Bruises

Starsky and Hutch come to some difficult realizations after the fight in Kira’s hallway.

Originally published in the zine Dance With the Devil in 2003 by Lucy and Elaine.

I don’t know why I came over. I argued with myself the whole drive here. But it was like the car had a mind of it’s own and I was too mad or too confused or too hurt to fight it.

But I could fight you, couldn’t I? Oh God…

I’ve never before hit you in anger. We’ve wrestled, clowning around and I hit you that one time in the bar undercover, and it just about killed me to do it.

But when I saw you come out of that bedroom, and I saw past you to the rumpled sheets, hell.. I could smell the sex wafting out of the room when you opened the door. I thought I was going to puke, right there on the floor.

Then I just put my head down and charged… I’ve never been so angry with anyone in my life. To look back on it now, I’m as sick inside as if I’d just smelled the room all over again. Sick that I did that—sicker inside that you did.

Why? Why did you fuck her? I know you didn’t make love, because you don’t love her… and if I were able to be brutally honest with myself, I don’t either. I thought I did… told you I did. But it wasn’t true. I’m not sure who it was most important to fool about that, you or me.

I didn’t bother to knock when I got to your place, just walked in like I owned it. I knew you were home, that junk heap you drive was down on the street. But I didn’t see you anywhere… then I saw the closed bathroom door. I knocked, hating the way my hand shook while doing it.

I took the grunt I heard as the okay to go in. You were just coming out of the shower. The water wasn’t running anymore, but you were standing there, naked and wet. And I got a good look.

Not just your body; hell, I’ve seen that plenty of times. But of what I’d done to it. The fist-shaped marks on your fair skin… the ones I put there. And I felt sick all over again.

I stepped closer and you straightened up with a wince like the movement hurt you, or you thought I was there to hit you again. I don’t know which… doesn’t matter because either way made me feel like shit. My hand reached out, a mind of its own, and my fingers traced the ugly dark purple and red marks along your ribs, barely touching, feather light.

“How bad did I hurt you?” My voice sounded like a stranger’s, and I didn’t want to hear your answer, but I had to know.

“Not as bad as I hurt you,” you said, and I looked up from your skin to your blue eyes and saw the tears there.

“I’m sorry…” we both said it at once and I laughed aloud just before I reached to hold you. But I could tell from the look on your face that an embrace from me was the last thing you were expecting.

“She was as close to you as I could get and still be with a female,” I confessed around the lump in my throat I was working hard to swallow.

“Just like Marianne,” you answered close to my ear and I swear I felt my heart stoop. My mind conjured up the singer’s face and I realized with a start that it was true. We were both looking for what we had right in front of us, but were too scared to reach out and take it. So we grabbed on to a substitute and settled for so much less.

“No more settling for less…” I told you, leaning back enough to look you straight in the eye. “I’m looking at what I want, all I need… for keeps.” I looked at you then waiting for an answer, sure down to my toes that I wasn’t the only one who was feeling this.

“I’m what you need? Even after…” I cut you off, my mouth taking yours hard, forcing it open and possessing it as if somehow I had the right… yet offering myself too, open and waiting for you. You took the invitation and when we parted we were both blown away.

“Does that answer your question?” I asked you and sorta chuckled at the dazed look on your face.

“That one, yeah.” You smiled a little shyly at me around your swollen lips.

“You got others?” I challenged, wondering how much plainer I could make it.

“Maybe, but they’ll keep for later, much later… we’ve got all the time in the world now…” you whispered to me and turned my bones to mush.

When we walked hand in hand out of the bathroom and over to your bed, I rolled that thought around in my head. All the time in the world, and I prayed that it was true. Then we fell together, into bed and into a deeper love and, I hoped, into a new life, and made every love we’d ever had previously fade to a distant memory. The now and the here of you and me are tangible… real.

The bruises will fade. I know that, but I’m kissing them now, half in supplication and half in gratitude. Because we finally saw the light… I wish it hadn’t taken such a heavy toll, but better that than not ever seeing it at all.

I’d rather lived bruised than blind.