Decades

Hutch reflects on his life with his guitar and Starsky.

December, 2008

Hutch learned to carry the old guitar with him whenever the two of them were invited to any sort of gathering, for if he didn’t bring his own, then he’d be offered another, dug out of a back closet and out-of-tune and begged to make music with it anyway. Which, of course, he did, but with regret for his own comfortable instrument.

It hadn’t always been an old guitar. Way back when, an insane nurse had smashed the one he’d had since he was a teenager. So many pieces of music he’d made with it, only to have its familiar heft and tone gone in a moment by a woman who had wanted to destroy him, physically and emotionally.

It was Starsky who’d rescued him. Hutch had seen him running up the stairs and at the moment Starsky had pulled the flailing, screaming Diana off him, Hutch knew he could relax and just bleed, could fall into Starsky’s arms and the world would reset itself on its axis without his needing to lift a finger.

Three days later, Hutch had insisted that Starsky leave for a while. “Go get some air. I’m fine. Go…buy some ice cream or something. You deserve it.”

Starsky had resisted, fussed over him, but in the end did leave, with a finger-wagging worthy of Hutch himself, complete with exhortations of further bodily harm if he moved so much as an inch from the daybed in the greenhouse.

Starsky was gone far longer than Hutch had expected, but he didn’t mind. The painkillers Starsky had forced down him left him sleepy more often than not, and he napped in the afternoon sunlight amid his leafy greenery until the familiar sounds of a strummed guitar brought him gently back to consciousness.

Reddish-gold in the sunset rays from the windows, with Starsky’s fingers fumbling sweetly to tune the brand new strings, the sound and sight seemed a dream.

Hutch had reached out, still half asleep, and Starsky had placed the instrument into his trembling hands.

That was when Hutch knew that this man—this man—would be the one to love him, no matter what. To know what Hutch needed, what made Hutch, Hutch—no woman could ever understand what true love meant, compared to the blessing he had in Starsky.

Over the decades since the gift had been made, the guitar had changed from new to old, becoming smoothly worn where Hutch’s hands touched it most, and the sound richly mellow, not unlike the two men who had aged along with it.

Partners they’d been during their years on the force, and partners in life afterwards, living quietly, but not in hiding. Anyone who challenged them were met with a cool look, a shrug, and a view of two rather nice looking backsides, if they did say so themselves.

And now, strumming through strings that needed yet another replacing, allowing the sunbeams from a nearby window to warm his face as they had in the greenhouse that long-ago day, he gazed around the gathering of people, his willing audience for whatever song he chose to play. But not until he found the one face in the crowd that he could never forget, that he never really saw change from year to year, would he begin. His Starsky, grinning that crooked grin, full of mischief and love and pride. Oh, the dark curls were so short as to be gone, and the gray had crept in beautifully, and he’d even grown a scruffy graying beard to match Hutch’s on a playful dare—but behind the lines and the silver and years gone past still lived the young man who had taken Hutch’s very heart into his capable hands and held it so carefully against his own ever since.