We’ll Always Have Brighton

Starsky and Hutch take a little holiday.

With a glass of wine in one hand and a croissant in the other, Hutch lay back, content in his lounge chair, taking in the sight before him. Paris was a beautiful city, that still contained much of it’s bohemian roots. The Eiffel Tower in the distance dominated the view with the sun setting just behind it.

It was a view that couldn’t be beat, even by his gorgeous partner who was sat next to him, sunglasses on and smiling softly.

Perfect. He could happily stay in this moment forever.

And then the beach ball hit him in the face.

Hutch woke up with a jolt, nearly falling out of his deck chair. A young teenager collected his beach ball, giving a feeble apology and ran back to his friends.

“Do that again and I’ll pop it!” Hutch shouted after them.

For the 10th time that day Hutch was glad this was their last day in England.

He’d agreed to the holiday back when Starsky was still in the hospital, trying to survive his second bout of double pneumonia. Hutch had talked about all the places they could go when he got better, promising to let Starsky choose. In between gulps of air, Starsky had mentioned wanting to go to France, saying he’d always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. However, when they came to book the holiday for the week before Starsky went back on official duty, he changed his mind and said he wanted to go to Brighton, England. He’d even made a list of all the things he wanted to do. This list had included seeing a football match, eating jellied eels, having an ice cream at the beach and taking a day trip to London. Sticking to his promise, Hutch booked the holiday, never asking why Starsky had changed his mind.

It had been a nightmare from day one.

A riot broke out at the football game over a botched referee call, Hutch’s camera was stolen outside Buckingham Palace, the jellied eels had made them both throw up, Starsky struggled to get used to driving on the left side of the road and he kept taking the wrong exit on nearly every roundabout getting them lost on more than one occasion. As for having an ice cream on the beach. When the weather was finally nice enough for it, after two days of constant rain, they found the beach packed. It looked as if every British person in the south wanted to take advantage of the hot weather while it lasted.

They’d managed to pitch their umbrella at a fairly quiet spot down the beach with the beautiful view of a burnt down pier.

“Here’s your ice cream,” Starsky said, handing Hutch the iced treat. He was wearing cut-off jeans, a t-shirt and a big straw hat. His skin was finally getting some of it’s old colour back, but he refused to take his t-shirt off. He wasn’t quite ready to show the world his scars.

“Wanna go for a paddle in a bit?” Starsky asked, licking his rapidly melting ice cream.

“How about we swim over to France?” Hutch grumbled.

“Will you drop that.” Starsky sighed. “You asked me where I wanted to go and this is where I wanted to go.”

“And it’s been a blast so far,” Hutch said sarcastically.

“It’s had it’s moments. I enjoyed the fish and chips we had for lunch and you enjoyed…that painting museum we went to.”

“The National Portrait Gallery,” Hutch corrected. “It wasn’t the Louvre, but it had a good collection.”

“There you see.”

They finished off their ice creams in silence, while all around the children played, the sun shined from above and the seagulls squawked over head.

“You never did say why you wanted to come here over Paris,” Hutch asked, cleaning his sticky hands on a napkin.

“You remember Angela, the night nurse?”

“Brunet with the big glasses?”

“Yeah, well, on one of the nights when the pain was really bad, she told me about this trip to Brighton she’d taken her girlfriend on and how much she loved it. She made it sound so romantic and she mentioned Brighton was very…accepting of certain…lifestyles.”

Starsky didn’t need to make it any plainer. Hutch took his partners hand and gave it a squeeze.

“I did wonder why you were being a little more…affectionate this holiday.”

“You wait until I get you back to our hotel after tonight’s dinner.” Starsky wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Hutch couldn’t wait that long. He leaned over and kissed his lover on his ice cream sticky lips, not caring who saw.

Maybe England wasn’t so bad after-all.