Changing of the Tide

We share this world, my love and I
Parallel these shores we reside
We live and love as time goes by
With each changing of the tide
—Steve Robertson

The room was dark, perfect for restful sleep and gentle dreams, but he wasn’t sleeping.

Neither was Hutch.

“Nervous?” he asked softly. He moved his hand, fingertips delicately drawing patterns across the back of Hutch’s hand.

“A little.”

Hutch turned his hand so his fingers brushed against Starsky’s, twining. A small sigh escaped and hung in the darkness above them.

“You’ll like the place I found – Linda found, I mean.”

Starsky turned just enough to tuck his head into Hutch’s shoulder. “I have no doubt.” And with all the packing they’d completed today, there wasn’t much left to keep them in this place. Starsky asked and Hutch had brought Starsky a cutting from the tree he’d given him for Christmas that one year, and Starsky, in his enthusiasm, had packed the bedside lamps without considering the one night left to them. They’d had to feel their way to bed.

“Are you nervous?”

“What have I got to be nervous about? I ain’t working. Gonna be a kept man.”

He felt a shimmer of laughter from his partner, and smiled into his neck. “‘sides, I’m kinda looking forward to taking care of you for a change. Being a house-husband for awhile.”

Hutch grew very still. “Except we’re not married.”

Hutch’s change in tone drew Starsky up onto his elbow. “Doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

Hutch abruptly tossed off the covers, left the bed and the room, and Starsky felt a tiny shard of ice spike in his belly. Feeling abandoned and not a little scared, he reached for the empty pillow, smoothing his hand over the warmth left behind. Had he just pushed a button he hadn’t meant to, or made an assumption that wasn’t agreed to? This whole plan to move to San Francisco had become stressful from the moment Hutch had told him about the new job, and now he felt as if he’d somehow gone too far in his excitement over the idea of living more openly than they’d ever been able to before.

He looked anxiously up at Hutch when he returned. His partner’s features and bare chest were softly lit by the glow of a single pillar candle, the flame of which he guarded with his hand. Starsky watched the beautiful face float in the darkness until Hutch moved to Starsky’s side of the bed, and from behind him Starsky could hear the candle being set on the end table, a gentle thud in the quiet.

A warm hand clasped his shoulder. “C’mere, Starsk.”

At Hutch’s urging, he rolled over carefully onto his back and then sat up gingerly, the ice chip of dread in his belly growing into a cube and his recovering body beginning to shiver. “Hutch, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“Shh. It’s okay. Listen. Just listen.” Hutch pulled the folded blanket from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around Starsky’s shoulders, then took trembling hands in his as he bent one knee under him and sat at the side of the bed.

“It’s been a crazy few months, you know? And you’ve been getting so much better, so fast. I’m proud of you – you know that?”

Starsky nodded, but his gaze focused on their hands.

“And this change, now…moving to San Francisco, a whole new job…yeah, I’m nervous.”

The candlelight flickered shadows across their clasped hands, and Starsky could smell the burning of the wick and hear his own heart beating as he breathed out a question.

“Would you rather I stayed here? Not come with you?” When Hutch didn’t answer right away, Starsky summoned the courage to raise his eyes to meet his partner’s, only to find them wide.

“Oh, Starsk.” Hutch pulled him close, one hand coming to grip the back of Starsky’s neck. “Look. Linda explained to me, and I could see when I was there for the interviews, that things aren’t all Shangri-La in San Francisco anymore than they are here. This new job – it’s going to be an uphill battle all the way, and I need-”

“Time to get used to it first. I understand. I can stay with Huggy or someone.”

“Starsky! No…no. Listen. I need you. You’re my partner, and I need you in my life, in my bed, and at my back, just like always! We’re leaving behind the people who get us. Who know and accept us, and moving to where there are more guys like us but no less discrimination against us. I need…oh, God, I need you. I can’t face all that without you right behind me. I need Me and Thee.” Hutch pulled back just enough so that Starsky could see his face. His eyes were like liquid in the candlelight, shimmering with emotion.

Hutch slid to his knees on the floor, tugging Starsky around to sit on the edge of the bed before speaking again. “Starsk, I want to ask you something. And I want you to really think about it before you answer me. Promise me?”

The cold ice warred between melting or cracking into even more freezing pieces. He nodded slowly.

Hutch reached for something on the end table, bumping the candle slightly, and Starsky could see his hand shaking. The shadows hid the object well, and Hutch’s large palm swallowed it up completely.

“You and me…we’ve gone down a lot of roads together. Seen more of the bad stuff than most people ever have to, but together we’ve come out whole on the other side. There’s a strength to be found in that, a strength that I know other people only wish they had.

“You’re so strong and alive, and you make me want to be alive with you. You see the light when I see the darkness. You make me think again when I am sure I already know what I think. And when Gunther did…this to you…to us…I felt like, if he succeeded, I might die, too.”

Starsky drew a sharp breath and felt a little dizzy. “Hutch.”

“One of those really bad days when it seemed like you weren’t going to turn that corner and come back to me, I went out to the beach. One of those rare thunderstorms was coming, and it fit my mood. I sat there and watched the storm and the tide, and once the tide got close, I laid down at the edge of the water and waited for it to take me away, hoping you’d understand, and find me on the other side. No more pain, no more hurting, for either of us. I felt so empty.”

Starsky reached out to him then, laying his palm against Hutch’s cheek.

“The ocean roared at me, pushed me away with its waves instead of sucking me in like I wanted it to. And I got so angry, Starsk. I pitched a fit, right there on the sand. Angry at the sea for refusing me. Angry that I had failed in the one task I held most important above everything else. Angry that I hadn’t protected you, that I hadn’t been fast enough, that I hadn’t taken the bullets. They told me you were going to die. You did, but they brought you back, only to tell me they might not be able to save you a second time. And I couldn’t live with that, Starsk. I couldn’t live without you.

“But the ocean pushed me back up the beach, refused to listen to me scream at it. And in a flash of lightning – I thought I’d been struck – I saw you, trying to smile, and holding out your hand, and shaking your head ‘no’. It felt like time stopped right then, just to make sure I understood that you were still here. It was your will to live that sent me back, back to my own life, back to you. You made me able to face it all again. You came back from dying, and if you could do that, then I could damned well stay alive for you.”

Starsky felt his eyes burn and prickle. His beautiful, generous, loving Hutch, ready to give up this world if he hadn’t survived. Guilt over what he’d put his partner through fell into his belly and mixed with the melting ice. “Oh, Hutch.”

“I love you. You make me feel so strong. And that night – I knew it was always you.”

Starsky shook his head slowly. “It’s you who makes me strong.”

Hutch smiled. “It’s me and thee, Starsk. Me and thee. It’s going to be forever. It’s been sealed within the universe already, but how about here, in our world?”

He opened his hand to show two gold bands glowing in the light of the single candle. “Would you marry me? Even if it could only be within our hearts and the universe, and not on a piece of paper?”

Starsky felt the ice melt in a rush and a ridiculous grin spread across his face. “So you really wanted me to think before I answered this question?”

“I still do,” Hutch answered, his face solemn.

Starsky leaned forward, bracing himself on Hutch’s shoulder with one hand and pressing their foreheads together. “Okay, I’m thinking. I’m thinking that I love you. I’m thinking that we have our whole lives ahead of us. I’m thinking that I’m done with hiding and pretending so other people ain’t uncomfortable around us. And I’m thinking…yes. Paper or no paper. I’m yours. You’re mine. Me and thee.”

Hutch kissed him then, and Starsky felt cool metal slide onto his finger. He pulled back to look at it, and then held out his hand for the other ring.

Slipping it onto Hutch’s finger felt like closing a door, a door behind which lived darkness, anger, pain, guilt, and loss. Kissing Hutch felt like throwing open a different door, one that let in the light and warmth of sunshine, the scents of the ocean breeze and delicate candle smoke, and love.

The tide had changed.

~end
February 12, 2008