her. “Although I’m gonna miss your smiling face, darlin'”

She laughed. “The sixth floor just isn’t going to be the same without your presence. Whatever will I do without your charms?”

“I could stay,” Starsky said.

“I’m retiring in two years. Try to hold off on coming back for any visits as a patient.”

“You got…” Starsky stopped as he looked at the car coming to pick him up.

He got to his feet—a bit stiffly, but he didn’t need any help.

“It’s my car.” He looked at Melinda and then back at the Torino—all shiny paint and looking as if nothing had ever happened. Hutch got out and came around the hood, wearing a smile that could have powered Bay City.

“It’s my car,” he said again, but this time to Hutch. He ducked his head and blinked hard once, twice, three times. His throat hurt with joy—all bottled so tight, he couldn’t get it out.

“Yeah.” Hutch had taken off his glasses, and Starsky looked into those ocean blue eyes and felt like he was drowning.

“Huh?”

Hutch shook his head and kept his arm on Starsky’s bicep. “I said surprise.” Then he pulled Starsky closer, moved his arm from bicep to shoulder. He did that little squeeze he’d done before. “You okay?”

Starsky nodded, afraid to speak. He swallowed a few times and then finally took a step towards the car. “How did you…I thought…how did you get…” He couldn’t seem to get all the questions out in a coherent order.

Hutch opened the passenger door, held on as Starsky lowered himself to the seat. “Merl did a great job, didn’t he?”

Starsky ran his hands over the leather—it smelled new, but it was his car. There was a little scuff in the dashboard—where Hutch had once scraped his keys. He rubbed it with his index finger as Hutch got in the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition.

“You ready, babe?” he asked.

“How did Merl get it done so quick? I thought she was gone for good.” Starsky looked at Hutch’s hands, one on the key, the other on the steering wheel. He watched as Hutch’s jaw tightened—it was something he noticed more often since…since May. That and the way Hutch’s shoulders had only recently loosened away all the tension he’d carried for so long.

“He got some of the kids from that tech school to help. They got school credit. He got to work on your baby and,” Hutch shrugged before he looked over at Starsky, “many hands make light work.”

Starsky smiled. “Guess they do.” But he found his gaze drawn back to Hutch’s hands. He didn’t remember much from those first hazy days when he woke up from the surgery and the coma, but he did remember Hutch’s hands, touching, grounding. Just like the first time he’d shook Hutch’s hand on that long ago January night.

He knew. It seemed to Starsky that the sky should flash lightning at his sudden realization. Or maybe not. Because it wasn’t really so sudden after all. It was the first time Hutch got into his car that he’d fallen in love.

“Ready to go home?” Hutch asked, finally turning the key.

Starsky felt the rumble, oh so familiar, of the engine deep in his bones. “Can we drive?”

Hutch glanced at him, frowned. “You sure you’re up to something like that? We should probably get home.”

Home—not the apartment, not Hutch’s either. But a little bungalow a half hour up the coast where ocean breezes would help Starsky’s still healing lung.

Starsky just looked at him. He didn’t say please; he didn’t need to. For a while, Starsky worried their bond had broken along with his body, along with the bullets, but it was there same as always. If anything, it felt stronger than it had in years.

Hutch shook his head and muttered something Starsky didn’t quite catch, but the frown had turned into a smile. Starsky’s release was Hutch’s too.

“Where do you want to go?” Hutch asked as he pulled out of the parking lot and into the midday traffic. “And,” he pointed his finger at Starsky, “you will tell me if you start getting tired. I’m not carrying you into the house if you’re sleepy.”

“I don’t care where. Just drive.” Starsky’s stomach chose that moment to growl. He rubbed it. He’d been too excited to eat breakfast and last night’s supper was a long time ago.

“You want to go to Huggy’s?” Hutch asked. “Melinda said you didn’t eat today.”

Starsky wanted to see their friend, but the thought of going into the darkened bar and being out of the sunshine for even a moment felt too confining. “Not today. You pick somewhere. Somewhere outside.”

Hutch nodded and took one hand off the wheel. He rested it on Starsky’s thigh. Starsky covered the broad hand with his own for just a moment before Hutch moved it back to steer.

It seemed too bright outside the little world within the Torino. So he watched Hutch drive. He wouldn’t ever admit but Hutch was a good driver. Steady, focused, alert. There was no one else he would have let drive his car.

Memories washed over him in waves—with them in reverse. Him driving, Hutch sitting in the passenger seat, drinking milk and eating toast with boysenberry jam. Nights when it seemed they were the only two people in the whole of Bay City. Arguments over where to eat, stakeouts with Starsky regaling Hutch with some odd bit of trivia, bursts of adrenaline when they were on the trail of a suspect, quiet moments when neither of them had to say a word because one knew the thoughts of the other as well as his own.

Hutch turned and Starsky looked out the windshield. “Hey!”

“Good enough?” Hutch asked as he pulled into a spot at the Chubby Chicken Drive-In.

“Good? This is great.” Starsky rubbed his hands together.

Hutch laughed and shook his head. “What are you gonna have, Starsk?”

Starsky hesitated only a moment. “Burger, fries, onion rings, and a chocolate malt shake.”

“Sounds good to me.” Hutch gave the order the car hop along with his own, substituting the chocolate malt for a vanilla shake.

“You’re eating what I got?” Starsky asked. “Health food king Hutch?”

Hutch shrugged. “You only live once. Besides, we’re celebrating, right?”

“This is nice.” Starsky nudged Hutch’s arm. “Just like old times.”

He didn’t miss the shadow that passed over Hutch’s face. He wondered how many memories were floating around Hutch’s head. Probably not happy ones—but blasts of gunshot, breaking glass, the crunch of metal.

Their food came, and they dug in. Starsky thought a burger had never tasted so good, although it was probably more because of the company and the circumstances than the actual quality of it.

He managed half before he had to stop. Although he had no dietary restrictions, he was still working his way back to eating normal amounts of food.

“You done?” Hutch asked as he looked over the remains of Starsky’s meal.

“Yeah. Can’t stuff any more in there.”

Hutch got out, threw away their trash—Starsky noticed Hutch had eaten even less than he had.

“Where to next?” Hutch started up the car and backed out.

“Around,” Starsky said. He didn’t really care where Hutch drove.

Hutch took them through their old beat. Somehow, they began playing the game of “remember when.” Remember when Lijah used to hang out down that alley? Remember when we busted Trostle for hustling? Remember, remember, remember.

Starsky wasn’t even sure why they were doing it. It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t be going back to work with Hutch. But it wasn’t going to be on the same streets. They’d be working at the Academy as instructors—and as Hutch began the drive out of the city, Starsky remembered that first meeting all those years ago.

And he knew. He knew what he’d known then when he first saw Hutch’s smile, when their hands first met, and the warmth curled in his belly like smoke. He loved Hutch. He didn’t think he’d fallen in love with Hutch as much as he’d quietly settled into love with Hutch. It was like getting a new pair of shoes and, over time, breaking them in until you slipped them in the morning and they felt more right than any shoes you’d ever worn before. Or the way your hands fell right into place on the steering wheel of your car, worn smooth with just a little groove where your pinky rings rubbed against the leather day after day after day. It was the way jeans fit after you’d worn them again and again, soft and almost like flannel. That was what loving Hutch was like, Starsky realized—the quiet, simple love that was just…there and had been all along.

Hutch drove and Starsky watched as the suburbs were left behind, and the traffic thinned. Hutch got off the highway and drove some more. Starsky felt he could already breathe easier—here where the sky seemed bluer and the air cooler and the ocean was a presence even if he couldn’t see it.

“We’re home,” Hutch said as he pulled up a driveway to a small bungalow. It reminded him of a mix of Hutch’s canal-side cottage and the rundown house they’d bought together. There were flowers growing alongside the path to the door, purple and gold ones that he didn’t know the names of. They weren’t as alone as he thought because now he noticed the other houses zigzagged along the road. But they were alone enough.

“You like it?” Hutch asked.

Starsky looked away from the house, at Hutch, at the way his body tensed as if he was afraid Starsky was going to say he hated it and demand to go back to Bay City for the next two months. He nodded, suddenly unable to speak. And then it all bubbled up inside him—a pressure building so strong that he felt if he didn’t release it, all those ugly scars patch-worked across his abdomen and chest and back would pop open and he would dissolve into nothingness like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy threw the water on her.

“I love you,” he said to Hutch.

“I love you too.” Hutch put his hand on Starsky’s knee, squeezed oh so gently. “You wanna see the place?”

“No. I mean yes. I mean, Hutch. Listen to me. I love you.”

He waited and watched as Hutch thought. He could see those thoughts—Hutch thinking what’s the catch, Hutch thinking where’s the but.

“There’s no but,” Starsky said when Hutch opened his mouth. “None at all.”

“You love me.” Hutch looked as if he was tasting wine as he said them, carefully testing them in his mouth.

“I do.” Starsky touched Hutch’s face, let his hand rest against Hutch’s cheek, rubbed his thumb along the line of Hutch’s jaw.

“Starsk.” Hutch’s voice broke. “Oh, Starsk.”

They lay in the big bed much later, the bed that was supposed to be Starsky’s alone but would always be theirs together. Hutch ran his fingers over the scars, and Starsky didn’t feel they were so ugly anymore. Not when they’d been kissed and reverently stroked.

He ran his fingers through Hutch’s hair, played with the curls at the nape of Hutch’s neck. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

Hutch raised himself on one elbow, his lips still looking wonderfully kissable. “I think you got me beat in the looks department.”

Starsky made a face. “Well, if ya got it, flaunt it.”

Hutch laughed and Starsky felt it vibrate through his body.

“When?” Hutch asked even later. The stars were out and Starsky could see them through the bedroom window. So many stars out here.

“When what?”

“When did you know?” Hutch had his hand on Starsky’s belly, a surprisingly intimate touch Starsky found. He curled his toes at the pleasure it brought.

“The first time you got in my car,” Starsky told him. “Along the road to the academy. It was dark, and you were walking alone with your suitcase and duffel bag.”

“You turned up the heat without me even asking,” Hutch said, his voice soft. “I knew then. At least I knew something.”

“Yeah?”

“I was in the right car. It’s always been the right car with you.”

Starsky had to look away, back at the wealth of stars. He blinked away the moisture in his eyes and listened to Hutch’s quiet breaths. This was home. This was going to be the ride of their lives.