Auld Lang Syne

The events of the preceding year shape the New Year’s resolutions Starsky and Hutch make each year from 1975 to 1980.

Originally published in Venice Place Chronicles volume VI.

December 31,1975

Starsky hated being a one-winged bird. Especially when the wing in the sling was his left. Fucking child-proof caps,” he muttered as he struggled with the stupid thing right-handed. “What kind of moron puts a bachelor’s prescription in a child-proof bottle? It’ll take an axe to get into it.”

Or a Hutch.

“Come on, Starsk. Quit being so stubborn and let me do it,” Hutch offered. He plucked the offending pill bottle from Starsky’s hand. “Go sit down and I’ll bring all this in, okay.”

Grudgingly, Starsky gave ground, retreating into the living room where the television was already on and tuned into broadcasted New Year’s Eve revels.

“It’s not fair, you know,” Starsky complained, easing himself down onto the couch. He would have liked to throw himself at it, release a little of the frustration he felt onto the harmless piece of furniture. He wouldn’t rock it too hard. Maybe just lift the front legs off the floor an inch or so. Except it would be cutting off his nose to spite his face, or, more accurately, ripping loose a barely healed stitch or two to vent his spleen.

“Tag dis,” Hutch requested, lips moving around teeth clenched tight on the top of a bag of potato chips.

Starsky tugged the bag from Hutch’s mouth and tossed it aside, then did his best to aid in the transfer from over-loaded arms to couch and coffee table of an array of junk food, cans of soda, and pizza box. “You coulda made two trips, Hutch,” he whined. “You can’t be in that big a hurry to split.”

“Here, take these,” Hutch commanded more intelligibly, as he handed over two small white tablets. “There’s two more on the counter for you to take before bed.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Starsky grumbled. He stuffed the pills in his mouth, then fumbled to open one of the cans of soda to wash down the bitter medication. He had forgotten how quickly they melted.

Smoothly, Hutch brushed Starsky’s fingers aside, pulled the tab, and handed over the soda.

“Thanks,” Starsky grumbled yet again. He wasn’t mad at Hutch, of course, just mad at the world in general, and in particular with the injury that had him dressed in pajamas and robe at 9:00 on New Year’s Eve when he should be….

“What isn’t fair?” Hutch asked as he shoveled some of the bags and boxes and bars he had delivered out of the comer of the couch, and then settled himself in it as if he were intent upon putting down roots.

“First New Year’s Eve I’ve had off in five years, and I can’t even go out dancing,” Starsky groused, feeling both hard done by and greatly put upon. “Should be celebratin’ the old goin’ out and the new… Hutch?”

“And the new what?” Hutch asked absently, flipping through the pages of the TV Guide. He looked up, his air of innocent inquiry enhanced by the way he tilted his head and widened his eyes.

“What are you doing?” Starsky asked suspiciously, guilt and relief waging a skirmish for possession of him, as he realized Hutch wasn’t planning on seeing him comfortably settled and then seeking out a little wine, women, and song to ring in 1976. “Don’t you…? Aren’t you gonna split?”

For a moment, it looked like Hutch might throw out a little banter, a convenient, humorous blind for what Starsky could see living deep in the blue eyes. Then that moment passed and what had been hiding in the eyes crept out and spread itself all over Hutch’s face. Affection. Shy offering. Hopeful expectancy.

“I was going to go down to Huggy’s, but…” Hutch admitted.

Starsky waited while Hutch poked a bag of chips a few inches along the cushion between them, and then lined up two Babe Ruth’s precisely with the edge of the same cushion. He was in no hurry. He had already heard everything Hutch hadn’t said, and would be just as content if Hutch chose to let the soapy little moment slide by, acknowledged only silently. The way so much remained between them.

Abruptly, Hutch’s fingers closed around one of the candy bars and flipped it toward Starsky. Awkwardly, Starsky caught it right-handed, but it was barely within his grasp before Hutch reclaimed it, peeled the wrapper back part way, and then returned it.

Blowing hot and cold. Starsky recognized the indecision. He had squirmed on the horns of it himself after Hutch was kidnapped by Forest. Waffled so long that, eventually, the opportunity to give voice to how he was feeling, the lingering fear and the profound relief, had simply been lost in the march of time. Starsky never had been able to decide if it was an opportunity lost or an awkward pitfall avoided. And now, here they were between that same emotional rock and a hard place again. A bullet in the back could sort of change a guy’s perspective about a few things. If he let it. Maybe scrambling to save your partner’s life could, too. If Hutch let it.

Hutch tossed the TV Guide onto the coffee table. “Nothing on the tube worth watching,” he announced, as if their evening’s entertainment were the topic under discussion.

Starsky accepted the tactic withdrawal, feeling it only fair to allow Hutch the same retreat he had taken. “What about Dick Clark?” he protested aloud.

“You’re not up to dancing,” Hutch reminded him. “And I’m….”

Starsky let the opening to tease pass, inclined to be kind. Inclined, in fact, to be very mellow now that he knew he wouldn’t have to spend the evening alone. It was right, in any case, to watch the shiny New Year tick onto the clock with Hutch. If it wasn’t for his partner, after all, there might be no 1976 for Starsky. And they had spent every New Year’s Eve together since they had been partnered. On duty, but still together. So, yes, all was as it should be.

Hutch found a movie on the television—an old Wally Stone—and they laughed as they munched their way through the small mountain of junk food Starsky had insisted Hutch bring him to see him through the lonely evening. That he only got to eat half seemed more than a fair exchange to him for Hutch’s company.

The credits began rolling up the screen just as, outside the open windows, the rattle of banging pots and the high-pitched shrieking of drunken revelers drifted in to compete with the closing music of the movie.

Hutch raised his can of root beer. “Happy New Year, partner.”

Cautious of his healing wound. Starsky leaned forward until he could tap his own can against Hutch’s. “Happy New Year, partner.”

Together, they brought soda tins to smiling mouths, tipped back heads, and drank down the last of the warm sweetness.

“You make any resolutions this year. Hutch?” Starsky asked, smiling a little, remembering the long list of last year, discarded before 1975 was a full day old.

“Just one,” Hutch admitted, the seriousness of his tone bringing Starsky’s head up, locking their gazes, gifting Starsky with guilt and sorrow that he struggled to soothe with the absolution and joy in his own.

“What’s that?” Starsky prompted him gently.

“Gonna keep a better eye on you this year, partner,” Hutch promised. It was the solemn vow of the knight in shining armor, chased by a teasing grin that teleported the serious moment into another universe. “Dobey’s right, you do need a keeper.”

Obligingly, Starsky gave him outrage and offense in a shower of empty junk food wrappers, and acceptance of the sentiment in his laughter.

“What about you, Starsk? Gonna resolve to drive the speed limit again this year?” Hutch teased.

“No. Not this year,” Starsky denied. He lifted his be-slinged arm a little. “This year, I resolve to go before I leave the station.”

~*~*~

December 31,1976

It was quieter up here. Quieter still when Hutch stepped into Huggy’s private room and closed the door behind him. He could still hear the music from the bar below. Hell, he could feel the bass vibrating the floor beneath his feet. But the heavy disco beat was muted. A heartbeat instead of a kettledrum.

Huggy’s New Year’s Eve party was a success. Starsky, Terry, and Christine were all having a good time. Everyone, even those revelers not already three sheets to the wind, was having a good time. Including Hutch. He hadn’t retreated up here because he wasn’t enjoying himself. But midnight was approaching, and he needed a little solitude. A few minutes of quiet—comparative quiet—and peace, to lay a few of the ghosts of 1976 to rest.

Eschewing the light switch that would turn on the overhead fixture, Hutch crossed the familiar room, guided only by the intermittent flash of neon through the uncurtained window. He fumbled with the lamp beside the bed long enough that, when it finally flared, his eyes had adjusted to the gloom and even the meager glow made him squint.

It was just as well. This room looked a whole lot better through slitted eyes and deliberately shuttered memory. But the pain Hutch had suffered in this austere room was last year’s ghost, already exorcised, even if a misty tendril or two occasionally slipped into his dreams to haunt him.

With hardly any hesitation at all, Hutch sat down on the bed that had witnessed his torment, propped his back against the wall, and stretched out his legs. The beer he had brought with him from the party he rested in his lap, both hands wrapped around the cool, brown glass. Amnesia in a bottle. But Hutch wasn’t looking to forget. A man was only the sum total of his experiences, however painful. He couldn’t let them rule his life, but he had to acknowledge them.

That’s what Hutch was doing up here now as Old Man 1976 limped on his gnarled cane toward his well-earned retirement. The year had delivered a few sucker punches, too many perhaps, and Hutch was here to give those blows their due. Accept the ghosts of tragedy, death, and loss. And face the specter of fear.

Where to begin? Hutch closed his eyes and went digging into memories usually kept tucked away until some sensory stimulus—a scent, a melody, a flash of color—roused them from their half-sleep. Now he sought out those recollections, the way a man prodded at a sore tooth, just to see if it still hurt, or hurt as much. It did, but, dulled by time and a little distance, the loss of a friend, nearly a year in past, offered itself as his first ghost.

The Prince and the Pauper. Hutch smiled, conjuring the image of his high school friend behind his closed eyelids, eschewing the memory of Jack’s untimely death in favor of happier moments. Lazy days of fun in the sun and humid nights of sharing hopes and dreams. The pauper, perhaps, a little too serious; and the prince not serious enough. Hutch would never forget standing at the podium on graduation day, soberly delivering his valedictorian speech, while Jack did his best from front row center to crack him up. Good days, gone forever now. Hutch hadn’t seen Jack since they had gone their separate ways after graduation. Despite the circumstances of their reunion, despite the tragedy of Jack’s too-early death, Hutch was grateful that fate had brought them together one last time.

“To Doctor John Patrick Mitchell,” Hutch whispered to the image smiling behind his eyelids. “Gone, but not forgotten.” Then he lifted the bottle to his lips and drank deeply.

Hutch opened his eyes, staring at the bottle between his hands, listening to, but unable to identify, the song that beat its way through the floorboards. Disco, certainly. Perhaps Gloria Gaynor or the Bee Gees. While his mind sought lyrics to go with the steady thump-thump-thump of the bass, Jack’s image slowly faded, taking its place among the spirits of the past who were also gone, but never forgotten.

Next, Hutch thought with a touch of irony, closing his eyes again to invite the next image to form upon the blank screen of his mind. Sweet beauty, painted in delicate hues of gold and blue began to coalesce but, instinctively, Hutch shied away from probing this empty socket, painted over with the stinging iodine of blood and shame, and sought out the gentler memory of a more recent loss in its stead.

Another city. A new life. Abby. A beautiful lady stolen right from beneath Starsky’s nose. That alone was enough to make Hutch smile. But there had been more. A comfort and ease and continuity to the time he had shared with Abby that Hutch had seldom known. Her Christmas card had said she was happy, healthy, and missed him. Hutch missed her, too. But fondly.

“To Abigail Crabtree,” Hutch toasted, settling Abby into a gentle niche in his memory, willing to let her keep a corner of his heart, if only as a friend. “Gone, but not forgotten.”

“Last but not least,” Hutch murmured, willing himself to have the courage to prod this final cavity of death and tragedy. Or was it travesty? Amazing the difference a couple of letters could make, he thought bitterly. A red balloon travesty from her first coy hello to the death-cool silence of her goodbye. Gillian.

Perhaps it was true that time really did heal all wounds, wore away the honed edges of grief and horror, and allowed the mind and heart to mend. Hutch could hardly remember her face now, in life or in death, the cool perfection of her features superseded by the memory of a fierce embrace and the steadfast support of a friend that had never wavered.

“To Gillian Ingram,” Hutch murmured, hearing in his memory the high-husky rasp of tears already shed. “Gone, but not forgotten.” He drank again, letting the cool yeasty flow ease the aching tightness of his throat, and wash the memory of a love too good to be true into the backwater of his mind.

After he drank, Hutch lifted the bottle to eye level, judging the remaining contents, unable to decide if it was half-full, or half-empty.

Hutch didn’t start when he heard the door open, didn’t even turn his head. He knew who was there, who had sought him out in these last few minutes before the baby 1977 toddled onto the calendar to begin his year-long reign.

“Hey partner,” he greeted the welcome intruder as Starsky came to stand over him.

“Wondered where you got to,” Starsky returned the greeting. His mouth was smiling, but the good cheer didn’t reach eyes shadowed by concern.

“No, you didn’t.” Hutch denied the falsehood, reading the shadows, recognizing them for they were the same ones that had lived in Starsky’s eyes for the past couple of weeks. There was one last specter to exorcise, and Hutch had known he couldn’t do it alone. Only with Starsky, did he have a hope of banishing this fear back into its bunker.

“Yeah, I knew,” Starsky admitted.

“Make yourself at home,” Hutch invited, an expansive wave of his hand offering what meager comforts this room possessed.

Starsky handed over the beer bottle he carried and turned away to retrieve the battered easy chair in which he had kept vigil over his suffering friend. He lifted it, staggering a little as he carried it back and set it down gently beside the bed. Hutch didn’t ask why Starsky didn’t simply drag the heavy weight to where he wanted it. There was no need to ask, he knew. The sound might be heard below, prompt unwelcome invaders to intrude upon them. Smiling his understanding, Hutch handed over the bottle before Starsky sprawled into the chair and lifted his feet onto the bed, the soles of both sneakers nudging Hutch’s thigh.

“Saying goodbye,” Starsky said, a certainty in his voice and an affectionate knowledge in his expression, that stripped any possibility of inquiry from the words.

Hutch sighed, warmed by the pleasure of being so well known. It was comforting, with this one man, to be so predictable. This one man who had seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of him, and loved them all. This man who had so nearly joined the company of the ghosts Hutch was here to put to rest. Last year’s resolution had been shattered on the point of a needle, and even months later, how terrifyingly close he had come to finding out if it truly was hardest on the ones left behind still had the power to chill him.

“Gone, but not forgotten,” Hutch confirmed, more grateful than he could ever say that Starsky was still here, still beside him. Still so vitally alive.

“So, how come you’re sitting up here?” Starsky asked, and it was a question this time. He waved his bottle toward the one cradled between Hutch’s hands. “Half-empty or half-full?”

Hutch lifted the bottle, held it up between them, trying hard to see the beer that still remained rather than the vacuum that topped it.

“He was wrong, you know, Hutch. Older, slower, won’t matter a damn. Coyle was wrong,” Starsky said with the same certainty with which he had stated the reason for Hutch’s retreat, the same certainty Hutch had been searching for since they had discovered Ferguson’s Law and repealed it.

They had talked of forests and trees. Over the chessboard, Hutch had debated as if he had understood Ferguson’s motives, but he hadn’t been able to convince himself any more than he had been able to convince Starsky. Coyle’s prediction echoed in Hutch’s soul, breaking up his certainty the way Starsky’s image was refracted by the glass held up between them.

“If Iron Mike could fall…” Hutch reminded both himself and his partner, leaving the thought unfinished. Aloud. But the heresy played out in his brain. If Iron Mike could fall, what magic would prevent Hutch from tumbling into that same pit of corruption?

Starsky sighed, tapping the toes of his Adidas gently against Hutch’s leg as he spoke. “I know you admired the man, looked up to him, but he was only human,” he chided gently. “Even Iron Mike Ferguson had his price.”

It was nothing but the truth, but still it angered Hutch a little to hear it said. No one wanted to believe his heroes had feet of clay. “Wonder if it’d be so easy for you to say that if it was John Blaine,” he jabbed, regretting it almost before the words had left his mouth. Not for the flash of anger he saw come into Starsky’s eyes, but for the longer, lingering hurt that followed. No one could cut you like your best friends. Someday, perhaps, Hutch would learn not to strike out from the deep well of his own pain. But until he did, he could take some comfort in the humility of apology. “I’m sorry. That was a miserable thing to say.”

The need for forgiveness was disparaged with the wave of a beer bottle, and then granted in the quirk of Starsky’s lips. “Hope I never have to find out,” he confessed. “But even if I do someday, Coyle was still wrong.”

The repetition was no more emphatic, no louder, and yet this time it seemed to resonate more clearly within Hutch. Perhaps it was just this place, the reminder of a much darker crucible that Hutch had survived—if not unscathed, then wiser and stronger. More likely, it was his partner. The realization that Starsky had somehow found his footing on the slippery slope of doubt, and was more than ready to offer Hutch a hand up.

“How can you be so sure?” Hutch accepted that hand, more than willing to let Starsky’s convictions bolster his own and carry him the last few steps.

“It’s like you said, Hutch. Iron Mike, Blaine, or any other guy in the department. They haven’t got what we got.” Starsky paused, grinned, and waggled his free hand back and forth between them invoking déjà vu. “Each other,” he concluded with satisfaction.

Ten… Nine….

The countdown had begun, bellowing voices piercing the wood and plaster between their quiet sanctuary and the revelers below.

“Resolutions, Starsk?” Hutch asked. “The same one this year—Coyle’s always gonna be wrong.”

“This year and every year,” Starsky confirmed, leaning forward to tap the neck of his bottle against Hutch’s. “Coyle’s always gonna be wrong,” he echoed.

Five… Four….

Hutch tipped his head back and drank, draining the half-full bottle to the last drop and knowing Starsky was doing the same. A shared resolution. An equal determination that it would be just as true one year from today when they would reconfirm it.

Two. One. Happy New Year!

“Happy New Year, Hutch.”

“Happy New Year, Starsk,” Hutch agreed, content that all his ghosts were laid to rest. Whether 1977 would bring new ones to haunt him remained to be seen. But the prospect held no terror for him, not with Starsky beside him. “You lucky devil,” he added with a wink.

***

December 31,1977

Leaning back against the ramshackle fence, arms casually crossed over his chest, Starsky waited for Junior to react to what Starsky had just told him. No, not Junior, Starsky reminded himself, Jackson. A confused and grief-stricken boy, his spirit staggered by the responsibilities of manhood thrust too soon upon him. Like Jackson, Starsky had been taught young that life wasn’t always fair. Since then, he had also learned that some lives were more unfair than others.

“How come you didn’t tell me about your pop when my daddy died?” Jackson finally asked, suspicion in his voice, but less of that wary emotion in the dark eyes that met Starsky’s. It had only been two weeks since his father’s death, but Jackson had already learned a lesson or two about who to trust.

Starsky gave a one-shouldered shrug, remembering how he had chased down Jackson the morning of his father’s death, and the bigoted fury that had polluted the boy’s grief. “You weren’t ready to hear it,” he said softly. “I was a white cop then. Tonight, I hope I’m your friend again.”

Jackson’s gaze skittered away and his head dropped, shame twisting the young face as he studied his own sneakers.

Starsky let him live in that thorny place for a minute or two, then laid his hand on the shoulder too thin for the burdens it now carried, and offered absolution. “I busted my Uncle Marvin right in the chops when he told me about my pop,” he confessed.

Jackson’s head came up with a snap, his eyes searching for the truth once again. His lips parted, this time, Starsky was sure, to question his veracity more seriously, but Mrs. Walters’ appearance at the back door prevented Jackson from voicing his suspicions.

“Junior. David,” the old woman called. “You two gonna come in here and help me set up the table before Ken gets back with Sammy, or you gonna stand out there all night stargazing?”

Starsky and Hutch, after working a full shift and then some, had joined the Walters for a New Year’s Eve dinner. The fine repast Mrs. Walters had laid out had left them both so stuffed they had talked her into saving the dessert of her homemade pie until Hutch had picked Sammy up.

Starsky gave Jackson a gentle push on the shoulder. “Go on and give your grandma a hand,” he said. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

Obediently, Jackson trotted toward the house and Starsky sighed with satisfaction. He felt more confident that the Walters family were going to be all right. In fact, Starsky was sure of it. Mrs. Walters had her faith, and Junior—Jackson—would grow into his new role. With a little help from his friends.

Starsky turned and leaned his arms on the top board of the fence, needing a few minutes before he went inside. He glanced at his watch, the illuminated dial showing him that 1977 had only twenty-five minutes left before a fresh year would take over. Starsky, for one, was going to be so damned glad to see the back of this miserable year. He hoped Hutch wouldn’t get caught up in traffic and miss the stroke of midnight. This year, more than any other since he had first met his friend, Starsky needed Hutch to be at his side when 1978 began.

Nevertheless, Starsky didn’t turn around when he heard the distinctive clank-rattle of the LTD he had bought to replace the demolished Galaxy. He did straighten, gripping the edge of the fence for balance and tipping his head back to look up at the sky overhead as he listened to the slam of car doors, the murmur of voices, and then, finally, the crunch of Hutch’s footsteps approaching from behind him.

“Stargazing, buddy?” Hutch asked. The suggestion, that might have been teasing, was stripped of humor by the deep note of concern in the familiar voice.

“In Bay City?” Starsky countered, narrowing his eyes, wishing he could see just a sparkle or two through the smog. He wasn’t asking for much, certainly not the panoramic star scape visible outside the city that had the power to make him feel small and insignificant. Just one or two stars. Well, three, actually. One for each of the lost souls who no longer shone in his life here on Earth.

Hutch didn’t comment, didn’t prod Starsky along with well-meaning inquiries. Starsky felt the big hands come to rest on him, palms pressed gently into his back, the long fingers resting lightly on his shoulders. Through jacket, shirt, and t-shirt, the warmth of Hutch’s touch, Hutch’s caring, penetrated to Starsky’s flesh, soaked into skin and muscle and bone and melted some of the ice that had frozen little patches of his heart.

“Do you believe in heaven, Hutch?” Starsky finally asked. Somehow, despite the many years they had been friends, religion was one of the few topics he and Hutch had never discussed. Not seriously, as so many dep subjects had been shared, over beer and the Monopoly board.

“I don’t know,” Hutch admitted. “I was taught to, but I guess it’s hard to believe in some higher being when you see so many prayers go unanswered.”

Starsky was a little disappointed, although he recognized that he had no right to be. Hutch couldn’t have all his answers for him, even if usually he did. “Maybe they aren’t unanswered, Hutch,” he speculated, knowing Hutch, knowing how guilty he would be feeling for the inadequacy of his belief. “Maybe the answer was no.”

Minutes passed while Starsky felt Hutch absorbing the possibility. He tracked it in the way the long fingers moved restlessly on his shoulders, in the way the thumbs—those opposable digits that separated humans from all other species and gave such esoteric considerations their importance—pressed possessively into the muscles of his back.

“And sometimes the answer is yes,” Hutch reminded him gently.

This year, four times the answer to Starsky’s prayers had been yes, and three times it had been no. Four to three. Almost even. But on the scales of Starsky’s life, the four yeses tipped the balance way in his favor.

“One thing I am sure of, babe,” Hutch whispered. “If there is a heaven, she’s up there.”

Starsky closed his eyes against the pang of remembered, lingering grief. The first “no.” The first star to blink out of Starsky’s personal heaven this year. Ten months without that light had taught his eyes to see beyond the gloom Terry’s loss had left behind. Time healed all wounds, it seemed. Time and the unceasing care and support of the friend who stood so patiently at his back now.

“Jackson, too,” Starsky insisted, opening his eyes to let in a little of the light Jackson Walters had left behind him. It glowed from the small home he had provided for his family, the flame tended by a grieving mother and son, kept bright by cherished memories.

“For sure,” Hutch agreed. “Gone, but not forgotten,” he added the same eulogy and promise he had given his own burned out stars the year before.

“What about John? You think God’d really keep him out of heaven just for being what he was?” Starsky asked, feeling surprise stiffen the hands that connected them.

“Being what he was?” Hutch echoed, wariness sticking out all over his tone like the quills on a startled porcupine. “I thought… You don’t think it’s what he chose to be?”

It was Starsky’s turn to feel shame now. The same failure-to-trust consequence that he had let Jackson suffer for a few brief moments earlier. He wasn’t so quick to offer himself absolution, had tormented himself with his lack of understanding, right up to the moment when, as such revelations so often do, it had reared up and slapped him smack in the kisser.

“Once, yes,” Starsky admitted his culpability, gratefully accepting the understanding the sudden strong grip of Hutch’s hands offered. “You want, love, what you love. Can’t change that. Like how I love jalapenos and you hate them. I can decide not to eat them, but that’s never gonna mean I don’t like them,” he explained, choosing his analogy carefully, hoping Hutch, who knew him so well, would just this once hear only the spoken, remain blind and deaf to what weaved itself within the unspoken lines.

“When’d you figure all this out?” Hutch asked, nothing but curiosity and perhaps a touch of relief in his voice.

Starsky knew exactly the moment of his revelation. An epiphany gifted to him as he had stood on the wrong side of an isolation window and known, certainly, surely, and without even the tiniest scrap of hope, that Hutch was going to die. Starsky had already been third time lucky this year, and he had been certain that all his good fortune was spent. The precious coin had been handed over in exchange for a bullet proof vest, a crazy old veteran, and the lousy aim of a mad woman.

Starsky hadn’t fallen in love with Hutch in that moment of clarity, he had simply seen that the man he had labeled friend, companion, and brother had also become the love of his life. Also, not in exclusion. So, now, Starsky answered only, “Ashamed of how long it took me, but I got there.”

“You always do,” Hutch said, bestowing approval with the tone of his voice and reward with fingers that ruffled Starsky’s hair, squeezed his nape, and then returned to his shoulders as the alarm on Starsky’s watch began to beep the hour.

“Coyle’s always gonna be wrong.”

They said it together, their voices blending in the resolution that had become their credo, the one promise neither of them had been tempted to break in the year since they had first spoken it.

“Any other resolutions, Hutch?” Starsky asked.

There was a thoughtful silence behind him that lasted through the final beep of 1977. “No,” Hutch finally replied. “And you?”

“You boys cornin’ in before the clock strikes twelve?” Mrs. Walters called from the doorway before Starsky could decide whether to answer or what the answer might be.

“That fancy watch of yours must be fast,” Hutch teased. His hands dropped away, leaving behind a chill.

Knowing his opportunity was lost, at least for now, Starsky turned and watched as Hutch crossed the hard-baked earth of the yard, those long legs eating up the distance in a few easy strides.

“Just one,” Starsky whispered, his heart so full of Hutch’s light it eclipsed all the stars he had ever hoped to sew. “To love you.”

As if he had heard the whispered promise, Hutch hesitated on the doorstep, turned, and cocked his head. “You comin’, Starsk?”

“Right behind you, partner,” Starsky promised.

***

December 31,1978

Hutch was miserable. Who wouldn’t be, parked in a stinking alley, waiting for a low-life rat to walk into a trap of someone else’s devising? Stakeout was a lousy way to see in a new year. It had never been Hutch’s favorite part of the job. That he could no longer remember any favorite part, only added to the misery of his aching back and sandpapery eyes. Whatever it was that had made being a cop seem like it was the very best use he could make of his life was slipping through his fingers, and he couldn’t hold onto it no matter how tightly he clenched his fist.

He couldn’t even pinpoint the moment when the rot had begun to set in on his illusions. As hokey as it sounded, Hutch truly had, once upon a time, believed himself to be the defender of truth and justice. Truth would win out over lies, and there would be justice for all. He was the idealistic Superman in denim and leather. Had that bright promise really been illusion, or had it been delusion all along? That he didn’t have the answer to that question scared the hell out of him. He had seen burn out, seen better men than he could ever hope to be give up and walk away. If he had any gray matter still functioning, he would get out, leave the shattered illusions or delusions behind, before, some dark lonely night, a .357 slug began to look like an irresistible midnight snack.

The reason Hutch was still carrying a badge could be laid at the doorstep of the man currently catching a restless catnap in the passenger seat. Blame or credit? Tonight, Hutch couldn’t have said. Giving up his morose perusal of the front windshield, Hutch turned his head to study Starsky’s sleeping face, trying, fruitlessly he was sure, and for maybe the thousandth time, to find himself, his conviction, in those familiar features.

As Hutch watched, something unhappy flickered over the well-known profile. Eyelid fluttered. Lips tightened. Was it just the discomfort of the worn cushions of the LTD, or was Starsky’s sleep haunted by the same demons of doubt that too often crept into Hutch’s rest? Hutch didn’t think so. His partner, in painful contrast, still seemed so very certain that the sacrifices demanded by the streets they swept with their pitiful law and order brooms were worth it. For the first time since they had met so many years ago, they weren’t on the same page. Or even the same chapter. Hutch, in fact, felt ready to close the book entirely.

As if the disloyalty of Hutch’s thoughts had somehow been transmitted, Starsky woke with a start, eyes immediately alert and seeking out his partner. “We ready to rock and roll?”

“No,” Hutch said, pitching his voice to a soothing murmur, certain it was his intent regard that had yanked Starsky from the escape of sleep, and feeling yet another ounce of guilt added to the pounds that already rested on his shoulders.

“Just lonesome for my company, huh?” Starsky asked with a sleepy smile.

Unaccountably embarrassed by how accurate Starsky’s gentle allegation was, Hutch groped for humor to cover the sudden nakedness he felt. “Yeah. Nobody’s cracked a lame joke or spilled coffee on my seat in an hour,” he quipped, an oil spill of bitterness slicking the intended humor, polluting it into a cesspool of accusation.

Starsky, however, didn’t seem to hear the tone or, if he did, chose to ignore it. He straightened from his napping slouch, stretching as best he could, the creak of leather and the snap, crackle, pop of ligaments and tendons orchestrating an oddly soothing music in the confined space of the car. “Think we’re gettin’ too old for this shit, buddy,” he complained around a second yawn, then twirled one finger in a circle in the space between them. “Turn around.”

Hutch glanced out the window beside him, expecting to see whatever had caught Starsky’s attention, but there was nothing to see. The stained brick wall looked exactly the same to Hutch as it had when they had parked here three hours ago. “What?” he asked, looking back and finding Starsky watching him.

“I can tell your back is hurting. Turn around and I’ll see if I can untie a few of the knots,” Starsky offered.

“Uhm, that’s nice of you…” Hutch began to decline the offer.

“Bullshit,” Starsky cut in succinctly. “Nice my numb ass. If you seize up, who’s gonna cover me?”

Hutch sighed. Starsky knew him so well. Knew when his stubborn nature was prodding him to foolish self-denial, and knew exactly how to disarm it. When, he wondered, had his predictability become an irritant rather than a balm for his aching spirit? An imposition upon his individuality instead of the comfort of knowing he was one-half of a whole?

“Here, hang on to this,” Starsky commanded as if Hutch had voiced agreement instead of dissent. He handed over the radio unit that connected them to Babcock and Simmons, the lead team on the stakeout.

Hutch accepted the unit and defeat, turning to face the door. The twist almost pulled a yelp from him as it torqued his spine, before he shuffled back a little, clearing the steering wheel and giving himself enough room to bend his left leg and pull it up onto the seat. His knee pressed into the door, but he forgot the discomfort as he listened to Starsky wriggling around behind him and realized he was anticipating the first touch of Starsky’s hands. It made his blood thump an uneven rhythm in his veins even as he tried to tell himself he was only anxious for the relief from his pain.

He felt a fumble at the hem of his jacket, and then the heat and strength of Starsky’s hands zeroing in on the torment above his belt. It felt so good. Too good. A good that had nothing to do with the easing of strained muscles. A coming home sensation that almost made Hutch pull away, reject the comfort and security along with the physical relief.

“Christ, you’re tight,” Starsky complained, his fingers testing the taut muscles. “If Bobby gave us the heads up right now, you’d fall on your face getting out of the car. Why didn’t you say something?”

A matter of business. If Hutch rejected now, he wouldn’t be just an ingrate, but a negligent partner. Absolved of guilt, if only for this one small moment of untainted pleasure, Hutch felt free to open himself to it. To accept the relief as tight muscles were coaxed to relax and give up their jealously guarded pain, to welcome the anticipated warmth when Starsky’s hands found their way under his shirt, and to rock gently with the push and pull of Starsky’s strength.

Lulled by the sensations, Hutch closed his eyes, blocking out the visual reality of the filthy alley, letting the static from the radio he held blend with the whisper of cloth on cloth, creating a white noise that held the rest of the world at bay as effectively as his eyelids.

“That’s it. Just relax.” Starsky’s voice slipped into the womb of well-being surrounding Hutch, becoming a verbal massage that worried away at the taut psychic knots the way his hands worked loose strained back muscles. The deep murmur seemed to stroke from ear to brain to tired spirit with the same magic as fingers and palms flowed from waist to shoulders and back again.

Zebra Three, you still out there?

The sudden squawk from the radio fractured the bubble of contentment Hutch had found, dragging him back to the stinking alley and the sacrifice that, any moment, might be demanded of him. Lay their lives on the line for a cause he was no longer sure he believed in.

With a leaden arm, Hutch raised the radio unit to his lips, thumbing the send. “Are we a go?”

“That’s a negative. No sign of the rat yet,” Bobby Simmons’s static-filled voice reported. “Just wanted to say Happy New Year. “

Consumed by fury, Hutch was unable to offer a civil response. He felt assaulted and robbed, as if their colleague’s cheery interruption had stolen away something precious that could never be recovered.

“You guys willing to give it another hour?” Simmons asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Starsky answered from over Hutch’s shoulder. “Whatever it takes.”

Hutch let his hand fall back into his lap, switching the radio to stand by before Simmons even finished signing off. Starsky’s hands hadn’t left him, Hutch realized with a jolt, as those hands took up the stroking once again. They had stayed, warm and firm against his skin, holding the connection open between them. Hutch’s own hands tightened into fists around the radio, though he was hardly aware of its physical reality as he sought to capture the elusive something that wouldn’t let him abandon the vocation he had chosen. His illusions were gone, but his connection remained. Whether they agreed or argued, in tune or on completely different channels altogether, Starsky was the reason, the one and only reason. Hutch continued to do a job he had grown to despise. He no longer believed he made a difference, but Starsky made a difference to him.

“Coyle’s always gonna be wrong,” Starsky whispered, so close that his breath ruffled the too long hair over Hutch’s ear.

Starsky had been right two years ago. Older and slower didn’t matter a damn. But Hutch had discovered a weariness of the soul that made their annual resolution seem nothing more than a frightened voice whistling in the dark. Not a lie. Even as disillusioned as Hutch felt, he hadn’t yet considered adopting Ferguson’s Law. But he feared the possibility now as he never truly had before. Prayed he would have the courage to walk away before Coyle’s prediction came true, but was no longer sure he could when it would mean walking away from Starsky. Starsky held Hutch to the Bay City Police Department, perhaps to Bay City and California itself, as surely as a hawser line held a ship to the pier. In this moment of crystal clarity, Hutch almost hated him for it.

“Hutch?” Starsky murmured, his voice as hesitant and uncertain as the hands that rested on Hutch’s skin had become.

“Coyle’s never gonna be right,” Hutch rasped, knowing it wasn’t the same resolution, offering what he could. Close, so close, but a world of difference yawning between them that had never before existed.

“It’s not the same thing,” Starsky whispered. There were questions and fears in his voice, but neither accusation nor surprise.

Of course, Hutch thought, he was predictable. Those blue eyes had pierced his defenses long ago and no hastily raised camouflage netting could ever be proof against them. Rebelliously, he tried, muscles stiffening, rejecting the comfort of Starsky’s touch, wishing that, just once, his partner would back off and leave him to suffer. It was no more than he deserved.

“Close enough,” Hutch growled, demanding that Starsky accept what little he had to offer while mourning how truly little it was. A weary loyalty to a shared past, unsweetened by the promise of a better tomorrow Hutch no longer believed in. “What other resolutions did you make?” he asked, not because he cared if Starsky had resolved to prove the moon was made of blue cheese, but only to fill in the waiting silence.

Starsky’s hands, still warm, still resting upon him, perhaps trembling a little now, left Hutch’s back but not his skin, fingers and palms sliding around him, stroking from belly to chest to shoulders with a delicate tenderness that roused a sharp yearning in Hutch, defeating his resistance when Starsky drew him back to rest against his chest.

“Oh, Hutch,” Starsky sighed, so close that Hutch could feel the moist heat of his breath against his jaw. “Same one I make every year. To watch my partner’s back.”

The waiting silence was back, aching impatiently this time, an ache that invaded Hutch’s senses when he felt the warm brush of Starsky’s lips against his jaw, uncertain if the moist caress was really a kiss or only more words dropped below the level of sound and painted directly onto his skin. “Wherever that takes us.”

It came together in Hutch’s mind then, the breathless promise and the embrace leaving him gasping with the suddenly limitless possibilities.

Zebra Three. Zebra Three. Rat’s in the trap. We are a go.

They scrambled from the car, racing in tandem for the mouth of the alley, but even as Hutch drew his Magnum, it felt as if his fist was closing on nothing but air.

***

December 31,1979

Starsky stepped out of the shower and pulled a towel from the rack. After a long nap and a shower as hot as he could stand it, he had no trouble with the twist and stretch and bend required to dry and dress. There were only a few protesting twinges left over from today’s physiotherapy session to remind him that the road map of scars that etched his torso were anything more than an ill-considered tattoo. He hardly gave them a second glance, or a second thought anymore, except for days like today when a grueling evaluation reminded him those scars weren’t just skin deep.

Patty had told him today that he had a fifty-fifty chance of full recovery. Certainly better than the twenty-eighty of three months ago, and just about what Starsky had expected. Limitation had always been a filthy word to Starsky, but seven months of running face first, over and over and over again, into the brick wall of the boundaries Gunther’s goons had triggered into his body, had taught him there was little shame to be found in accepting the cards life dealt you.

“Not bad for a guy who almost punched out,” Starsky told his reflection, and then turned his back on it. A glance at his watch, as he strapped it on his wrist, had shown him he had lingered a little too long in the shower. It was already after eleven o’clock and he had a few, last-minute preparations to make. Too many, certainly, to spend his time regretting the unchangeable past.

Still holding anticipation at bay, Starsky checked on the Chinese take-out dinner staying warm in the oven, and transferred the cold champagne from the refrigerator to the ice bucket sitting beside the table that was already set for a late night dinner for two—complete with candles.

Starsky grinned to himself, imagining Hutch’s reaction when he arrived after shift. Hopefully before midnight. Starsky was anxious to begin celebrating, not just the beginning of a new year, but a whole new life. They had talked it around in circles. Argued and debated the inescapable facts around and around between them until, as usual, they had found themselves in accord. A plan for the future, resolutions to be implemented today, had been agreed upon as they both left the past behind them and looked forward to the future.

That reminded Starsky of one missing item, and he hurried to the closet to retrieve a twice-folded carbon copy from his jacket pocket. He returned to the table and laid it on Hutch’s plate, then paused for a second thought. That was a little… He picked it up and took it to the coffee table instead, but that didn’t seem quite right either. Too blatant or not blatant enough? He stuffed the paper in his back pocket when the slam of a car door and the staccato beat of a boot-shod rush up the outside stairs warned that time to waffle over the final detail was over.

Starsky dropped the leash he had been holding on his anticipation and let it hurry his steps toward the door. Still, he was only halfway across the living room when the door opened and Hutch walked through it. The same surprise that often made him do a double take when he caught sight of his scarred body in the mirror froze Starsky in place. It was going to take more than a week for his memory to imprint the changes in Hutch, before he wouldn’t feel as if he had stepped into a time warp every time he saw his lover. Lover. Even five months after Hutch had kissed him for the first time, that word alone, applied to Hutch, still had the power to rock Starsky all the way down to his soul.

“Whoa!” he said, shaking his head as he watched Hutch shrug out of his letterman jacket and toss it over the back of the wicker chair.

“Whoa?” Hutch echoed. “That’s a hell of a way to greet your lover.”

Laughing at himself and the hands-on-hips attitude of wounded sensibilities Hutch assumed, Starsky was able to convince his feet to cross the last few feet that separated them. He reached up to ruffle the much shorter hair at the back of Hutch’s head as Hutch slipped both arms around him, then ran his fingertip over the disconcertingly naked, and still slightly paler, upper lip.

“Don’t think I’m used to my Christmas present yet,” Starsky defended himself.

“Want me to grow it back?” Hutch asked, his lips moving against Starsky’s finger, delivering little baby kisses that tingled their way into Starsky’s veins.

“Think I’m still figuring that out,” Starsky confessed, securing a grip in the short, soft strands, and drawing Hutch’s mouth to him. Mustachioed or clean shaven made little difference to him. As long as it was Hutch’s mouth moving eagerly against his, and Hutch’s tongue inviting his to come out and play, Starsky was content. More than content to know that Hutch no longer felt the need to hide behind his hairy camouflage.

“That’s more like it,” Hutch murmured when the long hello kiss ended, the rumbling purr at odds with the expectant expression Starsky found on his face when he opened his eyes.

“You did it?” Starsky asked. He was certain that Hutch had implemented his part of their joint plan for the future. Ninety-nine percent certain, at least. But it was that pesky one percent that pressed his arm into the empty holster that hung beneath Hutch’s arm, flattening the leather against the firm flesh of his side. “You did it,” he repeated more firmly.

“I did it,” Hutch confirmed, reaching back to pull the worn leather folder from his jeans pocket. A practiced twist of his fingers flipped it open between them to reveal that it was just as naked as his upper lip.

“You did it,” Starsky repeated yet again, wonder and perhaps a smidgeon of relief in his voice as he ran his fingers over the imprint where, only this morning, maybe only an hour ago, Hutch’s badge had been pinned. A bright, shiny new badge, not even a year old. A replacement for the one that, along with Starsky’s original detective’s shield, lay rusting at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

“Did you do it?” Hutch asked with a few shades less certainty than Starsky had asked the same question.

So, perhaps Hutch’s certainty had been hovering closer to ninety-five percent than ninety-nine. Starsky couldn’t blame him. There was a world of difference between making a choice and having a choice shoved down your throat. And the truth of the matter was that Hutch was a fretter. It was his natural state of being. If he ever stopped being the pessimist, Starsky knew that would be his cue to get his lover to the nearest hospital.

“Signed, sealed, and on its way to Dobey,” Starsky confirmed, fishing the much-folded carbon copy of his application for disability pension from his pocket and placing it on top of the empty badge case in Hutch’s hand. “Patty said today that I might make it back to the streets if I kept working as hard as I have the past three months,” he admitted, closing his hand around Hutch’s, trapping the evidence of their mutual freedom between their palms. “I’m willing to work that hard to live with you, Hutch, but not to risk dying with you.” He gripped Hutch’s hand convulsively. “Or without you.”

The leather wallet hit the carpet with a soft thwap, the carbon fluttering behind it as they embraced, clinging hard to the reality of each other.

“Christ, Starsk,” Hutch whispered, the huskiness of tears competing with the unalloyed joy in his voice. “What happened to the guy who hated soapy scenes?”

“He died, Hutch,” Starsky murmured, a lesson well-learned this year letting him pull away a little, meet Hutch’s eyes with ease, and reveal his emotions without shame. “His heart stopped and he died. You kissed this one back to life, and now you’re stuck with him, buddy.”

“Damn right,” Hutch growled and took possession of Starsky’s mouth.

Even as hungry and fierce as it was, this kiss had little to do with the desire they had discovered could be both roused and sated in each other’s arms. This kiss drew together all the threads of love that had bound them together for more than a decade. But passion had found its place within that fabric and, as the kiss deepened, desire flared, weaving the bright red of sensual heat between them. Starsky let himself become lost in this kiss, letting every brush of their lips banish the pain and near tragedy that 1979 and an evil despot had visited upon them, until it became a ghost of the past, swept further away from them by the march of the second hand as the clock ticked inevitably closer to midnight.

“Is that moo shoo pork I smell,” Hutch murmured, separating their lips only the bare minimum required to permit intelligible speech.

“Uh-huh,” Starsky confirmed. He stole yet another nibbling kiss from Hutch’s much redder lips, then eased the possessive grip he had on the bright hair, allowing Hutch to look around and take in the careful preparations.

“And champagne in the bucket?” Hutch asked teasingly.

“Uh-huh,” Starsky repeated, trying hard to pretend an innocence of purpose that possessed not one stray scrap of veracity.

“And candles?” Hutch continued in mock surprise. “Starsky, are you trying to seduce me?” he accused, the heat in his gaze as it returned to Starsky offering reassurance that he was a more than willing seductee.

Laughing, Starsky slid both hands slowly down Hutch’s back, loving the flex of the strong muscles under the thin cotton of Hutch’s shirt, until they settled on his ass. He pushed, flat-palmed, against the denim encased curves as he lifted to press them groin to groin. “Is it midnight yet?” he asked hopefully, instead of admitting to his seductive culpability.

“Does it have to be?” Hutch asked, dipping his head, nuzzling into Starsky’s throat.

“First New Year’s kiss,” Starsky reminded him, knees going weak as Hutch’s tongue lapped at his skin.

“You’ve turned into such a romantic,” Hutch teased gently, head lifting and his hands cupping Starsky’s face. But there was no censure in his voice, only approval. The same approval that lit his face and glowed in his eyes. “If it isn’t midnight, it’s close enough. Happy New Year, babe.”

“Happy New Year, sweetheart,” Starsky whispered and gave himself up to the promise of their very first New Year’s kiss.

The End