Another Fine Mess

Somewhere past the small hours of Sunday morning, the last gasps of a summer storm rattled the colored glass skylights as they pulsed like a disco dance-floor to the flashes of lightning outside. Hutch had moved to the canal-side cottage almost three weeks ago, but the Homicide department shift pattern hadn’t paused to acknowledge that fact, and he’d been living out of the cardboard boxes that now surrounded him in flattened battered states that matched his mood.

At a loose end last night — Starsky was out on the town with Becky-or-was-it-Sally from Finance — he’d opened his front door and been seized by a sudden urge to unpack his neglected possessions. Pushing through exhaustion he’d emptied all the boxes to the sounds of distant thunder and an occasional flurry of rain pattering down the metal flue of the fireplace. Now, stringing a cord across the corner of the living room, he was ready to hang the poster he’d found nestled in between Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison in a shop window when he was house-hunting; pegging it up with clips like socks on a washing line.

Hutch had first seen Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting ‘In Bed’ nearly half his life ago now, on a culturally-improving family trip to Paris the summer he turned seventeen. Standing in the busy gallery looking at the two sleepy louche people under the covers, something about the image had struck a chord with him, like a glimpse of something he wanted in his future. Reading about the painting later in the museum guidebook, he’d discovered it was thought to depict two women, prostitutes in a Parisian brothel, an educational fact he had chosen not to share with his parents. But part of the painting’s appeal to his teenage self had been that the tousled heads on adjacent pillows could conceivably belong to boys or girls in any combination.

Looking at the picture now as it hung in his new place, Hutch felt the shine dim slightly on his recent discovery that the unsocial shift patterns of cops and air stewardesses could coincide for mutually convenient and blissfully uncomplicated sex. As much as he appreciated the advantages of this shiny new situation, which some mornings put a swagger in his step to almost rival Starsky’s, he was aware that the kind of fond, lazy gazing across a pillow immortalized by Toulouse-Lautrec wasn’t likely to be part of his new easy-come easy-go world.

Apparently unpacking hadn’t helped him feel any less restless. Depressed now by the chaos he’d created and with no energy to start putting order into his worldly goods, Hutch closed the door on it all and set off into the dark and drizzle along the canal.

***

Part of the cottage’s appeal when he was looking for his new place — once the long-brewing divorce from Vanessa had become cold, hard fact — had been that less than ten minutes walk via a couple of canal bridges could take him right to the ocean at Venice Beach. Huggy had remarked he always knew Hutch was a beach boy at heart.

Growing up a little over twelve hundred miles from the Atlantic coast and eighteen hundred from the Pacific hadn’t stifled small Hutch’s seafaring ambitions. After a childhood spent devouring maritime adventure stories, graduating from Stevenson to Swallows and Amazons to Melville to Hemingway, he’d joined the local Sea Scouts on his fourteenth birthday. Despite Duluth being so spectacularly landlocked, the North Shore of Lake Superior boasted Sea Scout ships in double figures, although as each one was run by a different Lutheran, Presbyterian, or Methodist church this wasn’t the rich variety of choice it first appeared to be. Hutch joined the appropriate ship for his congregation, followed the rules and dreamed of a romantic life on the ocean wave.

Bizarrely, the Port of Duluth was the world’s farthest inland port accessible to oceangoing ships. It had seemed ironically appropriate to young Hutch that getting to the ocean from Duluth was genuinely possible but, like other things he longed for in his life, only by a circuitous route so complicated it might as well have been out of reach — the Atlantic Ocean was two thousand three hundred miles away by water. Now here he was, on the shore of a different ocean. Being a divorced homicide cop had not featured in his youthful daydreams. But then neither had Starsky, so adult life did hold some good surprises.

Divorce gave Hutch the same sense of vertigo he once got from the vast, endless horizon of Lake Superior. As his marriage disintegrated he had resolved to take this scoured-out empty space inside himself and explore what he might fill it with, left to himself. Now for the first time in his life he could pick a place to live with neither his parents nor his wife on hand to disapprove of his choice.

He’d heard Venice had been built seventy years earlier by a man with dreams of recreating historic Italian splendour in southern California, and Hutch could do with that kind of crazy aspiration right now — never mind that his new place was a somewhat scruffy cottage next to a vacant lot by a smelly canal, and the canals had originally been built to drain the marshes anyway, whatever their romantic associations. He was delighted to have a palm tree in his front yard, and he’d joked to Starsky that see, he didn’t need a wife to achieve the American dream of the white picket fence. In an expansive mood he could stroll by the canals and picture himself far off in the original Venice, or in Amsterdam, perhaps, or lose himself in this ’seventies Bohemia by the ocean where polite society mores were not a thing and values were unconventional in the burgeoning art, music, and gay scenes that spilled from the streets onto the beach. Hutch quietly reveled in the glitter of it all. Starsky, meanwhile, liked the ducks.

***

Crossing a deserted Pacific Avenue, Hutch hit Venice Beach just as the sun was edging above the horizon, bleeding colors into the storm-rinsed sky. The lightning storm had been the first Hutch had experienced in California, the first he’d heard of, even, but then life had been throwing a lot of curve balls lately. He’d discovered that the rhythmic wash of the surf could settle the riptides of his thoughts like little else. Pausing, he took a deep breath, feeling the hit of salt in the damp air as he headed towards the ocean. The tide was going out and the rough waves had left behind a higher-than-usual yield of flotsam and jetsam on the shore for any passing beachcombers.

Once he hit the shoreline Hutch turned right, steering a course in the general direction of Santa Monica pier three miles down the coast, and strode through the misty dawn, hands in pockets and head down, past the lifeguard station, the playground, all deserted at this time of the morning. Somewhere past the breakwater he was abruptly tackled to the floor and found himself flat on his face in the wet sand.

Scrabbling to get back on his feet, Hutch discovered his attacker was a large piece of driftwood. Something about the windswept curves of the twisted, soaked branch which had just scraped his shins appealed to him — a persistent beauty scoured out by wind and tide, the essence of the tree finding a new form. And a new home, if he had anything to do with it.

He trudged up to Oceanfront Walk to find a payphone, dug in his pocket for a dime and called his partner if not in actual crime then in crazy schemes like this. Hutch counted seven rings before the sound of Starsky dropping the receiver clattered down the line.

“ ’Lo?”

“Starsk?”

“Dammit Hutch, it’s not even six o’clock! I thought Ma forgot the time difference again. You even been to sleep?”

“Sleeping is over-rated. Look, I need your help. It’s something I can’t handle on my own.”

Starsky fought valiantly to speak through a jaw-splitting yawn.

“OK, what did Vanessa do now? Is there some screwup with the settlement?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“So what’s the emergency? There is an emergency, right?”

“No, not an emergency. It’s, um, it’s a big piece of wood.”

“It’s a what?”

“A piece of driftwood on the shore at Venice Beach. You see, I was walking and —”

Starsky sniggered.

“Hutch, did you phone me in the middle of the night to ask me to help you get wood?”

Hutch giggled in spite of himself.

“You are such a child, you know that?”

“Takes one to know one.”

The chuckling subsided. He felt Starsky’s resigned sigh right in his ear.

“OK, where are you, Hutch? I mean, that’s a lot of beach.”

“Meet me in the car park by the fishing pier? We can walk from there.”

The resounding silence on the other end of the line was broken by another enormous yawn, which Hutch immediately followed with one of his own, like some Pavlovian Mexican wave of exhaustion.

“OK… but just because I like your face. This unholy time in the morning maybe I can make it in twenty minutes. Jesus, Blondie, the things I do for you…”

It occurred to Hutch as he hung up the phone that given the earliness of the hour, the possibility of a derailed Sunday morning tumble with Sally-or-was-it-Becky, and Starsky’s constantly ravenous stomach, a bribe/apology/consolation prize might be a wise move. Courtesy of a nearby café catering to the early-morning wants of fishermen, Hutch was armed with a bag of doughnuts and a cup of coffee by the time the Torino pulled into the pier car park.

Starsky emerged from the car looking barely awake, slammed the door, winced slightly, then looked Hutch up and down.

“Rough night, huh?”

Handing over the doughnuts, Hutch shrugged and rocked his hand like a seesaw, palm down, in the universal sign for “so-so”. Sitting on the hood, shoulder to shoulder, they looked out to sea as they traded the coffee cup back and forth. Hutch could feel his muscles relax as Starsky’s warmth soaked into him, though the coffee brewed at a strength to fuel early-morning fishing wasn’t exactly calming his heart-rate.

Starsky wordlessly held up a doughnut for Hutch to take a bite. Hutch complied, purely in the interests of staying on Starsky’s good side, before a long dormant taste-memory kicked in to remind him that doughnuts were, in fact, delicious. Meeting Starsky’s sugar-coated grin with one of his own, he reeled slightly as his freshly jump-started senses went on to observe that this combination of coffee, salt and sugar was exactly how it would taste to kiss Starsky right now. He looked swiftly out to sea, suddenly bashful.

These random, sensual thoughts about Starsky were nothing new — Hutch was becoming used to batting them away like mayflies — but he suspected they were coming more frequently now that he wasn’t being distracted by the sallies of Vanessa’s domestic guerilla warfare on a daily basis.

Turning back, for a fraction of a second he could have sworn Starsky’s eyes were focused on his mouth, his fingers raised to brush away the sugar — but maybe he was just reaching for the coffee. Hutch shook off the thought, took a final sip of coffee, handed it over with the bag of doughnuts. Starsky drained the cup, licking the edge for stray sugar grains, and winked. Hutch ducked his head, his eyes crinkling.

“Come on then, Blintz, what’s keeping you?”

Jumping off the hood Starsky threw the coffee cup with effortless accuracy into a nearby trashcan, locked the car and set off towards the sea without a backward glance, trusting Hutch to follow in his wake. They walked the fifteen minutes or so to the driftwood as they finished off the doughnuts, Starsky fully on board now with their early-morning mission, riding his sugar rush and urging Hutch to hurry it up so they could beat any potential beach-combing rivals.

“Why d’you want this hunk of wood so bad, anyway?”

“I dunno, Starsk. It’s stood the test of time, I guess, drifted with the tide and survived against the odds. I like that. And it’s kind of beautiful.”

Starsky laughed, reaching out to mess up Hutch’s hair, already tousled by the wind.

“Kinda beautiful, huh? You’re cute when you’re weird. My partner the artist philosopher.”

“Shut up. Maybe I just feel a kinship with a gnarled old tree branch at this point in my life.”

“Aw, we’ll get your sap running again Hutch, don’t you worry. Plenty more fish in the sea.”

“Starsky, you wanna stop off at the pier on the way home, you buy the coffee.”

Starsky grinned, and Hutch shoved him to distract from his reaction to the grin – well, to Starsky really, period. Starsky shoved him back, chased him along the beach and Hutch, inevitably, tripped over the driftwood. Starsky, gloating, reached down a hand to pull him up.

“Klutz. Is this it?”

Hutch nodded, trying and failing to brush the sand from his clothes.

Starsky surveyed the scene, hands on his hips.

“Well Hutch, I gotta say your wood is enormous.”

“What are you Starsky, twelve?”

“Nah, seriously, it is kinda pretty. Hey, there’s two pieces here! You want both?”

“Sure, why not? Far be it from me to break up a partnership. We got four arms between us.”

“Half an octopus.”

“You know, the workings of your mind never cease to amaze me.”

“Why thank you, professor.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

Starsky scrunched the empty doughnut bag into a ball and attempted to muzzle Hutch with it, before tucking it in Hutch’s pocket and patting his cheek. Hutch grimaced but left the bag where it was, pleading litter awareness to himself while secretly plotting to maybe lick the sugar from it later.

It was when they bent down to pick up the driftwood that they discovered the branches were heavier than they looked, waterlogged with seawater like sponges. Hutch stumbled, his branch swinging around and knocking Starsky on his ass in the wet sand.

“Jesus, Hutch. What is this, a Laurel and Hardy movie?”

Hutch pulled him back up on his feet.

“Sorry pal. Just be grateful I didn’t ask you to help me move a piano up a flight of steps.”

“We wouldn’t live to tell the tale. C’mon, Ollie.”

They set off back up the empty beach, driftwood balanced between them with a branch on either shoulder, water soaking through their jackets, sand caught in their hair. The softer sand close to the road was treacherous, shifting beneath their feet and grabbing hold; each time one tripped they took the other with them. Behind him, Hutch could hear Starsky cursing to himself as the sugar high wore off and the early start caught up with him.

“You owe me a new pair of Adidas. I got half the beach in these things. Seawater stains, Hutch! And I’m hungry.”

“Hey, you get this wood home with me, I’ll feed you, how’s that?”

“If you got anything edible in those cupboards of yours. No wheatgerm, I’m warning you. When was the last time you went shopping?”

“Monday, maybe?”

“OK, there’s some hope. You got coffee? Sugar? Eggs?”

“Yep.”

“OK, we’re good. You’re lucky I like you, Blintz. This foolishness is way above and beyond the call of duty.”

“We could always put the wood in the Torino.”

“Don’t push your luck, buddy boy.”

There were a few people on the sidewalks by now, but no-one batted an eyelid at the two bedraggled souls lugging sodden branches through the streets. Dodging puddles as they walked along the canal path, Starsky nearly tipped the pair of them into the water when he pointed delightedly at some passing ducks.

“Chrissakes, Starsky! What was that you said about Laurel and Hardy?”

“Hey, now that’s an idea – maybe we can find some reruns on TV when we get there. I mean it’s Sunday, what else are local channels for?”

“Sure, and you can take notes. Your sense of humor could stand some improvement.”

“Well you don’t need any comedy tips, you were born falling over your own feet.”

Hutch stopped dead so Starsky would run into his back.

“You were saying?”

“Bozo.”

***

Hutch had fully intended not to have a TV as part of his new bohemian lifestyle, but then Starsky had turned up on his first day at the cottage with a portable television set as a housewarming present, claiming it had belonged to his Uncle Al but Aunt Rosie said the picture was too small, so Starsky had taken it off their hands.

“It’s perfect for you, Hutch. You can hide it in a cupboard when visitors come round, get it out to watch art films in the middle of the night. And The Waltons.”

Hutch was touched by the gift for more than practical reasons.

When Hutch lived with Vanessa, Starsky wasn’t welcome and double dates were out of the question — Van and Starsky wouldn’t voluntarily spend time together (to be fair, Starsky would have done it to please Hutch but Van was unmoving on the issue). Hutch was exhausted by being in a room with them both anyway, and didn’t have the mental energy for overthinking cheating on Van with assorted friends of Starsky’s various dates even if it had sat well with his moral compass, which was as inflexible on the issue as Van was on Starsky. When Hutch spent time with Starsky, precious relaxed hours of just hanging out and clowning around, it was at Starsky’s place or Huggy’s bar. And Starsky had a TV, of course, so old movies and comedies and ball games were part of those hours, indivisible from Starsky somehow.

So when Starsky had showed up on the doorstep with a TV for Hutch’s new place, it was as if he’d arrived with his toothbrush, a statement that the two of them would be spending time at Hutch’s place too from now on, and man that felt good. Hutch went out and bought him a toothbrush the next day — the local drugstore had a his-and-hers two-for-one deal which left Starsky singing incessantly about pink toothbrushes and blue toothbrushes having met somewhere be-fore, so Hutch landed him with the pink one in revenge.

Starsky’s arrival with the TV had felt much like Starsky holding up the doughnut this morning with his I-defy-you-not-to-want-this expression — he existed to take the wind out of Hutch’s sails when he took himself too seriously, to throw a metaphorical banana skin under the health shakes, the early morning runs, the high culture. Though to be fair, Starsky hadn’t been wrong when he observed that Hutch, one of nature’s slapstick comedians, had never needed any help with pratfalls. Caught up in his own thoughts Hutch could trip over his own feet or a stray curb or rope, pull the door labelled push, at the drop of a hat. Starsky on the other hand was on much better terms with the physical universe. Sometimes Hutch thought he could bend it to his whim.

***

Arriving at the cottage, they dumped the driftwood in the porch to dry out along with their beach-ravaged footwear before Hutch reached under a flowerpot for the key and opened the front door.

Starsky whistled. “You’ve been busy. Tidying up is gonna happen later, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“Nah, it’s shaping up to be a nice place. I could spend time here.”

“Maybe I’ll manage to grow a few plants now Vanessa isn’t here to sabotage them.”

“Yeah, try a new form of husbandry.”

“OK first, up yours, and second, nice wordplay, Starsk.”

“Thanks. I’ll take the compliment and ignore the fact that you’re a condescending bastard.”

Starsky had wandered over to the poster in the corner.

“This new? This is cute, Blintz. Sleepy people.”

“Yeah, I like it. I’m gonna get changed — just rummage in that suitcase for something to wear and dump your wet clothes in the bathroom, I’ll sort them out later. Right now we need food. And coffee.”

When Hutch emerged, still sandy but in dry clothes, Starsky had located the portable TV and stood checking the listings in the paper.

“Hey, we’re in luck! Laurel and Hardy in five minutes, then a Bela Lugoosi double bill. Perfect Sunday viewing.”

“Lugosi, Starsk. Scrambled eggs OK?”

“Good idea, Ollie. Food of the gods. And it’s not like you’ve got anything else, right?”

“Right.”

“Right. You get cooking, I’ll clear a space for us to eat. You sure a bomb didn’t go off in here?”

“Har-de-har, funny guy.”

Hutch found an unopened carton of eggs in the refrigerator. He rinsed the coffee pot, tracked down a pan and a couple of plates and mugs to wash from the dusty pile on the counter, and set about making breakfast. Behind him the noise of Starsky rattling about the place set off an odd domestic contentment that Hutch hadn’t felt in — well, he couldn’t remember how long. It was pleasantly, vaguely nostalgic. Starsky emerged barefoot from the bathroom wearing a pair of Hutch’s jeans turned up at the ankle and a battered old button-down shirt with at least some of the buttons done up; hair pointing every which way.

“You look like a beach bum, Starsk.”

“This is what you’ve reduced me to. I woke up this morning suave as Cary Grant, now look at me.”

He ambled over to investigate the state of the scrambled eggs. Hutch slung an arm across his shoulders.

“How often do I have to tell you, you’re not Cary Grant, I’m Cary Grant.”

“Nah, you’re Gary Cooper. Legs for days.”

Hutch felt absurdly like blushing. He removed his arm and tried not to think about what it meant that he got a kick out of Starsky wearing his clothes.

“Go on, get things set up so we can watch the funny men fall over.”

He gave Starsky a gentle shove towards the chaos in the living room. After dishing up scrambled eggs and pouring coffee, Hutch turned to put them on the chest by the couch only to find that Starsky had dragged it across to the foot of the bed to set up the TV.

“Starsky, what are you doing? I need to put the plates on that. And we need it over here.”

“There is no way I’m clearing all that crap off the couch, you can barely see a couch under there. We’ll have breakfast in bed. It’s the least you can do after waking me up at dawn to drag me across town and trash my wardrobe.”

“We already had breakfast, Starsk. You forget the coffee and doughnuts? This is lunch. Elevenses maybe.”

“Elevenses? Who do you think I am, Christopher Robin? I have no memory of breakfast. It was the middle of the night, it’s all a haze. This is breakfast and I’m gonna have it in bed on my day off, which is my right as a hardworking citizen.”

Starsky grabbed a big pillow from the back of the couch.

“Here, now that shelf behind your bed won’t dig into our backs. I plan to have my well-earned breakfast in comfort.”

“Starsk, you’ll get crumbs in the bed.”

“Crumbs are the least of your worries. What you’ll get is sand in the bed and you’ve only got yourself to blame, big fella. You need to learn that there are consequences to your actions.”

“That assumes that there is any kind of logical order to the events of my life, which at this point I think is is stretching it.”

“Come on Hutch, the show’s started already. You look ready to fall down anyhow. Did you sleep at all last night?”

Hutch had to admit that the horizontal plane was actually looking pretty appealing right now. He sighed and grudgingly placed the two mugs of coffee on the shelf above the bed. Starsky did a little dance of triumph and jumped on top of the bedspread, pulling an afghan over his legs and leaning back against the couch cushion with an ostentatious groan. Hutch handed him a plate of scrambled eggs and joined him under the blanket.

“You’re a bad influence, you know that?”

On the TV Laurel and Hardy, in nightgowns and nightcaps, were hiding a goat under their double bed out of sight of the hotel manager. Starsky waved his fork between the screen and the two of them watching.

“See, this is the only way to watch Laurel and Hardy.”

“Guess so. Remind me to buy you a nightgown for Christmas. Or a goat.”

“Sounds like your kind of gift.”

“Shush, you, or you won’t get anything. How are the eggs?”

“Acceptable, acceptable.”

“You know, this is the first meal I’ve cooked in this place. Never eaten so much take-out as I have in the last three weeks.”

“See, you’ll feel at home now. You’re like a cat.”

“A cat? Not quarter of an octopus?”

“Nope, a cat with butter on its paws.”

“OK Starsk, now you really lost me.”

“My grandmother always said that’s how you get a cat to settle in a new home, butter its paws so it has to wash them. See, cats only wanna wash their paws when they feel safe, but it’s gotta lick the butter off its paws, so it washes its paws and feels —“

The ancient Starsky family wisdom was interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn from Hutch.

“You see? All ready for a sleep now you’re settled in. How you feeling?”

“Full of breakfast and completely confused by your logic, Starsk.”

Hutch abandoned his empty plate on the blanket and wondered idly if Starsky’s grandmother had buttered cats’ paws with garlic butter, since she lived above an Italian restaurant. He was actually very comfortable now, and the sounds of the TV were rather soothing, and Starsky was warm and reassuring against his side and saying something about cats and ducks…

***

The low late afternoon sun woke Hutch. Starsky was fast asleep, stretched out on the bed beside him. Starsky, wearing his clothes, in his bed. It felt like home. Hutch took a deep breath and basked in the chaotic peace of it all — plates with crumbs and empty coffee mugs stacked on the shelf above the headboard, couch cushion thrown on the floor now, empty boxes scattered around. A passing duck quacked on the canal. Looking across at the skylights lit up honey-colored in the sunlight he caught sight of Toulouse-Lautrec’s drowsy couple in the corner and felt contentment spread through him, making his bones glow. Turning his gaze back to his partner he was greeted by a pair of dozy blue eyes. Hutch smiled, got a slow, fond grin in return.

A trail of sand above Starsky’s left eyebrow glittered in the light. Hutch reached out to brush it off.

“You got some sand…”

Starsky held him off with a warning hand.

“Blintz, you’ll get it in the bed…”

Hutch shrugged.

“It’s my own fault.”

“Hah.” Starsky grinned. “Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.”

He leaned in to Hutch’s touch on his brow like a cat, then settled the blanket more comfortably over them. Sleepy and blissed-out they lay in the quiet together, regarding each other across the pillow as the shadows lengthened in the room behind them. Starsky tilted his head.

“You got sand here…”

He traced the whorl of Hutch’s ear, sending sparks down his spine.

Hutch took a breath, stroked along the sand-dusted line of Starsky’s collarbone.

“Some here, Starsk.”

“Yeah? Here too…”

Starsky touched a fingertip to Hutch’s jaw, where sand mixed with stubble,

“…and here…”

His thumb followed a slow path down Hutch’s neck, skimming his pulse point. Hutch caught Starsky’s thumb in his fist.

“Hey, my turn.”

“Oh yeah?”

The air around them felt charged, like they were back on the beach after the storm. Lightning quick Starsky rolled Hutch, looming over him, hands bracketed on either side. Taking his weight on his arms like a gentleman, at least. Hutch ducked his head, reached for a button on the button-down shirt.

“Yeah. I mean you might have some sand under here…”

Starsky dipped suddenly as if he were doing press-ups and kissed him on the mouth.

Hutch looked up at him. There was the doughnut-tempting expression again, the I-defy-you-not-to-want-this expression, and underneath it an impatient tenderness that made Hutch’s stomach flip. Starsky was looking at his mouth like it was sugar-coated.

Hutch rolled suddenly to switch their positions, pinning Starsky’s hands above his head. He’d always known that college wrestling medal would come in handy. Leaning down he slowly and deliberately kissed Starsky back. Less a romantic gesture, more a down payment to stake his claim, a flag planted in new territory. Crossing that line in the sand. Rolling them both so they were side by side again, he met Starsky’s eyes and their gaze held. The mayflies were back with a vengeance but Hutch had no desire now to look away. Starsky, eyes gentle, reached out and smoothed down the tousled peaks of Hutch’s hair.

“Kinda beautiful, huh?”

His smile was incandescent. Hutch traced it with a finger and then went back to unbuttoning Starsky’s shirt. Well, his shirt really. He still got a kick out of that.

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, you might have some sand…”

Starsky’s eyes twinkled as he leaned in for another kiss.

“Babe, I got sand in all kinds of places.”

---

Chapter End Notes: