Cowboy

It’s late Friday night. Huggy, for reasons best known to himself, has taken out some weird cable package of obscure European TV — maybe it will widen his clientele, who can say — and somehow Starsky has ended up in the corner booth with Hutch, idly watching the TV screen above them while they shoot the breeze at the end of a working week which, praise be, has coincided this week with the actual week-end.

Hutch’s responses to Starsky’s current anecdote — about the lady with the va va voom who he met when he was booking in those shoplifters this afternoon — have been getting more and more offhand over the last couple of minutes, and he’s not even pulling his eyes away from the TV to comment now. Starsky looks up, anticipating some buxom beauty or other, and instead finds a sexy Bowie-esque cowboy on the screen. He’s clad in a skin-tight outfit with snakeskin boots and a feather boa and singing into a microphone in a decidedly phallic manner. As Starsky watches, the guy gets up close and personal with his guitarist before climbing up on a mechanical bucking bronco and putting the ‘ride’ into, uh, riding.

Hutch is gazing, transfixed, like a snake watching a rabbit, or maybe a rabbit caught in the gaze of a snake. Starsky does a double take, grins to himself as something slots into place, moseys on over to the bar for more beer.

Huggy is standing there polishing glasses as he surveys his domain. Starsky leans a hip against the bar and nods in Hutch’s direction.

“Huggy, my man, you got a cold one? Think Hutch is gonna need something to cool him down.”

Huggy can’t see the TV screen from this angle, but he looks over at Hutch sitting there hypnotised and says, “Cowboy, huh?”

Starsky’s on his second double take of the evening. “Uh, got it in one.”

Huggy nods, pulls the smooth wooden pump handle towards himself to pour the beer in a way that might have seemed less suggestive five minutes ago. Starsky’s brain is whirring now.

“You don’t seem surprised, Hug.”

Huggy slides the beer glass along the bar, grabs another to fill.

“Where’s the surprise? Only one thing does it for him more than that. Anyone with eyes and an ounce of sense could tell ya.”

Starsky’s bamboozled now, but he ain’t gonna let that show. Got to keep his place as Number One Hutch Expert. He pays the man in cash for once, takes a glass of beer in each hand and puts on his best strut to cross back to the corner booth.

He holds out one chilled glass towards Hutch, who shivers a little like he’s coming out of a trance, wipes his hand over his face, self-conscious.

Starsky can’t help but drawl as he asks, “Little hot and bothered there, partner?”

Hutch takes the beer. “I uh, um—” He ducks his head. “Thanks, Starsk.”

Once he’s hit his limit for Hutch just sitting there looking shifty and restless and still a little heavy-lidded, Starsky takes the nearly-empty beer glass from Hutch’s hand and sets it down on the table.

“C’mon, bronco, I’m taking you home.”

Hutch allows himself to be escorted from the bar. Huggy watches them go.

————————————————————

Sitting in the dark in the Torino’s passenger seat, smooth black leather under and around him, Hutch stares out of the window at the city lights as Starsky drives toward Venice. He feels caught out, his nerve-endings raw and exposed. He tries to ignore how Starsky is sneaking looks over at him, wonders if he’s imagining the crackle of tension in the air or if it’s just his own sense of impending disaster, like someone’s cut the brakes on the car again.

Starsky’s voice is loud against the rumble of the engine. “Never knew you swung that way, Blintz.”

Yep. Brake lines are gone. Hutch sighs, heavily. “Yeah, well, maybe I didn’t want you to know.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath and it feels like the oxygen has been sucked out of the car. Hutch turns in time to see all the light go out of Starsky, and gets a sinking feeling that he just played that very, very wrong. That maybe he’s thrown away his heart’s desire without ever knowing it was right there in his hand. He can’t force another word past the lump in his throat so he just sits there in silence, looking bleakly out of the windshield as the sodium streetlights go by.

After an endless couple of miles that leave Hutch breathless, and not in a good way, Starsky pulls up outside Venice Place. Handbrake on, engine off. His shoulders are hunched, all that lithe grace gone from his limbs. He looks over at Hutch like it’s an effort to turn his head, asks,

“So what else did I miss, huh?”

Hutch can’t help but be defensive. The guy’s a detective after all. He don’t miss much. “What do you mean?”

“Hug said there’s only one thing does it for you more than that, that anyone with any sense knows that, anyone who ever watched you. Hell, I watch you. So how come I missed it?”

Hutch gets a wild giddy surge of hope, squashes it right back down. But he owes his partner honesty, at least.

“’Cause you’re standing in the eye of the tornado, is why. Christ, Starsk, you are the tornado.”

Starsky looks back at him, visibly confused. “Huh?”

Hutch can’t help but smile, even as he puts himself in the line of fire.

“It’s you, dummy.”

For a moment everything hangs in the balance, and then Starsky’s grin is brighter than the sun and he’s throwing himself forward and kissing Hutch, gracelessly and fast and with a scrape of stubble.

“Don’t you ever.” Kiss. “Do that to me.” Kiss. “Again.” Kiss. “Never. You hear?”

He pulls back. Hutch is breathless, laughs in shock. “Do what, Starsk?”

Starsky shakes him by the shoulders, grinning right up close by Hutch’s face.

“You bastard! I thought you didn’t want me!”

Said as if that would have put the whole universe off-kilter. Which it would, to be fair, if it could ever be true. Which is frankly impossible, because Hutch simply doesn’t know how not to want Starsky, never has.

————————————————————

From the very first time Starsky discovers that he can turn on Hutch’s heavy-lidded trance expression at any given moment with just a deliberate cant of his hips, a flicker of an eyebrow, he uses that knowledge shamelessly. He learns pretty quick not to do it while Hutch is driving. In fact, it gives him a whole new perspective on how Hutch’s junk heap on wheels got all those dents in the first place. That doesn’t stop Starsky from calling him “bronco” in the office, from working on his cowboy strut, from going out and buying himself a pair of snakeskin boots. Huggy rolls his eyes when he sees them. Starsky grins back at him, eyes dancing. After all, something that gives Hutch a little pleasure and Starsky a little power to play with, like revving the Torino into a high speed chase, Hutch at his side — how could that be a bad thing? Huh, Cowboy?