As Starsky is released from the hospital and continues his recovery, he discovers that Hutch is in need of healing as well and makes plans to help his partner.
Originally published in Venice Place Chronicles IX in 2012.
Ten!
Starsky paused outside the open door of his hospital room. He knew he had at least one more lap in him today, maybe even two. He was going home tomorrow, however, and there was packing to do, and he wanted to have it done before Hutch arrived. Even if it meant using up his tiny horde of energy now, leaving him too tapped out to even make decent conversation, it might also mean that Hutch would just sit and relax for a change.
The choice was a no-brainer as far as Starsky was concerned. He began collecting six weeks’ worth of accumulated personal possessions and gifts. After he had stuffed the suitcase Hutch had brought him to capacity, Starsky still had a respectable pile of unpacked items. He thought about calling Hutch and asking him to bring another case, but decided to just ask the nurse for a paper bag. It wouldn’t be that far out of Hutch’s way, but Starsky didn’t want to add one more item to Hutch’s too-long to-do list.
As he had expected, the packing had pretty much sapped him, and Starsky climbed on the bed. Carefully. Always goddamned carefully now. But this, too, would pass eventually. Settling his healing body against the pillow, he closed his eyes, guessing he had enough time for a nap before Hutch arrived after shift. He was just beginning to drift off when his skin began to tingle with that being-watched feeling.
Visitors.
Starsky usually welcomed company eagerly, but he didn’t want to entertain visitors right now. He wanted to nap so he could be awake when Hutch was here. Reluctantly, Starsky cracked one eye open just enough to identify his visitor.
“Hank.” Starsky automatically sat up, away from the support of the raised bed as he greeted the department shrink. He sank back immediately, wincing at the stab of pain the too-quick movement had knifed from back to chest.
“Don’t get up on my account.” Hank Boucelle came into the room and sat down uninvited in the chair beside the bed.
Hutch’s chair.
Starsky dismissed the tiny twinge of resentment that always caught him whenever anyone but Hutch sat in that chair and smiled a welcome. “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”
“You were expecting me?” Hank asked with the probing innocence of his profession.
“I figured the re-qualifying officer wasn’t the only guy I’d have to get past if I ever want to get back to Metro,” Starsky admitted candidly. Whether he could or even wanted to return to the streets was still a great big question mark in Starsky’s mind. The decision, in his opinion, was as much Hutch’s as his. The counseling, however, was SOP, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been through the process before.
Hank laughed as he settled himself more comfortably in the chair. “You always were a smart cookie, Dave.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem fair to me. Hawkeye Pierce gets Sidney Freedman, and all I get is you.”
Hank obligingly carried on the banter. “I promise I’ll give old Sidney a call if I need a second opinion.” They both laughed for a moment, then the psychiatrist’s expression sobered. “Seriously, Dave, how are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been shot at and hit.” Starsky let his own sober expression assure Hank that he wasn’t continuing with the humorous evasions. “Four times, in fact.”
“Four?” For a moment, Hank’s professional mask slipped to reveal his surprise. “The report I read said three.”
Starsky lifted his left arm a little. “Caught a crease in the arm first. Spun me around so I took the other three in the back. Ironic, huh, that getting shot probably saved my life.”
“The best kind of irony.”
Hank let silence fall and Starsky waited through it, experienced enough with the post-trauma counseling process to have learned when to volunteer a peek into his psyche and when to wait to be prodded.
“So, is that your plan? Is that your idea of success, making it back to Metro?” Hank asked when it became apparent Starsky was aware of his game.
Starsky sighed, thought about shrugging and then thought better of it. Shrugging still wasn’t very high on his list of things to do. Lifting the right shoulder made his wounds scream all the way down to his ass. “I’ve found out my idea of success changes from day to day, lately.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, like a few weeks ago, success was getting the tube out of my dick so I could piss on my own,” Starsky admitted with the unabashed candor of a hospital patient. They weren’t kidding when they said drop your modesty at the door, especially when you came in on a stretcher just barely clinging to life.
“After that, it was doing it in the john and not the bottle.” Starsky remembered that first trip. It had seemed to be an endless journey of baby steps while clinging to Hutch’s strong arm. He gestured toward the door, putting away that memory of unwavering support and taking out another. “After that, it was lapping the nurses’ station.”
Hank’s left eyebrow lifted in question, a mannerism Starsky had never noticed before. “And what is it now?”
Starsky shifted against the hard mattress and let his mind slip ahead just about twenty-four hours to a moment he had been anticipating for too long. “Sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night.” He was willing to reveal a part of that fantasy to Hank, but kept the far more intimate part of it his special secret.
“I have to admit that I didn’t expect such a… pragmatic attitude from you, Dave,” Hank said.
“You mean patient?” Starsky flashed another grin. “It’s funny how dying can make you patient with living, huh?”
Clearly, Starsky had surprised the shrink, who perhaps, based on their previous acquaintance, had already been forming some assumptions and conclusions before he had even sat his butt down in Hutch’s chair. But Starsky had changed and he knew it, his priorities in life had been made far clearer for his glimpse into death.
“I think the next few months are going to be more interesting than I expected,” Hank admitted as he stood up. “But now I think I should let you get back to your nap.”
“Appreciate it. Be seeing you, Doc.”
“Probably once a week for a while.” Hank nodded and then left the room closing the door behind him.
Once a week, but not this week. Starsky had other plans that were dictated by the priority that had always been important to him but was now number one.
~*~*~
Starsky stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at the latest hurdle ahead of him. Who would have thought twelve lousy steps could look so… unbeatable?
“Are you sure you want to stay here?” Hutch asked, concern in his voice and doubt in every hovering line of him.
“Stairs at my place are steeper, two steps higher, and they’re outside.” All of which was true, but none of which was Starsky’s reason for tackling Mount Venice Place.
“Do you want me to carry you?” There was enough diffidence in Hutch’s voice to make it clear he wasn’t sure if he was offering offence rather than assistance.
Starsky didn’t even waste the breath to grunt disdainfully; he just ran a deliberate gaze over Hutch. His perusal paused pointedly at the arms already burdened with one suitcase, two paper personal effects bags, and three somewhat crushed flower arrangements.
And a partridge in a pear tree.
“I’ve done it before,” Hutch reminded him in that same tip-toeing tone.
Starsky gave Hutch a gentle smile that acknowledged his understanding of the good intentions, but rebuffed them nonetheless. “I know you have.”
By the time he reached the top, Starsky was wondering what fool had decided he was well enough to leave the hospital. By the time Hutch opened the door, Starsky’s vision had narrowed down to a tunnel that locked onto Hutch’s brass bed. Somehow, he convinced his feet to carry him that far.
“Are you all right?”
Starsky peeked at his anxious partner and found an itsy bitsy smile for him. “Ducky. Door,” he said, resorting to verbal shorthand to conserve oxygen.
Hutch obediently went back to close the door and shed his burdens. Meantime, Starsky carefully wriggled his way to the other side of the bed. Hutch’s side. The side Starsky had never slept on. But he had a definite method to his madness. When Hutch returned, Starsky was pleased to see that gun, holster, and jacket had already been discarded.
He offered a bigger smile to Hutch’s confused expression, then held out his left arm. “Come’re.” He did his best to growl the command, but there was too much satisfied purr in his throat to pull it off.
“I should put your stuff away.” Hutch was saying what he obviously thought he should, but he moved up to the side of the bed, his gaze f1icking from Starsky’s outstretched arm to the empty space beside him.
Again, Starsky saved his breath, replying with only a wriggle of his fingers.
“I should make you something to eat,” Hutch mumbled yet another dutiful excuse.
“Not hungry.” Starsky was delighted by the rock and sway of the mattress that immediately followed as Hutch first put his knee up and then, as if he could no longer resist, sank into the arm that curved around him, filling up that Hutch-sized space with every inch of his beloved body.
Starsky tightened the embrace as much as he could and let victory flow through him. “Success,” he murmured into the soft, blond hair that brushed his cheek, inhaling deeply of the fresh, clean aroma of Hutch.
“Hmmmm.” Hutch burrowed his head harder into Starsky shoulder, then retreated a little. “Sorry.”
Starsky cupped his hand around the bright head, impressed the shape and warmth and security of it into his too-long starved flesh. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?
“As long as I have?” There was an aching longing in Hutch’s voice that made Starsky’s yearning seem like a moment’s whim.
“No, baby. Only since I woke up and saw that ugly mug of yours,” Starsky whispered. He had been days of hopeless anguish behind Hutch, and was determined that, if it took the rest of his life, he would make up for the days Hutch had suffered alone.
Hutch might have accepted intellectually that his lover was going to live, but that tender heart he had given into Starsky’s keeping was still bleeding. Starsky understood that the bullets that had ripped into his body couldn’t have wounded Hutch more deeply if they had tom through him first. Of the two of them, Starsky feared that Hutch was going to take longer to heal.
Hutch didn’t reply, but Starsky hadn’t expected him to. He was still being stoic, perhaps he even believed Starsky was buying into the act. He did shift a little, perhaps considered protesting the “baby,” but then settled down against Starsky’s body again as if he might decide to move in permanently. That was okay with Starsky.
“I’m home now,” Starsky stated the obvious, sliding his hand down the long hair to Hutch’s shoulder and giving a little tug. “And I’m ready to collect.”
“Collect?” Hutch lifted up, propping his head on his hand, his eyes searching Starsky’s face.
“Yeah, collect. I figure you owe me at least a hundred,” Starsky teased, loving the puzzlement that chased the perpetual shadows out of those clear blue eyes, if only momentarily. He slid his hand back up, found a grip on the smooth skin beneath the fall of soft hair.
“A hundred? Dollars?”
“No, dummy, kisses.”
Hutch had kissed Starsky, of course, during those long weeks in the hospital. But never the way Hutch wanted to kiss him, and certainly never the way Starsky wanted to be kissed. The sneaky little pecks, delivered hurriedly for fear of being caught, had only ever whetted Starsky’s appetite, never satisfied it for the feel and flavor of his lover’s mouth.
There were weeks of yearning in the mouth that closed over Starsky’s, a hunger to match his craving, and tenderness that would have surely tied him to Hutch forever if he hadn’t already been bound. Starsky gave himself up to Hutch’s gentle possession, more than content to call the debt paid in full by this one endless kiss. Until it changed. Until yearning became sorrow, and the gentle possession became frantic, the slick salt of grief leaking into the flavor of love their tongues shared.
Starsky eased away from the tear-wet lips, gently led the grief-stricken face down to hide against his neck, then held on tight, prepared to ride out the coming storm. But this was no catharsis. No shudder and shake of sobs that tore into the places where Hutch had hidden his grief and allowed the festering sorrow to escape. This was the disbelieving mourning of a lover who still expected love to die.
It was less than Starsky had hoped for, but it was a beginning. A small crack in the dam. Starsky just let it continue until the warm salt that slid down his neck had soaked the pillow and the long, warm length of Hutch’s body relaxed against him. Fighting his own aching need to sleep, Starsky continued to stroke and murmur his wordless litany of comfort until he was sure Hutch slept. Only then did Starsky allow himself to rest.
~*~*~
It was twilight when Starsky awoke. He was alone, but the tingle of returning circulation in his left arm reassured him that Hutch hadn’t been up for long.
He didn’t open his eyes or try to move, just lay on the familiar comfort of Hutch’s bed and let his ears find his lover for him. They tracked the putter of unpacking, fed him a preliminary search of the refrigerator, and finally the tiptoeing return to the bed.
“Hi.” Starsky lifted one eyelid and both comers of his mouth in welcome. “Only ninety-nine left to go,” he said, a wink and a crook of his finger inviting Hutch back into his arms.
Hutch sat down on the side of the bed, but didn’t lay down, taking Starsky’s hand between his and bringing it to his lips instead. “Ninety-eight?”
“Uh-uh. Finger kisses don’t count,” Starsky rejected the attempted exchange of currency.
“How about dinner? Would a Paul Muni special help pay off my tab?” Hutch asked with a smile. The smile that Starsky loved so well, weighed down by charcoal smudges under the blue eyes and the exhausted slump of broad shoulders.
Starsky ached to erase the smudges and straighten the slump but knew there would be no magic fixes for this. So he pretended to consider, then slowly nodded. “It might, if I can take a rain check. Somethin’ simple tonight?” It wasn’t part of his plan for Hutch to labor over a hot stove.
“Simple it is.” Hutch slatted to stand up.
Starsky wouldn’t let him go just yet. He needed to start implementing his plan first. Carefully, he rolled toward Hutch, making no effort to disguise the pain the movement caused him. “Hutch, do you think Dobey might be willing to give you a few days off?” he asked, watching as the burden of duty settled down hard on Hutch’s shoulders.
“I…I don’t know. There’s so much to do if we’re going to make sure Gunther’s high-priced lawyers don’t find a way to wriggle him out of this.”
“I know. It’s just…” Starsky felt like a heel, playing on Hutch’s sympathy like this, and yet hoping and praying that Hutch would take the bait. He turned his back on his guilt as Hutch released his hand and combed through his curls gently.
“Why, babe? It’s just what?” Hutch asked, the concern in his voice only a fraction of a sliver from panic.
“I’m just a little shaky,” Starsky admitted, trying to forgive himself for the fear that flashed into Hutch’s eyes. “I was hoping you could maybe hang around until I, you know, get my sea legs under me. No more than a week. Dobey should be able to spare you for a week, huh?”
There was the war of duties on Hutch’s face, but only for a moment. Just a few heartbeats for the lure of love to win out over the call of duty. “Maybe not a week, but I can take a few days.” Hutch’s decision was delivered in a tone that reassured Starsky he wouldn’t give in to any persuasion Dobey might try.
“I really appreciate it, Hutch. Do you think you could call him now, so you won’t have to go in in the morning?”
There was no second battle of conscience on Hutch’s face, just immediate agreement. When he tried to stand this time, Starsky willingly let him go.
Starsky watched Hutch make the call, pleased he had been able to set his plan in motion fairly easily. He had hoped for a seven-day vacation in the eye of the storm, but he would take whatever he could get. For however long Hutch was able to wrangle out of Dobey, Starsky’s idea of success was going to be beginning to erase smudges and slumps and the weary shuffle of Hutch’s steps.
~*~*~
“Are you sure you don’t want to watch TV or anything?” Hutch asked, the creases of concern beside his mouth almost as deep as the worry dent between his eyebrows.
“I think the stairs knocked me out. I just want to sleep.” Starsky didn’t object when Hutch slipped a supportive arm around him as they walked slowly to the bed. Starsky knew he didn’t necessarily need the help, but he also knew Hutch needed the connection. They both did.
“Do you want to undress?” Hutch asked when they reached the bed.
“No.” Starsky held on to Hutch’s shoulder for balance as he toed off his shoes. “I’m not down for the count yet tonight. Just takin’ a breather.” He was tired enough to sleep through the night, but he wasn’t going to undress in front of Hutch.
The new scars didn’t bother Starsky much. They certainly weren’t his first memento of the job, and since they were all in his back, Starsky didn’t have to look at them. In any case, they would fade, just like the one on his left shoulder and the one on his right leg.
Hutch, however, had seen the scars only once. And had promptly lost his lunch. He had blamed it on lousy cafeteria food, and Starsky had pretended to believe him, but he wasn’t fooled. Hutch wasn’t ready to see the scars as proof of life yet; to him, they still reeked of death. Tackling that aversion was in Starsky’s plans for this brief hiatus he had engineered, but it was nowhere near a top priority.
Time. They just needed time. The mantra repeated in Starsky’s head as he stretched out on the bed. He wasn’t expecting the passage of hours or minutes to cure what ailed Hutch, but he was banking heavily on his understanding of Hutch that had grown through years of friendship and partnership and only deepened when they had become lovers.
“You sure you don’t need anything?” Hutch asked anxiously.
“Just forty winks, babe. Go on and do your own thing.” Starsky yawned theatrically to hurry Hutch on his way.
Starsky lay on the bed, resting but not sleeping, keeping an eye or an ear on Hutch as he tidied up the mess from dinner, puttered and poked at the plants around the apartment, and then finally disappeared into the greenhouse. Starsky heard the murmur of his voice as he talked to his plants and smiled in satisfaction. Hutch sounded a little better already.
This was the reason Starsky had insisted they stay at Venice Place and had been willing to drag himself up that endless flight of stairs.
Starsky was a gypsy at heart. It never took him more than two days to find an apartment, and he never gave the old one more than a passing thought once he had packed and moved on.
Not Hutch. Hutch needed a home. It had taken him a long time to find the apartment at Venice Place after his landlord sold the cottage on the canal. They had spent weeks of fruitless searching newspaper ads and viewing apartment after apartment every night after work only to have Hutch dismiss each one.
It had been love at first sight: however, between Hutch and this open, airy apartment, and Starsky was glad now that he had witnessed that meeting and absorbed the effect being “home” had always had on Hutch. A few hours here could take the knots and kinks out of Hutch faster than any well-trained masseur.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” Starsky whispered when he caught the faint sound of Hutch humming to himself. “There’s no place like home.”
Satisfied that he had done all he could for the moment, Starsky allowed his body the rest it so desperately needed.
~*~*~
Starsky woke up to the touch of hands. He was so used to it by now that it barely raised a mental eyebrow. Someone was always checking something. Bandages, tubes, wires, and needles all required diligent monitoring, especially, it seemed, whenever he was sleeping.
Then he remembered. Home. Hutch. Hutch’s hands carefully working buttons, fumbling at his feet. Starsky giggled when the withdrawal of a sock tickled his instep. He curled his toes and kicked a little in protest.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you,” Hutch murmured. The warmth of his hand encircled Starsky’s foot, and the firm stroke of his thumb erased the lingering tickle.
“Told you I wasn’t down for the count yet.” Starsky yawned but remembered at the last moment not to stretch. “What time is it?” He blinked at the soft glow of the bedside lamp, noting belatedly that it was the only light in the place.
“Almost midnight,” Hutch moved up to sit on the side of the bed, and his fingers went to work on the buttons of Starsky’s shirt.
With Hutch’s assistance, Starsky sat up so the shirt could be stripped off his shoulders and down his arms. He wasn’t surprised when Hutch made no attempt to remove the t-shirt. Starsky didn’t protest. He had bigger fish to fry. Like the neatly made up couch he glimpsed over Hutch’s shoulder before he was gently lowered back to the bed.
“Have you got ideas, Mr. Hutchinson?” Starsky asked as Hutch went to work on his jeans, popping the snap and sliding the zipper down on the jeans that now hung on him like a half-empty sack. “Lewd and lecherous ideas, I hope.” He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“Lascivious.” Hutch’s correction was automatic, but his touch was far too impersonal to suit Starsky as the jeans were pulled down and tossed toward the chair.
“Lecherous,” Starsky insisted, remembering when Hutch’s touch had been anything but impersonal. There had been times when Hutch’s passion had been so urgent that he had even been a little rough in his eagerness.
Hutch hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Yeah, lecherous.” The lover was back in his hands for a moment as they ran down the outside of Starsky’s thighs from hips to knees.
The hands were withdrawn, reluctantly Starsky wanted to think, and though there was no desire on Hutch’s face, his expression was tender and loving as he started to rise from the bed.
“Hey. Where you going?” Starsky reached out and caught Hutch’s hand, concealing the pain of the quick movement and the tug Hutch added before he realized he was tethered and sank back to the bed.
“I was just going to get some sleep. Did you need something?” Hutch’s anxious gaze ran over Starsky, the tick-tick-tick as he thumbed through a mental list of possibilities almost audible.
“Yeah, I need something.” Starsky released Hutch’s hand to point at the empty side of the bed. “You. Right there.”
Hutch looked at that space with the hunger of a starving man who couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten, and Starsky was glad he had decided to pick his fights, save his energy for the battles that really mattered. He would gladly sleep in a t-shirt for the rest of his life; sleeping without Hutch beside him just wasn’t an option.
“What if I rolled over on you?” With a visible effort, Hutch dragged his eyes away from the resting place that could be his.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Starsky hoped the reminder would evoke memories of post coital collapses and short circuit Hutch’s stubbornness.
Hutch, however, seemed to be having his own trouble keeping his determination engaged. His eyes strayed back to that empty side of the bed again, and Starsky, quick to capitalize on the advantage, reached out and flipped back the covers.
“What if I kick?” Hutch’s gaze came back to Starsky’s face, but there was hope in his eyes now. Hope that Starsky would continue to efficiently deflect every objection his reluctant brain could invent.
“I’ll kick back,” Starsky promised, and decided that this was one of those times when Hutch, being Hutch, probably needed a selfless excuse to take what he so obviously wanted. He tried to look as pathetic as possible. “What if I get cold?”
Hutch glanced over his shoulder toward the couch. “I guess that would be a long way to share body heat.”
Sometimes winning an argument with Hutch required nothing more than for Starsky to recognize when he had said enough. Starsky knew he had won this debate when Hutch didn’t mention the extra blanket at the foot of the bed or the fact that the forecasted low for the July night was somewhere around eighty degrees. He was careful not to let his triumph show when Hutch rose and circled the bed, his clothes migrating to the floor as he went.
“That’s better,” Starsky whispered when Hutch had turned out the light and climbed onto the bed. “But what are you doing way over there?” he questioned the inches of cool sheet between them. Hutch had to be balancing on the very edge of the mattress.
“Haven’t you ever heard of quit while you’re ahead?” It was a familiar complaint, but tonight, there was amusement in Hutch’s voice and capitulation in the shift of the mattress and the rustle of the sheet.
“Never,” Starsky confessed without shame when Hutch’s warmth reached him. He considered trying to coax Hutch a little closer, but instead, found Hutch’s band in the darkness and entwined their fingers. Sometimes half a loaf could be plenty to feed a couple of starving souls.
“I’m glad you’re home, babe.” Hutch’s voice came out of the darkness, his hand squeezing Starsky’s hard enough to hurt.
There was contentment and joy in the whispered confession, but they were still shot through with fear and grief. Like Starsky’s physical wounds, Hutch’s were barely beginning to heal, the skin closed over, but the damage beneath still mending. They both had a very long road to travel. Starsky believed, however, with all his soul and the heart he had already committed to Hutch, that there was little a squad of doctors and physiotherapists and counsellors could do for them that they couldn’t do for each other. Love wouldn’t just keep them together, it would, with enough time, make them whole again.
“I’ll still be here in the morning,” Starsky promised.
~*~*~
Starsky awoke the next morning to a formerly familiar sound. Birds. Singing, arguing, scratching around in the gutters for grit. Though he wasn’t normally a big nature lover, Starsky found that this morning he didn’t really mind the ruckus. It was certainly better than waking up in his hospital room to the rattle and crash of the breakfast cart delivering yet another inedible meal. He would probably be back to cursing the early morning chorus again by tomorrow morning, but today it was the sweet music of being back where he belonged, in bed with Hutch.
Starsky opened his eyes and turned his head, checking that Hutch was, indeed, beside him in the bed. Too far away, but he hoped that the space between them would narrow as the days went by and Hutch realized that Starsky wasn’t made of glass. Hutch, in any case, shouldn’t still be lying around in bed at this time of the morning. It was time for Starsky to put plan number two into motion.
“Hey, lazy bones, what’re you still doing in bed?” Starsky gave Hutch a poke in the shoulder, sternly resisting the temptation to stroke the bare flesh.
“What?” Hutch demanded, sitting straight up, apparently going from contented sleep to alarmed awareness before his eyes were fully opened. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s 6:30 already and you’re still laying around snoring your head off, that’s what’s wrong.” Starsky noted the unnecessary vigilance but didn’t comment on it. It was familiar enough, observed with every unexplained noise on the busy hospital ward. Yet another symptom of Hutch’s unhealed wounds. “Don’t you have a few miles of pavement to pound, or grass to trample, or something?”
Hutch rubbed his face, knuckling his eyes as if they stung with grit, and then ran both hands back through his sleep-ruffled hair. “I haven’t been running lately.”
“Too busy running your ass off between the station and the hospital.” Starsky didn’t give Hutch a chance to refute the accusation. He grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled it back, exposing Hutch’s brief-clad body to the cooler morning air. “No time like the present to get back to it.”
Hutch sank down onto the bed, the taut muscles of the profile he presented to Starsky a clear indication he wasn’t thrilled with the suggestion. “Not this morning.” He closed his eyes as if he thought he could really pretend he was going back to sleep.
Starsky knew better. Once Hutch woke up, he was up; not like Starsky who could happily sink back into oblivion after he turned off the alarm in the morning. It didn’t matter if Hutch had only managed to grab a few minutes of shuteye when his body was badly in need of an around the clock rest, Hutch couldn’t go back to sleep immediately after waking.
“Why not this morning?” Starsky asked softly, without demand in his expression, without censure in his voice. He was hoping to prompt Hutch to shut off his autopilot and really consider what valid reason he might have, without the excuses of work or hospital visits, for abandoning a routine that had been part of him for most of his adult life.
The frown deepened on Hutch’s profile, lips pursing in either anger or frustration, and then Hutch’s expression suddenly became resigned and he capitulated. “Yeah, why not this morning,” he said, rolled out of bed, and disappeared into the bathroom.
Starsky made a much slower and more careful exit from the bed and hurriedly pulled on yesterday’s clothes. He was just tackling the awkward task of tying his shoes when Hutch emerged from the bathroom, dressed in sweats, the front of his hair slightly damp from where he had splashed a little cold water wake up onto his face. He shot Starsky a silent question, which Starsky pretended not to notice, concentrating instead on getting his shoes tied. He finished and stood up at the same moment Hutch did, following on his heels as Hutch headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Hutch stopped well short of the door and the outside world.
“With you,” Starsky said casually, just as if he had always automatically fallen into jogging step at the crack of dawn each morning with Hutch, as if Hutch hadn’t had to drag him out from between the sheets grumbling and grousing all the way.
“Don’t you trust me to run?” Hutch asked.
Actually, what Starsky was afraid of was that once he started, Hutch wouldn’t stop. Pushing himself beyond his limits had become Hutch’s MO since the shooting, and Starsky was determined to put a stop to it. He was not, however, ready to reveal his private agenda to Hutch just yet. “Hell, no. You’ll quit after the first lap if I’m not there to crack the whip.”
For a moment, it looked as if Hutch might protest, then his expression changed, his features donning the mask of tolerance he always wore when he had decided to humor Starsky as he backtracked and picked up his keys. “Then I guess it’s going to be grass to trample today.”
Starsky sat on a convenient bench at the park, keeping Hutch in sight as he jogged around the quarter mile track. It was uncomfortable to watch, the stiff strides and awkward posture, such a painful contrast to the last time they had run together. Starsky, however, kept the wince off his face, being careful to ensure that he was wearing an encouraging smile as Hutch passed him once, twice and then a third time, taking some comfort in the small improvements of form and the growing pleasure on Hutch’s face with each completed lap.
By the time Hutch came around for the fourth time, a mile completed in a little longer than his usual ten minutes, Starsky was pleased to see that the tall body was once again moving in that loose-limbed, easy lope that had previously carried Hutch through his daily routine.
Hutch’s breathing might still be a little too hard when he sat down beside him on the bench, but Starsky wasn’t disappointed. That would improve as well, just as the laps would increase until a mile became a mere warm up.
“Thanks, Starsk.” Hutch’s gratitude was gasped out between panting breaths before he leaned back, stretched out his legs, and tipped his head until he was looking up at the clear blue sky above them.
“What for?” Starsky asked innocently, as if he didn’t damn well know the reason for Hutch’s gratitude.
“That was fucking wonderful.” The smile that claimed Hutch’s sweaty face crowded out shadows and stress lines and edges. He looked relaxed and content, the way Starsky hadn’t seen him since they had kissed good-bye before opening the door on the outside world on May 15.
“You better keep it up, buddy boy. You’re outta shape. In a couple a weeks, I’ll run your ass right into the ground.” Starsky issued the challenge instead of taking the ‘I told you so’ opportunity as he once might have.
Hutch laughed at the bravado, but the laughter didn’t last long. His head turned to show Starsky’s eyes devoid of humor and an expression that hungered for Starsky’s prophecy to become reality. “Yes. Please.”
Stripped of words, Starsky reached out and took Hutch’s hand, holding it for the tiny second or two he dared in this very public place, squeezing tightly in his commitment to do everything in his power to appease that desperate hunger. “Just as soon as I can,” he promised, then forced himself to let go of the warm contact and the moment, climbing slowly to his feet and offering his left hand down to Hutch.
Hutch looked at the hand doubtfully for a moment, then put his hand in Starsky’s palm but there was no tug, no reliance on Starsky’s strength, as Hutch also stood up, only the brief reestablishment of contact between them. Just as fleeting as the touch Starsky had initiated, it nevertheless offered its own promises in return.
Smiling contentedly, Starsky turned and started toward where Hutch’s car was parked. He had taken only a step when the morning quiet was shattered by a loud bang. The sound had barely registered on his awareness before Starsky found himself grabbed by the arm, spun, and tucked protectively behind Hutch’s back, while Hutch pawed uselessly at his side where, under any other circumstances, his gun would hang.
It took both of them only a few more seconds to identify the source of the gunshot-like disturbance—a backfire from a car of similar vintage to Hutch’s latest new-old vehicle. Hutch blushed furiously, ducking his head as he gave up his guardianship and began walking, stiff-legged and straight-backed, toward his car.
“Two steps forward and one step back,” Starsky muttered softly as he followed Hutch’s embarrassed retreat. He was disappointed that Hutch’s pleasure in the moment couldn’t have lasted longer, but even those few minutes had to be seen as a success of a sort. One little minor miracle of love.
~*~*~
Starsky waited until he heard the bathroom door open and then went into his act. He had found Hutch’s blender and had it all set up on the counter, already partly filled with milk, but had saved his performance until he was sure Hutch could hear him. He made a production number out of searching through the multitude of jars on the upper selves and opening and closing the bottom cupboard doors. It wasn’t until the same door had been banged back into place twice that Starsky felt Hutch’s eyes on him. He didn’t acknowledge his lover. Instead, mumbling indecipherably under his breath, he opened the other cupboard, carefully bent over to search through its contents, then added a dramatic sigh as he banged the cupboard door back into place.
“Starsky, what are you looking for?”
Starsky straightened and turned to face his friend, planting his hands on his hips for dramatic effect. “Your let’s-get-thin.” He pitched his tone to exasperation, letting Hutch guess whether it was the question or the search that had shortened his temper.
“My what?” Hutch moved further into the kitchen. He had been rubbing absently at his wet hair with a towel but, his attention obviously captured, now stood with the towel around his neck, an end held in each hand above his bare chest.
Starsky gestured toward the blender. “You know, your let’s-get-thin,” he repeated in the same tone.
Partial understanding moved in on the puzzlement on Hutch’s face. “You mean lecithin?”
“Yeah. That’s the stuff. I thought I’d give one of those shakes of yours a try. That was devastated liver and sea scallops and traces of elephant vitamins, right?” he asked earnestly.
Dropping the towel on the counter, Hutch moved to Starsky and nudged him gently aside. “Lecithin, desiccated liver, and sea kelp, and trace elements and vitamins.” Hutch rummaged through the same shelves Starsky had pretended to search in vain, pulling down various bottles and cans. “But it isn’t just a matter of knowing what to put in it, you have to be careful about just how much you use. Too much of one and not enough of the other can do more harm than good.”
Starsky leaned back against the counter, pretending to listen to Hutch in his best lecturer mode but paying little real attention to the dissertation. It didn’t matter if Hutch’s secret ingredients were frog bellies and toad legs; what mattered was re-establishing another element of Hutch’s previous interest in his own health and well-being. If it meant Starsky had to choke down the nasty concoction every morning to get Hutch doing it as well, then that was a sacrifice Starsky was willing to make.
“Here you go.” Hutch handed over a frothing glass of the disgusting mixture to Starsky.
When Starsky saw that Hutch had poured himself a glass as well, he took the one offered to him without hesitation. Holding his breath against the stench, he brought it to his lips and. swallowed as fast as he could. “Not bad,” he lied when he had drained the glass, grinning at his partner and then giving him a saucy wink. “But I’d still rather have a banana daiquiri.”
~*~*~
Starsky stood in front of the refrigerator, holding the door open and staring into its interior. Mother Hubbard would be ashamed. It took about half a second for Starsky to catalogue the few items the refrigerator contained, but he stayed where he was, pretending complete fascination until Hutch finally noticed.
“Now what are you looking for?” Hutch asked, exactly as Starsky had hoped he would.
“Food. Even for you, this icebox is sad.” Starsky let the door swing closed. “What have you been living on, Hutch?” He was fairly certain that he already knew the answer, but wondered if Hutch would be honest with him or was even aware of the deplorable state of his diet.
“The same thing you have, Huggy’s take out,” Hutch reminded him of the nightly deliveries he had made to rescue Starsky from the purgatory of hospital food.
Starsky had looked forward to each and every one of those deliveries and had wolfed down whatever happened to be in the paper bags or cartons. Hutch never seemed as interested in the food, however, and Starsky had suspected that was likely because the majority of Hutch’s diet had been corning out of a coffee pot throughout the day.
Starsky didn’t comment on the reminder, just let his displeasure with any plan that continued the takeout diet communicate itself to Hutch through the disgruntled expression on his face.
“Okay, okay. Let’s go get some groceries.”
Starsky began to follow, then hesitated as he remembered the backfire incident of this morning. Hutch had relaxed a little by the time they reached home, but Starsky didn’t want to chance a repeat so soon. They said lightning never struck in the same place twice, but backfires on Bay City streets always seemed to be the norm rather than the exception. “Do you mind going on your own?”
Hutch, of course, immediately became concerned. “Why? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
Starsky had already promised himself that he wouldn’t become exasperated with Hutch’s concern, that he would somehow find an endless supply of patience. He was discovering that was easier said than done, but as his old football coach used to say, he would just have to keep running that play until Hutch believed it. “Hutch, Walker wouldn’t have let me out if I wasn’t okay.”
“Walker is human, humans make mistakes.”
Deciding that a little demonstration was called for, Starsky walked up to Hutch, wrapped his arms around the slim waist and squeezed just as hard as he could. It hurt like hell, but it was worth it when he eased the pressure and leaned back to find surprised delight on Hutch’s face.
“You see?” Starsky asked.
“I see.” Hutch slid his arms around Starsky to complete the embrace. There was still some doubt in his voice, echoes of the weeks of the painfully slow progress and setbacks of Starsky’s recovery, but there was also some belief.
“So go on and get me something to eat.” Starsky stepped out of the circle of Hutch’s arms and gave his friend a push toward the door.
“What are you going to do while I’m gone?” Hutch asked as he collected wallet and keys from the table beside the door.
Starsky had been anticipating that question and had an answer ready. He looked around the apartment. “I’m going to clean up this pig stye. I love you, ya big lug, but, damn, you’re a slob.”
Hutch, as Starsky had also expected, paused with the door open, that concern back on his face. “Uh, Starsky. Don’t you think—”
“Don’t worry,” Starsky interrupted before Hutch could complete his caution. “I’ll save the windows for you.”
“See that you do.” After another moment’s hesitation, Hutch left, closing the door behind him.
Starsky looked around the apartment again after Hutch left, deciding where to start. He knew he wasn’t up to any of the big stuff like vacuuming or hauling around bags of dirty laundry, but he could tidy the place up, if nothing else.
The tidying itself gave Starsky some food for thought. This was the first time that the two of them had really had a chance to live together. They had stayed at each other’s places many times, but that was different from actually trying to occupy the same space with their very different personalities.
Starsky wouldn’t exactly call himself a clean freak, but he did like a certain order to his home. A place for everything, and it was second nature for him to put everything back in its place once he was finished with it. Hutch, on the other hand, liked a much more relaxed home life. If they ever did decide to live together, there were definitely going to have to be some compromises made by both of them.
Whether to cohabit was a decision, however, that was a long way down the road for them, a decision that hinged on other choices yet to be made. If they remained with the force, and wanted to stay partners, moving in together was out of the question. They would have to return to their pre-shooting arrangement of Starsky staying over as often as they thought they could get away with. Starsky had never found that arrangement particularly satisfying, and he liked the idea even less now.
“Quit borrowing trouble,” Starsky advised himself as he collected their jackets from the couch and headed for the closet, bending to scoop up both pairs of their running shoes as he went.
He opened the door of the hall closet, dropped the shoes at his feet and hung the jackets neatly on hangers. As he bent to clear a space on the floor of the closet for the shoes, something caught his eye. Behind the tennis racket and basketball and other assorted leisure equipment, he saw one of the paper personal effects bags from the hospital.
“I thought Hutch unpacked those.” He dropped the shoes into an empty space on the floor and pulled the bag out of the closet. He unrolled the top of the bag as he began to move away and froze when he saw what was inside it.
Sensory memory swept over him as he reached into the bag. The fire the striking bullets had slammed into his body washed over him, followed by the ice that had crept through his veins as his life blood had pumped out of him. Suddenly weak in the knees, Starsky stared down at his brown leather jacket, the iron smell of his own blood flooding his senses.
“Jesus.” Starsky’s memory of the shooting was sketchy at best, little more than sensory perceptions fleshed out by what other people, including Hutch, had told him of the event. The urgent sound of Hutch’s warning, the rat-a-tat-tat of the automatic gunfire aimed their way, and the boom, boom, boom of Hutch’s magnum in reply.
Shaken by the discovery, Starsky stood.in the middle of the living room trying to decide what to do. He couldn’t think of any reason Hutch would have held onto this blood-soaked relic. At least, no reason that wasn’t sick and morbid.
As he began to calm down, other possibilities began to suggest themselves. Although he had been exaggerating when he called Hutch a slob, Starsky hadn’t been that far off the mark, and Hutch had been very busy since the shooting. It was just as possible that Hutch had shoved the bag in the closet weeks ago and just forgotten about it.
It was an explanation a hell of a lot more palatable to Starsky than the idea that Hutch might be holding on to this tragic souvenir intentionally.
“He just forgot about it.” The reassurance sounded hollow in his own ears, but by stubbornly turning his back on his instincts, Starsky was able to choose to believe it.
Rolling the jacket into a tight ball, Starsky shoved it back into the bag. He ought to throw the damned thing out right now, but the idea of going up and down the stairs for a second time today didn’t appeal to him.
He stood for a moment in indecision, staring at the crumpled bag, realizing slowly that it really was only the trip up and down the stairs that prevented him from trashing the jacket immediately. Now that his initial reaction had passed, he felt nothing, neither attachment nor revulsion. The contents of the bag were simply garbage to him.
Relieved, Starsky returned to the closet and tossed the bag back where he had found it, making a mental note to put it out with the rest of the trash later, and went back to his self-appointed work.
A short time later, he heard Hutch outside the door, probably balancing grocery bags while he tried to get the key in the lock. Starsky hurried to the door and opened it, finding exactly what he had expected.
“‘They’re heavy.” Hutch twisted away when Starsky tried to take one of the bags.
“Give it here.” Starsky flashed a grin and held out his left arm. The bag probably was more than he could handle, but Starsky knew he had to keep trying to get it through Hutch’s stubborn head that the complete invalid had been left behind in the hospital.
With obvious reluctance, Hutch let him take one of the bags. Starsky led the way to the kitchen and insisted on doing his share of the putting away. “Okay. Now I’ve got something to work with. Now you get out of here and let me make lunch.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Why not? You’ve been cooking since I got home, now it’s my turn. Share and share alike, remember?” The mutual agreement had been working for them for years, long before they had becomes lovers, and certainly long before Gunther had entered their lives.
“But…”
“But what?” Starsky put some exasperation into his tone.
“But I’m supposed to be taking care of you.” Hutch’s admission was a little sheepish, perhaps because of the demonstration of returning strength Starsky had already given him not more than an hour before.
“Hutch, I’ve had a whole bunch of somebody’s looking after me, including you. But nobody’s been looking out for you. When you weren’t at work, you were at the hospital with me.” Starsky wondered if Hutch would put it all together now and see that, in a way, Starsky had been looking after him since the minute Hutch had brought him home from the hospital.
Hutch opened his mouth to continue the argument, but Starsky stepped close and put his fingers over the parted lips, ruffling Hutch’s mustache a little. The tickling sensation brought an involuntary smile to Hutch’s lips.
“So now you want to take care of me?” There was understanding in Hutch’s eyes but not quite complete acceptance.
“How about we take care of each other?” Like share and share alike, it was a system that had always worked for them. “Lunch is my turn, okay?”
“You’re not the best cook in the world,” Hutch grumbled, almost but not quite, too quietly to be understood.
“True, but I can make eggs and cheese.” Starsky was fully aware of his lack of culinary skills and hoped tempting Hutch with a favorite dish might end his objections. Hutch was one of those eat-to-live people Starsky would never understand. Starsky, however, knew Hutch might dismiss a plate full of scrambled eggs with a toasty cheese topping as a heart attack on a platter, but it was one of his few guilty pleasures. It was knowledge confirmed by the way Hutch’s face lit up at even the mention of the dish.
“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought,” Starsky crowed in triumph. He gave Hutch a quick kiss and then pointed toward the living room. “So, get outta here already.”
~*~*~
“Come on, Hutch. You can come a little closer,” Starsky coaxed his lover as they climbed into bed, hoping to narrow down the stretch of sheet that still gaped between his body and Hutch’s.
They were settling down for the night after spending the rest of his second day at home doing not a whole lot of anything. Just being together. Quiet sometimes; talking sometimes. Touching often. Satisfied with the little successes he had achieved today on Hutch’s behalf, Starsky was content to put the rest of his plans on hold for the day.
“We already had this discussion.” Hutch’s hand found Starsky’s under the sheet, building a warm bridge across the chasm Starsky resented so much.
“And we’re gonna keep on having it until you’re over here where you belong.” Starsky sensed that Hutch wanted and needed the close contact, but he also knew he was going to have to nag his lover into abandoning his caution. That was okay. It wasn’t as if Starsky wasn’t well practiced in the art of nagging Hutch.
“Nag,” Hutch muttered, as if he had read Starsky’s thoughts. No mind reading being necessary, of course, after their long history together.
Starsky felt the pitch of the bed, then the press of Hutch’s forearm against his and considered pushing for more.
“Compromise?”
The question reminded Starsky of his earlier live-together thoughts. “Compromise.” He squeezed the hand in his and pressed his arm more firmly against Hutch’s.
The muted night sounds of Ocean Boulevard drifted in through the open window, settling around them in the darkness. Familiar sounds that had often lulled them to sleep after they had made love. The swish of tires on pavement and whisper of faraway voices that always worked their soothing magic on them.
Starsky could feel Hutch’s hand relaxing in his, each finger giving up its tight grip in turn as sleep crept closer. He willed himself to stay awake until he was sure Hutch had drifted off, holding sleep at bay by once again considering the small victories the day had held, the setbacks, and the plans he hoped to put into action in the coming days.
“Starsk…” Hutch’s voice came out of the darkness just as Starsky was sure it was safe to slip over the edge into sleep himself.
“Uh-huh?” Starsky grunted the inquiry in the same intimate whisper in which Hutch had spoken his name.
“I know what you’re up to.”
Starsky smiled into the darkness. He wasn’t surprised. He never had been able to put one over on Hutch for long. “Yeah? What am I up to?”
There was no reply for a time long enough for Starsky to think Hutch had gone to sleep after all. Then he heard a yawn and felt the warm wash of Hutch’s toothpaste-minted breath sigh over his face as Hutch spoke.
“Lovin’ me,” Hutch whispered through the yawn.
For a moment, Starsky couldn’t reply, his throat tight with tenderness and his heart aching at the wistful awe in Hutch’s voice. He slipped his hand from the lax grip, ran fingers that shook with emotion up Hutch’s arm until he could trace the so well-known features.
“Oh, yes, Hutch. That’s just what I’m doin’. I’m loving you,” Starsky whispered even though he already knew Hutch had gone to sleep. It was a promise to himself as much as to Hutch. To love Hutch, no matter what. And to heal him.
~*~*~
Starsky woke the next morning to the tender/ticklish caress of Hutch’s kiss.
“Mmm, mornin’,” he whispered against the smooth lips, his nose twitching as the mustache prickled his upper lip.
“Morning, sleepyhead.” Hutch eased back a few inches.
Without opening his eyes, Starsky reached up and unerringly found Hutch’s mouth, one fingertip stroking the full bottom lip. “Wouldn’t mind waking up like that every day of my life,” he confessed, then let his finger comb the mustache bristles against the grain. “Though I could do without the filter.”
“Still trying to talk me into shaving, huh?”
Starsky opened his eyes as he felt Hutch’s withdrawal in the shift of the mattress, letting his hand drop to Hutch’s arm to hold him in place. “I’m just curious, that’s all.”
“Curious about what?” Though he was already dressed in his running clothes, Hutch seemed in no hurry to leave.
“Whether it would be different. Never kissed you before you grew that damned caterpillar.” Starsky had no real objection to the mustache, though he had yet to admit that to Hutch. Its existence gave him too much ammunition for teasing.
Hutch’s hand rose, his finger repeating the investigative stroking Starsky had given his facial hair. “If it means that much to you.”
Maybe it was about time Starsky came clean. “Hey. Don’t go making promises you might regret. I’d wanna kiss you if you had a beard like Grizzly Adams.”
Hutch’s hand moved from his lip to his chin, a thoughtful expression appearing on his face. “Hmm. Now that you mention it.”
“It’s your face, babe. I’m gonna love it whatever you do to it.” Starsky let a knowing grin inform Hutch that he wasn’t rising to the bait
Hutch laughed as he stood up. “Are you coming?”
“Coming?” Starsky shook his head with regret. “Hell, right now I can’t even get it up.”
“Coming running with me this morning?” Hutch’s disgusted expression gave Starsky the same bait-ignoring message.
“Uh-huh,” Starsky grunted and started to sit up. “Uh, maybe not.” He sank back to the bed as he remembered that he had an early morning mission to complete while he had the apartment to himself. “Do you mind going on your own this morning?”
“Are you all right?” Hutch asked predictably.
If Starsky never heard that particular question from Hutch again in his life, it would still be too soon. Repeatedly reassuring Hutch of his well-being didn’t seem to be working, so Starsky tried a different approach. “Hutch, can we make a deal?”
“What deal?”
“I’ll promise to tell you if I’m not okay, if you’ll promise to quit asking me if I’m okay every five minutes.” Starsky made no effort to keep the exasperation out of his voice.
“I don’t ask every five minutes.” The defense was delivered automatically, then Hutch hesitated a moment before nodding his understanding. “Okay. It’s a deal.”
“Good. Now go run your mile, and when you get back, you can give me an instant replay on that wake-up call.” Starsky gave his lover his best lecherous smile.
Hutch returned the smile, then left the apartment.
Starsky stayed where he was until the sound of Hutch’s retreating footsteps had completely disappeared. When the last echo faded, he sat up, stuffed Hutch’s pillow behind his back for support, and reached for the telephone that sat on the table beside the bed.
Just before he had gone to sleep last night, while nebulous plans had still been swirling around in his head for the next day, it had occurred to Starsky he had neglected one crucial element that all of his planning rested on—their privacy. There wasn’t a thing he could do about Dobey. If the captain needed Hutch for something concerning the Gunther case, Dobey probably wouldn’t hesitate to call. Starsky was certain, however, that Dobey was an observant man and had to be just as aware of Hutch’s depleted condition as Starsky was. The captain wouldn’t call unless he absolutely had to.
Their well-meaning friends were a different matter altogether. They had already had two days’ grace since his release from the hospital, and it just wasn’t prudent planning to think that was going to last.
Starsky dialed Huggy’s number, crossing mental fingers that he would catch the night owl before he turned in for the day. The phone was answered on the second ring.
“Hello.” Huggy’s familiar voice offered the greeting in a less than cordial tone.
“Hey, Hug. What’s shakin’?” Starsky asked. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“I’ll have you know I’ve seen plenty of sunrises.”
“Usually while you’re gettin’ ready for bed, right?” Starsky shot right back.
“Too true.” There was a short pause, filled up by a yawn, before Huggy asked, “What can I do for you, my man. I assume you’re not up at the crack of dawn just to hear my dulcet tones.”
“You need to put the Playboy back in the john and lay off the Reader’s Digest, my friend,” Starsky said, then, aware of the passing minutes, cut to the chase. “I need you to do a favor for me, Hug.”
“Ask and it shall be yours.” The agreement was gratifyingly immediate, even if Huggy then went on to qualify his generosity a little. “As long as it isn’t going to cost me more than a hundred bucks.”
“No bucks, Huggy, just a little of your time. I need you to run interference for me.”
“Interference? With who? Hutch?” Huggy guessed. “Don’t even think of asking me to keep Hutch out of the way so you can do something stupid behind his back. No way do I want to spend the rest of my life singin’ soprano.”
“Nothin’ like that, Hug. When was the last time you saw Hutch?”
“Couple of days ago.”
Starsky smiled at the mental picture conjured by the curiosity’ in Huggy’s voice. “Okay. Huggy, I’m going to be straight with you. I talked Hutch into taking a few days off work, and I have plans that don’t include anyone dropping in to deliver casseroles or good wishes or even just to see how I’m doing.”
Although there was nothing but silence from the other end of the line, Starsky had no trouble imaging Huggy’s knowing expression. Their mutual friend was the only person who knew about their relationship. They hadn’t told him. They hadn’t had to. Huggy had figured out the change in them within fifteen minutes of their first visit to the Pits after they had become lovers. A lifted eyebrow and that same knowing expression had been his only comment, but both Starsky and Hutch had received the message loud and clear.
Starsky allowed Huggy a minute to do his own mental picturing, then advised, “Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Do your plans have anything to do with the fact that Mr. America has been going around looking like the dog’s breakfast, twice removed, and with a temperament that don’t smell a whole lot sweeter?”
“They have everything to do with it.” Starsky was relieved that Huggy had also noticed Hutch’s slide toward exhausted collapse. Both Huggy and Dobey had probably been doing what they could to at least slow it down. But neither one of those concerned friends had the leverage that Starsky possessed with a Hutch who was hell bent on pretending he was a man of steel.
“Glad to hear you’re on the case. Interference, it is. OJ Simpson couldn’t ask for a better blocker,” Huggy promised.
“Thanks, Hug. We’ll be around to the Pits next week.”
“Your favorite pool cue will be waitin’. Later.”
Starsky hung up the phone, returned it to the table, and started to climb out of bed. Then he remembered the wake-up call Hutch had promised him and sank back against the pillow to wait.
“Just a few days,” he reminded himself aloud. It wasn’t a lot of time and, though Starsky had a shopping list full of possible plans, he wasn’t entirely sure how or when he could put them into motion. He was at the mercy of chance, his own physical limitations, and any resistance Hutch might throw his way. He was just going to have to be ready to capitalize on every opportunity that presented itself, and if none did, to create a few on his own. Either way, he was determined to carve out a few more successes before he had to send Hutch back into the deep end of the stress pool at the station.
~*~*~
It wasn’t Hutch’s kisses Starsky woke up to later that morning, it was Hutch’s snoring. Starsky turned his head and found Hutch, still dressed in his running clothes, flaked out on his back beside him. Judging by the clumps of blond hair stuck to face and scalp by dried sweat, Hutch must have run hard.
Watching the sleeping face, Starsky looked for any signs of improvement. He wasn’t expecting an overnight metamorphosis; he would be more than happy with any sign that Hutch was beginning to relax. What he saw, instead, was that Hutch appeared more tired, not less.
More stressed and strained.
Trying to hold onto his optimism, hoping that it was only some trick of light and shadow or the unfamiliar angle of his view, Starsky rolled carefully toward Hutch.
“What? What’s wrong?”
As he had the morning before, Hutch came awake at the small disturbance as Starsky changed position. He shot upright on the bed, his head whipping from side to side as he looked for any threat that might have crept into their bedroom.
“Hey, settle down. Nothing’s wrong.” Starsky put a comforting hand on Hutch’s arm and felt the coiled tension beneath the smooth skin.
Hutch flopped back against the pillow, lifted both hands to his face, and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “What time is it?”
Starsky looked past Hutch to the clock on the other side of the bed. “Almost eleven.”
“Shit. I’ve wasted half the day.” Hutch’s hands dropped to his chest, his bleak eyes staring at the ceiling accusingly as if it was to blame for his decision to go back to bed after his run, its fault entirely that he was so exhausted he had slept most of the morning away.
Starsky’s moved a little closer and laid his hand over Hutch’s to establish a physical connection. “You’re on vacation. Vacations are all about being lazy. No law against sleeping in if you want.”
Hutch rolled his head on the pillow, his eyes arrowing a glare at Starsky. “That’s not what you said yesterday when you were kicking my ass out of bed to go run.”
“That was just a little revenge for all the times you dragged me out of my nice warm dreams. Besides, you ran already today, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I ran.” Hutch rolled his head back, sighed and closed his eyes.
Starsky was pleased to see that Hutch’s initial alarm seemed to have passed, and he had to admit that, now that he was awake and his features animated, the signs of fatigue and stress weren’t quite so prominent. Perhaps, as usual, Starsky was just being impatient. Just in case there was a cause, and Hutch might feel like sharing, however, Starsky saw no harm in asking. “Are you all right?”
A second sigh, a second roll of his head, but this time, Hutch opened only one eye, his eyebrow lifting along with the lid in a blond question mark. “I take it our deal doesn’t go both ways?”
There was a little more temper in the growled question than Starsky had expected, but he decided to brazen it out. “Nope.” He added the cheeky grin he knew Hutch found hard to resist.
For a few seconds, it appeared that Starsky had chosen the wrong tact. There was a flash of real anger on Hutch’s face, but then it cleared and Hutch rolled toward Starsky, smiling as one big hand ruffled his hair. “Dope.”
“No dope, but if you go shower, I could probably rustle up some coffee and breakfast before you’re done.” Starsky paused a second, then added, “You’ll have to make the shake. I wasn’t paying attention yesterday.”
“Okay.” Hutch’s agreement was followed by an immediate move toward exiting the bed.
Starsky grabbed at the damp t-shirt to prevent the retreat. “Hey, you made me a promise before you left.”
“But you’re already awake.” Hutch was openly teasing now, and Starsky was relieved that the less than sunny mood in which he had awakened was lifting.
“A promise is a promise.” Starsky closed his eyes and tilted his chin to present puckered lips for his wake up kiss but prudently retained his grip on Hutch’s shirt.
Starsky was expecting nothing more than a peck. What he got was a pair of lips that moved over the joking pucker of his with an aching tenderness that took the humor out of him. Loved. Cherished. Prized. Hutch’s lips pressed all of those emotions into Starsky’s mouth with a gentle yearning that made the words sing in his head. Yearning that remained gentle only a moment before a desperate hunger came into the mouth that kissed him and the hands that urgently gripped his arms hard and pulled him tight against Hutch’s body.
The sudden movement shot painful fire into Starsky’s healing wounds, but he ignored it. He wrapped his arms as tightly as he could around Hutch, content to let the man he loved take this wherever Hutch wanted or needed to go.
As abruptly as it had begun, the passionate encounter ended when Hutch tore his mouth away and scrambled from the bed. Not so much as an “excuse me” was mumbled as he bolted for the bathroom.
Stunned and shaken by both the passion and the retreat, it took a few moments for Starsky to react. By the time he had made a careful exit from the bed, he heard the shower go on and hesitated.
Venice Place didn’t boast that much hot water. Whatever the hell was going on in that blond head of his, Hutch was going to have to come out of there eventually. Maybe by that time, Starsky would figure out a way to pry it out of his stubborn lover.
~*~*~
Even before he had fallen in love with Hutch, it had always been one of Starsky’s favorite pastimes to watch him move, especially when Hutch was unaware he was being watched. Not today. Watching him prowl the apartment, his body tense, every movement tight as he picked up a book here and dropped it there, or repositioned a plant half an inch only to move it back seconds later, was driving Starsky nuts. Hutch might be tired, but it was obvious he was also restless, and probably beginning to feel like the walls were closing in on him.
“Hey, Hutch. I feel like getting out of here for a while.”
The eagerness with which Hutch turned toward him, the relief in the blue eyes, gave Starsky hope that he was on the right track.
“Do you want to go to Huggy’s?”
Huggy’s was a possibility Starsky had already considered and dismissed. He didn’t think what Hutch needed was a crowd of people and a cloud of secondhand smoke. He had been getting plenty of both in the squad room.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a little fresh air. How about a walk on the beach?” Starsky was drawing on his knowledge of Hutch for the suggestion. Never mind that the port town he had grown up in had been on a lake, Hutch loved the ocean. Like this apartment, Starsky had seen the ocean work some undeniable magic on an out of sorts Hutch.
“The beach? Are you kidding! Three-quarters of Bay City will be at the beach today.”
Starsky had forgotten that it was July now. Six weeks in the hospital had screwed up his sense of the seasons. Definitely a crowded public beach, complete with screaming kids and barking dogs, wasn’t what he had in mind.
“Not out at the Point.” Starsky made the suggestion tentatively, bracing to counter Hutch’s arguments as best he could. He wasn’t sure he was up to the grueling hike the Point would make of the pleasant stroll he had intended, but he was willing to give it his best shot.
He was encouraged by the flash of interest that appeared on Hutch’s face before doubt squashed it. Starsky could see the protest sitting on Hutch’s lips, even saw his Adam’s Apple bob as he tried to swallow it down. Obviously, Hutch wasn’t certain if the protest he wanted to make fell within the boundaries of their deal.
“No, babe, I don’t know if I can handle it.” Starsky collected Hutch’s keys, moved to where Hutch still stood indecisively in the middle of the living room, and dropped the keys into Hutch’s hand. “But there’s only one way to find out.” Hoping this would be one of those times Hutch would decide to indulge him, Starsky turned and headed for the door.
“Wait a minute.”
Starsky opened the door before he turned back to give Hutch an innocently inquiring expression. “What ya waiting for?”
“I was hoping for a moment of sanity, but that isn’t going to happen, is it?”
“Probably not.”
Against his better judgment. Probably against his worst judgment. But to Starsky’s relief, Hutch finally nodded his agreement. “I know I’m going to regret this.”
~*~*~
This had been a very bad idea. Ten laps around the nurses’ station, even climbing Mount Venice Place, hadn’t prepared Starsky for the inhospitable Point.
It was a good thing there were plenty of boulders scattered along the narrow beach. Starsky had probably plunked his ass down on half of them during the hour since they had parked the car and scrambled down the incline to the beach. He had no idea how he was going to make it back up that path, but he would worry about that when he had to because, in his opinion, the effort had been worth it.
Hutch had accepted Starsky’s limitations, ranging ahead when Starsky took a breather, and returning with an unerring timing when Starsky felt ready to trudge along a few more yards. He was still introspective, and they hadn’t exchanged much in the way of conversation, but he was definitely more relaxed each time he returned to Starsky’s side.
“Are you okay?”
“Okay means the same thing as all right, you know.”
“I’m suspending the deal because of unusual circumstances. You should have read the fine print.”
Starsky laughed, levered himself to his feet, and slipped his arm through Hutch’s. The Point had its drawbacks, but it also had its advantages. The empty stretch of rough terrain gave them the freedom to walk arm in arm or hand in hand. In fact, alone as they were, Starsky saw no reason not to extend their public intimacy a little further. He slid his arm around Hutch’s waist and smiled when Hutch mirrored the embrace immediately.
“I’m fine.” Starsky started them back toward where that godawful climb awaited them, setting a steady pace to prove his point.
“Uh-huh,” Hutch grunted a doubtful acceptance of the reassurance, but tightened his grip, his strength supporting Starsky as they walked.
Starsky ignored the doubt and accepted the assistance, saving his breath for walking until he noticed the way Hutch was watching the ocean. “Something on your mind, buddy?”
“I was just wondering where they are.”
“Where what are?” Starsky stopped moving, taking the opportunity for a rest while they talked.
“Our badges.”
Starsky studied Hutch’s profile as his lover watched the ocean’s restless dance. The blue eyes were narrowed against the sun’s glare off the water, but other than that, there was nothing to set his inner alarms jangling. The handsome features were introspective, yet compared to their recent tension, relatively relaxed.
It was simply a question, not an emotional landmine, and Starsky chose to answer with humor. “I know where my badge is. A shark ate it.”
Unexpected annoyance tightened Hutch’s profile, but then quickly gave way to a small smile as he started them walking again. “Yeah? A great white or a hammerhead?”
“A great white, of course.”
Hutch acknowledged the humor with a small laugh before, but his expression became serious. “Have you thought about it?”
Starsky didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Hutch knew as well as he did that for a long time, he had had little to do but think. “Of course.”
“Do you know what you want to do?”
“Maybe, but…” Starsky didn’t finish his sentence because, again, Hutch already knew the answer. What Starsky wanted and what he could have might turn out to be miles apart.
“What would you do?” There was a hopeless desperation in Hutch’s question, tamped down and buried under the weeks of optimism Hutch had been spouting. Maybe to keep Starsky’s spirits up, or maybe to keep his own demons at bay.
As much as he wanted to reassure Hutch, to paint a picture-perfect future of the two of them regaining everything Gunther had tried to steal from them, Starsky knew he would be blowing hot air. He had bucked the odds by surviving; whether he could defeat them again with a full recovery remained to be seen. Hutch had to be just as aware of that as Starsky was.
It took a moment before Starsky realized what Hutch was really asking. Right now, Hutch needed to hear that there were other options, and that he had a place in them. Once again, Starsky chose to keep his reply on the lighter side. “I could see if my Uncle Marvin wanted to expand the family business out here.”
“What business is that? Selling used cars?” Hutch’s disdain for the idea was obvious in his disgusted tone and disapproving expression.
Starsky dismissed the questions with a negligent wave of his free hand. “No. That’s my Uncle Al on my mother’s side. Marvin’s my father’s brother. He runs Starsky’s Fine European Foods. They’ve got stores all up and down the east coast.”
Hutch stopped in his tracks, released Starsky and turned to face him. “You’re not serious? You wouldn’t know fine food if it bit you on the ass.”
Starsky shrugged carefully. “That’s where you come in. You can be the brains of the operation.”
“And what are you going to be?” Hutch asked suspiciously.
“The charming front man, of course.”
Hutch rolled his eyes and started walking again, but talking and trudging had Starsky ready for another break. He found another convenient boulder and sat down, waiting for Hutch to realize he was walking alone and return to him.
“I’m okay,” Starsky said before Hutch could ask him yet again. He sensed it was time to drop the banter and offer what answers he could as clearly as possible. “I know you think I’m fooling around, and I admit, I wasn’t really serious about opening a store. Honestly, if I can’t be a cop, I don’t know what I want to do.”
“But it was always your dream to be a cop.” Hutch, of course, was privy to the reason behind that dream. Had long ago been told of the vow made by a newly-fatherless son.
Starsky took Hutch’s hand in his, squeezed until Hutch had to meet his eyes. “Yeah, it was. And I made it. I was a cop. But you know, even before I got shot, that dream was changing. Eight years on the job was turning it into a nightmare sometimes.”
“Does that mean, even if you can, you don’t want to go back?” Hutch’s face had taken on a careful neutrality as if he feared he might force his own preference onto Starsky.
Still following his instincts, Starsky gave the only absolute certainty he had to give. “There’s only one thing I know for sure, Hutch. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I wanna do it with you.”
It was the right answer, finally. Starsky could see that in Hutch’s eyes, feel it in the hands that held onto his like a lifeline. He hoped Hutch understood that it was Starsky’s only true answer. Dying hadn’t only taught Starsky a little patience, it had also shown him where his dearest priority lay.
Starsky got to his feet and allowed Hutch to pull him into his arms. He encircled Hutch’s waist with both arms and let the strength of his embrace reinforce his declaration.
“What if I want to be a beach bum?” Hutch’s question was a whisper in Starsky’s ear, barely loud enough to be heard above the restless waves.
“Then I’ll learn to surf.”
“A sushi chef?”
“I’ve always been good with knives.”
Hutch pulled away a little, revealing eyes that had lost much of their doubt. “Porn stars?”
Starsky slid his hand up into Hutch’s hair and pulled his head down until their lips almost met. “As long as they let us get it on together, I’m game,” he promised and brought their mouths together, realizing only as their lips met that maybe they had both already made their decisions. Why else, if they weren’t ready to make fish food out of their new, shiny badges, would they take this kind of risk.
When Starsky ended the kiss, he saw that same thought on Hutch’s face. Saw his own joy, and his own fears reflected in the clear blue of Hutch’s eyes.
They still had a long way to go, but Starsky was feeling more certain that they had their feet on the right path and, together, they would make it wherever the road might lead them.
“Speaking of paths.” Starsky released his grip on Hutch, taking his hand instead as he, once again, took up their interrupted journey. “You know I’m not going to make it up that hill on my own.”
Hutch smiled and opened his mouth, his fine voice blending with the wind and the waves as he began to sing: “He ain’t heavy, he’s my lover.”
~*~*~
For a second time that day, Starsky woke to the feeling of Hutch’s loving kiss. When Hutch ended the kiss and dropped back into his chair, Starsky looked around, belatedly remembering where they were.
The greenhouse. Surrounded by Hutch’s leafy friends, they had been playing chess. Obviously, Starsky had fallen asleep waiting for Hutch to make a move, though, if he were honest, the peace and comfort of the moment had probably been a contributing factor.
“Hey, Prince Charming.” Starsky was only partly joking. With his blond hair freshly washed and wearing the soft butter-yellow tunic Starsky loved, Hutch looked like the handsome prince of some fairy tale.
“Hey, yourself, Sleeping Beauty.” The tone of Hutch’s voice was serious, but his eyes were teasing, sparkling with humor barely suppressed.
“I was just resting my eyes.” Starsky didn’t expect Hutch to believe the claim any more than his father had a quarter of a century before.
“Long rest.” Hutch’s observation was made in a matter-of-fact tone through lips that tried to twitch as he stood and offered his hand down to Starsky. “Time for bed.”
Starsky stared at that hand. If he let Hutch pull him up, it was going to hurt like hell, but it would almost be worth it. For the first time, it appeared Hutch himself had forgotten his partner’s injuries, and Starsky was delighted.
Before Starsky could reach for the offered hand, however, it dropped back to Hutch’s side.
“Sorry. I forgot for a minute.” The guilt of the lapse of memory was chiseled into Hutch’s face and drawn in every tight line of his body.
“Good.” Starsky held Hutch’s eyes until the guilt began to dissipate, then struggled out of the chair on his own and followed Hutch to the bedroom.
Starsky still left his t-shirt on as he stripped and crawled under the covers, but any dissatisfaction he felt with that particular state of affairs melted away when Hutch joined him. There was no need to coax Hutch closer tonight. He closed the gap between them immediately and found Starsky’s hand in the darkness.
“Love you,” Starsky whispered.
Hutch squeezed almost hard enough to hurt, then the pressure eased before Hutch propped himself up on one elbow and brought Starsky’s fingers to his lips.
“Uh-uh. I told you finger kisses don’t count.” Starsky pushed his hand against Hutch’s mouth in a mock punch, delighted to feel those lips stretch into a grin and to hear Hutch’s laughter. It might just be wishful thinking, but the sound seemed a whole lot less forced and tense tonight.
When Hutch followed the laughter with a long, lingering kiss, Starsky was sure wishing and hoping had nothing to do with the progress they had made today.
“I love you, too, Starsk.”
Content to have taken a few more baby steps, and maybe even one grown up stride of reassurance, Starsky let himself drift off to sleep with the warmth of Hutch’s kiss on his lips and the strength of Hutch’s hand in his.
~*~*~
Dead of night dark. Wee small hours silent. Starsky wasn’t sure what had wakened him, but he knew immediately that he was alone in the bed. Hutch gone to the john, maybe, but the coolness of the sheet under his outstretched hand shot down that theory. Hutch had left the bed a while ago.
He couldn’t see much of anything, but there was a quality to the silence that kept Starsky’s mouth shut. It breathed, heavy and ominous, bearing a weight that seemed to settle on his chest. Not danger or threat, just a heavy foreboding. Something was waiting to happen.
Starsky’s ears caught a soft sound. Foot against carpet? Thigh to couch? He couldn’t be sure, but he knew it was Hutch. He waited, straining his ears for the next whisper. A creak. Floorboard? No, there was strain in the sound.
The sudden crackle of paper seemed so loud that Starsky’s body jerked in reaction, his heart thumping. The blood pounding in his ears muted the crackling as it continued, but Starsky finally recognized the sound. Finally realized what was happening only a few feet away.
The image was as clear in his mind as if he had aimed a spotlight and frozen the tableau. Hutch was at the hall closet, that damned, destroyed jacket in his hands, the leather creaking with the force of his grip.
Stunned, Starsky continued to listen as the enormity of his discovery slowly became clear to him. Hutch was visiting the damned jacket. Creeping from the warmth of their bed and the security of their love to stand and wallow in silent grief. Alone. Separated. Cut off by his own choice from what he could not bear to lose.
Fury burned beneath the weight on Starsky’s chest. Not for the tortured man who suffered only a few feet away, but at his own arrogance. How stupid he had been to think his piddly little plots and plans could fix Hutch. That Starsky, and only Starsky, could heal the wounds in Hutch’s psyche. What a conceited asshole he was. Conceited and stupid and—
The silent tirade came to an abrupt end as Starsky felt the mattress dip. Hutch had returned, but Starsky could tell his lover balanced on the very edge of the mattress, a chasm of denial yawning between them.
Starsky was held frozen by indecision, his confidence undermined. Uncertain what to do, he did nothing. Until he felt the shaking. Tremors that inched across the mattress toward him from Hutch, sliding under his shoulders and back and buttocks and vibrating into his belly. His brain a confused lump of jelly, Starsky let his gut lead him.
With an indecipherable mumble, Starsky rolled toward Hutch, pretending an unconscious shift of position as he cuddled up to Hutch’s cold back.
“S-sorry. D-didn’t mean to w-wake you.”
The whisper that came out of the darkness, stuttered between chattering teeth, sounded all too familiar to Starsky. It had reached into his coma, haunted his dreams, and tore at his heart. Heartbroken. Bereft. Unable to hope.
Still following his instincts, Starsky remained silent, doing his talking with his body because he no longer trusted his mind. He ignored stretch and pain and stab as he wrapped his right arm and leg around Hutch and held on with fierce defiance, challenging the demons that possessed Hutch to try to take him away.
The minutes crept by in slow motion. Each second stretched itself out while Starsky focused every ounce of his heart and soul into drawing Hutch back to him. The big body came first, relaxing and easing within Starsky’s embrace, the quaking passing into quiet rest almost unnoticed. Still, Starsky held on, alert and vigilant, until he felt Hutch’s hand close over his, fingers entwining with his and held over the steady thump, thump, thump of Hutch’s heart.
Starsky’s plan was a bust, and stupidly he didn’t have a Plan B to fall back on. He had been so certain that he knew what Hutch needed. But he couldn’t give in to despair when he only had until the dawn drove away the night’s shadows to come up with a new strategy. His confidence was shaken, even rattled to the core, but Starsky wasn’t going to give up. Not when it was Hutch, his heart and soul and sanity, at stake.
~*~*~
The rest of the sleepless night hadn’t revealed any brilliant insights beyond what Starsky already knew. He had to do something. Trying to talk Hutch into seeking professional help at this point, Starsky sensed would be a fruitless waste of time and effort. As fruitless as his daytime baby steps forward undone each night by Hutch’s solitary strides back.
He was afraid provoking a confrontation might drive a wedge between them. After so many weeks apart, it was a horse pill Starsky found hard to swallow. In the absence of other workable options, however, it seemed like his only choice.
Starsky pretended to be asleep until he heard the door close as Hutch left for his run and then went straight for the closet where he found the jacket. It wasn’t anything to him now. Not a personal favorite. Not a reminder of his own mortality. It was the enemy now, and his only goal was to free Hutch from its malevolent power.
Without hesitation, Starsky moved to the kitchen table, hung the jacket over the back of the chair, and then positioned it so Hutch couldn’t avoid seeing it as soon as he walked through the door. It was going to hit Hutch like a sucker punch to the belly, and imaging his lover’s reaction sank the same fist into Starsky’s gut.
Starsky hand tightened around the leather in a brutal grip. “You think you can take him away from me?” He released his grip and shoved the chair in closer to the table. “Well, you’re wrong. Hutch is mine.”
He was shouting. Fists clenched into tight balls of fury, Starsky was bellowing his defiance at an inanimate object. The jacket didn’t react, which only stoked Starsky’s fury. Abruptly, he clamped his jaws together, forced his hands to relax, and took one deliberate step back. He breathed deeply, concentrating hard on slamming down the lid on his own emotions. He was about to ignite a firestorm inside Hutch, and if he was anything less than completely calm when he lit the fuse, the powder keg could blow up in both of their faces.
Just like on the streets, Hutch needed Starsky to be in control for the coming confrontation. He had to be calm to Hutch’s fury, the flywheel, the anchor, or whatever other counterbalance Hutch needed.
Turning his back on the painful tableau he had staged, Starsky retreated to the bathroom.
~*~*~
Starsky heard the front door close as he stepped out of the shower. He dried haphazardly, pulled on a robe, and hurried into the main room. His eyes went to the door, looking for Hutch, expecting to see him standing, stunned, shocked blue eyes fixed on the jacket. No Hutch. A quick scan located him in the kitchen preparing their morning shake.
A stranger might think Hutch hadn’t seen his secret revealed or simply didn’t care. Starsky knew better. Every over-controlled motion, every precisely placed step, every taut muscle revealed by t-shirt and running shorts, betrayed the truth. Hutch was anything but oblivious.
Prepared for an immediate explosion, Starsky hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. Follow Hutch’s lead? Counter it? A little of both?
As Starsky hung suspended on the horns of indecision, Hutch glanced over his shoulder and flashed a caricature of a good-morning smile. “You’re up already. Busy, too. You’ve already showered.”
Starsky’s brilliant “uhm, yeah,” was lost in the whir of the blender as Hutch turned away and hit puree.
Starsky had seen thinner brick walls than the aura of self-protection Hutch had pulled around himself. Shoulder butts, no matter how many Starsky threw at it, wouldn’t even crack the mortar.
“Patience. Patience,” Starsky mumbled to himself as he sat down on the unjacketed kitchen chair. “Did you have a good run?” he asked when the noise of the blender ended.
“Uh-huh. Extra half mile this morning.” Hutch handed a glass full of the morning concoction to Starsky, hesitated, his eyes on the other chair, then retreated back to the counter.
Starsky drank down the despised shake without even tasting it. He saw Hutch choke, then recover, as he drank his portion, and felt like seven different kinds of a bastard for what he was forcing on the man he loved. His resolve wavered until he remembered the shake and shudder of the grieving man in his arms the night before.
Starsky might be handling this all wrong, ham-fisted and hobnail-booted, but it didn’t take instinct or brilliance to realize the secret couldn’t continue to stand between them. Simple common sense was enough to see that, if there was to be any hope of rescuing Hutch’s health and sanity, the nightly retreat into grieving isolation had to end.
“Did you say you ran an extra half mile?” Starsky asked while he watched Hutch like an owl at a mouse hole for any clue of how to proceed.
“Uh-huh.” Hutch’s grunted response was delivered with his back to Starsky while his hands were busy making toast.
Starsky was willing to bet Hutch was on autopilot, hardly aware of what he was doing. He had obviously forgotten Starsky usually made breakfast.
Starsky didn’t point out the break in routine. “Did you drive to the park or just jog around here?” The small talk wasn’t coming easily when the majority of his brain cells were already full of the questions that needed to be asked.
“Just around here.” Hutch stood over Starsky with two plates of toast in his hands. He handed one to Starsky while his gaze skittered briefly to the unoccupied chair before he retreated to the counter once again.
“So, good run?” Starsky tried repeating a previous question in hopes it might sneak through a crack in Hutch’s defenses and provoke a response. Hutch hated it when Starsky asked him the same question more than once.
“Uh-huh. Extra half mile this morning.” Hutch repeated his earlier reply without any signs of exasperation. Maybe his brain was as occupied as Starsky’s, the mundane slipping in one ear and out the other without leaving a memory behind.
Starsky allowed the crunching of toast to fill up the awkward silence for a few minutes while he shored up his crumbling determination. He swallowed the last bite, made sure Hutch had also swallowed, then dropped the first verbal depth charge. “Do you think it can be fixed?”
Starsky would have been willing to bet that Hutch’s body was already drawn as tight as it could be. He would have lost that bet. He could almost hear the twang of sinew and muscle as Hutch remained mute. Mute but rattled.
Starsky counted to thirty, watching Hutch’s robotic movements as he rinsed his plate and glass and returned bread loaf and butter to their usual places. When Hutch started toward the table, Starsky loosed a second salvo. “That’s why you kept it, right?”
Hutch froze. Tortured blue eyes met Starsky’s for a brief second, then skittered away. His jaws bulged, teeth clenched so tight that the full lips disappeared almost completely behind the blind of his mustache.
His lover’s torment stabbed, painful as a blunt blade, into Starsky, once again shaking his resolve. He didn’t know if he was pushing too hard, or not quite hard enough. He was certain, however, that now the subject had been raised, it had to be dealt with. If it wasn’t, it would crouch in a corner, wherever they went, whatever they did, just watching for the perfect moment to explode between them.
Starsky could see in Hutch’s face that he would be willing to wait for that explosion, preferably as far in the future as possible. He also saw the temptation to lie, to trot out some excuse of lack of time or memory lapse.
Hutch shook his head sharply, as if to deny the temptation. “No. That isn’t why I kept it.” There was a “screw you” defiance in the statement, followed by another retreat to the counter.
“They why did you keep it?” As tenacious as a rat terrier, Starsky pursued the subject, but he pitched his voice to its gentlest tone. When Hutch didn’t answer, Starsky sighed softly, picked up his glass and plate, and carried them to the counter. He wasn’t surprised when Hutch sidestepped away as he approached, avoiding contact.
Starsky set the dishes in the sink and rested his hand on the counter, resisting the need to wrap it around some part of Hutch to bridge the terrible distance between them. “Why?”
Hutch’s head dropped, and Starsky knew he was about to be lied to.
“I don’t know.” The mumble was packed full of shame and guilt wrapped up tightly in an envelope of desperate defiance. “I need a shower.”
Starsky hesitated. Allowing Hutch to retreat was a gamble. He could emerge from the steam resigned to baring his soul, or he could use the time under the spray to shore up his defenses. Starsky was a gambling man, usually willing to place a wager on whatever game of chance came his way. The one bet he was always willing to lay money on was Hutch. However much it hurt him personally, whatever the struggle to get there, Hutch would do the right thing.
Silently, Starsky reached out and wrapped his hand around Hutch’s wrist. He held on gently, not restraining, simply waiting until Hutch lifted his head and their eyes met. What he saw in those tortured eyes reassured him enough to step aside, clearing the path for Hutch’s temporary retreat.
~*~*~
While Hutch was hiding out in the only completely private space in the apartment, Starsky rinsed his dishes, wiped down the counter and table, and exchanged his robe for a t-shirt and shorts. In other words, he puttered. Kept busy so every click of the second hand of the clock didn’t drill into his brain.
“Be calm. Be cool.” He repeated the mantra as he prowled the apartment. It wouldn’t be long before the water turned cold. Hutch had to come out eventually.
When the shower thumped off, Starsky chose a strategic place at one end of the couch and sat down. Unless he returned to the bathroom or went out the front door, there wasn’t any place in the apartment from which Hutch wouldn’t be subjected to the sight of Starsky patiently waiting for him.
The bathroom door opened and Hutch stood framed in it. Scrubbed clean, freshly shaven, wearing the same uniform as Starsky of t-shirt and shorts. One of the most beautiful sights in the world, in Starsky’s opinion, except for the haunted eyes and wary expression.
Starsky was only a little surprised when Hutch came directly to him. Long legs bent at the knees and the equally long torso folded at the hip to set Hutch down on the couch beside Starsky.
“I’m sorry. I should have thought how hard it would be on you to find that…your jacket. It must have been a terrible shock.”
Starsky hadn’t been expecting this, though he should have been. Hutch was a damned good strategist. Evade and re-direct. Although, to be fair, there was probably an element of true concern for Starsky’s feelings in there as well.
Starsky was more than willing to accept that part of the apology. “Yeah, I admit, seeing it sorta knocked me on my ass.” He paused, allowed Hutch his moment of hope, then confirmed that the strategy was a bust. “So, why didn’t you throw it away? I assumed you trashed the other stuff. My shirts and jeans.”
Wariness stuck out all over Hutch like the hackles on a feral mutt. He tried acknowledging only the last part of Starsky’s statement, ignoring the question. “Yeah. I gave you back your watch and wallet, but everything else…” Both hands lifted, fingers spread in a digital shrug.”… was pretty, ah, messed up.”
“Covered in blood, you mean.” Starsky clarified the euphemism, though he sympathized with Hutch’s wince. “So, why did you keep the jacket?” he repeated the question for the third, tenacious time.
“Oh, hell, Starsky. I told you, I don’t know.” There was some exasperated heat in Hutch’s voice, the way it always appeared when Starsky kept asking a stupid question Hutch had already answered. It didn’t sit all that comfortably with the wary eyes, however. In fact, those eyes contradicted the hell out of Hutch’s claim to ignorance.
“I’m not buying it. If you really didn’t know you’d… hypothesize. Like maybe you forgot all about it. Or maybe you were just too busy running between the station and the hospital.” Starsky shot down the plausible excuses before Hutch could trot them out.
“Damn it! I have been busy, in case you didn’t notice.” Predictably, when conciliatory didn’t work, Hutch switched gears, going on the offensive with a sharper tone and self-defensive observation.
“I noticed, babe. Noticed the weight dropping off you and the bags under your eyes turning into a full set of luggage.” Starsky curled his hand into a fist to prevent it from reaching out to Hutch. “You’ve been busy, but you never forgot. Not for one second.”
“All right. All right.” The acknowledgement was shouted and Hutch paused, a hard swallow evidence of his effort to reclaim a more reasonable tone. “I didn’t forget it. I… I tried to throw it away, but I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Starsky prodded relentlessly.
“I don’t know why you have to be so damned… pushy. I didn’t throw it away. I didn’t forget about it. Big deal. What the fuck does it matter?” In his attempt to dismiss the importance of the matter, Hutch unknowingly offered Starsky a clear opening.
Starsky hesitated. This relentless hounding of Hutch about something so obviously painful ran contrary to every instinct. It was his job to protect Hutch, heal Hutch, love Hutch, not to torture him. Nearly choking on the words, Starsky forced himself to continue. “If it doesn’t matter, then I could just put it in a bag and trot it down to the bin out back right now. And it wouldn’t matter a damned to you. Right?”
“R—” Hutch’s lips closed over the lie, continued working against each other as he tried to force the single, defiant word out.
Starsky could see that the defenses were crumbling, bombarded as much from within by Hutch’s growing agitation as by Starsky’s relentless verbal shelling. He was backing Hutch into a corner, a dangerous proposition under the best of circumstances, but the only way Starsky could see to get in behind those walls with him.
Starsky put his hands on the cushion under him and pushed, half raising himself from the couch. “Then I’ll just go do that.”
”No!” Hutch shot off the couch as if he was jet propelled and placed himself between Starsky and the jacket draped over the back of the kitchen chair. His hands lifted waist high, then fell, both palms pressed hard against his bare thighs. “I need it!”
”Need it?” The echo came out of Starsky’s mouth without direction from his brain. That organ was too busy, sorting, shuffling, lining up the clues of the panicked, protective position, the desperate expression, and the eyes so full of shame it hurt to look into them. He was supposed to understand Hutch better than any other soul on Earth. How could he have been so blind, deaf, and dumb until Hutch practically hammered him over the head? Instinctively, Starsky reached out toward his partner. “Oh, my God, Hutch, no.”
“You see? I can see you understand. I have to keep it. As long as I’ve got it to remind me, I’ll never make the same mistake again. Never drop my guard. Never get lazy or complacent ever again.” Hutch took a step toward the couch, his hands outstretched in a plea for understanding. “I’ll never forget to watch your back again.”
Starsky felt sick with the enormity of his error. Once again, he had been stupidly simple in his thinking. He had been taking too many clues from Hutch’s physical condition, while stubbornly ignoring too much of what he knew about Hutch.
Starsky let his hand fall back to the arm of the couch. “Sit down, Hutch,” he requested softly. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to touch it. I just…I need to think for a minute.”
Hesitantly, with obvious reluctance, Hutch obeyed, glancing over his shoulder toward the jacket before he perched on the edge of a cushion.
Starsky would have liked to give himself a good swift kick in the ass. This wasn’t however, the time. Hutch was waiting, looking sicker by the moment, as if he expected Starsky to hand down some sort of life without parole sentence. Which, in reality, was exactly what he intended to do. The rest of Hutch’s life, without hope of parole, with Starsky. But first they had to get over the huge, unforeseen obstacle of Hutch’s undeserved guilt.
Although he could see Hutch wanted to perch there in his isolated torment, rejecting comfort and prepared for punishment, Starsky held his hand out toward him nonetheless. Hutch eyed it as if it was some alien creature, but Starsky just left it there until, finally, Hutch capitulated. Shuffling a little along the couch, Starsky entwined their fingers, then let their joined hands rest on the cushion between them.
“Do you remember a couple of nights ago when you said you knew what I was up to?” Starsky asked gently.
Cautiously, Hutch nodded, a little of the tension easing from his face at the memory Starsky evoked with the reminder. “Loving me.”
“That’s right. All those weeks I was in the hospital, I watched you running yourself ragged. I could tell you weren’t sleeping much, figured you probably weren’t eating much, either.” Starsky paused, his eyes on Hutch, waiting for Hutch to admit he had gotten at least that much right.
Again Hutch nodded, less hesitantly this second time.
“I couldn’t do anything then. Hell, most of the time, we were lucky if we were alone long enough for a sneaky smooch. So, you know me, I came up with a plan. I thought I knew what was wrong and how to fix it. Hell, arrogant asshole that I am, I thought only I could fix it.”
Starsky shook his head, once again appalled by his arrogance and myopic focus. “You weren’t taking care of yourself. You never do when you’re in that frame of mind. You think you’re Superman. You live on coffee and cold soup right out of the can. I thought, easy fix. Make him take some time off and get him back into ‘my body is a temple’ mode.”
“You know I appreciate it, and I do feel better.”
“Uh-huh. I thought we were coming along fine, too.” Starsky’s disgusted tone damned his own short-sighted focus. “I knew there was other stuff eating at you. Grief ’cause you aren’t really sure I am still walkin’ around. I figured it’d take some time for you to believe it. And in some kind of future for us, too.”
Starsky shook his head, partly at his own stupidity, and partly in wonder at the very complex person he had chosen to be the love of his life. “It never, not once ever, crossed my mind that you blamed yourself because I got shot. Knowin’ you like I do, it shoulda, but it didn’t.”
Hutch’s head dropped, his eyes on their joined hands. “It was my fault.”
Starsky felt a slight tug and tightened his grip, refusing to let Hutch break the connection. He ignored the whispered interruption, continuing as if Hutch hadn’t spoken. “You know Gunther had his sights set on us from the minute we collared his runners on the road from Vegas?”
Hutch’s head came up and he protested, “Of course I know that. I thought… I thought we’d be safer back on the force.” Although his head remained up, Hutch’s eyes once again refused to meet Starsky’s as he continued. “That’s why I talked you into it.”
Starsky snorted at the absurdity of Hutch’s claim. “You didn’t talk me into anything. Not resigning. Not going back. We decided.” He waved his free hand back and forth between them. “You and me together. But none of that is what’s really twisting your guts. What you said just a little while ago about failing, that’s the meat and potatoes. What the fuck makes you think you failed?”
“You mean other than the three bullet holes in your back!” Hutch shouted. He yanked his hand away and leapt to his feet. He started for the door, made a sudden sharp right and stopped abruptly beside the jacket hanging on the chair.
Starsky started to follow, remembered that leaping was still beyond his capability, and settled back against the cushion. He watched Hutch, saw the way shaking fingers brushed over ruined leather before the big hand dropped back to his side. What Starsky had refused to see was now so damned crystal clear. It was a pattern, too familiar, that he had encountered too often in their partnership.
“We’ve been through this before, you big lug,” Starsky said to the stiff back. “It wasn’t your fault Jennings decided to try out his poison on me first. It wasn’t your fault Simone’s crazies caught me with my zipper down in the can.”
There was a soft sound from Hutch that might have been a chuckle or a moan. Starsky wasn’t sure which until Hutch turned around and the expression on his face revealed the noise had probably been a combination of the two.
“I know, Starsky. I didn’t invent gunpowder. I didn’t start the Vietnam war. And I didn’t kidnap Patty Hurst.” The litany of his faultlessness was delivered with irony, a mantra Starsky had been trying to get through his pretty blond head for years. The touch of humor faded, however, as he continued. “But it is my fault you were shot.”
“No, Hutch, it wasn’t,” Starsky said with absolute conviction. “It was mine.”
Perhaps if Starsky hadn’t believed what he said so certainly, the simple statement wouldn’t have been able to penetrate Hutch’s defenses. It would have just bounced off them like a rubber ball off titanium. As Hutch returned to the couch, there was still disbelief in his face, but there was also curiosity.
“You gonna sit down?” Starsky asked, tipping his head back at an exaggerated angle to make his point.
“You don’t remember what happened. How can you be so sure?” Hutch asked suspiciously.
Starsky patted the cushion beside him. “Sit down and I’ll tell you.”
There was a flash of temper on Hutch’s face, followed by resignation as he slowly lowered himself to the cushion.
Starsky immediately re-claimed his grip on Hutch’s hand and flashed a “gotcha” grin. He sobered quickly beneath Hutch’s demanding glare. “All right. All right. You’re right, I don’t remember a lot from that day. But there are two things I remember. I remember ‘Starsky, get down.’ and I remember the sound of that cannon of yours. You warned me, Hutch. I didn’t listen. If you want to blame somebody, blame me.”
“You.” Hutch said the word as if it was a puzzle piece he was trying to make fit into a previously unconsidered empty space. “But… I don’t remember yelling.”
“Probably because it wasn’t something you had to think about. Something you do as automatically as breathing.”
Hutch’s expression had become introspective, the progression of his thoughts almost visible on his face as they were considered for their merit and then either accepted or discarded. Starsky waited patiently through the process, unsurprised that when Hutch’s eyes finally turned to him, they held a puzzled accusation.
“Why didn’t you get down?” Hutch asked softly, as if he felt he was perpetrating the worst sort of betrayal of their partnership he could imagine.
“Honestly, Hutch, I don’t know,” Starsky admitted. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and I just don’t know. After all these years, when you bellow like that, I don’t think. I just get my ass down and figure out what’s going on later. Same as you when I bellow at you like Dobey on a diet.”
“You don’t know? I’m supposed to just accept that?” Hutch’s uncertainty had hardened into a glare. ‘”I don’t know’ wasn’t good enough a few minutes ago.”
“It’s the only answer I have, babe.” Starsky shrugged, lifting their joined hands from the couch for a moment, distracted as he realized that, for the first time the motion hadn’t hurt all that much, even with the added weight of Hutch’s hand.
“Are you sure you remember?” Hutch asked suspiciously. “Remember me warning you?”
“Why would I lie?” Starsky asked.
Hutch suspicion deepened. “Maybe because your cockeyed logic figures I’ll forgive you quicker than I’d forgive myself.”
“Well, yeah, that’s true,” Starsky admitted with a scapegrace smile. “But I swear to God, Hutch. That’s what I remember.” He squeezed Hutch’s hand. “If you gotta blame somebody, blame Gunther. Hate that black hearted bastard. Please, sweetheart, don’t blame yourself. We can’t live the rest of our lives with you stuck in that parking garage forever.”
Silence settled in around them and, again, Starsky waited through it. The knots in his belly slowly unraveled as he watched Hutch and saw belief slowly take the place of the guilt that had been crushing him. They were back to baby steps again, but Starsky was ready to rejoice in every one. The ease of broad shoulders, the lightening of the dent between fair brows, the fading of the shadows in blue eyes as Hutch glanced at the jacket and back to Starsky all felt like major victories.
“What about that?” Hutch nodded toward the jacket. “I…I guess you’d rather not see it ever again.”
“Doesn’t matter to me, Hutch. If you still need to keep it around, then keep it. But don’t hide it.” Starsky gestured toward the closet near the door. “Hang the damned thing in the closet.”
Although Starsky would have liked to trash the morbid reminder, the relief in Hutch’s eyes confirmed he had made the right choice in leaving the decision to Hutch. Starsky had already made his own peace with what the jacket represented. If he had to, he could live with it until Hutch could live without it.
Hutch rose and retrieved the jacket, but instead of taking it to the closet, he returned to stand in front of Starsky, the back of the jacket displayed. “I want you to know something. It wasn’t just guilt. At first, before anybody knew if you were going to make it, then it was something to hang onto.”
Starsky understood that. He had, more than once, had a brief sample of the pain and fear Hutch had suffered through alone while Starsky was in a coma and the outcome uncertain. If they were both going to truly survive, however, Hutch needed to accept that that time had passed. If they were going to build a future together, Hutch had to put the past in its proper place.
“I get it, babe,” Starsky said and reached out his hand. He was gratified when, this time, Hutch didn’t hesitate to accept it. “Keep it as long as you need to. Just one thing I want you to promise. Any time you need somethin’ to hang on to, anytime you’re not sure if we made it or where we’re goin’, you hang onto me. Okay?” He tugged gently until Hutch sat down beside him, then continued to pull at Hutch’s hand until he could press it, flat palmed, over his heart. “I’m alive, Hutch. We made it.”
Hutch leaned toward him and Starsky met him, eagerly accepting the kiss that delivered Hutch’s promise with love and fierce tenderness. He didn’t kid himself that all Hutch’s troubles were over, purged by one emotional conversation. They had miles to go yet, he was sure. Still, petty it might be, but he couldn’t help rejoicing when he heard the jacket hit the floor and felt both of Hutch’s arms go around him in a possessive embrace.
“I told you, sucker,” Starsky projected silently to the defeated enemy lying discarded and forgotten on the floor. “I told you. Hutch is mine.”
~*~*~
Starsky woke up in exactly the place he had dreamt of being for many long weeks. He was cuddled in Hutch’s arms. The blond head rested on his very numb left shoulder, and Hutch’s right arm and leg draped over him possessively. They had both been exhausted by the sleepless night and emotional confrontation and had, without discussion, debate, or spoken agreement, climbed back into bed together.
The long body felt more relaxed against him, and Starsky allowed himself to savor this partial success. Hutch’s sense of guilt might be a little overdeveloped, but it wasn’t on steroids. Given a good reason to discard his mental hair shirt, he wouldn’t hang onto it out of sheer stubbornness. It might take him a while to work it through and be ready to dispose of the jacket, but Starsky was willing to wait.
Starsky couldn’t see the clock, but he estimated they hadn’t slept away the entire day. So, what to do with the rest of it? Tomorrow, Hutch had to go back to work and there were still plans Starsky hoped to put in motion before then. They were on the right road, however, Starsky was sure, and he wondered if he should just relax and let them both enjoy a last day of leisure together.
As if Starsky’s thoughts were disturbing the peace of the moment, Hutch shifted against him. A soft, indecipherable murmur left his lips and his grip tightened. Starsky was startled to feel the unmistakable hard press of Hutch’s erection against his thigh.
“What are you thinking so seriously about?”
Still absorbing the surprise of Hutch’s arousal, the sound of his voice came as a second, almost as startling event. For the first time, it seemed Hutch had awakened gently rather than being yanked into adrenaline-shot awareness.
Starsky recovered quickly, reaching out with his right hand to ruffle Hutch’s hair. “You, of course. You ‘re always on my mind.” As if it had its own will, his hand stayed in Hutch’s hair, smoothing the ruffled strands back into place.
To Starsky’s delight, Hutch pushed his head harder into Starsky’s hand, stropping like an attention-starved cat. Then the pressure eased. “Does that hurt?”
Starsky’s fingers closed, catching a few long strands. “Only a little. It’s worth it. I love the feel of your hair.”
Starsky waited a few beats to let Hutch protest, then took up the stroking again, hedonistically enjoying the sensation of the warm silk flowing through his fingers. He let the quiet and comfort continue until it began to lure him back toward sleep.
“I shrugged this morning and it hardly hurt at all,” he said, wondering if Hutch might already have tumbled back into the sandman’s jurisdiction.
“That’s good,” Hutch murmured, confirming he was still on this side of slumber’s curtain.
“I’m gettin’ better every day, sweetheart,” Starsky murmured, hoping Hutch could believe it, could buy into a future Starsky who would be fully healed.
Hutch didn’t give Starsky any words, just a sigh in which Starsky could still hear too much doubt. He was sure actions were going to speak louder to Hutch’s lingering fears so gave the subject a rest for now.
“What do you want to do with the rest of the day? What little there is,” Hutch asked.
The erection against his thigh hadn’t lost its tumescence, and Starsky realized he was also aroused. His cock wasn’t hard, but the rest of his body, his mind, and his heart, were definitely aroused by the idea of making love to Hutch.
Starsky didn’t hesitate. He pressed his thigh gently into Hutch’s groin. “We could just stay right here.”
Hutch’s lower body jerked away as if he had been touched with a cattle prod. “It’s too soon.”
Starsky thought it was probably more up to him than to Hutch to make that determination. He opened his mouth to point that out, then hesitated. Maybe Hutch’s objection had more to do with “out of the blue” than “too soon.” Starsky had had to wage a patient war of seduction to coax Hutch into accepting that it was safe for them to sleep close together. Maybe Hutch also needed to be seduced into taking the next obvious step. Starsky had no objection. He liked seducing Hutch. So he temporarily dropped this subject as well.
“Or we could go for a walk at the Point again, then you could buy me that five course dinner you still owe me.”
“Three course,” Hutch objected predictably.
Starsky pretended to consider, then offered a compromise. “Okay. You can buy three courses and I’ll buy two.”
“And then? Don’t tell me you don’t already have more plans?” Although Hutch had rejected the sexual overture in no uncertain terms, he seemed in no hurry to alter the warm intimacy of their position.
“Well,” Starsky drawled. “We could play Monopoly and you could let me win. Or…” He pitched his tone to convey sudden discovery, the light-bulb-over-the-head effect. “You could play your guitar for me. Have you looked at that thing lately? There’s an inch of dust on it. Helluva way to treat a present.”
Starsky pretended to pout, even though Hutch couldn’t see him. He had bought the guitar for Hutch for the birthday following the time Hurricane Diana had blown through their lives.
“What about you?” Hutch finally lifted himself off Starsky’s shoulder. He propped his head on his hand and glared down at Starsky in mock offence. “I gave you a perfectly healthy plant and you brown-thumbed it to death. Poor Phillip didn’t last a month.”
Starsky was delighted by the quick response and by the way they had dropped into their usual banter. Hutch was laughing, the sound freer, less restrained, as if he was no longer quite so afraid to let it out in case fate deemed him too happy and jumped on him again. He might not yet be completely liberated, but he seemed, at least, to be out on day parole.
“Maybe we should just get our lazy asses out of bed and see where the day takes us,” Hutch suggested.
That was fine with Starsky, just as long as the day, eventually, led them back to this bed.
Together.
~*~*~
Starsky was enjoying this stroll along the inhospitable Point beach much more than he had the day before. The trekking was no easier, and he had to stop just as often. The difference was Hutch. No longer relentlessly restless, Hutch was apparently content to walk hand in hand at Starsky’s pace. There was no telltale tension in the hand that held Starsky’s, nor did he stand, shifting impatiently from foot to foot, when Starsky had to rest. Instead, Hutch perched beside Starsky on the dubious comfort of a convenient boulder, their bodies pressed at shoulder, hip and thigh.
They had hardly spoken, but as they neared the turnaround point, Starsky broke the silence. “If we moved to San Francisco, we could do this all the time.” He swung their joined hands a little to clarify his reference.
Hutch offered no opinion beyond a non-committal hum that was almost lost in the whoosh of the waves. But his grip tightened around Starsky’s hand and his lips wore a soft smile.
There was also an unfocused, dreamy quality to the blue eyes that piqued Starsky’s curiosity. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m just trying to imagine what we could do in ‘Frisco. We didn’t have much luck finding civilian jobs in Bay City.”
That was certainly the unvarnished truth. If they were completely honest, however, they would have to admit they hadn’t taken the job search all that seriously. Especially after people started shooting at them.
They had already had this conversation, just about twenty-four hours ago, in fact. But there was a different tone to it today. Less needy, more wistful. In any case, Starsky had had plenty of time to consider many possibilities. “You could paint.”
Hutch’s lips quirked at the suggestion, then he offered one of his own. “And you could get into freelance photography.”
Starsky laughed at the unlikelihood that either suggestion would yield up a living anywhere above the poverty line and was pleased when Hutch’s laughter joined his.
“We’d both be a couple of starving artists.” The humor was gone from Hutch’s voice though his expression wasn’t as grim as it had been yesterday when they discussed the future.
Starsky put his reassurance into the strength of his hand and a loving smile. They both knew their future was nebulous, and there was no sense pretending otherwise.
As they turned for the return trip up the beach, Starsky released Hutch’s hand long enough to reach as far as he could under his t-shirt, trying to relieve a persistent itch.
“Maybe we should have stopped at the barber on the way back instead of first thing.”
Starsky ran his hand through his much shorter curls before he reclaimed Hutch’s hand again. “I needed a haircut before I went into the hospital. I couldn’t stand it anymore.” He gave Hutch’s hand a playful tug and brazenly fished for a compliment. “Do you still love me even with a haircut?”
Hutch stopped their progress and turned them to face each other. He looked Starsky over in a tongue-in-cheek critical assessment. “Well, I do sort of miss the ‘fro.” His free hand rose to finger a curl near Starsky’s ear.
Starsky pretended outrage. “I looked like a poodle nobody loved!”
The humor left Hutch’s face as his fingers released the curl. His hand slipped to the back of Starsky’s head in a possessive grip. “I love you.”
There was only one answer Starsky could give to the fierce declaration, and he gave it with his mouth, his arms, and his heart. Hutch’s urgent passion filled the kiss, gentling after unnoticed minutes had passed into something equally as dedicated but far more tender. A sharing rather than a possession.
It was the type of kiss they had shared before the shooting, full of joy, empty of fear. There had always been that extra little thrill of stealing an illicit moment, and their present location fed that feeling, multiplying the pleasure.
With true regret, Starsky eventually had to end it. He squirmed away from Hutch, once again trying to reach the distracting itch on his back.
Hutch threw back his head, laughing at his gyrations. “Why don’t you take off your shirt and shake it out?”
“Good idea.” Starsky reached for the hem of his t-shirt then froze as he remembered the scars and Hutch’s drastic reaction the only time he had seen them. “Uh, no. It wouldn’t help. I need to shower and change clothes.” It was lame, and such an obvious lie, and it dumped them with a reality jolt back into their lives as they now existed.
Hutch’s face had hardened, the gentle lover retreating behind a mask that ignored the moment of awkwardness as it shoe-horned itself into their contentment. He looked at his watch. “We better get moving then, if you still want to eat out. I’m back to early to bed, early to rise tomorrow.”
Starsky nodded agreement, silently cursing Gunther for the thousandth time. Damned him for the hardness of Hutch’s eyes, the tightness of his lips, and for the miserable inches of space that now separated them as they trudged along in their own footsteps.
He kept his thoughts to himself and demanded that his body keep up with Hutch’s pace. Every few minutes, he slanted a look at Hutch, searching for some sign that the strain was being left behind them on the hard sand. Just as he feared he was going to have to ask for a rest, Starsky saw what he was looking for.
Hutch’s mask had been discarded as he slowed his pace and reached for Starsky’s hand. “Where do you want to go tonight? Huggy’s?” he asked as if there had been no long minutes of introspective withdrawal.
Starsky followed his partner’s lead. “Huggy’s? There aren’t any five course meals at Huggy’s unless you count the beer and pretzels.”
More importantly, Starsky’s plans for seduction didn’t include the distractions of well-meaning friends. “I was thinking about Valentino’s,” he suggested and waited for Hutch’s reaction.
As expected, Hutch’s expressive lips tightened. They had both developed a phobia for Italian restaurants after Starsky had been shot in one. They both enjoyed the food so much, however, that they had eventually overcome their mutual aversion. Starsky wasn’t certain if the new wounds in his back would be too much of a reminder for Hutch.
They had almost reached the path leading up to where they had parked the car before Hutch gave Starsky an answer. “You know what? I think I’m in the mood for veal tonight.”
That suited Starsky perfectly. He didn’t care what they ate. He was only in the mood for Hutch, and Valentino’s, with its dim lighting and intimate booths, was just the atmosphere he wanted to begin his seduction.
~*~*~
Starsky had called ahead for reservations, and when they arrived, the owner was there to greet them.
“Starsky, my friend. So good to see you.” Tony Valentino, short gray haired and more muscular than you would expect of a man in his sixties, enveloped Starsky in a bear hug. The embrace was surprisingly restrained, and there was concerned disapproval on the still handsome features as he pushed Starsky away. “You’re so skinny! Tony’s spaghetti and meatballs will put some meat on your bones. Come, I saved you the best table in the house.”
Starsky put out a restraining hand before Valentino hustled away. “I was kind of hoping for the booth in the back.” He waved the same hand back and forth between himself and Hutch. “Hutch and me have gotten a little… too well known lately. We just want a quiet dinner.”
“Of course. Whatever you want.” Valentino himself led them to the booth. “Vino de casa?”
Starsky caught Hutch’s eyes and they shared a brief flash of amused memory before Starsky nodded. “Just for Hutch, Tony. I’m not allowed to drink yet.”
“But soon, eh?” Valentino clapped Starsky on the shoulder.
“Pretty soon,” Starsky agreed as Valentino left them. He sighed and looked around happily. “Do you know what this place reminds me of?” he asked, giving Hutch his opening. He didn’t like the crease that had chiseled itself between Hutch’s eyebrows at the reminder of Starsky’s continuing recovery and hoped to distract him.
Hutch allowed the distraction, the crease disappearing as he relaxed on the well-padded bench. “The place your grandmother lived over when you were a kid. You ask me that every time we eat in an Italian restaurant.”
“Oh, yeah.” Satisfied with the response, Starsky nudged the menu toward Hutch. “Still in the mood for veal?”
“Maybe.” Hutch opened the menu and began reading it. “What about you?”
“Hmmm, I don’t know. Spaghetti and meatballs?” Starsky grinned a challenge at Hutch.
Hutch assumed an appropriately appalled expression. “You’re not serious! You can’t think you’re up to Tony’s challenge yet? I can’t believe you did it when you were, ah, in fighting form.”
Valentino’s challenge was something of a legend in town. Any patron who could eat ten plates of their signature spaghetti and meatballs ate free, as did his or her entire party.
“Hey, there was free food at stake, remember?” Starsky had no intention of taking up the challenge this evening, but he was enjoying the sparkle of humor in Hutch’s eyes.
“I remember. 1 also remember the Alka seltzer.” Hutch pantomimed dropping tablets into his water glass. “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz. Every two hours all night.”
They both laughed at the memory, sobering quickly as the waiter appeared with Hutch’s wine and stood waiting for their order.
Hutch looked at the menu a minute longer, then closed it. “Veal scallopini.”
“Sounds good to me.” Starsky closed his menu as well and handed it to the waiter. His appetite hadn’t really returned to normal yet, and frankly, what he ate tonight was the last thing on his mind. Being with Hutch, evoking memories of good times, and capitalizing on every opportunity to subtly flirt with his lover had higher priority than the food on his plate.
As the waiter departed, Starsky lifted the carafe of wine. He derailed Hutch’s protest by reaching out to fill his glass. He met the watchful blue eyes and winked. “You’ll have to drink for both of us tonight.” He held Hutch’s eyes as he filled the glass almost to the brim.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” Hutch’s expression wasn’t yet revealing whether he would be amenable to the idea or not.
“Could be.” Starsky didn’t really want Hutch drunk, just pleasantly mellow. “Why do you think I insisted on driving?”
“I thought you just couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel of that striped tomato again.” Hutch’s eyes were full of sympathy above the rim of his glass. “That had to feel good.”
“It did.” Starsky dropped his eyes to the tablecloth as he made the confession, then lifted them to hold Hutch’s in a warm embrace. “But not anywhere near as good as it felt to hold you in my arms again.”
Hutch’s eyes widened in surprise and a blush bloomed on his cheeks as his eyelids lowered, concealing their expression. He seemed intent on his glass as he set it on the table, those beautiful fingers of his delicately toying with the stem.
When he finally gave his eyes back to Starsky to read, Starsky saw familiar delight there and knew that the blush was now the warm flush of anticipation. Hutch had always liked to flirt with him. In the BL—Before Lovers—time, it had been their only way to express their growing feelings.
Now that Hutch had recognized and tactically agreed to the game, Starsky was free to be as subtle or overt, or any combination of the two, as he chose. Hutch didn’t need to know that Starsky’s intentions were more in line with the AL—After Lovers—time. In fact, that he didn’t was to Starsky’s advantage.
Their meals arrived and they began to eat. They spoke little, no more than a request to pass the pepper or the bread basket, but Starsky pointedly lingered over every visual or physical contact. They had always been able to share their thoughts with little more than a look or a touch. Tonight, all of Starsky’s efforts were aimed at ensuring his end of the silent conversation was filled with love. He was encouraged when he received the same in response from Hutch.
As they neared the end of their meals, Starsky decided it was time for something a little more overt. He slid his foot forward under cover of the long tablecloth until it encountered Hutch’s, then lifted it, slowly stroking his calf up Hutch’s shin.
Hutch’s fork paused in mid air and his eyes pinned Starsky’s.
“Remember the time we didn’t even get halfway through dinner?” Starsky asked in a husky whisper, evoking a memory from when they had first become lovers. They probably should have known better. They had been so hungry for each other that every moment alone had been precious, and trying to eat out had been a tactical error.
Hutch’s fork continued to his mouth and he chewed slowly and swallowed before he replied. “I remember,” he finally admitted, then Starsky felt Hutch’s leg slip away from his, only to return a second later. Now it was Hutch’s calf delivering a firm caress to Starsky’s shin.
“Thanks for suggesting this place,” Hutch said as he laid down his fork.
Suddenly, Starsky realized everything he had been striving for with his plans was sitting in front of him. It might not be permanent, might not last beyond the moments it took Starsky to drink it in, but all trace of the past few stressful, grief-stricken months had been erased from Hutch’s face. For this brief, wonderful moment, at least, Starsky was enthralled by the face of the new lover Hutch had been in the memory Starsky had just evoked.
Starsky had never before been more frustrated by the fact the love they shared wasn’t acceptable to the rest of the world. That he didn’t have the right, as a resounding “success!” echoed through him, to simply lean over the narrow table and kiss the man he loved. He had to be content to slide his hand across the table and subtly brush the side of it against Hutch’s. When Hutch returned the pressure just long enough for Starsky to feel it, he discovered it was more than enough. He didn’t need to shout his love from the top of the mountain, just as long as Hutch would let him whisper it in the privacy of their bed.
“Can I get you something for dessert?”
The bubble around them had been so complete that Starsky hadn’t even noticed the waiter’s approach. He jumped, grinned at Hutch, and let a raised eyebrow solicit Hutch’s preference.
Hutch shrugged. “What does that famous sweet tooth of yours say?”
When he had been planning the evening, ordering something like tiramisu and requesting two spoons had been on the agenda. Starsky had calculated sharing the creamy dessert would give him plenty of opportunity for overt flirting. He might not be quite the strategist that Hutch was, but Starsky could recognize when his goal had already been achieved.
“Just the check please,” Starsky said to the waiter. He just hoped Hutch’s current mood would continue until they got home.
~*~*~
Starsky was nervous as he waited in bed for Hutch to finish his shower. As nervous as their first time. Remembering how well that had worked out, however, went a long way to calming his jitters. They might be a little rusty, but they had certainly practiced enough before the shooting to have become experts at pleasing each other. They still possessed that knowledge, and Starsky hoped the time was right to use it again.
If he could get Hutch to cooperate.
That was no sure bet. They hadn’t talked much since they left Valentino’s, but the silence had been comfortable. Starsky hadn’t sensed tension or withdrawal from Hutch as he prepared for returning to work, set the alarm clock, and disappeared into the bathroom. Starsky had briefly considered joining Hutch under the spray, but then remembered the scars.
That was the same reason he was still wearing his t-shirt. Starsky’s plans didn’t include a confrontation over the scars. In his opinion, there had been enough confrontation for one day. All he hoped for tonight was an opportunity to make love to Hutch. Nice, slow, life re-affirming love.
“If Hutch ever comes out of the damned bathroom! Seems like I’ve spent half the day waiting for him to finish a shower!”
As if Starsky’s muttered complaint had been heard, he saw a brief flash of light in the dark apartment, and a moment later, Hutch appeared in the alcove.
“Hi.” Hutch hesitated, his eyes going from Starsky to the lamp on Starsky’s side of the bed.
“Leave it a while, okay,” Starsky said when Hutch began to move toward the lamp. Once again, there was a brief hesitation before Hutch moved to his side of the bed, dropped his robe, and slid under the sheet.
Immediately, Starsky held out his arms. How long it took Hutch to come to him, he judged, was going to give him an idea of just how uphill a battle this was going to be.
There was no hesitation, however, as Hutch shifted toward the center of the bed. Delighted, Starsky rolled to his side and into Hutch’s arms. Their lips met. This was the kiss Starsky had wanted to share in the restaurant. A meeting of hearts in the press of their lips. A smooth press and part that flowed naturally from one kiss to the next.
Starsky reveled in it all. The smooth, easy way their lips moved against each other. The tickle and prickle of Hutch’s mustache. The slick slide of Hutch’s tongue in his mouth. The delightful threat of Hutch’s teeth as they closed carefully over Starsky’s tongue. Separately, a feast for the senses; collectively, more potent than morphine.
Starsky’s brain was buzzing pleasantly by the time Hutch finally eased away. He opened his eyes to see that same muzzy pleasure on Hutch’s face and congratulated himself for thinking of the light. The love in Hutch’s eyes was too precious to be hidden in the dark.
“How many do I still owe you?” Hutch asked in his laziest drawl.
“Hmmm,” Starsky hummed, wondering why Hutch was using those sensuous lips for something as useless as talking. “Owe what?”
“Kisses, remember?” Hutch’s sensuous lips were now stretched into a teasing grin.
Starsky pretended surprise. “Aren’t you keeping track?”
Hutch’s lighter blue eyes mirrored Starsky’s mock surprise. “I thought you were.”
Starsky shook his head in apparent regret. “Guess we’re gonna hafta start all over again.”
He fully expected Hutch to protest the unfairness.
Instead, Hutch claimed his mouth in a deep, deep kiss that took possession of Starsky’s heart, turned it inside out, and then gave it back to him keyed to a whole new rhythm. A rhythm that beat in perfect harmony to the heart that pounded in the chest pressed to his.
“Ninety-nine?” Hutch began the countdown all over again when he released Starsky’s lips.
“A kiss like that gets you double credit,” Starsky panted, delighted that Hutch seemed to be fully, completely, and uncompromisingly focused on the here and now. No past. No future. Just now and the pleasure to be found here.
Starsky’s cock was still playing the sleeping dragon, but the rest of his body was aroused and sending him demands to proceed. His hands were anxious to caress Hutch’s smooth skin, and his body tingled with anticipation of the caress of Hutch’s loving hands. For too long, Hutch’s touch had been caring and competent, but too close to impersonal. Starsky’s skin yearned to feel Hutch’s passion again.
While yielding once again to Hutch’s kisses, Starsky obeyed the commands of his body. He slid his hand between them, paused for a pleasurable moment over the thumping heart, then stroked downward. One long, slow caress skated over the silken hills and valleys of Hutch’s chest and belly, until he encountered the barrier of Hutch’s boxer shorts. Teasingly, he ran just the tip of one finger under the band. The strong muscles against his knuckles tightened, then, as Starsky had feared, Hutch pulled away.
There was no violence in the withdrawal, though, and when he opened his eyes, Starsky found concern rather than adamant rejection. He didn’t wait for Hutch to voice an objection. “Remember a couple of days ago and again this morning when we were talkin’ about me lovin’ you?”
Hutch nodded cautiously while the crease between his eyebrows deepened. His body, it seemed, had an opinion of its own, shifting just a little closer while the tension against Starsky’s knuckles eased.
“That’s what I wanna do. I wanna make love to you tonight.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?”
Starsky knew Hutch’s question had nothing to do with his ability to perform. He wasn’t sure of the answer to that himself. He only knew they needed the intimacy, the unique connection formed only when giving and receiving pleasure. And they needed the pleasure itself. For too long, their senses had been bombarded with pain and grief and stress. It was time to remind them both that pleasure still existed.
“Don’t know if I’m up to it or not,” Starsky whispered, intentionally misinterpreting, Hutch’s question. “I just know I want it. Please, sweetheart, let me make love to you. Please.
Hutch groaned while his grip on Starsky tightened. “Damn it, Starsk. You don’t have to beg. Never.”
Starsky accepted the kiss Hutch gave him to seal the vow, then took the lead, drawing on the memories of Hutch’s moans and groans on other passion-filled nights to guide his hand. His fingertips re-learned the smooth planes of Hutch’s chest while his palm delighted in the remembered eager poke of a hardened nipple. His ears drank in the soft moans and harsher groans that escaped Hutch’s lips between kisses. If there was pain in the use of his right arm, Starsky’s senses couldn’t feel it. They were too overwhelmed by the pleasure of once again caressing Hutch.
“Do you want me to?” Starsky panted the question. Remembering how much Hutch liked to be teased, he ran his fingers back and forth beneath the waistband of Hutch’s shorts, dipping a fraction deeper with each pass.
“Cocktease!” Hutch growled the accusation while he grabbed Starsky’s wrist and forced the teasing hand down inside his shorts.
A harsh gasp, almost a sob, escaped Hutch’s throat as Starsky’s hand encircled his cock. Starsky echoed the sound back to him, enthralled by the hard heat while memories of this eager flesh in his hands, in his mouth, thrust deep in his body, burst into his brain.
“Damn,” Hutch whispered against Starsky’s lips, his hips thrusting with restrained need. “Wanted this. So much. Dreamt it.”
“No more dreamin’, babe,” Starsky promised and set aside his own pleasure, focusing all the expertise he possessed on Hutch’s cock, eager to give Hutch every particle of pleasure possible.
Selfishly, Hutch accepted the gift of sensual delight, unknowingly returning it to Starsky with his uninhibited response. He groaned and gasped, thrusting within the tunnel of Starsky’s hand. When the thrusting stopped, Starsky took up the interrupted rhythm, eager now to feel the slick slide of Hutch’s release.
“Stop!” Hutch’s hand covered Starsky’s while his body tensed and his eyes squeezed tight. His breath whistled in and out of his lungs, strained between clenched teeth.
Obediently, Starsky waited, willing to continue the unbridled race or to slow it down to a more leisurely sprint to the inevitable conclusion. He watched his lover’s face, saw control grappled for and regained, before his hand was gently removed from its prize.
“Want my turn.” Hutch’s eyes had opened and asked for the same privilege of rediscovery he had given Starsky.
Without hesitation, Starsky swept back the sheet that covered them, offering himself to whatever Hutch had in mind. He added a heavy-lidded leer to his smile of invitation and wasn’t surprised when Hutch swooped in to kiss it from his lips.
The thin material of the t-shirt muted the pleasure, but still Starsky reveled in the firm caress of Hutch’s hands, the sure knowledge that found his nipples beneath the barrier and pinched them to throbbing, eager life. Hutch, however, seemed less content with the obstruction, sighing as he slid his hand up under the material.
“Ah, that’s better,” Hutch murmured, a dreamy smile teasing his lips as his fingers carded through the hair on Starsky’s chest. “So soft,” was the next breathy comment as Starsky’s chest was abandoned and the possessive hand slipped over his heaving belly. One finger paused to dip into his navel, sending a jolt of pure electricity into his balls. A second later, his stretchy briefs were breached and Hutch’s hand engulfed his cock.
“Christ!” Starsky shouted as his hard flesh pulsed in Hutch’s grip. He tried to recall if he had ever before, in a waking moment, been so unaware of his own erection. His scattered brain failed to bring forth a memory while his eager body dismissed the relevance. Who cared? What did it matter?
“Oh, God, Hutch. Yeah,” Starsky moaned as he gave himself up to the confident fingers that pumped and teased and stroked.
“Looks like I underestimated you,” Hutch purred into Starsky’s ear while his hand continued its expert dance. “Oh, yeah, baby. You’re definitely up.”
The husky purr was almost Starsky’s undoing, arrowing straight from his eardrums to his balls. He was going to come, shoot off like a roman candle. Though that might be the desired goal, he didn’t want to reach it alone. Somehow, he managed to weave his arm into the tight space between their bodies to tug at Hutch’s shorts.
“Together, babe,” Starsky begged when Hutch stubbornly refused to co-operate. “Always better together.”
It took another stroke or two before Hutch received the message, and one more lingering caress before he accepted the wisdom of Starsky’s plea and withdrew his hand.
The next few seconds were spent in a frustrating tangle of cross purposes as they each struggled to strip away the barriers between them. Finally, the material yielded and they were free to come together, their cocks trapped side by side in the warm cage of their tightly-pressed groins.
It felt to Starsky as if sparks flew when their cocks met, threatening to set off an immediate, mutual explosion. His fingers scrambled for an anchor to the Earth, finding it in the strong muscle and bone of Hutch’s shoulder. He felt Hutch’s arm around his back, crushing him closer as their bodies began to thrust for release.
Starsky shut his brain down. That organ was no longer needed. His body knew what to do for his pleasure and Hutch’s. Thrust and squirm, match Hutch’s rhythm and….
Suddenly, there was no rhythm to match, no thrust to counter. Hutch had gone as still as death in Starsky’s arms, and the hard cock pressed to his erection was softening, fading fast.
Starsky’s body stopped moving as well as his brain re-awakened, seeking clues. No memory of Hutch’s climax. No warm, slippery semen trapped between them. No harsh, but contented, gasp for breath as Hutch recovered. What there was was silence, apart from Starsky’s panting, and the wall of rigid muscle and bone Hutch had become.
Then Starsky felt it. Hutch’s hand, frozen to his back. Sometime during their abandon, Starsky’s concealing shirt had ridden up and Hutch’s hand now rested over the lowest scar.
Starsky wanted to open his eyes, be brave enough to face Hutch’s revulsion and accept it. He couldn’t. Not while his body still sang with the proof of Hutch’s passion. Too cowardly to go forward, too heartsick to retreat, Starsky simply waited in the silence while his erection faded and joy slipped through his fingers.
Then Hutch’s hand moved, the fingertips outlining the crater left behind by the bullet that had torn into Starsky below the rib cage.
Starsky’s eyes flew open. Only a few moments ago, he had been grateful for the light that had revealed Hutch’s love. Now he cursed it. Wished he could close his eyes but knew it was too late. The tortured rictus of Hutch’s face, such a cruel caricature of arousal, was already burned into his brain forever.
“Please, Hutch, no. You don’t have to,” Starsky whispered past throat muscles that clenched around tears trapped by the hopeless pain on Hutch’s face.
Hutch’s hand stopped moving while a hitching, tortured breath was sucked into his lungs. His eyes opened and the lost soul Starsky saw there cut into him in a way bullets and scalpels never could. Starsky had thought he had already experienced all the pain life could deliver. He knew better now.
“Yes, I do,” Hutch whispered so softly Starsky almost had to lip read. Yet there was steel in Hutch’s voice, the grinding of steel under unimaginable pressure.
Starsky wished with all his heart and soul he could spare Hutch this, but he couldn’t. The scars were here to stay. They would fade over time, but they would never disappear. They would remain as a life-long reminder that Starsky wasn’t immortal.
There was nothing Starsky could say as Hutch’s hand moved upward, tracing the long surgical scar until his blindly seeking fingers found the middle crater. Starsky would have sworn it impossible, but Hutch’s eyes became even more bleak as his fingers memorized the wound.
What felt like an eon later, Hutch’s hand finally began inching upward again toward the final scar, the bullet beneath the shoulder that had come the closest to Starsky’s heart. The soul in Hutch’s blue eyes was no longer lost. As his fingers learned the shape and size and depth of this last wound, the reflected soul passed through the gates into Hell itself.
Starsky could remain silent no longer. “Hutch, sweetheart, please—”
“You died.” The voice that interrupted Starsky was eerily flat and yet horribly expressive. “You died.” Hutch repeated, his hand pressed flat over the final scar.
“Your heart stopped.” The same, unrelentingly tortured tone reminded Starsky of a memory he didn’t possess while Hutch’s hand moved to claim the middle scar.
“You died.” Hutch repeated one last time in a keening howl all the more agonizing because it was delivered in a whisper.
Both of Hutch’s hands were on Starsky’s back now, fingers wide-spread to cover all the scars as if he could hide them, erase them, while the big body shook as if Hutch was holding his hands to hot coals.
“Oh, God. You died!” Hutch cried one last time, and this time the howl emerged full-voiced as Hutch’s frozen expression shattered. Starsky looked into the eyes that filled and then spilled.
Then Starsky was flat on his back, Hutch’s dense weight crushing him while the hands caught beneath them dug desperate fingers into his flesh. Hutch’s face was pressed to his, the hot salt of his tears leaking into Starsky’s eyes, joining with his and flooding both their faces.
Caught up in Hutch’s catharsis, Starsky could only weep with him, hold him close and join his grief. Mourn with him for all that had been lost. The innocence, the confidence, and their belief in their own immortality. Let his broken sobs join Hutch’s for all the dreams they would never dare to dream again.
Starsky had no idea how long the storm raged in their bed, crashing over them and retreating like the relentless tide. What could have been only minutes or maybe a lifetime later, however, it began to pass until Hutch lay quiet, sprawled on Starsky in a cruel parody of passion’s aftermath.
Feeling battered, bruised and crushed, Starsky nonetheless was content to remain exactly where he was. Hutch’s weight might be compressing his lungs, forcing him to fight for every breath he drew, but it also shielded him, surrounded him, protected him. He rested both hands on Hutch’s back, occasionally stroking the sweat-slick skin when an aftershock shuddered through his lover.
Another lifetime later, Starsky felt Hutch’s lips press his cheek, a sweet innocent thank you for his comfort and patience. Then the slack muscles beneath Starsky’s hands began to flex as Hutch gathered himself to move. Accepting the separation with regret, Starsky held his hands. firmly to Hutch’s skin, prolonging the contact as Hutch slowly shifted off him and settled on the mattress at his side.
Starsky allowed himself only one deep, lung-filling breath before he rolled to his side to face Hutch. What he saw reassured him.
Hutch hadn’t collapsed onto his back, but had resumed his previous position on his side facing Starsky. At any other time, Starsky would have said Hutch looked like hell. Tears had taken their toll on the handsome face, leaving behind swollen lids, puffy cheeks, and a reddened nose. Framed by those ravages, however, were blood shot eyes that, finally and at last, held a measure of true peace. The terrible grief that had lived inside Hutch, encased in its impenetrable cocoon of denial, had been lanced, its poison purged in scalding tears.
Then Hutch’s hand lifted, reached around Starsky and began the ritual of discovery again. Each crater and the surgical lines that connected them was traced in its turn. But this time Hutch remained grounded in the present, his eyes full of regret for the pain, but also at peace with the knowledge that the suffering was over.
When each scar had been memorized by the delicate examination, Starsky felt Hutch’s hand slide further along his back, coming to rest over another long-healed bullet wound.
Starsky caught on quickly. “Got one in my leg, too, from that barn out on Badger Creek Road.”
Hutch’s lips quirked in acknowledgment, and his hand ended its exploration, coming to rest on Starsky’s shoulder. “So many scars,” he whispered with regret.
It was Starsky’s turn now to seek out a scar, a reminder this time of Hutch’s mortality, on the left side of his chest. He saw acknowledgement that Starsky had also shared his fears of loss, then moved his hand to Hutch’s arm and down to the crook of his elbow. There were no visible scars here, but Starsky knew the damage Forest had done lived on in Hutch’s psyche.
“You gotta be alive to have scars, Hutch.”
Hutch sighed, a hefty expulsion of breath that had been trapped in his lungs in Metro’s parking garage and only now could be released. “We’ve both got our share of those,” he agreed. “And broken dreams. And shattered illusions.” His hand moved to Starsky’s face, tracing each feature as gently as he had the scars. “But we’ve still got the best dream. The one we never expected to find. The one no one can ever take away.”
Starsky found a grip on the back of Hutch’s head, drew him closer until their lips almost met. “I love you, Hutch, and I’m gonna spend the rest of our lives lovin’ you,” he promised, then he sealed it with a kiss.
When Starsky released him, Hutch flopped onto his back. For the first time since the shooting, the big body was completely relaxed, a boneless sprawl that promised a deep, dreamless sleep.
Starsky watched as sleep stole his lover away for the night. He had known from the first moment he woke in the hospital and saw Hutch that he was going to make it. Now Hutch truly believed it, too.
The eye of the storm had almost passed over them. It hadn’t been quite the clear sailing Starsky had hoped for, but a respite, nonetheless. Tomorrow, they would go back out into the world, Hutch to continue his quest to bring James Gunther to his knees forever, and Starsky to continue his journey toward a full recovery. Starsky had no doubt that along the way the storm would overtake them again, buffet them with failure, and rain on their victories. Now that they were once again united, however, and strong in their love for each other, Starsky almost felt sorry for the storm. It didn’t stand a chance.
Smiling, Starsky found Hutch’s hand and rested their entwined fingers on the bed between them. “Success,” he whispered softly, then closed his eyes and followed the love of his life into sleep.
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