Flying High

Starsky considers the biggest ‘what if’ of his life.

Originally published in the 2019 SHareCon zine; edited slightly because the muse, that’s how she rolls.

With appreciation to MatSir, for her unflagging encouragement and support. Also, many thanks to Cyanne and Flamingo for continuing to publish the zine, a treasured highlight of SHareCon.

It makes me happy when Hutch sings.

I suppose that’s sort of stating the obvious. A singing Hutch is just naturally a happy-making thing in general, right? But speaking for myself, it’s one of my all-time favorite things. So, I’ll take every opportunity I can get to hear him warble out a song or two. I’ll even ‘make’ opportunities for him to show off his stuff, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I admit I overdo it sometimes, pushing him to the point where he gets flustered and pissed at me, but I can’t seem to help it. I truly like to listen to him—just Hutch and his guitar, or on the piano. Besides, he’s cute when he gets all red in the face. Even the tips of his ears turn pink, it’s the damnedest thing. Bonus points when I can get his intensity dialed up to eleven, because then his eyes flash and that Hutchinson finger comes out. It’s kinda hot. Sexy bastard. Probably why I love to push his buttons so much….

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, Hutch singing.

He’s got a honey and whiskey voice: smooth and rough at the same time, it goes down easy in your ears and makes you all warm inside. Before you realize it, you’re drunk on its sound and feeling no pain. Plus there’s a quality, uh, a whatchamacallit—

Shit, I can’t think of the word I want.

Anyway, he’s special is what I’m saying, and I wish everyone could hear him the way I hear him. It’s best when he’s really feeling it, loses himself in the song and lets the music carry him away somewhere. He doesn’t go too far, though, not anywhere that I can’t follow.

I can play guitar too, y’know. Not as good as Hutch plays, I’m not real musical that way. Oh, I can play a little, sing a little. It’s fun when we do it together. But I’d just as soon sit back and let Hutch get the spotlight. He’s a singer, where I’m a guy who sings a little. There’s a world of difference between the two, and that’s fine by me. I like it a lot when Hutch sings for me. It makes me happy.

Did I say that already? Well, it does, so no harm in saying it again. I’m only thinking it in my head, anyway.

Sometimes I wonder why Hutch never went in for singing as a career. Well, he can get pretty nervous and tongue-tied, so maybe that’s why. But he could get over the stage fright with a little practice, a little encouragement. Look at what he did the time we went undercover at that Backwoods Inn Bar. Damn, but it was great watching him strut his pretty ass in front of everybody. He owned the place, had ’em all eating out of his hand. C. W. Jackson sounded like a professional musician, and no one there suspected he wasn’t. So if Hutch had put his mind to turning pro for real, I’m sure he could’ve made it. Oh, I get that the odds of making it big-time are really small and you gotta be extra lucky besides, but even if he didn’t end up a huge hot-shot recording star, he could’ve at least made a living at it. More than what he’s making now as an honest cop, no question. And it’d be a much safer gig, with a lot less getting shot at.

Then again, if he had, that would have meant we’d never have met at the Academy, never have become partners, never have become best friends. We’d probably never have met at all.

Now that’s a scary thought.

No, not scary, not exactly. More… more…. Damn it, why are words so hard? Must be the drugs.

Incomprehensible—that’s the one. My world without Hutch in it, without ever having had Hutch in it at all, is incomprehensible. More than that, it can’t exist, like how you can’t divide by zero. You ever do that with one of them pocket calculators? Try it sometime. It confuses the hell out of the thing, gives you a bunch of EEEEEEs, like it’s screaming before it explodes. Does not compute, cannot make sense of. My world without Hutch is like that. Does not compute at all.

What is scary, though, is how easily it could’ve happened. If he had gone down that road, or any of the hundreds of other roads he could’ve followed, then poof! No Starsky and Hutch. If you think about it, the odds must be about a zillion to one that we—

Whoa. Wait a second.

What if it was me? What if I’d been the one who went down a different road? Because that could’ve happened too. It would have, if Pop—

I can still see it in my head, clear as though it happened yesterday. A neighbor lady was yelling for Ma, but I was the only one at home. I ran the two blocks from our apartment building and got there before the police did. Pop had been shot—get this, he’d gotten it in the back, too; talk about irony—and he was lying face down. I started screaming at him to get up, while the people around me were holding me back, trying to keep me from his side. I kept fighting them, though, swinging and punching, until they had no choice but to let me go.

It was… God, it was awful. I pulled at his arm and he just rolled over, limp and heavy. He was covered in blood, even his face, from lying in it. That… thing, that body—it wasn’t my Pop no more. He was gone.

That’s the image that’s burned into my brain. Not the one of him lying in his coffin, clean and peaceful. Don’t get me wrong: I got good memories of my father, I don’t mean to say I don’t. But that one, on the sidewalk, that’s the one that haunts me. I still miss him.

So, what would have happened to my life if my Pop hadn’t died the way he did, when he did?

Well, first off, I’d have grown up in New York, with Ma and Pop, and Nicky.

I wonder, would Nick have turned out the way he did, if Pop had been around while he was growing up? One thing’s for sure, Pop wouldn’t have let Ma coddle him so much. She meant well, but Nicky could always wrap her around his little finger. Pop wouldn’t have put up with his bullshit if he’d been alive. I’d have been there, too, and hopefully have been the big brother he needed. No way to know if those things would have been enough to keep Nicky on the straight and narrow, but maybe.

As for me, I’d still have been drafted, so that part of my life wouldn’t have been so different, I guess. But after my discharge, I’d have gone back home to New York. Okay, maybe I can’t say that definitely one hundred percent for sure, anything’s possible; but that’d be the odds-on bet. I doubt it would have occurred to me to move out of the state, much less to the other end of the country, away from my family. So I wouldn’t have come to California, wouldn’t have met John Blaine.

And of course, I wouldn’t have Hutch.

The single best thing in my life wouldn’t have happened if the single worst thing in my life never did.

Fuck, my head hurts.

If it were somehow in my power to make it so that Pop wasn’t killed, of course I’d do it in a heartbeat. But if he hadn’t died, I’d be walking around with half of me missing. It doesn’t make sense, but hear me out. It’s like… you know the law of gravity, and how objects are attracted to each other? That’s me and Hutch. I’d still be attracted to him even if he wasn’t here, or if he was here and I wasn’t, or if we both were someplace else. Not together, is what I’m saying.

Okay, I know that’s not actually how gravity works. But that’s how my world works.

Anyway, if Hutch wasn’t here, I’d still be attracted to him even though I wouldn’t know that I was, and so I’d have this Hutch-shaped black hole inside of me, a big aching emptiness. I’d be feeling the loss of someone I didn’t even know existed.

That… that’s messed up. Geez. Fate is a bitch.

Suddenly out of nowhere, Hutch’s face appears, inches above mine. And by ‘nowhere’ I mean the chair he’s been napping in, right next to my bed. Startles the living crap outta me and I flinch before I can stop myself.

“What’s wrong, Starsky?” he asks, his voice sharp and concerned.

“Nothing,” I say. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” He’s not convinced. I can see his hand hovering over the nurse’s call button. “You sounded upset.”

Shit, had I been talking out loud? Fuck me, and fuck the fucking morphine. It’s messing me all up and ain’t even doing a damned thing about my headache.

“Did I? What—what did I say?” I’m going for casual, but I’m pretty sure I don’t get there. My heart is still pounding a mile a minute and it probably shows. He frowns a little.

“You were mumbling, I couldn’t make it out exactly. Were you having a bad dream?”

Oh, thank God.

“Nah, I’m okay. Nothing’s wrong, Blondie, I’m fine.” I take hold of his hand, pulling it away from the button and towards me. I don’t need a nurse, and I sure as heck don’t need more meds. I just need him.

Hutch still looks skeptical, but he lets me hold his hand and doesn’t try to reach for the button again. We sit there like that for a minute—well, he’s sitting, I’m lying down.

“Hey, help me sit up, will you?”

“Sure.” Hutch pulls his hand away to raise the head of my bed and adjust my pillow. “Better?”

I realize, too late, that this is not a good trade-off. Before I can protest, though, he picks up my hand again, this time lacing his fingers with mine.

“Yeah,” I say, relaxing. Much better.

Eventually, he asks, “You ready to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?”

“About the nothing that’s upsetting you.”

Well, shit. I should’ve figured he wasn’t about to simply drop it. But I don’t want him to worry more than he already does, so I decide I’m not going to tell him about my weird-ass thoughts.

“Like you said, must’ve been a bad dream.” I smile, pat his hand reassuringly.

Then I hear my mouth say, “Just some weird-ass stuff inside my brain. I think I’m a little high, that’s all.”

Damn it. Stupid brain. I cannot wait until I’m off this stuff.

“Oh,” Hutch says. “Flying high, huh?” He sounds as though he wants to laugh. Or cry, I’m not sure.

“Mmm-hmm.” It’s not really like flying, but that gives me an idea on how to distract him and I run with it. “Up, up, and away, in my bee-you-ti-ful balloooooon,” I croon.

Okay, I admit I’m croaking more than I’m crooning, but Hutch doesn’t object. He laughs, a little chuckle, but it’s the real deal. Hutch laughing makes me happy too, did I tell you? Best sound in the world, next to his singing.

Hutch, here with me, his hand in mine. He is the real deal.

I guess what it comes down to, is that the ‘what ifs’ don’t matter. We can’t go back and erase the past, and we can’t be paralyzed by regrets about might-have-beens. We can only go forward from where we are. Life goes on, and we go on. When bad things happen—and they can happen to anybody because fate is a bitch—then we need to treasure the good things we have, in the here and now, that much more.

I send up one more thought out into the universe:

I love you, Pop, and I always will. But I love Hutch too, and I wouldn’t trade him for anything.

It’s stupid of me to think I’m actually talking to my Pop. Must be the meds, right? Right.

But I hear his “love you too, Davey,” mixed in with Hutch’s chuckle. I catch a faint whiff of Pop’s cigarettes and aftershave, a scent I had almost forgotten. I feel him ruffle my hair like he used to.

Yeah, I think he heard me.

Hutch is still smiling, so I keep on singing:

“Suspended under a twilight canopy, we’ll search the clouds for a star to guide us. If by some chance you find yourself loving me—”

I stop, and I look at Hutch.

He’s looking back. His eyes are bright and clear. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them this blue before. There’s a world of promise in them, and I almost can’t believe it’s there for me.

Then he squeezes my hand and sings in his honey and whiskey voice:

“We’ll find a cloud to hide us, we’ll keep the moon beside us. Love is waiting there in my beautiful balloon…”

That’s it. Stick a fork in me, I’m done. I’m his, body and soul.

The next few words are muffled as he presses his lips against the back of my hand, then up to my lips. His mustache tickles, but I don’t pull away. I may be stoned, but I’m not an idiot.

I kiss him back with everything I’ve got.

My ‘everything’ probably ain’t much, under the circumstances, but Hutch doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seems pretty happy too. So I kiss him some more.

Hey, I just realized something: Hutch is right. It really does feel like flying.

If you’ll hold my hand, we’ll chase your dream across the sky
For we can fly

—”Up, Up and Away,” The 5th Dimension