Holy Palmers’ Kiss

453

After the events of The Psychic, Starsky and Hutch go home.

 

Fluff and Shakespeare quotes. Starsky knows Hutch better than Hutch knows himself sometimes.

Author Notes: Written for MatSir who suggested that Hutch needed some care after being shot in The Psychic.

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They’re quiet as they enter Hutch’s apartment. It’s dark and cool, and neither of them bothers to turn on a light at first.

Hutch heads towards the kitchen, moving in the way that means pain and muscles gone tight. Starsky watches him open the fridge and stand, head bowed, right hand braced on the top of the door. The light illuminates his frame, surrounding him with a suffuse glow that reminds Starsky a bit too much of an angel.

“Shit.”

When Hutch speaks, his voice is low and rough as if he’d been screaming, and he gives that little cough that has been coming off and on ever since he was shot—or not shot. Starsky isn’t sure what to call it when you take a bullet to a vest and it knocks you off your feet and through a plate-glass window and your partner, who loves you more than life itself, thinks you’ve been killed.

Starsky stirs himself into action, moving to Hutch’s side, placing a hand low on Hutch’s back, rubbing that same hand up over the cotton of Hutch’s shirt.

“No beer?” Starsky asks, as he peers into the fridge too.

Hutch shakes his head. “No.”

“There’s root beer,” Starsky offers. “And you’ve got vanilla ice cream in the freezer from Kiko’s birthday.”

Hutch turns to face him, more slowly than Starsky would like. “Root beer floats? What are we, ten?”

“Suit yourself, but I’m having one.” Starsky reaches past him to snag two bottles because he knows Hutch is going to drink most of his just to make sure Starsky made it right. So he may as well make two right from the start.

“‘Sides,” Starsky continues, “beer on top of that painkiller shot you got in the Emergency Room’d have you drooling on the floor inside of two minutes.”

Hutch makes a little huffing sound, which means he knows Starsky’s right, but he’s not willing to admit it.

“Go. Sit,” Starsky orders.

He knows how much Hutch is still hurting when there’s no sarcastic comment.

Hutch turns on a few lights as he goes through the apartment and out to the greenhouse balcony. Starsky watches as Hutch finally sits, surrounded by green, growing things. It reminds Starsky they’re alive, Joanna is alive—and the kidnappers…are not. Starsky puts that thought into a little mind box he keeps the bad stuff in and hopes Hutch never winds up in there.

He focuses instead on now—on the way the root beer bubbles and foams in the glasses Starsky pulled from the cabinet, the smoothness of the ice cream as he runs the scoop through it, the little flecks of black vanilla beans which means Hutch bought the good stuff and not the cheap stuff that only pretends to be vanilla. The ice cream bobs and teeters in the glasses, and Starsky digs in Hutch’s drawer for some straws he knows Hutch squirrels away any time they get sodas while on duty. Why buy it if you can get it for free seems to be Hutch’s motto. Unless it’s a plant—Hutch’ll spend what seems to be a ridiculous sum for a new plant baby.

“Here,” he says and hands Hutch his very own float with the bendy straw. The straw Starsky would have used any other night, but not this night. Not when Hutch needs it more.

Hutch takes it with a grunt and turns his attention to a wispy fern. Hutch has told him the Latin name of it more times than Starsky can count, but a fern’s a fern’s a fern—or so Willie Shakespeare said. Something like that.

He watches Hutch put the straw in his mouth and drink—absent minded. He’s not sure where Hutch’s mind has gone during the course of this day. Did Hutch remember he had the vest on? Starsky wonders. Was there a moment when Hutch thought he was going to die as he flew through the window?

Some day when they were driving on patrol and the sun was shining and the air was coming through the windows feeling all fresh and clean, he’d ask. Not today. Today, tonight, Starsky doesn’t want to know. He wants to watch Hutch touch the fern with a gentle finger, with those broad, strong, steady, always there when he needs them hands.

Starsky can feel his heart speed up a little as he watches Hutch caress the plant. He closes his eyes and drinks a little of his root beer float, imagining Hutch touching him with as much care. He shifts a little in the chair, his jeans feeling tighter.

Hutch turns to him, his eyes gone wide. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Starsky drinks some more of the float. He aims for nonchalance, isn’t sure if he’s successful when Hutch doesn’t avert his gaze. “You?”

“Good. I’m good.” Hutch picks up his float and drinks it way too fast. His eyes scrunch up the way they do when he has a headache.

“Ow,” Starsky says in sympathy. “Ice cream headache?”

Hutch nods, but it’s more than that. Starsky can tell. He can always tell with Hutch.

He sets his own glass down, takes Hutch’s, and holds out his hand.

“You need a hot shower. Get those muscles loosened up.”

“You gonna give me one?” Hutch is getting snarly, which Starsky knows means the day is crashing down around them.

“Maybe.” Starsky keeps himself from sighing when Hutch takes his hand and allows himself to be helped to his feet.

Hutch laughs and then coughs again. Nothing to worry about, the doctor said. Bruising, soreness, but everything is okay and nothing is punctured or broken or out of place.

Starsky gets the bathroom ready while Hutch hunts for a pair of soft pajama pants and a t-shirt.

“I’ve been taking a bath on my own for a long time, Starsk,” Hutch says when he comes in and looks at the towel laid on the closed toilet lid.

“Uh huh.” Starsky nods and turns on the shower. Hutch’s water always takes time to get warm enough, and the one thing Hutch doesn’t need is cold water. “Get naked. Get in.”

Hutch puts his hands on the hem of his t-shirt and looks at Starsky. “Don’t be ridiculous. Get out.”

Starsky crosses his arms over his chest and compromises by turning to face the bathroom door. “I’ll even close my eyes. And it’s not like I’ve never seen you naked.”

Hutch sighs—one of his long-suffering ones. Starsky knows all of Hutch’s sighs. “Stop rolling your eyes at me.”

He hears the swish of the curtain being pulled back and then the same sound as it’s put back into place. There’s another sigh from behind the curtain as the warm water hits Hutch in all the right places.

Starsky knows how Hutch is standing—he’s seen him do it often enough in the station locker room. Hands against the wall, head under the spray, still, letting the water sluice down his body without moving.

He tries to ignore the overwhelming need to relieve the pressure of his growing erection. Starsky tries thinking of arctic snow, of anything other than the way Hutch looked lying in the broken doorway. He’s almost succeeded when there’s a gasp from behind the curtain and a choked off sound.

Starsky’s out of his clothes and in the shower with Hutch without a thought. He wonders if he’s set a new Guinness World Record for getting naked.

Hutch’s eyes are closed, and he’s breathing hard. “St…”

“I’m here,” Starsky says. “What happened?”

“Just moved the wrong way.” Hutch’s face is wet, and Starsky’s pretty sure it’s with more than water.

“Okay. Okay. Let me take care of you.” Starsky takes the washcloth from Hutch’s lax hand and then looks.

Hutch’s chest is all mottled black and blue— the bruise on the left, wrapping around to his side.

“Oh babe,” Starsky murmurs. “Oh babe.”

He drops the cloth because it seems it would hurt too much and gently, as gently as Hutch caressed the fern, touches his lips to the bruise.

The skin is hot underneath his lips — as if there’s a fever in the bruise. If he could, he’d make it better, but he doesn’t have that kind of power. Kisses only take away the pain when you’re a kid.

“Let go,” Starsky tells him, meaning more than the shower. To his astonishment, Hutch does. He can see it in the way Hutch’s shoulders lose their rigidity, the way his body finally gives up the fight to be in control.

Hutch doesn’t open his eyes the whole time Starsky cares for him, washes his hair, bends down to wash the length of Hutch’s legs. He simply exists.

Starsky knows what it feels like—exhaustion, exhilaration, fear, joy, all of it mixed up and jumbled in your head.

He’s glad for a mostly pliant Hutch, even for a silent one, as he maneuvers him out of the shower, dries him off, and gets him naked into bed.

Hutch says nothing when Starsky gets in beside him, simply turns his hand palm up, and waits.

Starsky puts his hand into Hutch’s, palm to palm.

“‘Palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss,'” Hutch says.

He’s knows it’s from Romeo and Juliet, but Starsky figures he’ll let Hutch feel superior. He’s earned it.

“Yeah?”

“Romeo and Juliet,” Hutch says and then falls quiet again.

“I can think of another kiss,” Starsky says. He’d jerked himself off in the shower, aware Hutch wasn’t aware. Mastery of a quiet hand job had been learned in high school in Aunt Rosey’s very unprivate house.

Hutch turns his head, opens his eyes. Starsky stares into them. Sometimes he feels he could drown in the lake blue of Hutch’s eyes.

“I don’t think I can do anything but kiss,” Hutch says. “The mind is willing, but the body is way too weak. Don’t know what the doctor gave…” His voice trails off and he keeps staring at Starsky, blinking slowly.

Starsky leans in, presses a kiss to Hutch’s lips. Hutch responds, barely.

He hums just as Starsky knew he would, and Starsky grins and then places feather-soft kisses on each of Hutch’s now closed eyelids and another on his lips. He kisses his fingertips and touches them to the bruises on Hutch’s chest. “Sleep, babe.”

Hutch grumble-mumbles something, but he’s already off to dreamland. And Starsky remembers another line from Romeo and Juliet—he’s not sure when he’s going to tell Hutch he was Mercutio in the tenth grade play.

“‘For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night,'” Starsky whispers and falls asleep beside Hutch, palms touching.