Frog and Toad Are Friends

After a lengthy stay inside the Cabrillo State Mental Institution, Starsky has a great deal of trouble coping with the memories and the bad dreams following his harsh treatment there. He tries to hide it from Hutch, but, of course, Hutch is too smart and finds out anyway. Care and maintenance ensues, Hutch style.

Originally published in Venice Place Chronicles VIII in 2008.

“You bringing that coffee or what?”

Starsky’s head snapped up in the direction of Hutch’s voice, not really seeing his partner, only knowing vaguely from which direction it bellowed. He walked the cup over to the desk, and watched as Hutch absently took it from his hand, not looking up.

“Thought you were going to drink it all,” Hutch said into his file.

“Mmph,” replied Starsky, sitting in the chair opposite.

He buried himself in the paperwork, knowing it would only make his eyes close with exhaustion, knowing that sheer grim will, and three quick cups of straight black on the sly at the coffee machine, were the only things keeping him awake. Until later, of course. Then there was nothing that would let him sleep.

“That one on Davies,” said Hutch holding his hand out, “over on your, there….”

Starsky reached for the file without seeing it, without seeing the stream of hot liquid it tipped over onto Hutch’s lap.

Suddenly, Hutch shot to his feet and then Starsky saw. Hot, smoking coffee darkening both thighs, and Hutch’s face, puffed up like an underwater diver trying not to breathe until he’s broken the surface. But he made not a single sound. Didn’t turn and swear, didn’t hurl the empty cup at Starsky, or anything. No one in the squadroom saw a thing.

“Jeezus that’s hot,” Hutch said under his breath, as he pulled the cloth away from his skin. He looked at Starsky. “Got any ice?”

“No,” replied Starsky, feeling sorry. “I’m sorry.”

Hutch leaned forward, as much to separate his pants from his legs as to get closer to Starsky, it seemed. His eyes became hooded as they only did when he was very serious, or when something disturbed him. He placed his weight on the desk, and took a slight breath.

“If you don’t mind my saying,” Hutch said kindly, “you look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean it. You look like real shit.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“No, you.”

“You first.”

Starsky had to smile at this, it was Hutch trying to distract him, Hutch telling him that the spilled coffee didn’t count for anything. But he looked away, eyes down. Hutch could read him, read him real good if Starsky let him. If Starsky let him in.

The blond head came closer, until Starsky could smell the shampoo he used and call it by name.

“You feelin’ okay?”

“Tired.”

“Why?”

Hutch wasn’t going to let this one go. Wasn’t going to let Starsky ease off the hook like a trout going downstream. He hadn’t moved an inch from his slightly predatory stance, and Starsky knew those pants had to be feeling pretty clammy right about now.

“Can’t sleep.”

Those blue eyes brightened momentarily.

“No,” Starsky said, feeling stern, “not that kind of can’t sleep.”

“You sick?”

He was sick, he decided. Sick of not sleeping. Sick of dreaming of white walls, and tile-lined corridors. Sick of imagining that the sheets beneath him were over-starched and stale and loud beneath his ears on the pillow.

“Maybe,” he replied when he realized that Hutch was still waiting for his answer.

This seemed to satisfy his partner, who straightened up, patting Starsky on the arm.

“Great,” Hutch said, as if being sick were a good thing. “I’ll come over after my workout and make you some chicken soup.”

“But you’re from Minnesota,” said Starsky, miserable. He didn’t really want Hutch coming over. It would only make things worse, and maybe Hutch would even laugh at him. “They don’t have chickens up there.”

Hutch just smiled, barely showing his teeth. “I’ll call your mom again, she’ll be glad to give me the recipe.”

Starsky stared at his friend for a second. He could just imagine what anyone else would say if they knew. It was Friday night, and Hutch’s big plans were to go work out for an hour and a half and then go over to his friend’s house to make soup. However, Hutch looked as happy as if he had a blonde on each arm (thin, blonde, stewardess style) and as if he didn’t have cold coffee stains all up and down his pale gold corduroys. Big smile now, little sparkles in his blue eyes, and Starsky realized an essential truth he kept forgetting. Hutch liked, needed, to be needed.

Well, I can’t need you this time, big guy, Starsky said to himself. It’s just too damn weird.

But, if it would make Hutch happy, what could a little chicken soup hurt?

“What time?”

“After my workout.” Hutch waved his arm vaguely in the air. “It’s almost five, why don’t you go, and I’ll cover for you, see you later.”

Starsky went home, glad, for once, to escape an attentive Hutch, glad to see the overcast LA sky. If it was sunny, it would have felt extra strange to be feeling so weird. Once home, he put on his white sweatshirt, gray sweatpants, and wrapped himself in an old blue blanket and sat in the rattan chair. The bedroom door was properly closed and he turned on the TV with the new remote and watched until his eyes felt dry, never moving once, not even to change the channel.

It was going on nine when Starsky finally looked at the clock on the wall, his body grown tense and anxious without his knowing. Almost dark, almost time to sleep. Which he couldn’t do. And he decided that Hutch had forgotten, unusual yes, but not impossible. It’d happened once or twice before, and Starsky felt an almost sick relief that it was happening now.

Until the door opened and in walked Hutch with a large white flat box in his one hand and a six-pack in the other. He kicked the door shut with the back of his foot and marched in the room, smiling.

“Your mom wasn’t home, and it was kinda late, so I stopped at Pasquali’s.”

Starsky felt, suddenly, like a trapped animal, wrapped like he was, with no chance to move and lay casually on the couch like he had a cold or something. No, there he was wedged into a chair that was impossible to relax in, certainly no place for someone who was sick, maybe with a cold…when had he decided he was going to tell Hutch he had a cold? Was he going to lie?

But Hutch didn’t say anything, he merely ducked his blond head until the light was reflecting off it, and placed the box and the beer on the coffee table. He opened the box like a surgeon with large hands, extra careful and delicate. Starsky knew it was pizza, but he wasn’t prepared for the gourmet variety which met his nose and eyes. Sun-dried tomatoes, large slices of garlic, and the spiciest pepperoni. Hutch’s idea of good pizza was normally Totinos from a box. He’d made a special effort just for Starsky.

Starsky swallowed, pretended he was salivating, and swallowed again. The kindness of strangers always got to him. Pure, random kindness, like the kind Hutch was always handing out: a five spot to a drunkard, a tenner to a heroin junkie in need of a meal or a fix, advice for a young street kid purely without pretension, a gentle and guiding hand on the shaking form of a mother who has just lost her third son to street violence. Or even a special pizza for a friend who was under the weather.

Don’t Hutch, he whispered fiercely to himself, don’t be kind. Not now.

But one might as well ask Hutch to stop breathing, or being the flaxen-haired guardian that he was. He sat now, opening a beer and handing it to Starsky along with a slice of meltingly hot pizza with his long arms stretched out, all without commenting on why Starsky was so far away tucked in the Addams family chair when the couch was so much more comfortable.

“Anything good on?” Hutch asked, leaning back against the cushions, his own beer against one thigh, and a slice of cheese-dripping pizza curled in his other hand.

Distracted, Starsky turned toward the TV, noting only the news.

“Starsky, you hate the news.”

“Thought I’d catch up on my current events,” he mumbled.

He looked up in the ensuing silence. Hutch was looking at him, his eyes tilted down at the corners, as if truly grieved.

“Starsky,” he said.”

“What?”

“The volume’s not even on, and the remote’s way over here. What have you been doing for almost five hours?”

“Watching silent movies?”

An exasperated sigh filled Starsky’s ears as he lowered his head. Then he heard Hutch get up and go into the kitchen. Heard the water in the sink and rummaging in the cupboards. Hutch returned momentarily with two plates and some napkins. He came over to Starsky, took the fast-cooling pizza and transferred it to a plate. He then handed Starsky a napkin, which Starsky used vaguely and put on his knee. Crumpled, it fell soundlessly to the ground.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?”

Belatedly, Starsky realized his worst mistake. If he was mostly all right, only a little sick, maybe a fever or something, he would have, should have, torn into, like a starving man, the feast which Hutch had brought. He should have devoured his half, and maybe demanded some of Hutch’s, too. Finished three beers with a flourish and a loud belch, and then sat back and waited for some sarcastic remark from Hutch about what kind of pig he was.

But none of these things had happened, and Starsky had left himself wide open. Too late, he brought the slice to his mouth.

“Don’t bother,” Hutch growled. “If you didn’t want me to come over, all you had to do was say so.”

He got up, folded the pizza box closed, and grabbed his keys from the arm of the couch, preparing to go.

Then Starsky realized that Hutch was not leaving. That Hutch was staring at him. Or rather at what he held in his hand, at the tip of the pizza slice, which quivered in his shaking fist.

Quick as blinking, his partner’s stance changed. The keys went down and the shoulders lowered, the frown softening from one of annoyance into one of concern. He came closer, with soft, careful steps, his largeness folding itself on his knees at Starsky’s feet. He took the pizza and the plate from Starsky and placed them haphazardly on the floor. Took the discarded napkin and wiped Starsky’s hands with it and placed that on the plate. Folded his hands on Starsky’s wrists against the blue blanket.

“Starsky,” he said, “what are you doing in this chair?”

Hutch knew and he knew that no one ever really sat in this chair, it was the Addams family chair. Mostly for show, because of the show, and that Starsky liked the way it looked against the jungle-looking plant that Hutch had given him. Its back was too straight and too tall to sit in for long, and it usually ended up holding Starsky’s holster and extra sneakers at the end of the day. To sit in it now was proof that something was wrong. And, of course, Hutch would read the signs correctly; like a mongoose after a snake, he would keep at it until Starsky told him.

“I can’t sleep.”

“After three cups of coffee, no one could,” Hutch remarked dryly. Starsky realized he had been keeping track. That don’t drink it all remark hadn’t been merely for show.

“Can’t sleep,” he said again, halfway wishing that Hutch would let go of him, halfway hoping he never would.

“You’re not sleeping?” Hutch asked, his eyes suddenly zeroing in on Starsky’s. He seemed to instantly understand the difference between can’t sleep and not sleeping. “For how long?”

“Mmmm, coupla days.”

“How many?”

“Couple.”

Hutch let go briefly and brought one hand to his ear. His eyebrows went up sarcastically. “Let me guess. Sounds like, what, two, three? How many syllables?” He brought his long fingers down on his forearm, tapping them in groups of two and three. “Is it a book or a play?”

Starsky opened his mouth but nothing came out. Hutch would go ballistic when he told him, would shoot through the roof when he realized how much coffee Starsky had been drinking, how much soda and sugared donuts he’d ingested just to keep going. And he’d be far more angry than he usually got at Starsky’s bad eating habits, really really angry. Hutch didn’t tend to strike out at anybody when he got that pissed off, not that he’d ever hit Starsky, but he tended to boil, like an underground volcano. Boil and erupt at a totally unexpected time, on some unsuspecting innocent criminal who never realized, not even later, that he’d taken the brunt of Officer Hutchinson’s frustrations which he’d been saving for a special occasion.

“It’s a story,” Starsky said, deciding the round about way was easier.”

“A story?” Hutch ducked his head in closer, some of the flash leaving his eyes as he decided to play it Starsky’s way. “What kind of story, can you tell me?”

He had taken both Starsky’s hands in his own, Starsky was glad to see, and he concentrated on their large warmth for a moment, before lifting his eyes to Hutch’s patient face.

“No.”

Starsky stilled the quick jerk of his hands at Hutch’s look of disappointment. Why can’t I just tell him, why can’t I?

Because when he did, Hutch would be all over him with kindness and caring and love and the last of Starsky’s brittle defenses would come melting down like a snowman in a warm rain. Then he would really fall apart.

“Does this story have a name?”

Hutch’s face was so close now, so tender and still, waiting. Starsky leaned forward until their foreheads were touching, and he could still see the glimmer of blue eyes beneath Hutch’s dark gold lashes.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“What is it?” Hutch asked, equally hushed.

Starsky felt himself say it, felt it creaking and dry in the back of his throat.

“C’mon, Starsk, help me out here.”

He swallowed and tried again. “Cabrillo State.”

“THREE WEEKS!!!” Hutch roared, shooting to his feet, releasing Starsky’s hands. “Almost a MONTH, and you never TOLD ME?”

“I tried, Hutch, I–”

“You tried WHAT? Telling me?”

This anger was almost easier to deal with than the kindness would have been. It was easier to be objective in the face of its unpredictability, calm against its rampage. “No, tried sleeping, tried warm mil–”

“WHY can’t you sleep?” Hutch almost shouted in his face.

He stopped short. He thought it was obvious.

“The bed,” he said softly, pointing toward the closed door. “The bed.”

Instantly Hutch spun on his heel, nostrils flaring at the scent of his foe. It was an amazing transformation as he found something against which to fight. Something specific to fix instead of a partner who tended to not need anyone or anything, and who tended to go off and rest until his wounds were mended instead of asking for help.

I’m inadequate. I can’t need anyone that much. It scares me to need him that much.

“What’s wrong with it,” Hutch demanded as he flung open the bedroom door to stare at the offending piece of furniture. The sheets and blankets, Starsky could see even from where he sat, had spiraled to the floor and the two pillows were huddled ungainly in one corner, alone.

Attacking it, Hutch made up the bed in two minutes, smoothing the wrinkles, folding the pillowcases under, tucking the sheets and blankets together.

“There,” Hutch said brightly, turning, “will it help if I sleep on the couch for a coupla days? Then you won’t be alone.”

It occurred to Starsky that Hutch was probably right. It had been sleeping alone at Cabrillo State which had given him the willies. Having Hutch nearby, in the very next room, probably would help. His shoulders sagged with relief. He unfolded himself from the chair, letting the blanket fall on the floor.

“Thanks Hutch,” he said.

“No problem,” Hutch replied. “Listen, you look beat–”

“Better than looking like shit.”

“Ha-ha. Why don’t you just go to bed, smartass, and I’ll clean up out here.”

“Deal.”

He headed toward the bedroom with his head down, a deep breath lifting his chest, but not really filling his lungs. Then, just as the crossed the threshold, he lifted his face and stopped.

There was the bed. Two thin pillows on one uptilted end, pillowcases over-starched and frayed at the edges. And white. Blue-rinse white, like the kind the ladies his mother knew at the laundromat used. The kind of rise that could burn your hands, that smelled like Lysol, that worked its way into your face, your bare skin whenever you lay on sheets like that. White sheets, nothing should ever be that white, nothing that one slept on should be that sharp-edged. Like a knife.

But it was only a sheet, wasn’t it. A crisp, stiff pair of sheets, with no elastic on them anywhere, only folded over with square edges and tucked beneath a too-thin mattress under which was a mechanism that could fold the bed in any direction. Over which was a pale, almost-ratty blanket, too thin to keep out the chill of an overly still, hospital night. Alongside of which was a bed tray on a metal-gray arm and black-webbed straps, with loops and tongues and metal half-circles.

The better to tie you down with, my dear.

And the back of Hutch’s shining head, leaving through one of two doors, sashaying down the hall on intern’s feet. Not caring that he was leaving his partner alone with another door, behind which lurked as many dead bodies as he cared to imagine. And through the door Hutch had just gone through, the doctor came. Thick glasses on his face, a needle in his hands. And Starsky was tied in the bed, unable to move away, to resist. Feeling the craziness of the place sinking into him with the ease of that needle, wrapping him up and keeping him there forever.

“You gonna go to bed,” he heard Hutch’s voice ask from behind him, “or what?”

It rose from inside him, and Starsky dropped his head in his hands and began to cry.

As the strong, unhesitant arms encircled him, Starsky remembered that the first sleepless nights had seemed normal enough, even Hutch had admitted earlier that the place had given him the creeps. Insomnia was a result of a very unpleasant situation, he told himself–continued to tell himself even after a solid week of sleepy wakefulness, night after night. He grimly refused to give into it, going to bed each night as if nothing were wrong, as if he would drop off after his usual five minutes or so. Only he never dropped off.

After two weeks, coffee became his best friend. He was still so tired, though, when five o’clock came around, that he could barely keep his eyes open. He almost got into a fender bender on the way home one day, though he would never tell Hutch that. And darkness, once a companion to his work, became the harbinger of an anxiety he could not control. He liked to believe he forgot about it, but when it came to bedtime, whether he was looking at the clock or not, his whole body tightened into one big fist.

And the bed itself became an object of loathing. Even putting on his favorite sheets didn’t help. New pillows either. And, as an added impossibility, he began to see it as the bed in the institution. Somehow its familiar edges blurred into an instrument of torture, a stage on which he would place himself for someone else to control. Someone else to wrap him in a full-body casing and leave him there.

“Starsky,” Hutch was saying he suddenly realized, saying it with worry breaking his voice in the middle and putting that dark line between his blue eyes. “Starsky!”

Hutch was there, right there in front of him, holding his shoulders, making him pay attention, coming in so close. No boundaries. His stomach ached, and the back of his throat was raw from the sounds he knew he’d been making and he couldn’t stop.

“I’ll sleep with you, instead of on the couch,” Hutch said, giving him a little pull.

“No.”

Hutch’s lids lowered as if he were falling asleep standing there, and Starsky knew there had been a moan of desperation that his partner did not like the sound of. He hiccoughed, trying to stop crying, but could feel the tears flowing just the same, almost ceaselessly, as if there had been a switch flipped on inside him. Hutch’s eyes opened again, on Starsky and no where else.

“Starsky, you gotta sleep. You’re all white.”

A hand to his face and an expression of such caring, such compassion, and Starsky was undone. He whirled from Hutch’s grasp and raced toward the bathroom, slamming to his knees on the cold tile just as the day’s worth of coffee and donuts and whatall shot up and thundered into the toilet. And bile, stomach acid eating at his throat as it roared on its way to an exit. Hutch was only a step behind him, hands on his back, inches away, clasping Starsky’s hip gently, on his knees too.

“I’ve got you, I’m here,” said that soft voice at his ear.

He could feel Hutch’s hip and thigh brushing against his own, and knew if their positions were reversed, he’d be fighting a very strong urge to puke himself. But it was that doctor thing of Hutch’s, that ability to fix and care, detached and cool. He was reaching now, still on his knees next to Starsky, for a wet washcloth, wringing it out with one hand, the other never leaving the back of Starsky’s neck.

Starsky reached up blindly to push on the handle, pulling away from the bowl, and rested his suddenly very heavy head on one arm flung across the seat. Where he’d been hot all over, now he was suddenly very cold. Except for his head, on fire and ready to explode. But there was a hand reaching beneath his jaw, pulling his head up and turning it toward the light.

“No,” he said stupidly. Since he’d moved to California, he’d always thrown up alone, Aunt Rosie always said it made her sick to watch. It’d been years, years since he’d had someone waiting with a warm washcloth. Like a mother would, like a friend. A glass of cool water to rinse out his mouth. And hands to pull him to his feet, away from the john before the mere thought of throwing up would bring a reflex action and he got the heaves again.

Hutch did all these things, one at a time, with large and careful hands, pulling Starsky to the sink and wiping his face. Filling a Dixie cup with water and making him spit it out instead of drinking that first swallow. And a fast-cooling, still warm washcloth, a pure blessing, a benediction, taking away the sweat and traces of tears. And Hutch’s face from beyond it, frowning mouth, hooded eyes, and worried, his whole attention focused on Starsky as it oftentimes would.

“Damn it, Starsky,” Hutch said, dropping the washcloth in the sink. “Damn it.”

He wasn’t mad, Starsky knew, but upset. Berating himself for not having seen the signs earlier, so he was mad at his own incompetence. Supposed incompetence, Starsky knew, since it was Starsky’s own skill at hiding away from that hawk-like attentiveness. He was better at it than he knew Hutch would like to admit.

Hutch drew him close now, with gentle firm arms. “What if you put your head in my lap, on the couch. Think you could sleep?”

Tears built up behind Starsky’s closed eyes, and against the soft fuzz of Hutch’s t-shirt, he pushed them back. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what, Starsky?” Hutch asked, without force. “Don’t care? I love you, how can I not?”

There was a hand at the back of his head, and he imagined long fingers twining between the dark curls. Imagined that he could stay that way forever, leaning into Hutch’s shoulder, one of those long arms around his waist…and stay that way, never moving to try and sleep, just remaining exactly where he was until he faded away with the whiteness.

“Here,” Hutch said, moving, and Starsky was shocked that the air was suddenly so cold. He hadn’t realized how Hutch was so warm.

His partner left his side and went to grab the old pillows and extra blanket out of the closet, ignoring everything new that Starsky had recently bought, and with gentle hands, he guided Starsky to the couch. He sat down, put the pillow against him and patted it, an invitation.

“I-I don’t know if I can.”

“Try one more time, for me.” Hutch didn’t seem to question that he’d tried and tried, to no avail. Didn’t question how hard he’d tried, or scoff at some, as yet, unnamed fears. He tilted his blond head slightly to one side. “Starsky, you’re about ready to fall over. Why don’t you just lay your head down here. You don’t need to sleep, just rest. I’ll find something for us to watch. ‘Kay?” He stroked the pillow incitingly.

As Starsky lay down, Hutch unfurled the blanket and used both hands to whip it out straight so that it fell like a snowflake over his legs. Then he pulled it up around Starsky’s shoulders, leaning forward against Starsky’s face as he did so. Starsky could feel that warmth from Hutch’s side, catch the clean traces of soap and the after-workout salt. Then Hutch leaned back, and the pillow settled horizontally once more.

“Something black and white?” Hutch asked, leaning forward fractionally for the remote. “Or Star Trek if I can find it?”

“Kirk ‘n Spock,” mumbled Starsky. Something was happening to the backs of his eyes, and the weight of his head was pulling it into the pillow so far, so hard…he felt Hutch’s hand along his shoulder and arm, and then he felt nothing.

He sat up suddenly, noting the traces of pre-dawn outside of windows which weren’t quite dark. It was hours later. Hutch was asleep sitting up, his head on the back of the couch, the fingers of one hand trailing against his thigh. His other hand had once been on Starsky’s head, but was now falling nervelessly down his shoulder and onto the couch.

When it landed there, he seemed to awake with a start, mumbled something, and then moved down to cradle his head against the arm. His legs slipped past Starsky on the outside, curling just around his knees and off the edge because there wasn’t enough room. With a sleepy smile, Starsky moved the pillow up against Hutch’s hip and backside and he lay down again himself, legs bent, toes hugging the edge of the last cushion. He reached out to pull Hutch’s legs and stockinged feet closer in, wrapping his arm around them, feeling like a child clutching its treasured sleep-toy. He eased his other hand beneath the pillow and felt the denim-roughness of Hutch’s thigh. Curled his fingers around the inside seam and wedged his hand in so he wouldn’t have to think about it. And fell right back to sleep.

It was true sunlight in his eyes that awoke him later, and he found that he’d shimmied up Hutch’s length to rest his head on his shoulder, tucking his face beneath Hutch’s jaw. Blissful, blissful sleep. Both of Hutch’s arms were around him, their legs weaving together. It was like having the largest teddy bear in the world.

Chapter End Notes:

This one was fun to write because I sometimes think that Starsky’s nonchalance hides a more troubled soul than he would like to let on. I love comfort stories, where the hurt is long in the past, and I love it when the boys take care of each other.

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Hey there, thanks for reading my fan fiction! Because I love writing so much, I’ve turned my attention to writing m/m historical romances. My goal is to make a living by my writing, so if you’d like to give my books a try, you can click the link to visit my website and find out more.