Shaking In My Thighs That I Can’t Control

Author’s Note: Originally published in SHarecon zine 2023 as ‘Take Me All The Way Home’, and betaed by Squares back then.

Note on anachronisms: ‘Hollywood Nights’, which is referenced herein, didn’t actually come out until 4 years after this story is set – 1974, around Starsky’s NYC visit referenced in The Velvet Jungle. I’m fudging the dates slightly and deciding someplace called ‘Bay City’ existing in California somehow affected the timeline enough that Seger recorded the album four years early.

Shockingly, this doesn’t have a playlist, but if it did it would consist solely of Samantha Sang’s ‘You Keep Me Dancing’ and Melissa Etheridge’s ‘All The Way Home’ played on repeat, the latter of which is where (both variations of) the title come from.

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Starsky hasn’t told Hutch he’s coming home tonight. Honestly, he doesn’t know how he’s managed that, given how bad he is at keeping secrets from Hutch. Even with 3000 miles between them. But he called him this morning, carefully sussed out that he doesn’t have a girl over tonight – that would’ve been awkward, but he doesn’t seem to have had a single date the whole time Starsky’s been gone – and then called the airline the second Hutch had hung up and booked himself one seat on the next JFK-LAX flight.

It’s not that he doesn’t want Hutch to know he’s back; on the contrary, he’s planning to make sure of it. But Hutch would have wanted to pick him up if he’d known, and, well. The Torino had been in long-term parking at the airport, and Starsky’s going to need the entirety of the LA to Bay City drive to pull himself together for this.

*****

It had started with a phone call.

Well, honestly, it had probably started five years ago at the Bay City Police Academy, but Starsky was sticking with the phone call for now. Nicky had started teasing him about the fact that he was calling Hutch every night, and he didn’t even know about all the times he’d stood outside payphone boxes and only stopped himself by remembering the insane cost of a call to California.

Anyway, even though Starsky was more than capable of defending himself from little-brother mockery, Ma had stepped in to warn Nicky off with that particular glint in her eyes – only to conspicuously check Starsky was listening before she continued, “Of course, he only calls me once a week, you’d think maybe he could spare a little of that love for his poor old mother, stuck alone across the country, huh?”

Which had led to strident protestations of the ‘alone’ from Nicky and decrial of the impracticality of calling New York every single day of his life from Starsky. None of which had stopped Starsky from glancing at the clock ten minutes into the ensuing comfortable ruckus and excusing himself from it, or Nicky from laughing and hurling some reasonably good-natured comment about his ‘girlfriend’ after him as he left the room.

Hutch had picked up inside of three rings, with a quietly hopeful, “Starsky?”

“If not, I’m in the wrong house.”

He could hear the smile in Hutch’s returning, “Idiot. How was Uncle Clem?”

That was the uncle he’d gone to visit that day, an eternal hypochondriac who was widely acknowledged as giving the best hugs in the family. “His hip is going to shatter tomorrow and instantly kill him, apparently. Even though his doctor says he’s got the best bones she’s ever seen in a guy over 60.”

“Well, at least it’s variety,” Hutch said, the muffled noise of a running tap starting up in the background. “Didn’t he have advanced liver cancer last month?”

Starsky laughed. “Ma said it turned out he wasn’t jaundiced at all – he’d just been cooking with turmeric. And you claim it’s healthy.”

“I should know better. Surefire cause of liver failure.”

Hutch really was happy to hear from him, if he was playing along with jabs at his health foods. “Uh-huh. What about your end? You keeping the city warm for me?”

Hutch chuckled, but his responding, “Yeah. Just for you,” had an edge of sincerity to it that Starsky– should have been expecting, probably, but hadn’t been.

Starsky laughed anyway, with an awkward gun-shy edge to it that Hutch probably hadn’t been expecting but probably should have been. “Dobey tried to assign you a temporary partner yet?”

“You think he was ever gonna bother going through that for a couple weeks alone? No, he’s still just keeping me on the desk as much as he can.”

“Well, good,” Starsky said, aware he sounded a smidge too intense about it. “Don’t want you out on the streets when I’m not around to watch your back.”

“Guess I shouldn’t tell you about the barrio bartender I busted yesterday, then.”

“Long as there’s no hospital nurse holding the phone up to your ear right now or anything.”

“My own fingers, I promise. All ten of them.” Hutch paused, then corrected, “Well, five of them.”

“Four and a thumb.”

“That too.”

*****

Starsky takes the coast road. It’s a winding, hilly drive out of Los Angeles proper, and he’s just cresting the final rise before the ocean when the radio starts singing to him about Hollywood nights in Hollywood hills, and he can’t help but laugh. Hutch is the Midwestern boy, so Starsky guesses he’s the one in diamonds and frills. That’s okay, he can pull them off.

The point is, they hadn’t really been saying anything in the phone call that’s rapidly attained capital letters in Starsky’s brain. The Phone Call. Possibly even THe PHone CAll. But the fact that they hadn’t been saying anything, that is the point. The fact that it still felt like relief, like finally easing into a comfortable bed after weeks away – even though it had only been 24 hours since last speaking to him – and the fact that that was what had taken him out of his own bed that night.

*****

Starsky would blame the way he slept that night on an overactive subconscious, tumbling things over and around after that phone call, but the truth was he hadn’t been sleeping that well any night since he landed in NYC. New York would always be home some kinda way, but California had been home for a decade and a half now – next year, he’d have lived as long in Bay City as he had in Brooklyn, which sure was something.

It should probably have felt like more of something, except Starsky had always been sure of his capacity for having two homes. Three, really, because he’d known a while now that wherever Hutch was would always be home – it just happened to coincide with the Bay City one most of the time.

Maybe that should’ve tipped him off earlier, but instead here he was, tossing and turning in a single bed, staring at the wall where his Elvis poster had hung almost twenty years ago and wishing Hutch was around to warm up a different city.

It wasn’t that Hutch had said anything particular. Or anything particularly unusual. Maybe Nicky had just got in his head. Call a guy someone’s girlfriend long enough, it’s bound to have some effect, right? Especially when the guy in question is on the other side of the country and being missed like hell.

Wasn’t like Starsky had ever actually felt like this about any girlfriend. Not exactly, at least – there were echoes and shadows, but nothing that hadn’t faded by a few weeks into any relationship, once they were out of the crazy infatuation can’t-be-apart stage – and that stage might’ve borne some similarity to what it was like not being with Hutch, but it wasn’t what being with him felt like. Hutch mostly only drove him up the wall with things like his stupid diets and having a car any decent garbage collector would turn his nose up at, not with lust or that plain inability to tear his eyes away. When Starsky looked at Hutch to the exclusion of looking at anything else it was because he wanted to, not because he had to.

He got up. Maybe the rugelach in the kitchen cupboard would help him sleep.

*****

He had wanted the drive to think about things, but he’s only halfway home and he’s thought about things enough now. Well, maybe he hasn’t, but the power at his back propelling him towards Hutch is only increasing with every rotation of the wheels taking him a quarter-inch closer, like hands pushing him full-strength or a sustained gale-force wind, and he just wants to be there already. Needs to see him.

Fuck getting it together, he’ll improvise. He’s always been better at that anyway. He can’t physically push the Torino any harder without damaging her or just straight running off the road, so instead he thinks at her, as loud and as pleading as he can.

Come on, girl. You can do this. We need to see him. The last time, we didn’t know. I need to- the last time-

*****

Hutch was on duty the day of Starsky’s flight to NYC, but they’d had goodbye drinks the night before, just the two of them at Huggy’s. Which Huggy had teased them mercilessly for, since Starsky was only going for ten days, but hey, when you spent every waking day and a lotta waking nights together, a week and a half was a long time.

The point was, they’d already said goodbye, so Starsky wasn’t expecting to talk to Hutch until he landed in New York that afternoon, struggled briefly with the time zones, and rang him. But there he was, sitting at his kitchen bench chugging coffee and wondering what he’d forgotten to pack, when a very distinctive horn sounded from downstairs.

It took a minute and another honk for it to sink into his desperately-trying-to-regain-unconsciousness brain. When it finally did he frowned, put his coffee down, and went out to check on it, wondering if Hutch had drunk significantly more than Starsky had realised last night and forgotten that he didn’t have to pick him up for work this morning. That suspicion was only mildly allayed by seeing Hutch leaning against the side of his dented Galaxie, holding a paper bag.

Starsky jogged down the stairs, calling out, “Shouldn’t you have checked in for duty already? Far as I know, there’s no crime happening here.”

“I’ll only be a couple of minutes late,” Hutch answered as Starsky hit the pavement. “You’re the last person who can call me out on that.”

Starsky didn’t bother replying to the jab at his punctuality – he’d long ago accepted that he was never going to live down the 9am Academy class that he’d always shown up to at least ten minutes late. Hutch had saved his seat every time anyway, so Starsky could put up with the ribbing.

He jerked his chin at the bag Hutch was holding. “What’s in there?”

“Come over here and look for yourself,” Hutch said, waggling it in front of him, so Starsky did exactly that, bounding over and grabbing it from him.

The scent hit him as he opened it, even before he looked inside, and he grinned wide. “Hutch! You went to Marta’s bakery?” Through a mouthful of pastry, because damned if he was letting these stay outside of his stomach any longer than absolutely necessary, he continued, “I want you to forget anything negative I might’ve ever said about you. You’re the best partner to ever exist in the whole history of partners. When did you havta get up to get these? Not that I wanna dissuade you any, but why?”

“Well,” Hutch replied, the ghost of a smile brushing his lips. “I had to give you something that’d make you want to come back.”

Cinnamon sugar all over his hands and face, leaving a heavenly sweetness dusted along his tastebuds, Starsky threw both arms around Hutch’s shoulders. The paper bag hit the roof of the Galaxie with a thud, and Hutch laughed quietly and returned the hug.

His hands stilled on Starsky’s back, holding him in just a moment longer than they usually would, so as Starsky pulled back he said, “Didn’t need pastries for that, babe. But thank you anyway.”

Hutch ducked his head slightly, still just barely smiling. “Have fun in New York. I do have to get to the station now.”

“Yeah, I should leave for the airport.”

Neither of them moved. Then Hutch rapped the top of his car with his knuckles and straightened up. “Ten days.”

“Something like that,” Starsky agreed.

As Hutch opened the car door, Starsky, seized by impulse, reached out to grab his arm. He stopped, half in and half out, Starsky holding him in place just long enough to lean down and kiss him on the cheek.

He rested for one second there in the hush of their shared space before he drew back. “I’ll call you as soon as I get to Ma’s.”

Hutch blinked at him once, twice, then nodded. “Okay.”

Starsky kept one hand leaning on the Galaxie’s horrible beige roof as he finished shutting the door. Hutch stared at him from the inside of the window for a moment, then jerked his chin towards Starsky’s arm.

Oh. Right. He stood up, and stayed standing there staring after him until Hutch drove out of sight around the corner. Then he heaved a sigh and turned to go back inside.

The music tapes for Ma, that’s what he’d forgotten to pack.

*****

He’s been staring after Hutch one way or another for a long time now, he thinks. It’s hard not to, when someone looks like sunbeams caught and thrown across a canvas that’s not entirely sure what it was doing here in the first place, let alone why sunbeams were coming into the picture, and is frankly a little disgruntled about it.

That metaphor got away from him, but his point stands.

Whatever it was.

Something about loving Hutch.

*****

“Well, it’s not like Hug’s gonna not know his local councilman.”

Starsky could see the half-shrug that accompanied Hutch’s agreeing hum clear as day in his head. “I just didn’t expect him to know the councilman’s three mistresses as well.” He paused, and obviously listened to himself, before adding, “Yeah, that was dumb of me.”

Laughing, Starsky replied, “Don’t beat yourself up too bad. All four of them might be some kinda record even for him.”

Before Hutch could respond, Nicky appeared at the end of the hallway and jerked his head back towards the kitchen.

“Alright, bright eyes, I gotta go,” Starsky said. “Ma’s gonna start complaining about her minutes.”

“Okay. See you in a couple days.”

“Talk to you tomorrow.”

As Starsky hung up, Nicky raised his eyebrows, flattening a palm to his own cheek. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly last another day without you, bright eyes.”

Lost for a better response in his childhood home with his baby brother, Starsky stuck his tongue out at him.

*****

The rain begins as the hills flatten and he descends into Bay City proper. It creeps up on him; a few isolated drops becoming a steady drizzle, exploding into a full-blown downpour as he drives through the twisting streets leading to Hutch.

*****

Starsky ducks out of the car and slams the door behind him, fast enough to stop any water from entering the interior or marring his seats, then promptly forgets about the rain entirely. There’s a light on inside the riverside cottage, and even though the drawn curtains prevent him from seeing anything more, he can easily picture Hutch bumbling around inside. He stays there for a minute, watching, thinking.

Well, not thinking so much maybe as just watching. It’s not like he has anything more to think about – he’s done all that already. He’s not here to plan.

As shown by the fact that he doesn’t even quite realise he’s walked up the steps until he’s halfway through knocking.

There’s the sound of something being abruptly put down behind the door, then Hutch calls, “One minute!”

Starsky dutifully waits – significantly less than a full minute, he’s pretty sure, although his already bad sense of time is completely whacked right now – until Hutch opens the door. He’s in loose pyjama pants and a navy blue t-shirt that Starsky swears came new out of the store looking like it had been fifty years pre-worn, backlight turning his fluffy fresh-washed hair into a golden halo.

“There you are, my white knight,” Starsky says, and only realises that’s probably nonsensical when Hutch’s delighted shock shifts into a confused frown.

“What?” Hutch asks. “Starsky, what’re you doing here? I th-thought you were still in New York.”

“No, I’m here,” Starsky says pointlessly. “Can I-” he waves a hand over Hutch’s shoulder, inside. “It’d be atmospheric, maybe, to do all this on the porch, but I’m not sure what the ducks would think.”

“Do all what?” Hutch responds, but backs away from the door. “You’re wet,” he adds, frowning, as Starsky walks in.

Starsky glances down at his – wet – shirt. “It’s raining.”

“I know it’s raining, I-” Breaking off with a huff, he reaches out, rubbing the cloth of Starsky’s open collar between his fingers. “Take that off before you catch a chill and I have to spend the next week taking care of you.”

“Maybe that was my dastardly plan all along.”

“Oh, for-” Since Starsky hasn’t made any move to follow instruction, Hutch starts pulling his sodden shirt out from his jeans and unbuttoning it. This isn’t exactly how Starsky imagined being undressed by Hutch tonight, but he has to admit that now he’s inside the relative warmth and dryness of the cottage, the cloth is starting to feel uncomfortably plastered to his skin. Isn’t like he’s ever gonna say no to Hutch touching him whatever which way.

Having unbuttoned the last buttons as Starsky stared at his bent head and tried to placate the great winged beast flapping against his ribcage, Hutch turns Starsky around with a light touch to his shoulders and pushes him in the direction of the bathroom. Starsky goes, tracking Hutch’s footsteps following him. Inside the blue-walled room, he slips his shirt the rest of the way off and lays it next to the sink.

Hutch pulls a towel off the rack, holding it out, and Starsky gets as far as slinging it around his neck before he gets distracted watching Hutch look at Starsky’s shirt, click his tongue, and pick it up. He turns around, stretching up to hang it off the edge of the shower stall to dry. The worn t-shirt rides up, exposing the curve of his hipbone, and Starsky is only saved from flattening his palm over it by noticing and suddenly having to shift his entire focus to the way Hutch’s hair is tousled in the back, like he’d been running his hands through it in sleep or over-thought.

Then he turns back around, and really, how is a person supposed to think about anything else with that long-suffering but indulgent blue-eyed gaze aimed at them? Starsky’s of a mind to entirely sympathise with every girl who’s apparently forgotten the rest of the world exists while dating Hutch.

Hutch reaches out, and it takes Starsky a breathless minute to realise he’s reaching for the towel around Starsky’s neck. Not that it really helps with the breathing thing when he pulls it down and starts rubbing Starsky’s shoulders dry. “What’s up with you, Starsky?” he asks.

“You are.”

“Yeah, I am up with you,” Hutch agrees. “Because you knocked on my door at 9pm, in the rain, looking like a Romantic hero, when you were supposed to be all the way across the country.”

“You think I looked like Cary Grant?”

“Romantic with a capital R, buddy. Sad, bedraggled, like you’d just walked twelve miles across the moors.”

“Oh. Still.”

Hutch shakes his head and gives Starsky’s shoulders one final rub before he pulls the towel off and holds it out to Starsky again. “I’ll go find you a shirt, dry your chest. Or should I be giving you a hairdryer?”

It takes a moment for that to sink into Starsky’s brain, but when it does he makes a face at Hutch’s retreating back and follows instruction before hanging the now-damp towel back up.

Wandering out, he almost bumps into Hutch coming back in, putting a hand out to Hutch’s arm just in time to stop their opposing momentums.

“Here,” Hutch says, sounding mildly flustered, and shoves something cream-coloured at Starsky’s chest.

When Starsky shakes it out it reveals itself to be one of Hutch’s cable-knit jumpers that looks vaguely like the wearer should be catching sardines off the Welsh coastline. Starsky puts it on anyway, because he’s cold, and because he realises as he wraps his arms around himself that it smells like Hutch. It’s not that they don’t share clothes on a semi-regular basis, but those are usually explicitly shared items worn as much by one of them as the other, so they smell like Starsky’s laundry powder as much as Hutch’s green-y herbal soap that he swears is healthier for your skin, even though Starsky has never noticed any problems from his own apparently chemical-laden choices.

He has to admit that Hutch’s smells good, though. Especially when it’s in wool that’s pressed against Starsky, and even better when Hutch sighs at Starsky’s attempts at embracing himself and wraps an arm around his shoulders.

Hutch tuts. “You’re still shaking.”

He is, Starsky realises, on the edge of vibrato even though he doesn’t think he’s that cold anymore. Still, he doesn’t resist when Hutch steers them both towards the kitchen, or offer any argument when he says, “Help me make tea. Wait, who am I talking to? Help me make hot chocolate.”

Hutch had missed him. “Depends,” Starsky says, mildly astonished to find that his voice sounds normal, not like it was coming out of a nervous chihuahua or a rock giant stuck in tar or anything in between. “Do you have marshmallows?”

“Not of my own free will,” Hutch replies, but gestures towards a cupboard and lets go of Starsky.

The disappointment of Hutch’s arm disappearing is at least partially alleviated by the fact that, when Starsky pulls the bag of marshmallows down, he has no memory of buying them or storing them at Hutch’s. Which means either Hutch was just flat-out lying and had bought them for himself, or he’d got them specifically for Starsky. Starsky’s not sure which option he prefers.

He stares at them a moment, then plops them in front of Hutch as he comes back with the milk. “You get these for me?”

“No, they’re for my other friend whose tastebuds never adapted to adult human things like vegetables and grains.”

Starsky promptly decides he likes this option. “Hey, I like grain fine. When it’s ground down real small and made into bagels.” He turns around and hoists himself onto the counter, deliberately in the way of where Hutch will have to come to get mugs, leaning sideways against the cupboard to ensure it. He can play the long game, as long as it doesn’t take more than five or ten minutes.

Hutch moves to the stove first, pulling out a pot and turning the heat on. “You still haven’t answered why you’re here.”

“What, it’s such a surprise I’d be at your place?”

“When your flight wasn’t booked until this time tomorrow, yeah.”

“Change of plans.”

“No kidding.” Hutch stares at him for a moment, then shakes his head. “And your mother was okay with this?”

Starsky reaches over to pull a marshmallow from the bag and chews on it thoughtfully. “Okay might be overstating it.” Truth is, he basically snuck out the door. That’s a problem to deal with later. “Did I get you out of the shower?”

Absently touching his hair with one hand, Hutch replies, “You think I would’ve heard you knocking in the shower?”

“Oh.” Fair point.

“No, I was done. On my way to bed.”

“Sorry.”

Hutch stirs the chocolatey pot. Starsky’s done precisely nothing to actually help with the making of this, but Hutch wouldn’t have liked it anyway if he’d tried. He’s providing aesthetic accompaniment, that’s what Huggy calls it when he’s just sitting around looking pretty. “It’s fine. Early anyway, I just had nothing else to do.”

“Except sit up and pine for me, huh.”

The look Hutch casts him is fond, if doubtful. “Sure. Can’t occupy that much time with that, though.”

“I’m hurt.” Given how much time he’s occupied doing exactly that over the last week.

He’s still thinking about that when Hutch turns the stove off and moves over to the mugs. Starsky shifts slightly on the counter, legs swinging, but stays where he is.

Stepping in, Hutch wraps hands around Starsky’s shoulders – clearly about to move him out of the way. Starsky’s hand goes to his arm before he can, drawn, magnetised. “Hey, Hutch,” he says.

Hutch raises his eyebrows.

Starsky probably looks like a complete idiot, but Hutch is right there, close, in his space; Hutch’s sweater is on his skin and Hutch’s body is between his legs and he can’t help grinning goofily and repeating, “Hey.”

Helium is being pumped into his chest, filling it to bursting, threatening to float him right up to the ceiling like a balloon some little kid let slip out of their grip. Except Hutch is the one with a grip on him, and he isn’t letting go. He shakes Starsky slightly, rattling him back into himself, and says, “Starsky, if you don’t start making sense soon…”

“You got me pastries.”

Hutch doesn’t look any less confused, really, but one hand lifts from Starsky’s shoulder to his face, thumb brushing along his jawline. “Yeah, I did,” he agrees. “If you expect that to be a regular occurrence, though, you’re gonna be disappointed.”

“That’s okay,” Starsky says, and finally finishes what he’d only said half of that day. “I don’t need pastries. I’ve got you.”

Hutch blinks. “Of course you do.”

He still isn’t getting it, but he’s watching Starsky like he’s in an art gallery looking at one of those weird abstract paintings that he tries to pretend he understands the meaning of, except he looks like he does when he’s given up on the pretence and is content just to look at it, rolling his eyes as Starsky offers increasingly absurd explanations for what it could be a painting of. Acknowledged bafflement, a little amused frustration, and a willingness to simply keep looking at something he thinks is beautiful. A lotta girls – not to mention a few guys – have looked at Starsky over the years like he’s hot, or sexy, or attractive, or cute, he’s had multiple relatives just this last week tell him he was ‘so handsome, bubbelah’, but he doesn’t think anyone else has ever truly looked at him like this. Like he’s beautiful. Anyone but Hutch.

Starsky can rattle off a mile a minute any time, but his words aren’t getting him anywhere here, because they’re as scattered as the thoughts tumbling through his brain like a thousand grains of rice thrown into the wind.

Hutch’s hand is still resting under his chin, along his jaw, so Starsky raises his own hand to cover it before he turns his head slightly, pressing a kiss against Hutch’s palm.

“What’re you doing, Starsk?” Hutch asks softly, but there’s no offence – or even surprise – and he doesn’t pull his hand away.

“What I came here to do, I think.”

Hutch nods once, twice. Watches Starsky for one long moment then asks, “Why did you come here?”

“I realised something.”

“Okay.”

“I missed you.”

There’s a wave of hair fallen down, framing one blue eye, brushing at the bottom of his temple. “We said that the day after you left. How does that end with you on a plane and in my kitchen?”

“Yeah, but,” –Starsky runs a hand down Hutch’s arm–“missed different – and Nicky was teasing, and I was looking at Elvis – well, ex-Elvis – and–”

“Starsky.”

Starsky breathes in, then breathes out. Hutch is watching him, a soft smile threatening an appearance on his lips.

“Yeah?” Starsky asks.

Hutch nods again.

“Okay.” There’s barely an inch between them already; all Starsky has to do to breach it is let himself follow the tug of the cord connecting them – the one that brought him all the way across the country, all the way into this kitchen – and let Hutch bring him all the way home.

Hutch releases one long exhale in the moment before their lips touch, and it sounds like relief. “The cocoa’s gonna get cold,” Starsky murmurs into Hutch’s mouth.

His hand presses tighter against Starsky’s cheek. “Let it.”

“Mm.”

The next moments crawl, time slowed to molasses, as Starsky sets everything in stone in his memory – the scent of chocolate and sugar in the air, the patter of rain outside, the solid warmth of Hutch pressed against him and the sound of his breathing and the brush of his lips. He makes a sound, something halfway between a whimper and a moan looking at a gasp, and Hutch echoes it deeper, vibrating between their chests, before he backs off.

He swallows, hard, and blinks at Starsky. “You only just realised that?”

“Well,” Starsky says, curling his hand around the back of Hutch’s neck and marvelling at the deeply familiar and brand new sensation of his skin against Starsky’s fingers. “I guess it’s been a long time coming.”

“I’ll say,” Hutch agrees, and pulls him right back into the next kiss. And the one after that, and the one after that-

*****

Five years ago at the Bay City Police Academy

 

“Hey, can I sit here? What was your name again?”

“I’m Ken. Hutchinson.”

“Right. Dave Starsky. Can I call you Hutch?”

“Only if I can call you Starsk.”

“Cadet Hutchinson, I think this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”