I Found This Humerus

Starsky pitches off a parapet during a drug bust and fractures his funny bone. Hutch can’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

Starsky didn’t like falling—which went perfectly with his fear of heights. He’d prefer the good ol’ terra firma, thank you very much. Which was a problem when a humongous drug dealer with murder on his mind had Starsky pinned on the edge of a freeway overpass, determined to push him off.

Equally determined not to fall sixteen feet onto the roadway below, Starsky attempted to kick his assailant in the nuts. That would distract him.

The direct hit from the toe of Starsky’s adidas only managed to further enrage the dealer. He scrunched his massive face, bellowing in Starsky’s ear. Then he shoved.

Feeling his shirt ride up, concrete buttresses scraping the skin along his spine, Starsky grappled with Jumbo, grabbing at his jacket. “Hutch!” he screamed.

Desperately searching for his partner as he toppled backward, Starsky caught a glimpse of Hutch with his suspect on the ground.

Hutch locked eyes with Starsky; staring in disbelief.

The dependability of solid ground giving way to free fall, Starsky watched Hutch raise his weapon, pointing it straight at him.

Gravity claimed Starsky, the roar of pistol fire blotting out all other sound, and he plummeted to the asphalt below. Had Hutch shot at him? Terrified, Starsky expected to see his life in a Technicolor flash, as in every novel he’d ever read. Instead, strategies on how to land formulated rapidly in his whirling brain. Hitting the road flat on his back would be bad—hell, landing would be bad, no matter what– but possibly snapping his spine would be paralytic. He deliberately twisted, air rushing past his cheeks, puffing out his arms in a vain attempt to catch wind and fly.

Starsky crashed onto the macadam, his lungs releasing every molecule of oxygen they’d been holding onto. Around him, car horns blared raucously, brakes screeching as vehicles slammed to a halt. People cried out in a cacophony of alarm.

Not one car hit him.

“Starsky!” a familiar voice yelled anxiously from above.

Not the supreme being. It sounded a lot like Hutch. Starsky harnessed what few brain cells were currently working and looked straight up. Yep. Hutch peered down at him and then disappeared.

Good to know he wasn’t dead. And by he, Starsky was not at all sure he meant himself or Hutch.

Several people crowded around him, from where Starsky couldn’t fathom. The nearby cars, possibly?

“Don’t move him!” someone cautioned. “Could’ve broken his back.”

“Harry ran down to the Emergency phone at the off-ramp,” a woman said. “To call the paramedics.”

Starsky tried to put in a word but his lungs were still attempting to remember how to breathe. Would have thought he’d have learned that when he was newborn, but apparently, he could use a refresher course.

He sucked in the most satisfying breath of his entire thirty-one years, oxygen rushing through his body, enough to supply every cell. Felt amazing. Revitalizing.

All he had to do now was stand up, brush himself off, and go find Hutch. A tall order but nonetheless a goal worth pursuing. Not necessarily right this instant.

Soon.

After he got a few more breaths into his chest.

Beginning to catalogue his injuries, Starsky concentrated on his upper right arm which was definitely the most egregious. Pain radiated from the middle of his chest all down to his right fingers. Miraculously, he could move both legs—at least a tiny bit, despite agony in his shoulders, lower back, and hips.

“Starsky!”

That blessed voice again.

Hutch dropped to his knees, arms outstretched as if belatedly trying to prevent Starsky’s fall. “OhmyGod,” Hutch said, hands hovering inches above Starsky’s body. “You’re bleeding!”

“Arm—“ Starsky attempted, “hurts.” It wasn’t the only body part that was singing a painful chorus but that was a good place to start.

“Your humerus,” Hutch answered breathlessly, stripping off his linen jacket to staunch the blood flow from somewhere around his bicep.

“S’not funny.” Starsky had a certain level of pride for his mastery of both breathing and speaking at the same time. Hutch really shouldn’t be teasing him at a time like this.

“It’s…” Hutch opened his mouth and then snickered, as if caught between anguish and amusement. ”You broke your funny bone.”

“You’re hilarious.” Starsky groaned, the loud whine of an approaching paramedic truck siren too loud to ignore.

~~**~~

“Funny bone.” Dr. Franklin grinned, totally altering his usual morose Bassett hound expression.

That was a revelation. Until that moment, Starsky had been unaware the man could smile. Franklin had patched Starsky up far more often than he would prefer to admit, so he thought he’d seen the good doctor’s entire repertoire of bedside manner many times over.

“That’s a good one, Hutchinson.” Franklin nodded, his inscrutable nothing-surprises -me-anymore mask back in place. “The morphine should help with the pain, Starsky, and you’ll be off to surgery in an hour or so, to set the bone. Probably require a few pins and screws, as well. ”

A nurse who looked like she should be bouncing grandchildren on her knee, not working full shifts in an ER, slid an IV into his left arm with the finesse of an artiste. Starsky’s whole body hurt so badly that the single prick of the needle going in had barely registered. The silky sting of morphine a few minutes later did, though. Felt like the agony dialed down from eleven to maybe five or six. Much, much better.

“Morphine in, Doctor,” she said, noting the time on a sheet of paper.

“Thanks, Winnie.” Franklin glanced at the clock. “Keep your eye on these two. I’ve got to check the patient in exam room three.”

“Thanks, doc,” Starsky slurred, his whole word slowing down until he had to concentrate to speak. “No chance a’getting outta here tonight?”

“You’re staying here if I have to sit on you, mushbrain.”

Hutch appeared in Starsky’s peripheral vision. Actually, Starsky was well aware Hutch had been there the entire time. When had either of them ever left the other alone to be prodded and poked by medical staff when they could avoid it?

“You could be a comedian, y’know that?” Starsky made an attempt to roll his eyes in disgust but that only exacerbated rampant nausea. He swallowed repeatedly, determined not to throw up on the nice nurse’s white uniform when she slid the thermometer between his pursed lips.

“Vitals remarkably normal,” Winnie said with a wink, moving aside to write on the chart.

“You and Franklin were laughin’ at me,” Starsky groused to Hutch. It hadn’t actually hurt his feelings, certainly not with every other place on his body too painful to ignore. However, he felt the need to establish a point—no teasing the injured party.

“Babe.” Hutch’s Adam’s apple climbed his long neck and dived down again when he swallowed. “It was either laugh or cry. You scared the crap out of me.” He laced his fingers through Starsky’s, their palms flat.

Folding his fingers over Hutch’s knuckles, Starsky inhaled cautiously, the comfort shoring him up. He was thoroughly enjoying the mellowing qualities of the morphine. Everything still hurt, particularly his right arm, which had been bundled in layers of wrapping in advance of the surgery, but none of that bothered him any longer.

Hutch looked melancholy, and Starsky wanted to cheer him up while he still had the wherewithal to do so. “Hey,” he said woozily, the walls of the room only swaying slightly. “Plant one on the ol’ kisser b’fore I get shipped to OR.”

“Starsky!” Hutch’s eyes were bright blue beacons highlighting the shocked arousal on his face. “Not—”

“If you do so,” Winnie said, peering sternly at them through her cat’s eye glasses, “Then I will be forced—”

“Ma’am, it was just a joke between us,” Hutch began, hands in front of him as if warding off censure.

“To kiss that ol’ dame I’ve been shacked up with since we were honorably discharged from a MASH unit in 1953,” Winnie went on with a sly grin. “You’re entitled, in my book.”

“Even if my heart rate gets faster?” Starsky snickered. As Hutch had said, it was either laugh or cry.

“Nuisance alarms happen all the time.” Winnie shrugged, pointing her pen at the jagged green tracing on the monitor. “I’ll go get a second bag of Lactated Ringers, and the consent printed up. Won’t be five minutes.”

She hustled out of the little room, rubber soled shoes squeaking on the linoleum.

Hutch’s eyes were just short of googly when he swung around to look at Starsky. “Guess we have to comply with the medical professionals?”

“She’s a nurse, she can’t diagnose.” Starsky reached out with the arm skewered by the IV. Hutch caught his hand, holding on the way he would have on the bridge, had he been closer.

“Still, can’t take any chances.” Hutch leaned in, kissing him gently on the mouth.

Starsky sighed, exactly where he wanted to be, feeling Hutch’s breath enter him, recharging him, and giving him strength. “Hey,” he said suddenly, the events on the bridge coming back to him piecemeal. “Why’d you shoot at me?”

Hutch’s eyes went even wider than when Winnie had uttered her unforgettable threat. “I did not.”

“Saw the massive barrel of your Magnum aimed straight at me,” Starsky said, remembering the retort of the pistol as he pitched off the parapet.

“Was aiming at Coyne,” Hutch said, backing off from the kissing. He caressed Starsky’s bruised left hand instead.

“Who’s Coyne?” Starsky scrunched his forehead. This morphine was really doing a number on him. He couldn’t keep two facts in his head at the same time.

“The big guy.” Using both hands, Hutch sketched an overabundance of shoulders and height in the air. “Banks was the little one.”

“Their names were Banks and Coyne?” Starsky repeated. Had he known that? “Shoulda been forgers, not drug dealers.”

“They were definitely dealers.” Hutch nodded. “Had enough quaaludes, valium, and bennies in an overnight bag to supply every college campus from here to San Francisco.”

“So you shot a’me?” Starsky could hear he was slurring his words, but that was the morphine’s fault, not his. “An’ said fallin’ off a bridge was hum…” It was much more difficult to say than he’d anticipated. “Hum’rous?”

“I shot at Coyne,” Hutch explained patiently, his eyes rolling up toward the ceiling only a little bit. “Hit him in the leg. I tried to reach you…but you fell off and broke your arm. Your humerus.”

“S’not funny,” Starsky pouted as the OR techs came to wheel him off to surgery.

~~**~~

Propped in his hospital bed with his arm plastered in thick, heavy cast, Starsky wanted to scratch his shoulder in the worst way. Which, he knew full well would hurt worse than it did now—because he’d already tried three different ways to twist his left hand into the correct position to get at the annoying itch. Various scrapes, bruises, bumps, and cracked ribs all chimed in to remind him of his fall, making it difficult to get comfortable. The morphine only helped so much at this point.

He wanted Hutch.

He wanted distraction.

He wanted out of this torture palace.

The door creaked when it opened widely. About to complain for the 99nth time that he needed a different room, one with a door with silent hinges—or, as a last resort, a can of WD-40 so he could haul himself, cast and all, out of bed to oil the damned thing, when a small skeleton peered around the edge of the door.

Still caught up in the throes of his mini-rant, Starsky stared at the apparition. His every six-hour dose of morphine must have been a bigger than usual amount because the skeleton was floating in mid-air, and it wasn’t anywhere near October 31st.

At second glance, it was stuffed, and he could just make out long, slender human fingers covered in normal skin holding up the skeleton.

“Hutch!” he bellowed, distinctly grumpy.

“Scare you?” Hutch asked, giving the doll a little shake before tossing him into Starsky’s lap.

“No.” Starsky had to maintain his pride, even at a time like this. He batted the toy to one side. “Where’d you get him, at Darcy Department store’s after Halloween sale bin?”

“It’s mid-February,” Hutch said. “Nowhere near October 31st.”

Which was exactly the point.

“This is for a little…” Hutch rescued the skeleton and waggled his bony arm as if making it wave hello, “anatomy lesson.”

Starsky narrowed his eyes. “You bringing up my lack of college education again?”

“Nope.” Hutch climbed onto the bed, on Starsky’s good arm side.

The arm that only had an IV and not a three hundred pound cast. Hutch stretched his long legs out next to Starsky’s, settling in for a nice long stay.

Starsky wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand—the less encumbered hand, having Hutch this close could facilitate kissing. On the other, it could bring on decided frustration since sex was quite out of the equation for the foreseeable future, probably even after he was discharged wearing enough plaster to anchor a boat in the harbor. “You comfy?” he asked, prickly and half aroused. He wanted Hutch beside him, all big, warm, and comfortable, and couldn’t handle the distraction.

“I am. And this has nothing to do with you not going to college. You’re an extremely intelligent guy.” Hutch smiled dazzlingly, making the skeleton’s skinny legs prance and jig.

Starsky stared at him, trying in vain to avoid drowning in the depths of those crystal blue eyes. Hutch complementing him? “What’s your angle, buster?” he challenged to keep himself from kissing those sweet lips. His current nurse, Staff Sergeant Iron Butt Mary Katherine, was nowhere near as liberal minded as that wonderful ER nurse Winnie.

“This is simply an anatomy lesson.” Hutch tucked the doll onto his lap, folding his hands over the doll’s bony chest.

“There are two hundred six bones in the human body,” Starsky recited. He might be higher than a kite on morphine but he could remember every single trivial fact he’d ever learned. Never quite decided whether it was a blessing or a curse when he couldn’t pass geometry if he tried. And he had. Three times.

“Impressive.” Hutch nodded.

“Betcha didn’ think I knew that, huh?” Starsky licked his lips. All this talking was making him thirsty and Hutch’s proximity was becoming harder to resist. A lot harder, judging by the sensations coming from his penis.

Wasn’t morphine supposed to suppress that sort of thing?

“An’.” He raised a finger the way Hutch often did, poking at his blintz’s manly chest. Which also felt hard—and soft—at the same time. “Babies got even more bones—uh…” The number was on the edge of his tongue, tantalizing and slightly frustrating. “Can you give me some water?”

“Even better.” Like some magician, Hutch produced two bottles from the depths of his jacket. “Gatorade. Electrolytes to keep your body balanced and well hydrated.”

He opened the bottle since Starsky only had one hand. Which was such a kind gesture, Starsky felt the whole situation tottering into a soapy scene. He guzzled half the sweet red contents to thwart that emotion. “Terrific,” he said, emitting a loud burp. “Three hundred.”

“Three hundred what?” Hutch asked, in the act of unscrewing his own bottle top.

“Baby bones.” Starsky giggled. That was fun to say. “Bitty baby bones.”

“Ah, that’s true.” Hutch turned his face to Starsky’s, their noses all but touching.

Starsky didn’t hesitate. He kissed Hutch. Felt far, far better than a shot of morphine, that was for sure.

“The maxillary and the mandible,” Hutch said against his lips.

“Wha?” That was not at all conducive to kissing.

“Sternocleidomastoid,” Hutch continued, sipping Gatorade. “Which has to be one of the best named parts of the entire body.”

“Sterno-clyde…” Starsky tripped over his tongue in the process but it was a fantastic word. “Mastoid. Isn’t that a dog?”

“It’s a muscle band that connects the sternum, clavicle and mastoid process so you can—” Hutch took a drink with a frown. “Oh, you mean a Mastiff. Fine dog.”

“Who are you and what did you do with non-nonsensical Ken Hutchinson—” Starsky snickered. Gatorade didn’t generally make him drunk. Must be the effects of the morphine. Or maybe just having his lover in bed with him when his mast was raised and there was no way to trim the sail.

“That is not a word.”

“Wha?” Hutch was not usually this confusing.

“Non-“ Hutch stroked Starsky’s cheek gently and kissed him. “Nonsensical is not a real word. However, cranium and zygomatic are.”

“Isn’t a zygo a baby?”

“Zygote. And technically, it’s a fertilized cell, so sort of a baby. “ Hutch plopped the skeleton into Starsky’s lap.

Which incidentally, or possibly on purposefully, did terrific things to his erection.

“Don’t change the subject,” Hutch scolded. “You and I are never going to get a zygote between us.”

“We could ask a girl for one.” Starsky had to inject that point because, yes, he was well aware that he and Hutch could not make a baby. But if there was a reason to want a mini Kenny, or baby Davey, and he could see why there might be a reason, there was more than one way around the two guys can’t procreate thing.

Hutch stared at him with such a blindsided by love expression, he made Starsky want to dance. Like that was possible with a two ton weight on his arm.

“You really are—” Hutch inhaled happily. “Remarkable.”

“And here I thought I was on narcotics,” Starsky said fondly, leaning against him. “I know what you’re trying to do—get me t’name the bones on ol’ Clydo here.”

“Clydo?” Hutch shifted, putting an arm around Starsky.

“Sterno-clydo—” That one still had the power to tie his tongue in knots, which was unfair when he was high.

“Mastoid,” Hutch finished for him. He touched the base of Starsky’s neck. “Right there, helps you turn your head. Now you’ll never forget.”

“Y’know what’s humorous?” Starsky said straight-faced.

Hutch raised an eyebrow. “The upper bone in your arm?”

“Cracks me up.” Starsky couldn’t hold it any longer, laughing at his own joke.

“Reminds me of a song—”

“The nurses’ll hear you and bounce you out on your gluteus maximus.”

“That’s a muscle.”

“No bones about it.” Starsky snickered. This was exactly what he’d needed, and Hutch had delivered.

“Your back bone’s connected your shoulder bone,” Hutch sang in the warm tenor that Starsky could listen to all day. “Your shoulder bone connected to your neck bone—”

“Your neck bone connected to your head bone,” Starsky joined in, dancing Clydo into Hutch’s lap one handed simply so he could cop a feel of his cop. The skeleton sat down atop the mound on Hutch’s groin and Starsky squeezed, just once. It was all he had in him, a promise for the future when he was less encumbered by ten hundred pounds of plaster. “An’ your cock bone’s connected to—”

“The cock is not a bone,” Hutch said loftily, pushing up into Starsky’s hand.

“Funny thing, cause you got a boner.” Starsky grinned.

“You break it, you bought it.”

FIN