House of Cards

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A novella that explores the question: When does a life turn left instead of right? Can one event, a yes instead of a no, or a simple request to be alone, change the course of a relationship, opening doors to possibilities that might have otherwise always remained closed forever?

 

Originally published in the zine Venice Place Chronicles Volume VII, in 2007 by Keri T.

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Hutch hesitated just a couple of steps inside his apartment and looked around. Everything was exactly the way he had left it an hour ago. A few things he had forgotten to put away after packing the picnic lunch were sitting out on the counter. Half the contents of his hall closet were still in a jumbled heap where he had piled them while looking for the picnic basket. The very normality gave him a feeling of dislocation. He felt different from the light-hearted man who had gone out the door; surely something else ought to be different, too. If only his perceptions.

“I’ll just put this stuff away,” Starsky offered, prompting Hutch to step a few feet deeper into the apartment.

Hutch watched Starsky cross the open room, set the basket on the table, and with brisk efficiency sort its contents into cupboards and refrigerator. Starsky hadn’t changed. He had been unusually energetic, even for Starsky, from the minute Hutch and Abby had met him and Tina at the park. Hutch knew the cause of that super-charged mania now. Starsky had known what Abby was going to do.

A small spark of resentment flared, but it wasn’t quite enough to thaw the icy numbness of Hutch’s shock. He ignored it, gave up watching Starsky’s frenetic activity, and went to sink down on the couch. He might get mad at Starsky later; at the moment, he was grateful not to be as alone as he felt.

“Do you want any of this?” Starsky asked. Hutch looked up from where his hands–one of them still bandaged–rested in his lap, to find Starsky holding up a wrapped sandwich.

Hutch tried to tune into signals from his belly. He had been hungry when he and Abby arrived at the park and he had begun unpacking the basket. Hungry for the food he had prepared, thirsty for the wine he had brought, ready to celebrate that both he and Abby had escaped the attention of evil and madness combined.

“I visited her every day in the hospital,” Hutch said instead of answering the question. The issues of hunger and thirst seemed too mundane when his heart was breaking. Ought to be breaking? Maybe he had been suffering intentional blindness. “Why didn’t I see how scared she was?”

Starsky shrugged once, bent to stuff a few more items into the cupboard, then straightened again, facing Hutch with his back propped against the counter, arms and legs both crossed casually. Except, even half-numb, Hutch could see the coiled energy writhing around him in a near-visible aura.

“Just the different way we look at things, you know,” Starsky said. “I mean as cops.” One hand deserted its hiding place under the opposite arm long enough to wave a vague gesture around the apartment, then was tucked away again as if Starsky was aware of its deficiencies as an illustrator. “Put it behind you, get on with the job,” he elaborated, but there was something in his eyes, a shadow, that Hutch couldn’t quite interpret.

It was an inadequate answer, and it was apparent that Starsky thought so, too. Almost before he had finished speaking, and certainly before Hutch had had any chance to reply, Starsky scooped the basket off the table and hustled to the closet to put it away.

Not alone, and yet he was. Hutch watched Starsky busily sorting the pile of items that belonged in the closet, finding places for everything and putting everything in its place. Busy work. Make work.

“You don’t have to clean my house for me,” Hutch protested. He didn’t want to watch a whirlwind of efficiency clean up his apartment. He wanted his friend to sit down and commiserate with him. Maybe help him kill the bottle of celebratory wine Abby had rejected. Nail on the head–Hutch wanted his friend, not a free maid service.

“No problem,” Starsky replied, head and shoulders in the closet muffling his answer. “Too much for you with your hand and all.”

Hutch looked at that hand, lifted it from his lap, and flexed the burned digits within their white wrapping. It did hurt a little, but he had been lucky. At least he still had all his fingers. “I got it all out,” he reminded both himself and his industrious partner.

“No problem,” Starsky repeated and closed the closet door. He rubbed his hands together as he looked around the apartment, his eyes skipping past Hutch and only returning when it appeared the apartment had no other distraction to offer. “Is your hand hurting? Do you want a pain pill?”

Hutch sighed. It wasn’t like Starsky to be quite this…obtuse. It was true that he sometimes didn’t notice, or pretended not to notice, or chose not to deal with, some of the emotional consequences of the job they did. In fact, Starsky could be a master of the old emotion-avoidance two-step. But he didn’t usually try so hard to dance it with Hutch.

“I haven’t taken a painkiller since yesterday morning,” Hutch informed him wearily. The small spark of resentment that had failed to scorch his numbness earlier had grown into a coal. A little one, but a heat-generating ember, nonetheless, that was settling in on his temper. “You know I never take any kind of drug any longer than I have to.”

“What about a soda?” Starsky asked, apparently ignoring the reminder, if he even heard it. “If you don’t want the wine, maybe a soda? Or how about some coffee?”

Starsky was sidling. And he wasn’t even being subtle about it. It was just as if Hutch was sitting in the middle of a crime scene, all taped off with yellow caution banners, and Starsky was being extra careful to avoid doing anything that might contaminate the scene. He had made it to the kitchen counter and begun the rattling business of putting on fresh coffee before Hutch could refuse the offer.

“I don’t want any coffee,” Hutch said, bringing the clattering to an abrupt halt, and finally forcing Starsky to quit waltzing and look at him.

“I just…” Starsky made the vague waving gesture again, this time with the open bag of grounds in his hand, curbing the expansiveness of it at the last moment before he would have given himself a new make-work project. He looked at the bag, brows knitted as if he had just realized his lost opportunity, then put it down on the counter with a decisive little thump. “I’m sorry. I’m acting like a jerk.”

Hutch sighed again, deeper this time, assuming that Starsky was hoping to avoid being involved in a soapy scene. Starsky could usually offer comfort when Hutch needed it, but Hutch knew it was hard for him to endure an emotional scene. Perhaps that was really where his frenetic energy sprang from. He didn’t know what to do for Hutch, and was, therefore, anxious to let what practical things he could do release him from whatever obligation he felt to offer the emotional connection Hutch might need. Such things were to be done tactically. That was their unspoken agreement. A look. A brief touch. A few halting sentences, silent support and, if at all possible, distraction.

Hutch didn’t want to be distracted. He wanted to feel the hurt of Abby’s abandonment, wanted to wallow for a while at least. Indulge in a little self-pity and maybe even a helping of martyrdom. He couldn’t do that while Starsky was flitting around his apartment like a berserk butterfly slipped a mickey of speed.

“Starsk, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but go home,” Hutch commanded.

Startled. Relieved. Starsky couldn’t keep either reaction off his face, nor the immediate guilt that followed in their wake. “I’m sorry I’m being a pain in the ass, Hutch. I just-”

“Don’t like soapy scenes,” Hutch finished for him.

Was that a brief flare of anger he saw on Starsky’s face? It was there and gone so fast Hutch couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter in any case. Starsky gave him so much more than anyone else in his life gave him. He cared for Hutch, valued Hutch’s life. If Hutch had any doubts about that, he only had to remember Starsky’s terror when the trunk of the Galaxy had exploded. There had been no holding back then.

That memory gentled Hutch’s resentment a little and he was able to able to offer a reassuring smile as he dismissed his partner now. “Go on, Starsk. It’s too nice a day to be stuck with me.”

“But…what’ll you do?” Starsky asked, sounding almost as forlorn as Hutch felt, almost desolate enough to make Hutch reconsider sending him packing.

Hutch didn’t have the slightest clue how he was going to fill in the empty hours that stretched in front of him. “I’m going to…re-pot some plants,” he finally decided, the idea appealing to him. There was nothing like communing with green and growing things to put life’s little tragedies into perspective.

Starsky cast a glance over his shoulder into the greenhouse. “You sure you can manage?” he asked and, once again, gave that odd flip of his hand.

It was just one more sign that Starsky felt out of his element. Starsky often talked with his hands when words alone weren’t enough to convey his meaning, and sometimes the way Starsky mumbled, they weren’t. But those gestures were usually sharp and precise, punctuation for spoken sentences Starsky felt inadequate, not this vague, almost meaningless flapping.

“Please, Starsk. For the sake of my plants. They can tolerate my one-handed fumbling better than your brown thumb,” Hutch reassured him, wishing that Starsky would just go. Watching him fidget while standing utterly still had Hutch feeling as if someone had slipped itching powder under his clothes.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Starsky said in that way people did when they thought they had to keep arguing, even though they couldn’t wait to put themselves on the other side of the door. Which was exactly where Starsky was headed, halfway there already, although he didn’t seem exactly comfortable with the retreat. “I mean, I can hang around, you know….”

“Starsk.” Hutch waited until Starsky turned and faced him full on. “Go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Starsky backed up until Hutch heard the rattle of his hand on the doorknob. “Well, you see, that’s the thing. I, uh, promised my Uncle Al I’d help him out tomorrow, so I’m not… I might not be able to… Later for sure, but….”

“Call me when you’re free then,” Hutch said, almost ready to claw his way out of his own skin.

“Thanks, Hutch,” Starsky mumbled for no good reason Hutch could think of, and then he was gone.

The door closed, the snick of the latch as it fell into place sounding louder than a gunshot in the silence that was left behind, as if Starsky’s departure had sucked all the sound and vitality out of the apartment. The sudden, echoing emptiness almost prompted Hutch to call out to his friend, but he resisted the temptation. For all the good Starsky ever did him, he was better off alone.

The injustice of that thought stopped Hutch’s self-pity party before it had a chance to get into full swing. He was never better off without Starsky. It was true that Starsky occasionally got on his nerves, but Hutch’s career, and perhaps even his life, would have been over more than a year ago if Starsky hadn’t been there for him. Starsky had been his rock then.

Hutch sat up straighter on the couch, a sudden, horrified queasiness starting up in his stomach as he remembered how he had repaid that loyalty….

Hutch’s healing body was sitting safely on the couch in the little cottage by the canal, but his mind was a few tormented miles away. Mentally locked into the endless hours when his nerves had screamed for the heroin and his skin had burned from even the most caring touch, he jerked and shuddered when Starsky’s hand fell on his shoulder. He barely suppressed a shout of surprise, and was relieved when Starsky immediately released him and backed off a couple of steps. His partner, however, continued to hover, as if Starsky expected him to… What? Considering the things Starsky had seen in the past few days, who could say what Starsky might be expecting Hutch to do next? It terrified Hutch that he could offer no reassurances. He felt he couldn’t predict, with any reliability, just what his next breath would bring.

“What are you looking at?” he muttered defensively, wanting to squirm beneath Starsky’s intent regard.

“Uh. Nothing,” Starsky mumbled, backing away another step. “Just thinking–“

“What?” Hutch demanded, his unstable temper ignited by the fear that Starsky’s thoughts had been wading in the same cesspool as his own. “What a total fuck up your partner is?”

Starsky sank down onto the couch, his face going slack with shock, his hand lifting but falling back into his lap. “How about how glad I am that you’re safe? That that bastard, Forest, is behind bars where he belongs,” he said gently. “That Dobey will make damned sure he can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Bullshit,” Hutch spat, so certain of his own weakness that he knew Starsky had to see it, too. He must, when it was battered into Hutch’s bruised face and marched up his arm in an obscene parade of punctures. “I see the way you’re watching me. The look on your face. You’re waiting for me to crack. Start begging for a fix–“

“Hutch, no,” Starsky protested. His hand, the same hand that had supported and comforted and defended, fell like a white hot brand on Hutch’s arm and tightened around the raw rope burns that circled his wrist.

Hutch tried to endure the touch, but had to pull away when Starsky’s hand started to rub soothingly above the brands, inching closer and closer to the puncture wounds that itched and throbbed and whispered their siren song in Hutch’s brain.

“Bullshit,” he repeated. “You haven’t let me out of your sight since you found me in that alley. Not unless you had Huggy or someone to babysit me,” he accused accurately but unfairly, attributing motives to Starsky’s actions that Hutch knew would never have crossed Starsky’s mind. “You don’t trust me–“

“Shut the fuck up,” Starsky snapped, his jaw bulging over clenched teeth while a sharply indrawn breath seemed to try to rein in the wounded fury in his eyes. “You’re my partner and my friend. There isn’t anybody in this world I trust the way I trust you.”

There was the problem in one reverently spoken sentence. Despite everything he had seen and heard and been forced to do to drag Hutch through the torment of heroin withdrawal, Starsky still trusted him. And Hutch no longer trusted himself. Forest had castrated his belief in himself.

“I’m sorry,” Hutch cut in before Starsky could continue defending himself. He reached out, securing a grip on Starsky’s arm, trying to put his remorse into the strength of his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, feeling that if he said it a thousand times it still wouldn’t be enough. “You didn’t deserve that. You saved me from a lifetime of hell. You put your career on the line.”

“You didn’t deserve what that bastard did to you, either,” Starsky was quick to remind him, adding an absolute truth that, in nearly any other circumstances, would never have needed to be spoken aloud. “You’d have done the same for me,” he insisted stubbornly.

Starsky’s absolute belief in that sentence quieted a small portion of the doubts that tormented Hutch. As long as Starsky believed in him, Hutch could believe there was hope to regain his faith in himself.

“I know what you did for me. I can guess what it…cost you to see me like that,” Hutch acknowledged. He squeezed Starsky’s arm one last time and then released it, deliberately nudging that lifeline out of his reach. “And now, God help me, I have to ask you to do one more thing for me.” He paused and sucked in a deep breath to bolster his courage. “I need you to leave me alone, Starsk. I have to find out if I can stand on my own two feet. If I can trust myself as much as you trust me.”

“Of course you can, Hutch. You’re the strongest–” Starsky cut off his own protest, reluctant understanding replacing the earnestness on his face. “And you gotta find that out for yourself,” he said, smiling fondly, but his eyes still uncertain. “Just tonight?” he asked hopefully.

“I hope so,” Hutch agreed, a night of wrestling demons, both real and imagined, looming before him. A crucible he truly felt he had to face alone.

The battle of conscience continued to wage on Starsky’s face, his eyes searching, trying to probe into the shame darkened places Hutch sought to hide. It seemed to Hutch to go on forever, the way the interminable hours when withdrawal had racked his body and stolen his pride had crawled toward the promise of relief.

“Okay, if that’s what you need,” Starsky finally conceded around a sigh of defeat. He climbed to his feet and subjected Hutch to one last piercing scrutiny. “There’s nothing I can get you? Nothing I can do for you?”

“I think you’ve already done just about everything anyone could ever ask for,” Hutch rejected this last offer as gently as he could.

Reluctance and doubt in every movement, Starsky finally turned away and made his way to the door.

“Hutch?”

“Starsk?”

They spoke each other’s names at the same moment, in the same “are you sure” tone, and Hutch found he even had a small smile of real amusement to acknowledge the concordance.

“Call me in the morning?” Starsky asked with diffidence so uncharacteristic it was almost comical.

“First thing?” Hutch countered, feeling the smile widening until it hurt his bruised cheek, able for this brief moment, to offer just a bit of reassuring humor.

Starsky began to reply and then hesitated, eyeing Hutch speculatively before he qualified his request. “Well, run first. Maybe shower. Then call me.”

“See you tomorrow, mushbrain,” Hutch dismissed him, hoping, as he watched the door close behind Starsky that before the night was through, he wouldn’t be sorry Starsky had given him what he had asked for.

Hutch shied away from the memory of the rest of that night. A dozen times during the endless hours between dusk and dawn, he had regretted Starsky’s absence, and almost as many times, been tempted to call his friend back to him. Hutch knew Starsky would have set a new land speed record returning to the cottage. He hadn’t called, however, and he had made it through that night, emerged the morning after ready to put the incident behind him, tell the lies that needed to be told, and get on with the rest of his life. But it had been a trek he need not have made alone.

Hutch had promised himself that he would never allow any power on Earth to lead him to reject Starsky’s support. The next time, he had vowed as he watched the rising run chase away the last of his shadows, he would remember that he need never be an island. Not as long as Starsky was willing to be his land bridge.

Unfortunately, the next time Hutch had found himself cut adrift was a year down the road, and he had forgotten that hard-learned lesson….

“I just talked to her next of kin. Her brother. Lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. Name’s Dan Ingram.” Mike Dupris’ voice, sounding as if he was reading straight from his notes, fed the information into Hutch’s ear through the telephone receiver.

“Dan Ingram. Her brother from Nebraska,” Hutch parroted, gripping the rigid plastic of the telephone harder in disappointment. He had hoped that no next of kin would be found for Gillian. That he would be able to claim her body and do for her in death what he couldn’t do in life. “I appreciate you letting me know,” he added belatedly.

“No problem,” Dupris dismissed the gratitude. “Uh, listen Hutch, I just wanted to say…you know, I’m sorry. All the guys are….”

Hutch winced as the stumbling attempt to offer condolences staggered into an awkward silence he could think of no way to fill. He hunched over a little more, instinctively curling around the painful humiliation that twisted in his chest. He could hear the gossip now, streaking its way around the station. The cop and the call girl. It was just too tempting a juicy tidbit for the black-humored bastards he worked with to pass up.

“Anyway,” Dupris said when he finally seemed to realize that Hutch had nothing to say. “Ingram said he’d be flying in tomorrow.”

“Let the coroner know I’d like to talk to Mr. Ingram when he arrives, will you, Mike?” Hutch said. “I’ll be at the station.”

Hutch heard the refrigerator door close as he hung up the phone, and turned his head to look at Starsky while lifting the phone from his lap and setting it back on the table. The damned thing felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds.

“That was Mike Dupris. They found Gillian’s next of kin,” he reported, wondering what automaton had control of his voice. “He’s flying in from Nebraska tomorrow to…take care of things,” he added, trying to dismiss his disappointment with a shrug.

Hutch was tired. No, not tired, weary. The kind of exhaustion that had nothing to do with how many miles you ran or hours you put in on the job. A tapped-out, emotional weariness that left him wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed, curl around his grief, and pretend a good night’s sleep was going to take the tawdry tragedy out of Gillian’s life and death. Before Hutch could do that, he had to convince Starsky that he really did want to be alone. Hutch pushed to his feet and went to stand beside Starsky at the counter.

“I don’t know what to do for you,” Starsky muttered, starting, his body tensing defensively under the hand Hutch laid on his shoulder.

Hutch wanted to weep at the reaction, or, more honestly, allow the tears that had been lurking, barely controlled, to fall. He had already broken down once, went from sorrow to fury and back to sorrow and released a flood of tears that had barely tapped the least of his grief. He wasn’t even sure anymore if he was grieving Gillian’s death, or the foolish, ugly lie his love for her had turned out to be. Starsky had already helped Hutch as far along that road as he could; it was up to Hutch now to stagger along the rest of the way as well as he could.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Hutch said gently. “You were already there when I needed you.” He let his hand fall to his side when Starsky took a few hesitant sidesteps away. “Go on home. It’s late and God knows what kind of mess we’re…I’m going to be facing in the morning.”

“We’re,” Starsky insisted instantly.

“You see, Starsk. You might not like a soapy scene, but you always know what to say to me,” Hutch reassured him.

“Hutch, you’re not…?” Starsky hesitated, his evasive eyes flicking around the kitchen before returning to Hutch. “You’re not mad at me for telling you the truth?” he asked, hesitated again and then laid out the offense he obviously felt was far greater. “For not telling you sooner?”

An immediate denial sprang to Hutch’s lips. He had already vented that fury, landed an undeserved sucker punch that he was going to regret for a very long time. But Starsky deserved the truth, so Hutch took an extra moment to probe his motives before he spoke. “No,” he said slowly. “I’m not mad. I understand you felt it was the best way to cover my back.”

“You’re sure?” Starsky asked anxiously.

“I’m sure,” Hutch reassured him again. “All I want to do is get some sleep.” He laid his hand on Starsky’s shoulder, felt the tension but didn’t comment, and used the grip to lead Starsky to the door.

“Okay,” Starsky conceded when he stood on the other side of the door, but before that barrier had closed between them. “You wanna pick me up in the morning?” he asked.

Hutch recognized the offer to let him drive for the sacrifice it was. “Don’t oversleep,” he commanded, and gently closed the door.

For a second time, Hutch tried but failed to prevent the rest of the memory from playing out in his head. The growl of the Torino’s engine had barely faded before, belatedly, Hutch had remembered how desolate his island of self-sufficiency was, and that he didn’t need to be a lonely castaway on it. He had called Starsky that night, but there had been no answer, so Hutch had crawled into bed, curled around his misery, and tried to brace himself to face the humiliation waiting for him at the station the next day. It had been a long, lonely night.

And now he had done it again. No wonder Starsky had been antsy, he had been waiting to be dismissed. Hutch had set this precedent between them over a year ago, reinforced it just a few months ago and, despite his promises to himself, repeated the pattern yet again. Whatever it was in his personality that couldn’t seem to let him learn the hard lessons the first time, or even the second time, Hutch wasn’t going to let them make him repeat the class yet again today.

Hutch reached for the phone and then glanced at his watch. Starsky wouldn’t even have had time to get home yet. Hutch would call in a little while, apologize for kicking Starsky out in the first place, and offer dinner. In the meantime, he made his way into the greenhouse. He would just do a little watering, and then he would call.

Starsky stood before the mirror in his bedroom while a one-word chant played in his brain. Fool. Fool. Fool. The reflected eyes tried to coax him to heed their warning, but Starsky ignored them, studying instead the tight jeans and t-shirt he wore.

“You look like a hoodlum or a punk from the old neighborhood,” he told his reflection. His uniform was similar–faded blue jeans and white t-shirt, both tight enough to display all his muscular assets to their best advantage. But this wasn’t the old neighborhood.

Casually, Starsky adjusted his half-hard cock to a more comfortable position, feeling it pulse impatiently beneath the touch of his own hand, and sent it a soothing promise of  “soon.”

“Or a guy with an itch he can’t scratch by himself,” he admitted more honestly, because where he was going tonight, this uniform had a whole other meaning.

He was ready, and yet still he hesitated, rubbing at his cock through the worn denim until it was fully erect and protesting the restriction. If he had a fucking brain in his head, he would take his dick out now, beat off and come all over the man who watched him with cautious eyes. And he would just stand here and keep doing it until the restless need that wouldn’t give him a minute’s peace was milked out through the tip of his cock until his balls had no more to give.

But Starsky had tried that already. Last night when he knew Solkin was in jail and Hutch was safe from further harm. It had done him no good. Lonely self-pleasure had given him no relief at all, and he had tossed and turned and suffered nightmares of horrific possibilities all night long.

Starsky took his hand away from his cock, turned from the warning the blue eyes in the mirror tried to give him, and stalked out into the living room. He shouldered into his brown leather jacket, patted pockets to make sure he had wallet and keys, and turned his back on the holstered Beretta and badge that tried to whisper the same common sense as his own eyes. They were both wrong–and right. This was dangerous and stupid, but he was going anyway.

Starsky had learned there was only one way to tame this demon. One way to quench the thirst, sate the hunger. Chance had shown him they existed, and the same chance had shown him the cure. Unwillingly, Starsky allowed the memory of the first time the hunger had possessed him to play itself out in his mind….

“Here you go, Hutch,” Starsky said as he put the mug of hot tea on the table. His hand fell onto Hutch’s shoulder as he straightened, giving a gentle shake to ensure that Hutch was awake and had heard him. He tried not to take it personally when Hutch shrugged his hand away. Of course Hutch was feeling a little defensive after all he had been through. Starsky could sympathize, but it meant trying harder to keep his hands to himself and ignore his own needs.

“What are you looking at?” Hutch muttered, drawing Starsky’s awareness to the fact that he had been standing, his rejected hand hanging limp at his side, staring at Hutch as if he expected his friend to suddenly vanish like the Cheshire cat. Only it wouldn’t be Hutch’s grin that would remain behind, perhaps the mottled shiner instead.

“Uh. Nothing,” Starsky mumbled and backed off another step. All he wanted, after the days of frantically searching for Hutch and then playing the unrelenting jailor while his partner suffered through more days of agonizing withdrawal, was to…hover. “Just thinking–“

“What?” Hutch demanded. “What a total fuck up your partner is?”

Starsky sank down onto the couch, shocked speechless by the accusation. He lifted his hand, but let it fall back into his lap when Hutch visibly shrank away from him. “How about how glad I am that you’re safe? That that bastard, Forest, is behind bars where he belongs,” he said gently, trying to see some softening in the implacable condemnation in Hutch’s eyes. “That Dobey will make damned sure he can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Bullshit,” Hutch spat, his eyes narrowed to slits in the bruised face. “I see the way you’re watching me. The look on your face. You’re waiting for me to crack. Start begging for a fix–“

“Hutch, no,” Starsky protested, ignoring the previous rejection and latching onto Hutch’s arm, then loosening his grip when Hutch winced. He moved his hand a little higher, away from the rope burns, and rubbed soothingly at the taut muscle beneath the material of the jacket Hutch hadn’t yet bothered to discard, until Hutch again rejected his touch.

“Bullshit,” Hutch repeated, and it wasn’t just an expletive this time. Combined with the demand in his eyes, it was a challenge. “You haven’t let me out of your sight since you found me in that alley. Not unless you had Huggy or someone to babysit me. You don’t trust me–“

“Shut the fuck up,” Starsky snapped, then locked his jaws before the hurt could throw more incautious words out between them. “You’re my partner and my friend. There isn’t anybody in this world I trust the way I trust you,” he said when calm and reason had had a moment to reclaim him.

“I’m sorry,” Hutch cut in before Starsky could continue to defend himself.

Starsky didn’t want or need the apology. It was there in the blue eyes full of shame, the remorse communicated far more clearly by the strength of the grip Hutch found on his arm than any words between them could ever possibly convey. They didn’t need words to understand each other. The many memories the two of them shared of care and support and unquestioning loyalty were all Starsky needed to cool his brief flare of temper.

Hutch nevertheless repeated the apology. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. You saved me from a lifetime of hell. You put your career on the line.”

“You didn’t deserve what that bastard did to you, either,” Starsky was quick to remind him, allowing himself to relax a little as the threat of imminent explosion disappeared. “You’d have done the same for me,” he insisted from the absolute, sure and certain knowledge that he had never spoken truer words.

“I know what you did for me,” Hutch continued quietly. “What it…cost you to see me like that.”

The cost had been high, but not for the reasons Hutch obviously assumed. As far as Starsky was concerned, what was a little sweat and puke between friends, or harsh words spoken out of the depths of pain and despair. The cost Starsky had paid was far higher, playing the dispassionate, cruel jailor when all he had wanted was to comfort his suffering friend.

Starsky had thought that the opportunity to offer that comfort would come tonight, but the self-reproach in Hutch’s eyes, the way he very deliberately released Starsky’s arm and pushed it gently out of reach, warned that Starsky’s best laid plans were about to be flushed.

“And now, God help me, I have to ask you to do one more thing for me,” Hutch said, the pleading blue eyes in the battered perfection of his face bringing a hard lump into Starsky’s throat. “I need you to leave me alone. I have to find out if I can stand on my own two feet. If I can trust myself as much as you trust me.”

“Of course you can, Hutch. You’re the strongest–” Starsky began, the protest cut off by the fear and self-loathing on Hutch’s face. He realized that it wasn’t Hutch who needed him to be here, it was Starsky’s needs that held him in Venice tonight. Right now, what Starsky needed didn’t matter at all.

“And you’ve gotta find that out for yourself,” Starsky conceded. He forced himself to give Hutch a smile, hoping that if his doubts showed, Hutch would understand they weren’t born from any lack of trust. “Just tonight?” he asked hopefully.

“I hope so,” Hutch agreed.

 “Okay, if that’s what you need,” Starsky conceded and slowly climbed to his feet. “There’s nothing I can get you? Nothing I can do for you?” he asked, wishing he could fight this last battle for Hutch or, at the very least, stand back to back with him as Hutch battled his demons.

“I think you’ve already done just about everything anyone could ever ask for,” Hutch said, rejecting the offer gently, but with the same courage that had allowed him to escape his captors unaided.

Starsky used that memory to make his feet start moving, to prevent himself from giving in to the temptation to argue further. He made it as far as the door, even had his hand on the knob, before he just had to turn back.

“Hutch?”

“Starsk?”

They spoke each other’s names at the same moment, in the same “are you sure” tone, and the faint smile Hutch managed finally convinced Starsky that, for Hutch’s sake, he had to go.

“Call me in the morning?” Starsky asked diffidently, wondering if one night would be enough to let Hutch fumble alone toward self-certainty.

“First thing?” Hutch countered, the smile that had been only a travesty of itself deepening until it had to hurt the bruised cheek. It even held just a hint of teasing.

It was that hint that made Starsky think the question through, dig for the humor Hutch was trying for, before he answered. “Well, run first. Maybe shower. Then call me,” he said, and knew he had found just the right tone when Hutch laughed.

“See you tomorrow, mushbrain,” Hutch dismissed him.

“Tomorrow,” Starsky confirmed, pulled open the door and stepped out onto the stoop. The smile was fading from his face before the door was fully closed behind him, and it took a few moments before he could force himself down the walk and over to the Torino. He hesitated there, one hand on the driver’s door while he dug in the pocket of his jacket for his keys. Second thoughts could be a pain in the ass, but Starsky let them run through his mind anyway. In the end, however, he could only come to the same decision. He had to go. Hutch needed that from him now.

Popping the door, Starsky got as far as planting his butt in the driver’s seat, then hesitated yet again, wondering what the hell he could do with himself now. He couldn’t go home. Ten minutes inside his own place and he would be climbing the walls. He was too full of pent up energy. It was the growl of the Torino’s engine as he turned the key in the ignition that gave Starsky his answer.

It took a frustrating fifteen minutes to get to the first exit sign for the freeway, and even less time before the obstacles of slower moving vehicles had Starsky searching for another alternative. He took the first exit that appeared and found himself on a two-lane, almost empty highway. It gave him the freedom he needed to indulge his need for speed. Only a bike could have been better than this–the wind slashing his face, and the vibration of the engine throbbing into his cock and balls through the seat he straddled.

Starsky realized the station wagon he was coming up on was barely doing the speed limit at the same moment the speck of an approaching truck appeared in the other lane. A tiny voice, the cop deeply submerged at this moment beneath the maverick, warned him a second before he made his move that he was taking needless chances. Starsky ignored it, pulling out into the oncoming lane just as two young faces appeared in the back window of the station wagon. Appalled at his recklessness, he yanked the wheel over to the right and hit the brakes too hard. With both right wheels on the soft shoulder, the Torino sloughed, spinning while Starsky fought the wheel.

 “Asshole,” Starsky chided himself when he had brought the car to a halt. He pried his fingers off the wheel and gave it a smack with his open palm, then sat and listened to his heart pound in his ears, the racing thrum loud enough to drown out the engine’s idling rumble, and waited for the adrenaline to dissipate, for his hands to stop shaking.

“I’m out of my fucking mind,” he mumbled. But the worst of it was, despite taking complete leave of his senses, he felt no better. Worse, in fact, and he was almost afraid to put the car in gear again for fear the maniac just might return. But he couldn’t sit here all night.

Cautiously, Starsky slid the shift into drive and pulled back out onto the asphalt. He had put a lot of miles behind him, however, and before he retraced them–hopefully without committing any more acts of gross stupidity–he needed a break. Opportunity presented itself in the form of a previously unnoticed roadside bar only a mile or so away. The last thing he needed was a drink, but Starsky knew there wasn’t a bar on Earth that didn’t also have a pot of coffee brewing somewhere in the back.

To his surprise, the unpaved parking lot was almost full with an assortment of makes and models, but there was nothing about the vehicles that set off any alarm bells. No obvious muscle cars, with the exception of his Torino, and no row of shiny choppers to warn of a possible biker hangout.

From habit born of professional necessity, Starsky gave the bar and its patrons a quick scan as he entered it, and found that the inside contained the same variety of makes and models of humans as the outside boasted cars. He was halfway to the bar, however, before the anomaly struck him, faltering his step momentarily as he realized that there wasn’t a woman in the place. With a mental shrug, Starsky completed the trek until he could belly up to the bar, aware of the sudden interest of the men around him. This far off the beaten track, they probably didn’t see many strangers, and there was nothing about the scrutiny that felt, in any way, threatening.

“What’ll it be, stranger?” the bartender asked with a practiced smile.

“Coffee,” Starsky requested and smiled at the flicker of surprise that cracked the bartender’s façade. “You gotta have a pot here somewhere. If it’s been sitting and fermenting a couple of hours, so much the better.”

The bartender’s expression became knowing. “Been on the road a while then, huh? Need something to cure the white line fever?”

The only nosey bartender Starsky had any patience for was Huggy. This guy wasn’t his long-time friend, and patience was a commodity Starsky felt in very short supply of tonight. “Coffee,” he repeated, and pointedly shifted his gaze to the mirror behind the bar.

The bartender disappeared into the back, and Starsky hitched his butt up onto the stool beside him. He wasn’t given a moment of peace, however, to further assess his surroundings.

“Hi,” the man perched on the next stool offered in greeting.

Sighing inwardly, hoping the coffee was going to be worth it, Starsky turned slightly on the stool. There was nothing particularly outstanding about the guy next to him. He was an average Joe, maybe thirty, if that, with regular features and slightly wary eyes. The nicest thing about him was his mane of shaggy blond hair.

“Hi,” Starsky said cautiously, giving the bartender a nod of thanks for the speedy delivery of his coffee.

“I saw you drive in,” the blond stranger continued despite the barely polite acknowledgment Starsky had given him. “That’s some car you’ve got there.”

Starsky relaxed a little. He was always ready to talk about his car, especially with someone who seemed to appreciate her. Lord knew, Hutch gave him nothing but grief over his taste in cars.

“Custom paint and suspension?” the other man asked.

Starsky grinned. Not only an admirer, but a knowledgeable one as well.

“My name’s Rick. Pleased to meet you,” the car connoisseur introduced himself, offering his hand.

Starsky accepted the handshake. “Dave.” He picked up his cup and took a sip of the strong, black brew that was exactly what he had been hoping for. “So, you know cars, huh?” he asked, prepared to spend the time it would take him to get down to the dregs in the cup in pleasant conversation.

“Know a great chassis when I see one,” Rick said.

It was the tone–low and suggestive–that brought Starsky’s eyes from the coffee cup to find that Rick’s gaze had dropped. Almost like a physical caress, Starsky felt it tracing over his thighs and crotch. Startled, he scanned the room again, noticing now, as he had failed to notice before, that the patrons weren’t just all men, they were mostly couples. Hands were being held across tables, and there was some kissing going on in the darker booths and, unless his eyes were completely deceiving him, there was even some heavy petting happening between two men who, Starsky was sure, had been intent on a game of pool when he came in. The only balls they seemed interested in now were each other’s.

“Shit,” Starsky muttered as he brought his gaze back to the man beside him.

“I thought it was too good to be true,” Rick said with obvious disappointment. “Just wandered into the wrong place, huh?”

Agreement sat on the tip of Starsky’s tongue long enough for him to realize that his cock wasn’t going along with Rick’s assessment. It had started stirring beneath the visual caress and now throbbed, fully hard and eager, against the zipper of his jeans. He swallowed down the words of rejection with another mouthful of coffee. The restless energy that had been plaguing him had shifted into overdrive, and he feared his common sense and good judgment didn’t have a prayer.

“My sense of direction’s pretty good,” he said finally, meeting Rick’s eyes, seeing them widen in pleased surprise. Starsky turned on the stool until he faced the other man directly, then deliberately widened the spread of his thighs to highlight the rod he was sporting. In his mind, perhaps in his brain itself, a wall erected years ago began to crumble.

“You got something specific in mind?” he asked, cases of vice entrapment clamoring for attention he refused to give them.

Rick’s head dipped, indicating the hard-on clearly outlined in Starsky’s jeans. “I wouldn’t mind giving you a hand with that. Or maybe a couple of lips and a tongue.” He looked Starsky in the eye again. “Maybe in that fancy machine of yours.”

Queer sex in public with a stranger. Even during the wildest, most uncaring moments of his past, Starsky had had more sense than that. And now he had so much more to lose. As they had on Hutch’s doorstep, second thoughts were clamoring for his attention, but Starsky didn’t allow them to sway him. Instead, he leaned back, dug into his pocket and came out with a bill. Without checking the denomination, he threw it on the bar and slid down off the stool.

“After you,” he invited, not quite so befuddled that he would allow a stranger his back. He almost laughed at the irony of that as he followed Rick to the door. He wouldn’t turn his back on this stranger, but in less than a minute, he was going to unzip his jeans and feed him his cock.

He was out of his mind, but the fact was that Starsky had been nearly out of his mind for days. He hadn’t recognized what he needed until it was offered, but now he was going to take it.

Behind the wheel of the Torino once again, Starsky bit back a groan as he leaned across the seat to pop the lock on the passenger side, his cock compressed painfully inside his jeans before he straightened up again.

“Don’t. Please,” Rick requested as he climbed in, halting Starsky’s hand on the snap of his jeans. “Let me take it out.”

“Close the door,” Starsky ordered, but took his hand away, laying his arm on the back of the seat and securing a grip on the padded leather.

Rick wasted no time complying with the command. The interior light went out as the door snicked shut, leaving the car illuminated only by the faint light from the sign that advertised the bar’s name. The Cock-a-doodle-do? This time Starsky did laugh, hearing the reckless, near-hysteria in it as Rick, kneeling beside him on the seat, bent over his lap.

His laughter ended in a hiss as fumbling fingers hurriedly released the snap on his jeans and the zipper was tugged down. Warmth cupped him through his underwear for a heartbeat, before that barrier was breached as well, and his exposed cock claimed by an eager palm. A second later, his aching flesh was taken inside a hot, wet furnace.

“Christ,” Starsky cursed, his fingers digging into the seat back as sensations he hadn’t felt in almost a decade possessed him. He arched into it, lifting his ass off the seat and driving his cock harder into the mouth that sucked him, pushing relentlessly until he knew he was ramming deep into the other man’s throat. Hard thumbs pressed into his hip bones, and Starsky allowed himself to be pushed back down onto the seat, his cock sliding out until strong lips clamped around the ridge behind the head.

Ten seconds. Maybe twenty, if he was lucky. That was how long Starsky thought he could last beneath the mouth that was eating him alive. Climax was gathering in his balls and, as if sensing the imminent explosion, Rick tried to back off. Starsky’s hand flashed into the other man’s hair, registering its soft silkiness against his fingers a second before he looked down and saw light caught in the blond strands.

“Oh, fuck,” he cursed. “Hutch.” There was no sound to the name that formed on his lips, but it nevertheless had the power to carry him that last irrevocable step into climax. But even as he pumped his semen into the willing mouth, Starsky cursed himself for the worst kind of fool.

When the memory had finished playing itself out, Starsky found himself still standing at the door of his apartment with his hand on the doorknob. He remembered how he had continued to curse himself all the way home that night, spending the much slower, and therefore longer, trip back to Bay City beating himself over the head for his stupidity.

Remembering the terror that had churned in his gut as the miles had slipped away beneath the Torino’s tires, Starsky let his hand drop away from the doorknob. He turned back into the living room, his eyes drawn again to the symbols of the professional life he had chosen. They lay on the table, gun and badge both still singing their silent, dire warnings.

By the time he had reached the apartment that night, Starsky had managed to re-build the breach that had formed in the wall in his mind. Slapped on a few new layers of bricks and carefully plugged all the cracks with thick mental mortar. Cop and queer didn’t belong in the same sentence. And, more to the point, the true crux of the matter, a man didn’t screw with the most perfect friendship he could ever hope to find just to get his rocks off. Hutch and sex were two more words that, as far as Starsky was concerned, absolutely had to be mutually exclusive.

The next morning, when the promised call had wakened him from a restless sleep, Starsky had felt a surge of panic, but his partner’s familiar voice coming from the receiver had dispelled it immediately. The only thing the disgustingly cheerful voice managed to raise was Starsky’s ire. Seeing Hutch later in the day, he had probed for, but found no stirring of desire for his partner, and that had put the last of his fears to rest. The night before had been a moment of bad judgment, brought on by stress, too little sleep, and too much adrenaline. That Rick had been a blond had been no more than a coincidence that had nothing to do with Hutch. Starsky had always liked blonds–both male and female.

And it was never going to happen again.

Starsky was able to put his faith in that bit of self-deceiving fiction for a whole year. Right up to the night after he went back into a massage parlor hoping for some relief for his sore shoulder, and found instead, the imminent destruction of Hutch’s red-balloon fantasy….

“Dan Ingram. Her brother in Nebraska. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate you letting me know,” Hutch said into the phone.

From where he stood in the kitchen, Starsky could see only the back of his partner where he sat on the couch. It was hard to tell how Hutch felt about the information he had just received by the tone of his voice, but Starsky could read a world of pain in the way he sat, half-hunched over as if he had been kicked in the gut, his knuckles white where they gripped the phone hard to his ear. Starsky ached for his friend.

There was little Starsky could offer in the way of comfort, as little as he had been able to do to protect Hutch from the shock and pain of discovering, after her death, who Gillian really was. But he wanted to be here just in case. In case Hutch wanted to talk. In case Hutch wanted to mourn. In case Hutch needed to weep as he had wept in Starsky’s arms in Gillian’s apartment. They had held each other so hard then that the leather of their jackets had groaned a counterpoint to Hutch’s sobs and Starsky’s inane attempts to ease his pain.

The memory turned Starsky away from the image of misery Hutch represented on that couch. He wanted to simply walk over, take the phone away, and pull Hutch back into his arms. Keep him there until the pain was forgotten. But every line of Hutch’s tortured figure screamed a silent rejection that, despite his own needs, Starsky had to respect. The self-denial left him with a driving need to keep moving, as if he danced one step ahead of some unnamed danger. It wouldn’t let him sit still; it wouldn’t even let him stand still.

Looking for something to do, Starsky pulled open the refrigerator door. Maybe Hutch was hungry. He had eaten little enough that Starsky knew of since yesterday.

“Let the coroner know I’d like to talk to Mr. Ingram when he arrives, will you, Mike? I’ll be at the station.”

Starsky closed the refrigerator door and turned back to watch Hutch hang up the phone. The long back was straight now, the sober face turning his way as Hutch lifted the phone off his lap and set it back on the table.

“That was Mike Dupris. They found Gillian’s next of kin,” he reported as if Starsky couldn’t easily have inferred the information from Hutch’s side of the conversation. “He’s flying out from Nebraska tomorrow to…take care of things.” Hutch gave a small shrug and a rueful twist of his lips.

Starsky felt his face crunch up into a grimace and turned away to hide it. “Damn,” he whispered under his breath, but could think of nothing else to say.

There was something that drew hookers to Hutch like ants to a picnic. No, not just something. Starsky knew exactly why the Ladies of the Night looked at Hutch like he was Prince Charming. It was because that was the way he treated them. Hutch could spot a hooker a mile away, but he still treated every single one of them as if they were fairytale princesses. Starsky had no idea how Gillian Ingram had managed to sneak in under Hutch’s hooker radar, but his partner had taken as hard a tumble for her as Starsky had ever seen him fall.

For a second time, Starsky felt that urgent, gotta-move energy possess him, but there was nothing he could think to do to expend it. Hutch wasn’t hungry. Hutch wasn’t thirsty. The apartment was comparatively neat. He could suggest they go out, but he didn’t think Hutch was much in the mood for socializing. What Starsky needed tonight was to dance, but that wasn’t going to be happening either.

“I don’t know what to do for you,” he finally muttered, and nearly jumped a yard straight up when Hutch’s hand gripped his shoulder. He hadn’t even heard his friend’s approach.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Hutch told him tiredly. “You were already there when I needed you.”

Tonight, for the first time in all the years he had known Hutch, Starsky couldn’t bear to have that big hand resting on him. He was the one who was supposed to be offering comfort, not Hutch. As unobtrusively as he could, Starsky sidestepped until the loose grip fell away.

“Go on home,” Hutch advised. “It’s late and God knows what the hell kind of mess we’re…I’m going to be facing in the morning.”

“We’re,” Starsky insisted and received a wry smile of acknowledgement for the correction.

“You see, Starsk. You might not like a soapy scene, but you always know what to say to me.”

Always, Starsky wondered? That Hutch seemed to think so was a comfort that Starsky wasn’t sure he deserved. However good his intentions, he had still gone behind Hutch’s back. As far as Starsky was concerned, Hutch had already given him what he deserved for that disloyalty–a fat lip that throbbed a reminder of his own stupidity every time Starsky spoke.

Was that the real reason Hutch wanted him to leave? Starsky searched Hutch’s face, but could see no sign of the fury that had possessed Hutch before the big fist had knocked him to the floor. As much as he would like to let that sleeping dog lie, Starsky knew they couldn’t have it hanging between them.

“Hutch, you’re not…?” Starsky began, but couldn’t force the rest of the question past his lips, his courage deserting him. He looked around the kitchen while he re-claimed it, then met Hutch’s eyes again. “You’re not mad at me for telling you the truth?” he asked, then forced himself to reveal his true fear. “For not telling you sooner?”

The moments it took Hutch to answer that question stretched out with the surreal quality that time seemed to take on during a firefight.

“No,” Hutch said finally, the single word sounding to Starsky like the reassuring explosion of his Beretta when he had been certain the hammer was going to fall on an empty chamber. “I’m not mad. I understand you felt it was the best way to cover my back.”

“You’re sure?” Starsky had to ask again, the relief leaving him feeling a little giddy.

“I’m sure,” Hutch reassured him again. “All I want to do is get some sleep.”

“Okay,” Starsky conceded. He was surprised, however, that when Hutch’s hand fell on his shoulder, his body still tensed as if the friendly connection was in reality an unanticipated blow. This time he was able to accept the grip and allow Hutch to lead him to the door. He was ashamed to realize that he was as eager to go as Hutch seemed to be to have him gone.

“You wanna pick me up in the morning?” he asked, needing to atone for the relief he felt by offering to ride in that beat up wreck Hutch called a car.

 “Don’t oversleep,” Hutch warned and closed the door between them.

Shame was still riding the Torino’s tail pipe when Starsky left Venice behind him and merged into the moderate evening traffic. It wasn’t that late really, only about ten, but he felt as exhausted as if he had done a double shift after an all-night binge. Underneath that surface of weariness, however, beat a persistent throb of restless energy that wasn’t going to let him sleep easily. It was one of those nights when the blankets and pillows would end up all over the floor.

It wasn’t until he had passed the bar that Starsky remembered where he had seen the name before. The Down Under was new, but had already made a name for itself. A discreet name, known only in certain circles. Starsky knew it because he had seen the name on a cocktail napkin on Huggy’s bar a few weeks ago, and had jokingly asked if Huggy was considering a name change for his place. It had taken some prodding, but Huggy had finally confessed that the Down Under was a gay bar. Starsky had dropped the subject. He didn’t need to ask how Huggy had acquired the napkin because he already knew that, upon the right occasion, Huggy wasn’t opposed to taking a stroll on the wild side.

That, Starsky realized with the shock of belated recognition, was exactly what he needed tonight, had needed since… He couldn’t remember exactly when the restless energy had begun to collect inside him like a gathering of ignitable gasses just waiting for an incautious spark. Seeing the Down Under’s sign and unimposing front had been that spark. In one tick of the clock, his heart had started to race in his chest and his cock to crowd the inadequate space in the crotch of his jeans.

Starsky parked the car on a side street and made it out onto the sidewalk, after locking his gun and badge in the glove compartment, before good sense, judicious caution, or simple self-preservation made another attempt to make itself heard. Starsky, however, wasn’t listening as he shut the car door and strode down the sidewalk and around the corner. He didn’t let himself hesitate, but pushed through the bar door, pausing inside only long enough to let his eyes adjust.

There were no familiar faces ringing alarm bells, although admittedly there were enough faces turned away from him to up the ante just a little. If only one man in this place recognized him as a cop… Then he would be undercover, Starsky decided recklessly, and headed for the bar with an even firmer stride.

The beer he ordered from the bartender was delivered with a flourish that Starsky hardly noticed as he picked it up and swiveled the stool around until he faced the dance floor. There were a few couples dancing, but Starsky’s gaze skipped past them, scanning instead the men who sat at the tables and booths that circled the floor and the ones who lounged against the walls. He didn’t see anything that called to the restless energy inside him, and common sense was beginning to gain a tenuous foothold, until Starsky spotted the tall, slim blond on the other side of the dance floor.

Tall. Slim. Blond. The combination almost brought Starsky to his senses. Almost got him off the stool and out of the bar before he did something even dumber than picking up a man. There was no way he could rationalize the way his need had sharpened when he spotted the blond. When the guy turned his way, however, Starsky knew it was too late to run, knew he had no place to run.

A minute later, the object of Starsky’s fascination must have sensed the intense regard because he started searching, head swiveling deliberately until his gaze landed on Starsky. Just as deliberately, Starsky pushed his elbows back to rest on the bar behind him, putting all of his masculine assets on display.

“Hi. Looking for someone?” the blond asked when he reached Starsky. He cocked his head to the side, with what Starsky assumed was supposed to be a teasing expression on his face. “Me, maybe?”

Starsky had to give him points for the direct approach. But then, Starsky wasn’t being exactly subtle himself. Tall. Slim. Blond. Christ, was he really going to make it with a Hutch substitute? On purpose, this time? Why the hell not? It wasn’t as if doing it a year ago had made one particle of difference to his relationship with Hutch. This was stupid, true, but last time had reminded him that the resemblance to Hutch was just Starsky’s preference. He liked blonds. Lots of guys did. He had got away with it last time, and the last time was a whole year ago.

“Could be,” Starsky agreed with a predator’s smile and a smoldering visual inspection that took in pertinent details and made comparisons that let him excuse what he was about to do. A little padding around the middle, shoulders not quite as broad, eyes…some sort of muddy hazel. This wasn’t Hutch. His hair wasn’t even that same shimmering platinum as Hutch’s, more gold. It wasn’t an indictable offense, or even an insult to his completely platonic love for his friend, that Starsky just happened to like fair-haired sex partners.

“You got a name?” Goldie asked.

Whatever mental gymnastics he had managed to justify the act of stupidity he was about to commit, Starsky did retain enough sense to realize that he didn’t need to compound it by giving his real name. Dave was common enough, but discovery wasn’t really the reason Starsky held back the information. Any name would do, and he was experienced enough at undercover work to know he would answer to whatever pseudonym he offered. Starsky simply didn’t want to be a person to the guy, or vice versa.

“Does it matter?” he asked, putting an edge of challenge to his tone.

Goldie shrugged, one hand coming to rest on Starsky’s knee, then sliding up the defined muscle of his thigh so slowly that it drew both their eyes to it. The creeping encroachment ended with the tip of the manicured middle finger resting just short of the hard bar of Starsky’s cock.

“Top or bottom?” was Goldie’s next question, asked without any inflection to indicate which position he might prefer himself.

Starsky couldn’t think of anything in the world that could make him want to be that vulnerable to this stranger. Even the restless energy driving this foolhardy improvisation wasn’t enough. That wasn’t an admission he was about to make to the man he had decided was going to purge that need. Starsky waited until his silence brought the muddy eyes back up to his face and let his expression speak for him. If Goldie had an agenda of his own, Starsky’s narrow-eyed glare demanded he give it up.

It took only a few seconds for the stranger to concede, pale lids coming down to veil his eyes while his hand completed the journey to lay claim to Starsky’s cock. “Anyway you want it, hot shot,” he promised.

Starsky had become re-acquainted with the pleasures of fucking a man that night. On the way home, truly exhausted now, he had realized that the driving energy that had been an itch he couldn’t reach, was well and thoroughly scratched.

But it wasn’t going to happen again.

Barely two months later, however, here he was about to commit himself to the same foolhardy risk. Starsky bent and picked up the gun and badge, moved to the bedroom, and closed them both away in his bedside drawer. He could hardly hear their whispered warnings now. No more accidents of fate, convenient coincidences, or self-serving rationalizations. Tonight, Starsky was going hunting, with plenty aforethought. He was going to pick up a guy–a big, handsome blond–and live a few hours’ worth of lie with him.

Lies. A house of cards that could come crashing in on him. He had built the first unstable story tonight when he told Hutch that he had promised to help his Uncle Al tomorrow. There was no promise to keep tomorrow, but Starsky expected to be sleeping in.

At least he understood where the drive tormenting him came from now. It had started up at the first hint of Solkin’s threat to Hutch and only grown worse with each incident. That fit in with the first time after Forest. After Gillian was an anomaly that, to Starsky, only proved the conclusion. The need was Hutch-triggered, growing out of Starsky’s protective instincts toward his partner, but the first two times had also shown him it wasn’t necessarily Hutch-fixated. It was a temporary aberration that could be purged with a handsome young blond, and that was exactly what Starsky was going to do. He would do this tonight, and from now on work harder to keep Hutch safe. He wasn’t going to add any more floors to that house of cards and take the chance of it tumbling in on his friendship with Hutch.

Hutch hurried into Starsky’s bedroom when he heard the bathroom door open and found Starsky, wrapped up in his robe and dripping curls soaking the towel slung around his neck, leaning against the frame.

“You okay, Starsky? You look a little…” Hutch paused, trying to come up with something kind to say about Starsky’s drawn, white, battered face. Something besides the absolutely wondrous-to-him fact that it was alive.

“All crapped out?” Starsky suggested with a wry smile. “Fuck. Wonder what the hell those crazies put in that stuff they made me drink.”

“At least it wasn’t anything harmful,” Hutch reminded him. Despite his partner’s protests, Hutch had insisted on taking him directly to the hospital as soon as he had managed to pry the clinging, reluctant-cultist out of Starsky’s lap. Fortunately, the visit had been a comparatively brief one. Less than two hours after rescuing Starsky from Simon Marcus’s insane followers, Hutch had helped his weakened friend up the stairs. Unfortunately, Starsky had spent most of that time in the bathroom.

“I made you up a bed on the couch so you can watch TV if you want,” he told Starsky now. “Thought you wouldn’t mind a little distraction from your woes.” He hesitated, a visual inspection trying to judge whether Starsky might be offended if he offered him a hand. “Think you can get there on your own?”

“Yeah. And, from the feel of my gut, back again, too. Just don’t get between me and the john, okay. I might have to forget you’re my best friend and run you down,” Starsky warned as he made his way on visibly unsteady legs toward the couch.

“Did you take the Pepto?” Hutch asked worriedly, following his friend and watching as Starsky gingerly sat on the improvised bed he had made of the couch. “Hang on and let me dry your hair some before you lay down.”

Standing in front of Starsky, Hutch flipped the towel up over his head and face and began to rub, careful of the left side where the doctor had set a couple of stitches. After a few minutes of brisk rubbing, he began massaging, working at it long enough to cause a faint rumbling to come from under the towel. He lifted it and grinned at the odd mixture of woebegone puppy and contented cat he found under the blue terrycloth.

Starsky grinned back at him. “You remember the party after graduation from the Academy when we slipped the Ex-lax into the M&Ms?”

“Yeah,” Hutch replied. “You thought that was a pretty good joke, if I remember correctly.”

“Doesn’t seem so funny now,” Starsky admitted.

Hutch gave him a gentle push down onto the pillow and pulled up the blanket, teasingly tucking it under Starsky’s chin. “I’ll bet it doesn’t, partner.” He laid his wrist over Starsky’s forehead, but didn’t really expect to find his friend fevered. Starsky wasn’t ill, just a little…inconvenienced.

Starsky suffered the ministrations stoically. Actually, Hutch knew his friend was lapping it up and, right at the moment, Hutch was very grateful that Starsky was more than willing to let himself be cared for. Hutch needed to do this far more than his partner needed it from him. He was going to remember this feeling the next time life dealt him one of its hard knocks. Maybe, combined with the lessons he had learned the hard way this past year, it would stick in his brain and he would be more sympathetic and understanding when Starsky needed to be the one to hover.

“Do you want the TV on?” he asked, despite Starsky’s closed eyes.

“No, thanks. I just wanna nap ’til the next time I have to do the can-can shuffle,” Starsky replied, wriggling a little, looking for a more comfortable position; his grimace revealing that he hadn’t found it. The blue eyes popped open before Hutch could move away. “Hey. What day is it?”

Hutch sat on the coffee table and patted at Starsky’s shoulder reassuringly. “I know it probably felt like longer to you, but those nuts only had you twenty-four hours.”

Starsky groaned. “Then it’s Friday night. Shit. That means I gotta call my mom.”

Starsky started to shift position to get his elbows under him, but Hutch pressed him back down. “Just stay there. I’ll dial and give you the receiver,” he offered.

“Before she answers, okay, Hutch. Let me break it to her… Oh, shit.” Starsky heaved over onto his side and curled up around his middle for a minute or two. “Gently,” he panted out when the cramp ended.

“You sure you don’t want me to talk to her?” Hutch asked.

“Hell, no,” Starsky said, flopping back over flat and smiling wanly. “You nearly gave her a heart attack after I was shot.”

“Mmm, yeah,” Hutch muttered, concentrating on finding the number in Starsky’s telephone book. He had to admit that he hadn’t been exactly subtle when he had called Ruth Starsky while his partner was in surgery after being shot by a hit man gunning for crime boss, Vic Monte. Ruth had forgiven him his exhausted, disjointed delivery of the unhappy news, but, so far, her son hadn’t. Finding the number, Hutch dialed it, waited to hear the first ring, and then handed the receiver over to his partner.

Wanting to give Starsky a semblance of privacy, Hutch moved into the kitchen. Whether he liked it or not, the human garbage disposal was going to be on a liquid diet until at least the next morning. Hutch had the ultimate defense of  “doctor’s orders” to fall back on, but, once the cramping eased, Starsky was bound to be complaining about the endless succession of broth and juice and Jello. If he was going to keep the bitching down to a minimum, Hutch knew he had to be prepared with at least a gallon of each. He could hear the murmur of his partner’s voice as he dug for cans and boxes, boiled the kettle and searched out pots, and was reminded again of how close he had come to never hearing that voice again.

“Hutch!”

Hutch dropped the half-opened can of soup into the sink and hurried to the couch in time to catch the receiver Starsky threw at him.

“Talk to my mom,” Starsky commanded before he disappeared, at speed, into the bathroom.

Hutch brought the receiver up to his ear. “Uhm, Ruth, it’s Hu…Ken. St…Dave had to…uhm…go,” he stammered, unsure of what exactly Starsky had told her and trying to be delicate.

“That’ll teach him to go before he leaves home,” Ruth replied pithily, revealing that Starsky had been honest with his mother about the circumstances of his misadventure, although Hutch suspected that he probably withheld a few of the details.

“Maybe,” Hutch agreed with the mother’s wisdom, though, privately, he doubted it. If a bullet crease to the head and a slug in the back hadn’t taught Starsky that lesson, Hutch doubted Simon Marcus could. But Hutch had learned. From now on, when Starsky headed for the can, Hutch would be right on his heels. He could always wash his hands if Starsky objected to the company.

“So, how are things with you, Ruth? And everybody?” Hutch asked, knowing that would be all the encouragement she would need to carry the conversation until Starsky returned. He picked up the phone and sidled a little closer to the bedroom door when he heard the toilet flush a second time. Poor Starsky, he thought.

“I’m fine. A touch of arthritis, you know, but it only bothers me in the cold weather. It’s fine at this time of year. Now, my Aunt Sophie, there’s a woman with troubles. Just got over her gallbladder surgery when she fell in the tub and broke her wrist. And the right wrist of course. So she can’t even hold her cane. And I’m sure David’s told you how crippled she is with arthritis. Poor woman is lucky if she can get out of bed in the morning.”

“That’s…” Hutch paused to re-run the conversation, that hadn’t really been registering, through his mind before he filled in the pause Ruth had left just to make sure he was listening. “That’s a shame. Poor woman,” he muttered, far more of his attention on the pain-filled curses filtering through the bathroom door.

“Lucky thing for her, you know, that Al… That’s her nephew and David’s uncle, my late husband’s brother, you see. Well, he’s decided to move to Florida. Made a nice little profit on that place there in California and he’s retiring to St. Petersburg. Sophie hasn’t been able to make the trip out there in years. Plane ride’s too long, you know, and the poor dear just stiffens up. But it’s only two hours to Florida.”

“That’s nice,” Hutch again slid what he hoped was an appropriate comment into Ruth’s pause.

“I might even make the trip myself. I’m not getting any younger.”

“Jesus! Christ!”

The curse, or maybe it was a prayer for deliverance, coming through the bathroom door, stole Hutch’s complete attention.

“Fuck!”

The receiver cord pulled Hutch up two steps shy of the bathroom door. “Uh, Ruth. I, uh, think St…Dave needs…” he stammered into the phone.

“Go look after my boy, Kenneth,” Ruth told him indulgently.

“Yes, Mom,” Hutch said into the phone, grateful for her understanding.

“Tell him I love him,” Ruth added, and then the dial tone filled Hutch’s ear with its drone.

He would pass on Ruth’s message gladly, Hutch thought as he hurriedly hung up the phone and tapped on the bathroom door. And, while he was at it, he would do his best to deliver the same message in his own behalf.

~*~*~

Starsky woke to the comforting feel of a warm palm resting on his forehead and blinked in sleepy confusion, regretting the withdrawal when Hutch took his hand away.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you,” Hutch apologized and lowered himself to the coffee table. “How’s it going?”

Starsky yawned and stretched cautiously, checking it out before he answered. His gut still hurt, but it was an ache now, rather than the wicked cramps. No worse than he would be feeling after a really nasty flu bug. He checked his watch. “Been over an hour, so maybe I’ve stopped ‘going,'” he replied finally.

“Thirsty? I brought you some more juice,” Hutch said, picking up the glass from the table and offering it.

Starsky accepted the glass, his face scrunching up in disgust. “Have I ever told you how much I hate apple juice?” he asked, sipping at it nonetheless, just to see the pleased expression on Hutch’s face.

“And broth and green Jell-O,” Hutch added, parroting the complaints Starsky had been making all evening.

“Sorry,” Starsky mumbled and handed back the empty glass. “This is no fun for you, and all I can do is bitch,” he apologized, sincerely contrite and so damned grateful Hutch was here and willing to take care of him. And miserably guilty because of it. Only five weeks ago, Hutch had been the one needing a little TLC and what had Starsky done? “Sorry,” he mumbled again, remembering the young blond he had picked up the night Abby left Hutch and feeling like an even bigger louse. It was true that Hutch had all but booted him out the door, but Starsky had been all too willing to go. Finding out the next day that Hutch had tried to call to invite him back had only compounded his regret.

But that wasn’t going to happen again. The next time Hutch needed him, whether the big, dumb Blintz was willing to admit it or not, Starsky was going to stick to him like shit to an army blanket. Starsky grimaced/grinned at his own timely choice of analogy.

“‘S’Okay,” Hutch soothed, though he looked a little puzzled, as if he couldn’t quite figure out whether Starsky was serious or not. “You ready to crawl into bed and see if you can sleep the rest of the night?”

“You don’t have to hang around. You look…ah…pretty tired,” Starsky said diplomatically. In actual fact, Hutch looked just about as bad as Starsky felt.

“If I can get you to haul your sorry carcass into your bed, I’m planning on taking your place right here,” Hutch revealed, making no effort to stifle the yawn that punctuated the confession. “Too tired to drive.”

And too crippled to move in the morning if he slept on this couch. Starsky hauled the blanket up to his neck, and made a Tony-worthy production out of settling himself more comfortably on the unaccommodating cushions. “I’m too tired to move. You take the bed,” he instructed.

“Who’s going to keep you from midnight snacking on left-over pizza if I’m not out here to stand guard over the fridge?” Hutch protested, although Starsky knew Hutch didn’t really believe his own joking accusation.

Starsky worked one hand out from under the blanket and held it up, three fingers extended and his pinky and thumb folded in across his palm. “No eating ’til you tell me I can. Scout’s honor.”

“Were you ever a scout?” Hutch asked suspiciously.

“Hell, no,” Starsky confessed with a laugh, tucking his hand back under the covers. “I was a hoodlum. Or could have been, if it wasn’t for John Blaine,” he added.

Hutch laughed obligingly, ruffling Starsky’s hair before he climbed to his feet with such obvious exhaustion Starsky’s conscience stabbed him again. He grabbed for Hutch’s hand before Hutch moved out of reach, gave it a squeeze and then let go.

“Thanks for finding me,” he said softly, hoping his partner would hear everything he felt even though he couldn’t find the words.

“Just don’t get lost again, okay, Starsk,” Hutch said in the same intimate tone and, after turning out the lamp, disappeared into the bedroom.

“Won’t, babe,” Starsky whispered, too softly for Hutch to hear, but the promise was more to himself than Hutch anyway. He wasn’t going to disappear anymore when Hutch needed him, even if he had to sit on the stubborn bastard.

~*~*~

After delivering Joanna Haymes to her very relieved and grateful parents, Starsky and Hutch were free to return to Hutch’s apartment. Aching and exhausted, Hutch allowed himself to be led into the bathroom and pushed down onto the lid of the john so Starsky could attempt to clean up his cuts. His passive acceptance of Starsky’s nursing efforts didn’t last long. “Ow! Damn it, Starsky, that hurts,” he complained, yanking his arm away from his antiseptic-wielding friend.

It seemed to Hutch that Starsky was sadistically determined to find every little stinging cut and scrape and turn it into an agonizing wound with the damned peroxide. Still coming down off enough adrenaline to jump-start an ailing elephant, Hutch was in no mood to submit meekly to the torture. The universe had given Hutch a really hard time today, and he needed to return the favor. As so often happened, it was poor Starsky’s hard luck to be in the line of fire.

Starsky re-claimed the arm in an implacable grip and held the soaked gauze to another one of the many cuts Hutch had sustained. “You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? Couple of these look like they might need a stitch or two,” he asked, apparently oblivious to Hutch’s agitation. “Wouldn’t hurt to let a doc have a look at that elephant track in the middle of your chest, either,” he added practically.

“I already told you no,” Hutch snapped, then hissed as yet another cut was cleansed. He snatched both his arm and the gauze away this time. “Let me do it.”

Starsky didn’t fight over possession of the gauze but leaned back against the sink, crossed his arms over his chest, and tucked his hands under the opposite arms. “You think peroxide is going to hurt less just ’cause you use it yourself, you go right ahead, my friend,” he invited.

Further goaded by Starsky’s unusual sarcasm, Hutch stood up from where he had been sitting on the toilet lid and upended the bottle of peroxide over his right arm. Although it was better to get it all over with at once–like yanking off a sticky bandage instead of gingerly peeling it off one pulled-out hair at a time–he still had to struggle manfully to keep the fiery sting off his face.

“Stubborn bastard,” Starsky growled. Obviously at the end of his patience, he pushed back upright, grabbed up the bloody shirts Hutch had discarded, and left the room.

Hutch held back the grimace until Starsky left the room, but this time his reaction had nothing to do with the bite of the antiseptic he poured on his other arm. Starsky was only trying to take care of him, the same way Hutch had cared for Starsky after his rescue from the murderous cultists. Hutch had made silent promises to himself and Starsky then, and now, only six weeks later, he was breaking them.

Looking in the mirror as he daubed at the congealed blood on his forehead, Hutch met his own eyes, running the events of the afternoon back through his mind, skating over his own experiences to try, instead, to appreciate what his partner had gone through. Starsky had seen his best friend gunned down and had been given only one moment, a bloody grip, and a murmured “I thought you were dead,” to purge the terror he had to have felt. Hutch only had to imagine their roles reversed to know exactly what Starsky was feeling.

“You’re not just a stubborn bastard, you’re a heartless, selfish one, too,” he accused the image in the mirror. Of course Starsky needed to reassure himself that the worst hadn’t really happened, and it wouldn’t have hurt Hutch to let him.

It seemed Hutch still hadn’t learned his lesson, allowing the pattern he had recognized and sworn to break to repeat itself again. He should know by now that there were times when he needed to receive as well as give, and in actual fact, it could really be one and the same. Being shot at was never fun; being hit–even in a bullet-proof vest–was no picnic either. Hutch’s gaze dropped to the bruise on his chest–a truly nasty, purple/blue/black specimen that felt even uglier than it looked.

Hutch emerged from the bathroom in a much better frame of mind to accept whatever TLC Starsky needed to heap on him, and discovered his partner had found a distraction. Starsky was in the kitchen, elbow deep in soapy water in the sink. Damn. It looked like, once again, just as he had on so many other occasions, Hutch had driven Starsky into looking for some kind of busy work. An excuse to offer, in an indirect manner, what Hutch wouldn’t let him give directly.

“You don’t have to do a week’s worth of dishes just to show me you’re glad I’m alive,” Hutch said without leaving the bathroom doorway. He recognized the aura of energy around Starsky now and knew his rejection had frustrated the outlet for it Starsky needed. This time, Hutch wasn’t going to let it fray his nerves until he had to kick his partner out. No matter how gently he might have done it in the past, or how necessary it had seemed at the time, or how willing Starsky seemed to go, Hutch had still sent him away.

Starsky looked back over his shoulder, his hands busy in the sink. “‘S’Okay, Hutch. I know you don’t need a nurse, but it’s sure time you found another housekeeper. I’ll just finish these up and get outta your hair. You gotta be tired, running all over town like that,” he said and turned back to the dishes.

Double Damn. Starsky had already picked up on the message of  “get lost” as if Hutch had sent him a pre-paid telegram from Western Union. And if Hutch hadn’t sent that message so often in the past, he wouldn’t now be standing here wondering how to let Starsky know the telegram had been sent in error.

Hutch went to the alcove, found a fresh shirt and pulled it on, leaving it hanging open while he tried to think of some way to make amends. Maybe he should just march right over there, pull Starsky into his arms, and let the strength of his embrace communicate what words were too inadequate to convey. That Hutch was just as glad to be alive and just as shaken by the close call as Starsky was. What, after all, did he have to lose? In a few minutes, Starsky would run out of busy work and leave. Did it matter if he did the same because Hutch got a little soapy on him?

“Not one damned bit,” Hutch answered his own question in a self-indicting growl, and followed his plan right up to the moment he laid a hand on Starsky’s shoulder and Starsky jumped as if the contact was the last thing he expected.

“Sorry, babe,” Hutch apologized, using the endearment deliberately in the hope Starsky would understand that the cranky twin had been left behind in the bathroom.

“‘S’Okay. Guess this whole thing just has me, I don’t know, feeling creepy. Callandra…” Starsky hesitated, looked down at the soapy suds and flicked at a large bubble until it popped. “He just made me feel creepy, that’s all.”

“This from a guy who believes in vampires,” Hutch teased gently, keeping his hand firmly lodged on Starsky’s shoulder despite the restless shuffle his partner was dancing. “Forget the dishes, will you?”

Starsky did as Hutch requested, he even turned a little, though his expression was wary. “Getting on your nerves, huh?” he said with a wry twist of his lips that twisted Hutch’s heart.

“No, Starsk. You aren’t getting on my nerves,” Hutch promised and pushed on the shoulder under his hand until Starsky was forced to face him. The cautious wariness in Starsky’s eyes saddened him.

Not letting himself hesitate, Hutch tightened his grip and pulled Starsky to him, wrapping both arms completely around his friend. And then he waited for Starsky to react. It was maybe thirty seconds before the dripping fingers slowly lifted and found a grip on his shirt. Encouraged, Hutch then flattened both hands against the tight muscles of Starsky’s back. And again he waited, longer this time, before he felt that flat-palmed gesture returned on either side of his waist, the dampened material of his shirt pressed hard into his skin.

“I’m not dead, Starsk. Here and alive, and I’m sorry I was a stubborn bastard,” Hutch murmured and was rewarded when Starsky’s cautious grip suddenly became fierce. He returned it, reveling in the shift of muscle beneath his hands as Starsky relaxed into the embrace, concentrating on offering everything he thought Starsky needed and soaking it up himself. It lasted maybe a minute, then Starsky’s hands fell to his sides and he pulled away hard enough to give Hutch no choice but to let him go.

“Thanks, Hutch,” Starsky mumbled and turned back to the sink. “It was…I thought…” He stopped trying to come up with an explanation and plunged both hands back into the water.

Hutch hesitated, uncertain exactly what to do. Maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe Starsky’s needs weren’t the same as his. He thought his partner enjoyed the embrace, but it hadn’t lasted long. Long enough for Starsky, obviously, Hutch thought, gave up watching dishes being industriously scrubbed, and moved over to the couch.

“You want anything? A beer or something to eat?” Starsky asked above the sucking sound the last of the draining water made in the sink.

Just the tone of his voice alerted Hutch that he would soon be spending the rest of the evening alone, and he had no one to blame but himself. If he hadn’t been so surly to start with, hadn’t begun the chain reaction that saw Starsky, even before Hutch answered, rolling his sleeves back down as he moved to the chair to retrieve his discarded jacket, Starsky wouldn’t be in retreat.

“Going already?” Hutch asked, even though Starsky’s intentions were crystal clear. He wondered if Starsky would stay if he asked. Of course he would. And inside ten minutes they would both be ready to climb out of their own skins.

“Yeah. If you’re okay, I guess I should get outta here and let you sleep,” Starsky said as he pulled on his jacket, his movement becoming a stretch that was accompanied by a theatrical yawn. “Guess I’m kinda tired, too.”

Hutch accepted the obvious fabrication. Starsky looked anything but tired. In fact, he looked fully charged. Just like he always did when he needed to be needed, and Hutch became independent. It was a mystery to Hutch how he did it but, somehow by the next time they met, Starsky would have discharged that pent up energy, and they would be back to normal.

“Yeah, Starsk. Go watch one of your hokey late shows. Let Frankenstein or Godzilla make you forget all about Callandra.” Hutch paused to offer a smile. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Relief appeared first on Starsky’s face, followed by a flicker of something too brief for Hutch to interpret, then the smile was returned.

“Probably won’t be around ’til after lunch. Promised my Uncle Al I’d help him out in the morning,” Starsky told him.

Disappointed, but trying not to show it, Hutch stretched his legs out over the coffee table and produced a yawn that only started out as a sham. Perhaps he was more tired than he thought. “Call when you’re done. Maybe we’ll go over to Callandra’s place. Tell him thanks.”

“Yeah, sure,” Starsky agreed, though Hutch could see he wasn’t thrilled with the idea. With his hand on the door, Starsky half-turned, then seemed to decide against whatever it was he was going to say. “‘Night, Hutch.”

Hutch stared at the door for a while after it closed. Something was niggling at him. He almost felt as if he had tied a string around his finger as a reminder, and then forgot what the string was for. An uncomfortable feeling, but maybe, like Starsky, he was just unsettled by Callandra’s abilities.

He yawned again, hard enough that, for a second, he thought he would unhinge his jaw. Or maybe he was just tired. Whatever it was that wouldn’t present itself front and center in his mind tonight, might not be so elusive after a good night’s sleep. If not, maybe Callandra could ferret it out for him.

Feeling a little forsaken, but reminding himself it was his own fault, Hutch made his way to bed, turning out lights as he went. Next time, he promised himself as he stripped and crawled between the cool sheets, it would be different. Or, even better, maybe he would just have to figure out some way to stay out of trouble.

Less than ten minutes after leaving Hutch’s apartment, Starsky was driving the freeway as if the hounds of hell were on his tail. Starsky knew where he was going and he knew what he was going to do when he got there. But this time was different. Starsky wasn’t just driven tonight, he was running scared.

When Hutch had first hugged him, Starsky had almost heard the hiss of releasing pressure, as if the contact was a safety valve and Hutch had thrown it wide open. It had been so damned good. The reality of Hutch’s living, breathing body in his arms. The deep voice murmuring reassurance had calmed, for a few moments, Starsky’s worst fears. Then, just when Starsky truly believed the restless energy was gone and its place beginning to fill up with contentment, he ruined it. His cock got hard and, between one heartbeat and the next, pure platonic affection had become unacceptable lust.

Seventy-five miles from Bay City, Starsky arrived at the Gander’s Roost. He climbed out of the car and firmly shut the door, as if he could lock his friendship with Hutch inside the Torino and the overly loud slam could somehow act as closed brackets around it. He was going to take the lust inside, pick up a man, and pump all this inconvenient need into the willing body along with his semen. When he climbed back into this space where he shared so many hours with Hutch, the lust had to be gone.

Starsky didn’t even bother ordering a drink. He briefly checked for familiar faces, then concentrated on finding a man to fit his needs tonight. When he spotted the brunet strutting his stuff on the dance floor, Starsky didn’t hesitate.

“You mind?” he dismissed the man’s startled partner, cutting between them and immediately matching his movements to the dancer’s rhythm.

“You’ve got balls,” Starsky’s rudely-acquired partner complimented him, his gaze focused on Starsky’s crotch a moment and then slowly lifting to smile a welcome.

“Brass ones,” Starsky boasted, mimicking the once-over, dismayed to discover that, in his eagerness to find someone who didn’t resemble Hutch, he had gone to the opposite extreme, choosing a man that looked way too much like himself.

Determined, however, to follow his plan, Starsky returned the smile, reaching out when the music changed to a slower song and gathering the other man into his arms. He was grateful when no objection was offered, and without effort, his body remembered how to dance with someone his own height. He felt the press of a hard cock into his groin when the man performed a little hip thrust and rub, but it left him cold, his own cock contrarily remaining unaroused by this unfamiliar embrace.

This was a mistake. Starsky knew it, but stubbornly persisted, hoping the man in his arms wouldn’t notice his lack of response. Would remain oblivious to his lack of desire, the way Hutch had seemed to remain ignorant of the aching hardness the brief hug had caused. Starsky struggled to shut that memory away, to replace the sensory perceptions his body had gathered in those few brief moments in Hutch’s innocent embrace with the lustful zeal of the body he now held.

“A little slow off the mark, huh?” the brunet whispered in his ear, sliding his hands down Starsky’s back to cup the cheeks of his ass and squeezing encouragingly. “That’s okay,” he added and nuzzled Starsky’s ear. “Slow to come up, even slower to go down.”

Starsky shuddered when a tongue probed into his ear. He pulled his head away, barely resisting the urge to shake it to rid himself of the unwelcome wetness. He let go of the body in his arms and stopped dancing, grateful when his partner took the hint and released him immediately.

“No?” the brunet asked. He seemed unperturbed by Starsky’s behavior, his attention already beginning to wander to the other men around them.

“Might be a little too much like jerking off in front of the mirror,” Starsky excused his lack of interest to both himself and the other man. That was all it was, he was sure. He had simply jumped too soon.

The dancer’s eyes returned to Starsky briefly, cataloging the similarities of height and build and coloring, before offering an agreeing smile and a shrug. “Might be a kick, I guess. But, hell, night’s young. Right? Good hunting,” he offered and turned away.

Feeling like an idiot, Starsky left the dance floor as well. The embarrassment almost sent him out the door, but the ache of the desire he had felt for Hutch still throbbed inside him. He couldn’t take this back to Hutch. Instead of leaving, Starsky went to the bar and ordered a beer. Glass in hand, he found himself a hunk of wall to hold up and started over again. He just needed to take it slower this time, be a little more selective. Zero in on someone he could want and who would want him, too, before he made a move.

He just had to keep reminding himself, every time the shimmer of light caught at the blond hair of some stranger, that Hutch didn’t want him. More to the point, Starsky wasn’t in the market to trade what he already had with Hutch for the fleeting pleasure of sex. That pleasure had always been transitory, even before he had begun picking up big blond men for a few hours of anonymous lust, and he wasn’t going to let his confused libido screw up the best friendship he could ever hope to find.

It took almost the entire, slow-sipped beer before Starsky found another prospect. Despite his resolve, his eye kept skipping over every dark head, insisting on looking for that platinum shimmer until he forced his gaze on to the next man. With only a mouthful left in his glass, Starsky finally spotted a man who reminded him of neither himself nor Hutch. A redhead, sitting alone, who was watching the crowd the same way Starsky was.

When their eyes met, Starsky asked a silent question with the tilt of his head. Despite feeling no immediate desire, he accepted the invitation when the man nodded toward the empty chair beside him. He pushed away from the wall and started across the room.

The clichés ran through Starsky’s head as he skirted the busy dance floor and approached the empty chair.

“Mind if I sit down?” had already been answered.

“Buy you a drink?” was canceled out by the brimming glass that already sat on the table.

They were the kind of opening lines you used in a singles bar when they might lead to a one-night stand, a few dates or love everlasting. The possibilities gave them a certain honesty.

There were no possibilities to be considered tonight. The only honest opening line Starsky could offer would be “Wanna come upstairs and suck me off?” Crude, rude, and brutally to the point. But honest. At least as honest as Starsky could be while trying desperately to pretend he could want this redheaded, freckle-faced stranger. He was cute. Probably someone’s idea of lust on the hoof. But not Starsky’s.

Starsky changed course in mid-step and headed for the door, convinced by the near revulsion he felt that his mental salt peter had done the trick. The itch that had tormented him had disappeared it seemed, quieted by self-disgust.

Starsky pulled open the outside door, anticipating the rush of fresh air, and nearly ran face-first into the tall, blond stranger coming in. One look, and Starsky knew he was doomed. His cock, that had remained so uncooperative while he had stalked brunet and redhead, came up instantly hard as he met the stranger’s blue eyes, throbbing insistently when surprise left those eyes and was replaced by knowing certainty.

“After you?” the newcomer invited, waving a hand toward the stairs leading to the second floor.

Starsky nodded sharply, stalking to the stairs and starting up. All he could hope, as he climbed those stairs, was that when they visited Joe Callandra tomorrow, the proven psychic would have all his shields up like the Starship Enterprise going into battle.

~*~*~

Starsky had one hand wrapped around the pull-up bar on the side of the truck, and the other planted on the back seam of Hutch’s jeans. “Would you hurry up, for Christ’s sake,” he demanded, giving his partner an encouraging shove. Starsky was receiving all the encouragement to hurry he needed from the roar of more than three hundred pounds of enraged trucker issuing from the diner behind them. But the way Hutch was dawdling climbing into their rig, maybe he thought it would be fun to watch his partner broken up into kindling.

“I’m–oof–hurrying,” Hutch insisted, but to Starsky, it seemed like Hutch was moving in slow motion. “Let me get over before you–”

“Forget it, Hutch. I’m driving,” Starsky cut in, scrambling over Hutch’s sprawled body to reach the driver’s seat, and having little care, under the circumstances, where his knees and elbows might happen to land.

His butt had barely kissed the worn upholstery before Starsky was firing the diesel engine. In his urgency to escape, he cursed the massive rig, wishing he had the Torino under him.  “I may not be able to smoke this big elephant’s eighteen wheels,” he grumbled as he guided the truck out of the parking lot, “but neither can he.”

A glance in the mirror showed Starsky’s erstwhile assailant standing in the parking lot in a cloud of diesel exhaust, shaking his fist and, undoubtedly, mouthing dire threats for the future. Hopefully, the small mountain would be content to nurse his outrage until then, but Starsky wasn’t assuming anything. He kept his foot hard on the accelerator, impatiently working through the gears until they were rolling along a comfortable five miles above the limit.

“I hate to tell you this, Mr. Goose, but we’re headed in the wrong direction,” Hutch pointed out, laughter barely concealed beneath a far too serious tone.

“Won’t hurt for that guy to think we’re headed for Albuquerque,” Starsky grumbled, only a little embarrassed by his strategic withdrawal. His mother hadn’t raised any idiots and, as far as Starsky was concerned, there was no shame in retreating when your opponent outweighed you and your partner combined. “I’ll turn west in a few miles. We’ve still got plenty of time to make the next check-in.”

Hutch muttered what Starsky took to be an agreement with his plan, and then gave a little moaning grunt. “You could have been a little more careful with your elbows, pal,” he complained.

Starsky took his eyes off the mirror and the road long enough to shoot a quick glance toward the passenger seat and found Hutch rubbing his stomach, an exaggerated expression of pain on his face. Only then did Starsky realize that, in the heat of the moment, he had done what he had been doing his very best to avoid doing for the past six days–touched Hutch. That hadn’t been an easy feat to accomplish, imprisoned as they had been in the cab of the truck.

Now that he had climbed all over Hutch, however, it appeared the fear that had had him keeping his distance was groundless. In his haste to escape what even Starsky had to admit would have been his just desserts, he had crawled all over the lanky frame and his wayward cock hadn’t so much as twitched. Maybe the hard-on he had experienced in Hutch’s arms was only a fluke. Maybe getting his rocks off with an ersatz Hutch had done the trick. Or maybe it was just the present circumstances. Fear of losing either life or a few limbs could keep a guy’s mind out of his jeans.

Since what was at stake was way too valuable to be left up to maybes, Starsky decided to test the theory. Cautiously. Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached out and patted Hutch on the shoulder, going a little dizzy with relief when the contact didn’t flip the on switch in his balls. “Sorry about that, pal. Hope I didn’t rupture anything.”

Hutch shrugged off the hand, grumbling unintelligibly for a moment before he raised his voice to be heard above the engine’s racket. “I just hope you’ve learned your lesson. No more fooling around on that damned CB radio.”

“Who woulda thought a guy with a handle like Daisy’s Darling would be the size of the Empire State Building?” Starsky defended himself. “Makes him sound like a sissy.”

“The Puce Goose isn’t exactly a handle to strike terror to the heart, either,” Hutch countered, his laughter garbling the accusation so badly it was nearly impossible for Starsky to interpret.

“Hey, the Puce Goose has rhythm,” Starsky protested, although he didn’t really mind the teasing. He was so damned relieved to feel comfortable touching Hutch again, that giving his partner a laugh at his expense seemed a small price to pay. Besides, he had been working on a handle for Hutch that was sure to piss him off and was just waiting for the right moment to spring it on him.

The road behind them was still clear and Starsky took the next exit heading west. The late afternoon sun in his eyes reminded Starsky of the reason they were taking this extended trek around the highways and byways of western America, and it wasn’t because either he or Hutch had developed a sudden urge to experience truck stop dinning at its foulest.

They hadn’t even had a chance to sit down at their desks their first day back after the Haymes kidnapping, before Dobey was hauling them into his office and dumping their current assignment on them. Avoiding physical contact with Hutch wasn’t the only reason Starsky had been playing the fool on the CB radio. With the mention of one name, Dobey had dredged up a legion of old, painful memories, and Starsky had been doing his best to avoid dwelling on them. It wasn’t anywhere near Halloween, but Starsky had a host of ghosts and goblins clamoring for his attention.

Starsky sighed, recognizing the resigned weariness of the sound, and was, therefore, unsurprised when it brought an inquiry from Hutch.

“You ready to talk to me about it yet?” Hutch asked, his voice so soft Starsky barely heard him above the rumble of the diesel engine, as if Hutch was deliberately offering Starsky a chance to pretend he didn’t hear.

Starsky looked over at Hutch, becoming aware that he had been avoiding doing that, too. It was so nice to meet those blue eyes again, as if the natural order of Starsky’s universe had suddenly dropped back into place.

“No pressure. But I can see it’s bugging you,” Hutch added, concern and his willingness to help in any way he could in his eyes and the gentle expression on his face.

Starsky sighed again, but it was with relief this time, and offered Hutch a grateful smile. “Yeah. Gotta admit, I’m not looking forward to seeing Joe Durniak again,” he confessed, prepared to tell Hutch the whole story, or at least most of it. The parts he could bring himself to speak aloud. “I never really knew whether to love that murderous old bastard or hate him.”

~*~*~

Hutch glared at the rental car parked in the Torino’s usual spot outside Starsky’s apartment when he pulled the Galaxy up beside it. There was nothing wrong with the car in particular, but to Hutch, it was a symptom of a problem that went far deeper than the fact that Starsky was still driving it nearly a week after the Torino had been blown up by a brainwashed beauty. Hutch was almost certain he knew what the problem was, and he wasn’t all that confident he could help, but he had to try.

“Your mission, should you decide to accept it,” Hutch muttered as he climbed out of the car, barely resisting the temptation to push the driver’s door into the rental’s shiny blue paint. Getting Starsky to talk when he didn’t want to could truly be a mission impossible, but Hutch had accepted the assignment to look out for his partner a long time ago. That didn’t just mean drawing a bead on a bad guy who had Starsky in his sights. Sometimes, it meant dragging Starsky out of his own personal cover for his own good.

To Hutch’s surprise, Starsky was showered, shaved and dressed when Hutch knocked on his door, and he was invited in more cordially than he had expected.

“I thought you’d be out making the rounds of the car lots,” Hutch said with hardiness so patently false he could have passed for one of the slimy breed of salesman who sold clunkers to unsuspecting dupes.

Sure enough, Starsky was giving him that narrow-eyed scrutiny he usually reserved for the interrogation room. “If you thought that, what’re you doing here?” he countered.

Hutch threw up his hands in mock exasperation and returned the glare. “Okay. So I’m worried about you. If that’s a federal offense, then I’m guilty,” he said, holding out his arms, palms down and wrists together. “Go ahead and arrest me, Officer,” he added.

To Hutch’s relief, Starsky loosed an unwilling laugh, some of the guarded distance that had been a nearly visible aura around him fading. “Take too long to make out the paperwork,” he grumbled, then walked into the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, “You want a beer, or not?”

“Yeah, sure,” Hutch accepted the gesture of hospitality, uncertain as yet whether he had found an unexpected inroad, or if Starsky was only trying to lead him up a blind alley. Deciding he would find out soon enough, he made himself comfortable on the couch.

It looked like it might be little of both, Hutch decided when Starsky handed him a beer and joined him on the couch. All the signs were there, if you knew how to read the language they were written in, and Hutch considered himself pretty conversant in Starsky-speak, even the silent kind.

“You ready to tell me why you’re still driving a rental and your place looks like mine the day before FiFi comes to clean?” he asked, being careful to keep any hint of judgment out of his voice. He wanted to try to coax Starsky into talking to him, not blowing a gasket.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Starsky mumbled, his head down and his gaze locked on the beer bottle he held between cupped hands.

“Sorry, Starsky, but we’ve been friends too long. You can’t con me,” Hutch dismissed the claim of ignorance. “I know what it means when you stare down the neck of your bottle and pick at the label like a girl.”

The betraying thumb was immediately wrapped around the bottle and Starsky’s head sank a little lower.

Humor obviously wasn’t going to work today. Being emotionally vulnerable, even with Hutch, was probably Starsky’s definition of Hell, and it always made Hutch all the more determined to shield that vulnerability any way he could. Perhaps the best way Hutch could do that now would be to give his friend a place to start.

“When we were on the road, you told me about Durniak and your father. Why didn’t you tell me about the funeral?” he asked gently.

The sigh that accompanied the lift of Starsky’s shoulders sounded to Hutch to be made up of equal parts relief and resignation, as if Starsky had been stuck in neutral, spinning his wheels, wasting gas and burning rubber, and Hutch’s question had dropped his gear shift into drive. “Guess I didn’t want you to worry I might have divided loyalties,” he finally confessed.

Under almost any other circumstances, Hutch’s response to such an idea would be an inelegant snort, and maybe even a swat toward the down-bent head, but he sensed that Starsky was still working his way toward the true heart of the matter. “After seven years, do you think that’s even possible? That I don’t know where your loyalties lie?” he asked mildly, willing Starsky to look at him, to see the absolute certainty on his face.

“No,” Starsky admitted, the two letters drawn out to fill in a silent space while he fumbled for the next sentence. “Maybe it was my own loyalties I was worried about,” he confessed, his head lifting, his eyes pleading for understanding, for an answer from Hutch that he couldn’t seem to find alone. “Never really could find a way to explain it to myself that made sense. Not unless my pop….”

“And what Durniak said about you not being too happy when he started naming names makes it worse, huh?” Hutch guessed, resisting the need to reach out and connect. Every instinct clamored that the silent physical expression of comfort and support, that so often worked for them, was exactly what Starsky needed now. But ever since Starsky had reacted so skittishly to the embrace Hutch had initiated after the Haymes kidnapping, Hutch often found himself second guessing those impulses that used to be so perfectly in tune with Starsky’s needs. Hutch was no longer certain where his concern for his friend left off and his self-interest began. They seemed to have lost that middle ground where their needs overlapped, and Hutch missed it.

“And now I’ll never know,” Starsky agreed, shifting restlessly, easing away into the corner of the couch and then leaning forward again, back into Hutch’s personal space. The beer, apparently forgotten in Starsky’s lax grip, tipped dangerously, threatening an imminent spill.

“Don’t you?” Hutch challenged, reaching out to right the neglected bottle and then taking it from Starsky’s hands, setting it, along with his own bottle, on the coffee table. “Don’t you, Starsk?” he repeated, turning back to face his disturbed friend. “Durniak said it himself. He stood for everything your father despised, and Durniak didn’t strike me as a man who would pull his punches, or give his respect to someone who didn’t deserve it. Your father was his enemy, but you can respect an opponent. Respect him enough to regret his unjust death and want to show that respect to the world.”

“I know you’re right,” Starsky admitted, painful doubt still etched into his face despite the obvious desire to believe. “But, sometimes, you know, I can hardly remember my pop. It was such a long time ago. I want to believe in him, but….”

“No buts about it,” Hutch insisted, willing Starsky to believe him. “I never knew your father, but I know everything about him I need to know.”

“What, Hutch?” Starsky asked anxiously. “What do you know that I don’t?”

No longer able to resist connecting with his friend, Hutch finally reached out, laying his hand on Starsky’s shoulder, putting his conviction into his grip and his voice. “I know that he raised the finest man I’ve ever known.”

Starsky’s head dropped, but not before Hutch had seen the sheen of sudden, unshed tears glistening in the blue eyes. He let the silence stretch out between them, the need for words over now. He had said all he could say, everything he truly believed. All he could do now was hang on, let the strength of his hand channel the surety of his belief into Starsky.

He felt it happen, knew the moment that Starsky accepted Hutch’s truth and took it as his own, when the taut muscles under his hand suddenly eased. And still he waited, again letting silence surround them while Starsky regained control of himself, slowly easing his grip until his hand only rested on the firm flesh. When Starsky moved, began straightening and drawing away, Hutch patted him once and then let his hand slide away, allowed the physical bridge to be broken because the intangible one that served them so well seemed to be back, falling into place with a click that was almost audible.

“Thanks, buddy,” Starsky offered along with a smile that was only a little hesitant, his eyes meeting Hutch’s. “Guess I got a little lost for a while.”

That was Hutch’s cue. For the first time since Starsky had let him through the door, Hutch felt he knew exactly the right thing to do. It was time to step back from the emotional cliff edge, and let Starsky do whatever he needed to do to tuck it all away. Hutch’s job now was to offer his friend a little humor to hide behind, and then, depending on how Starsky reacted, distraction. “Any time, partner. I’m used to leading you around by now.”

Starsky gave him the affronted expression Hutch had been hoping for. With any luck, the distraction Hutch had to offer would now be the pleasant surprise he had hoped it could be when he had seen it on his way over.

“So, if we’re finished cruising the highways of your so-called brain, we have to get down to the Ford dealer on Columbus before the new, candy apple red Torino I saw on the lot this morning is snapped up by some other moron,” he declared in as matter a fact tone as he could manage.

“Torino?” Starsky echoed, giving Hutch a suspicious frown as if he was bracing for a punch line. “But I thought you hated my car.”

“Oh, I do, partner, I do,” Hutch reassured him, spreading his arms and sighing dramatically. “But you love it, and I guess I’m just gonna to have to put up with your lousy taste.”

“Does this mean you’re not gonna hassle me about my car anymore?” Starsky asked hopefully, as usual, when he was given an inch, going for the whole yardstick.

Laughing, Hutch left the couch, grabbing Starsky’s hand to pull him up, and then giving him a shove toward the door. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he warned.

Following Starsky’s much springier strut out the door, Hutch resigned himself to more years of riding around in a striped eyesore. He had hated the Torino the first time he laid eyes on it, and had hoped that Starsky might grow out of his taste for appalling automobiles. It appeared, however, that Starsky’s love affair with the ego machine hadn’t yet run its course. But if a new Tomato could put the smile back on Starsky’s face, Hutch was content. He didn’t have to love Starsky’s car, it was enough that he loved Starsky.

After the days of frantically searching for Hutch and then finding him pinned under his wrecked car, Starsky was almost afraid to believe this smiling stranger’s reassurances. It just seemed too good to be true. “You’re sure he’s going to be all right, Doc?” he asked again anxiously.

“Your partner is one lucky man, Sergeant,” Dr. Smith reported. “His leg is broken, but it’s not a complicated break. And the blood supply was never cut off to the leg itself. If it wasn’t for the exposure and dehydration, I might even have casted the leg and been willing to consider discharging him in the morning.”

“But what about his head?” Starsky demanded, remembering the dust-caked blood on Hutch’s face.

“Head wounds tend to bleed heavily, and it makes them look worse than they really are,” the doctor reassured him, holding up a hand to halt Starsky’s next objection. “And there doesn’t appear to be any concussion, but we’ll watch him closely through the night just to be sure.”

Somewhat mollified, Starsky asked the next two questions on his priority list. “Is he awake? Can I see him?” The first question didn’t matter anywhere near as much as the second. Despite his exhaustion, he had no intention of leaving until he saw Hutch. Right now, he didn’t think he would take the sworn word of the Pope unless he could confirm it with his own two eyes.

“No and yes,” Smith said with a tolerant smile. “We gave him a light sedative while we set the leg, so he’s probably drifting in and out. But you can see him just to make sure I’m not telling you fish stories. Room 105. Third door on the right.”

Starsky wasted no more time on the doctor, but hustled down to Hutch’s room, easing the door open and peeking around the edge. There were two beds in the dim room, both of them occupied, but Starsky had no trouble deciding which one of the sleeping patients was his partner. Not with that long leg, in its thigh-high cast, suspended above the bed.

Letting the door sigh closed behind him, Starsky made his way silently across the room until he stood beside the bed. Even with so little light, he could see Hutch’s condition was vastly improved. The IV attached to the arm tucked under the covers was providing water and minerals to repair the ravages of dehydration, the cuts on the sleeping face had been cleaned and bandaged, and some kind person had even made an effort to wash some of the dirt and grime from the handsome features.

Starsky wrapped his fingers around Hutch’s arm just above the limp hand, and felt the reassuring thump, thump, thump of Hutch’s steady pulse. Found safe and mostly sound. Starsky gave thanks to whatever deity happened to be listening.

“I’m gonna have a talk with your dentist as soon as you’re outta here,” Starsky threatened in a whisper that tried hard to stick in his throat. “Get him to cement a homing beeper into one of your fillings.”

“Huh?” Hutch grunted, shifting on the bed and wincing before his eyelids slowly lifted.

“Shh,” Starsky hushed him. “Didn’t mean to wake you up,” he apologized, stroking soothingly at the arm under his hand. He ran his fingers softly from wrist to elbow and back again, hoping to pet Hutch back to sleep.

“‘S’Okay,” Hutch slurred around a yawn. His eyes tracked aimlessly around the room for a few seconds and then closed, as if the effort of figuring out what all the shadows were was just too much for him. “Nurse’ll be doin’ it all night anyway.”

Starsky knew what the doctor’s “observe him through the night” meant. Every hour, on the hour, someone asking if you knew your own name. “Want me to find your badge. Pin it to this fancy dress they’ve got you in?” he offered.

Hutch laughed and then groaned as he shifted again. He opened his eyes and lifted his head trying, Starsky assumed, to figure out why his leg was being so uncooperative. “If I thought it would work…” he said, another yawn garbling the rest of the sentence.

Realizing he was keeping Hutch awake, Starsky mimicked the yawn. “I’m gettin’ too old to go night after night without sleep, so go back to sleep so I can get outta here,” he said gruffly, uncurling his fingers from around Hutch’s arm.

“Wait,” Hutch demanded, his hand grabbing at Starsky’s before he could move away from the bed. “Wanna thank you for saving me,” he insisted.

“You saved yourself,” Starsky reminded him. Even trapped and helpless, Hutch had done everything he could to save himself. “I just caught every pitch you threw. Sorry it took me so long,” he added, shivering as he remembered just how close it had been. Safe and mostly sound, he reminded himself as the grip on his hand slowly relaxed. “Go back to sleep, partner. I’m gonna go home and get my beauty rest.”

“Didn’t see nothin’ wrong with that mug of yours today,” Hutch insisted, the last word barely leaving his lips before he was out.

Gently, Starsky slipped his hand from Hutch’s grip. Safe and mostly sound. This time. “But I’m still gonna have a talk with your dentist,” he whispered and left Hutch to his healing sleep.

The lights of the parking lot seemed unnaturally bright as Starsky crossed it to reach the Torino, and every sound was overly loud. Symptoms of exhaustion. Some people suffered a dimming of the senses when they were over-tired; Starsky had always gone the opposite way. He seemed to acquire an almost super-sensory ability when sleep was only a half-remembered, five letter word, along with a charged feeling that….

Starsky paused as he finished unlocking the car door, his fingers wrapped around the handle, realizing belatedly how familiar this feeling was. Too familiar. Suffered only a few weeks ago, and again only a few weeks before that.

“Damn,” he muttered as he opened the door and slid onto the seat, recognizing that his jeans felt unusually tight because his cock was already almost fully erect.

“Hutch, you just gotta stop getting hurt or lost before I turn into a flaming faggot,” Starsky demanded of his   absent partner, glancing at the empty seat beside him and imaging just what Hutch might have to say in reply to that. Something ironic and unrepeatable in mixed company, most likely.

He shouldn’t have touched Hutch. If he had kept his hands to himself, Starsky might have had a hope of ignoring this insistent itch. Not touching Hutch tonight, however, had been as impossible as it was when Starsky first found him. No amount of training could have prevented him from cradling the battered face then, and even if he had recognized the need sooner, he certainly couldn’t have rejected the contact when Hutch reached out for him.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Starsky muttered, laying both arms on the steering wheel and then bending forward to rest his forehead on his folded hands. He was so tired he could hardly think. He should just go home and go to bed. But Starsky knew that would do him no good. This wasn’t just horny. The kind of need that he could appease with his own hand or in the arms of a woman. This was an itch that could only be quieted in the body of another man. A big, blond….

Starsky squeezed his eyes shut tight until the image of Hutch’s face disintegrated into a thousand little pressure sparkles. A blond, anonymous stranger. Not Hutch. Never Hutch. It didn’t matter what made it happen, Starsky knew how to make it go away. This restless, dangerous need didn’t have anything to do with the relationship he had with Hutch. That was love, caring. Brotherhood, even. The ache in his crotch was just…stress-induced hydraulics.

Whatever the cause, however, Starsky knew he was going to have to get rid of it. When Hutch was released from the hospital, he was going to need help. Help Starsky couldn’t give him if he couldn’t touch Hutch without getting a hard-on. Hutch was too handicapped to take care of himself.

“So, just do it,” Starsky growled and started the car. He glanced at his watch as he pulled out of the hospital parking lot and saw that it was almost midnight. That left him with only one option.

Three steps inside the door of the Down Under, Starsky had already picked out his blond du nuit, and stalked straight over to him.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said as if the guy had been waiting just for him. “Do I need to buy you a drink, or should we just go upstairs and get to it?”

The guy gave Starsky the once over, and then his crotch a second, slower scrutiny, before he lifted his eyes to Starsky’s. Damned if they weren’t blue.

“What’s your hurry?” Blue Eyes asked. “Gotta get home to the little woman?”

“Yeah. Sure. You comin’ or not?” he asked in his turn, nodding toward the stairs leading up to the second floor. He couldn’t have cared less what this stranger thought of his morals.

“After you,” Blue Eyes invited as he left his bar stool and drink behind.

Starsky led the way, aware of the presence crowding close behind him even before a hand cupped the under-curve of the cheek of his ass and a thumb slid up and down the back seam of his jeans. Fat chance, he thought, but decided he would deal with that issue if and when he had to. In the meantime, he tolerated the bold hand, letting it feed the energy already writhing inside him.

The first room was unoccupied, and Starsky stepped into it. He had time to scan it only once before Blue Eyes had him by the arm and was pushing him up against the wall, his groin already rubbing in a primitive rhythm against Starsky’s jean-shrouded cock.

The one problem with picking up guys like Hutch was they were bigger than Starsky. Sometimes that meant he had to take the time to teach the lesson that smaller didn’t necessarily mean weaker, when all he was interested in was getting down to the serious business of fucking. Hoping to teach that lesson quickly tonight, Starsky grabbed hold of the restless hips and pulled the blond in even harder, arching his back away from the wall to increase the pressure.

But when hungry, demanding lips sought his, Starsky turned his head.

“I didn’t take you for one of those. If you don’t kiss, you aren’t queer, huh?” Blues Eyes growled.

Sometimes the truth could be an elusive commodity, but while he stared into a pair of blue eyes more like his own than the ones he wanted to see this close, Starsky’s truth made an unforeseen appearance. Sad, stupid and hopeless as it was, he wanted to save kisses–that sweet expression of emotion–just in case the impossible ever became possible, to share with Hutch alone.

“I’m one of those,” Starsky agreed in the voice he used to tame street whippos and wise guys.

Blue Eyes missed the warning, grabbing Starsky’s head to hold it still and trying to force the issue. Starsky ignored the grip, drawing on skills learned to defend himself against men intent upon stealing far more than a kiss. Skills that hadn’t all been learned at the Police Academy. Pushing hard at the hip bones he held, he created enough space to get his hand between them and clamped a threatening fist around vulnerable balls.

“You can kiss my cock. You can kiss my ass if that’s your kink. But no kissing on the mouth. You got that?” he demanded, and then carefully tightened his fingers into a grip just the wrong side of painful.

~*~*~

Hutch sat on the staircase leading up to his apartment, facing the street door and about five steps up from ground level, his plaster-encased leg stretched out in front of him. “This is embarrassing,” he complained. “I feel like an idiot.”

Starsky grinned at him from the bottom of the stairs. “It’d be worse if I took you to my place.”

“True,” Hutch conceded. At least his stairs were inside where no one else could see his undignified position. He reached back to put his hands on the step behind him, braced his right foot on the stair just below his butt, and then heaved himself up to the next riser, dragging the heavy cast with him. “This is hard work.”

“Huggy offered to have his cousin come over with his crane,” Starsky reminded him. “We could’ve hung you in a hammock and swung ya in the window.”

“With the luck I’ve had lately, the wind would come up,” Hutch said, and repeated the awkward crab walk up to the next step. Starsky, he could see, wasn’t making the connection. “Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top,” he sang.

Starsky followed up the steps until his shin pressed into Hutch’s knee, and Hutch had to tip his head back to see the serious expression on his face.

“No more falls,” Starsky insisted, somber eyes holding Hutch’s. “You’ve been hurt enough. Didn’t think I was gonna find you in time.”

“I know,” Hutch said softly, leaning forward to give Starsky a pat on the thigh, earning himself a faint smile.

It was another one of those moments, so frequent since he awoke the morning after his rescue to find Starsky standing over him, that Hutch had lost count of them. Open, caring declarations from Starsky that, at first, had startled Hutch. He didn’t know where they were coming from–perhaps the same place Starsky’s usual high-octane response to Hutch being injured had gone–but Hutch wasn’t about to complain about the exchange.

Starsky was just as efficient as ever. He provided edible food while Hutch was in the hospital and figured out practical ways to get around Hutch’s temporary disability. However, the nervous aura that usually haloed him after Hutch was hurt was missing. It was a difference that made all the difference in the world, because it let Hutch relax, open himself to the comfort Starsky offered, and to offer the same in return. He hadn’t been tempted to pretend a self-sufficiency he wasn’t capable of, nor dismiss the ordeal he had suffered, and his present disability, as nothing more than minor inconveniences.

“Wait here a minute,” Starsky instructed when Hutch finally made it to the landing. “Scoot over a little.”

“I don’t ‘scoot,'” Hutch objected, but complied with the request, adding a smile to ensure Starsky knew he wasn’t serious. “You aren’t leaving me here, are you?” he added when Starsky, carrying crutches and overnight bag, squeezed by him. He twisted around to watch his partner open the apartment door and disappear inside.

“Nope,” Starsky confirmed when he reappeared. He held out his empty arms and grinned. “Consider these your own personal block and tackle. Just scoot back here away from the stairs, and I’ll have you up on your feet–foot–in no time.”

Hutch eyed his partner dubiously. “Without giving either of us a hernia?” he asked, but he had to admit that Starsky had got him up the stairs safely when Hutch had feared it might be an impossible task. He really had felt uncertain of both his balance and his strength to try to tackle the stairs frontward with the heavy cast dragging at him. He just needed to keep putting his faith in Starsky.

“No hernias,” Starsky promised. “Now just slide back and hold out your arms.”

Hutch did as instructed, lifting his arms and then bringing them back down when Starsky bent and wrapped both arms around him from behind. He covered Starsky’s hands with his, his body tensing in preparation for this last effort.

“Easy,” Starsky murmured. “Just let me do the work, okay,” he requested. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Hutch agreed.

Hutch helped all he could, bracing his booted foot and pushing, but his strength wasn’t yet back to normal. By the time Starsky had him on his feet, Hutch was exhausted and sweating and grateful for the hands that steadied him as Starsky moved around to his side.

“I know you’re tired, but we’re almost there. Just let me do the work,” Starsky repeated as if he feared Hutch might, at this late date, suddenly develop a case of rampant independence.

“What would I do without you, my friend?” Hutch asked. It was a question that, once, he might have posed in only the most teasing manner. But not today. Not when the proof of his mortality was still so close at hand, and the lesson of just how unique their partnership was so fresh in his mind. He lifted his arm and wrapped it around Starsky’s shoulders.

“Not something you ever have to worry about,” Starsky promised, a pat to Hutch’s stomach seeming to set a seal on the pledge.

The corridor that had seemed about a hundred miles long was, Hutch found, not so formidable a distance with Starsky’s strength to lean on. When they arrived at the door, Hutch saw that Starsky had already prepared him a comfortable nest on the couch, and that every possible obstacle had been removed from his path. He sighed softly as Starsky first eased him down against the pillows and then lifted the casted leg and set it down on a pillow as well.

“Give me your jacket,” Starsky instructed and when Hutch complied, went to hang it in the closet. “You don’t look very comfortable,” he said when he had returned to Hutch’s side. “Put your other leg up.”

Hutch pointed at the boot at the end of his right leg. “I wasn’t born in a barn. You don’t put your feet up on the couch with your shoes on. It’s rude.”

“Rude, my ass,” Starsky countered. “Uncomfortable is what you mean,” he added with a grin. He held out his arms again, just as he had at the top of the stairs. “So now I’m your boot-taker-offer.”

“Bootjack,” Hutch corrected him just to enjoy the exasperated expression Starsky gave him.

“Just give it here,” Starsky commanded.

Dutifully, Hutch leaned back and lifted his leg, bracing himself to resist when Starsky started pulling. It was the exact reverse of the procedure they had followed less than an hour ago to get the boot on.

Starsky tugged and tugged, changed his grip and tugged again, before lowering Hutch’s leg to the floor and straightening back up. He stood over Hutch, hands on hips, staring down at the stubborn footwear.

“Now, aren’t you sorry you didn’t bring me a sneaker?” Hutch asked. He had wondered about the choice of boots when Starsky showed up at the hospital, but had been too anxious to leave to question it.

“I wanted you to have the extra height to make up for the cast,” Starsky explained. “But I got it on there, I’ll get it off,” he promised, continuing to study the problem. After a minute, the light of discovery went off on his face. He turned his back to Hutch, bent, and held his hands back through his splayed thighs. “Okay. Let me have it,” he commanded.

Hutch couldn’t help it, he roared, falling back against the arm of the couch and laughing so hard he could barely breathe. He couldn’t have lifted his leg if his life had depended on it, not even when Starsky straightened and twisted around to glare down at him.

“S-sorry,” Hutch gasped between paroxysms of hilarity. “You j-just have no i-idea how many times–”

“Very funny,” Starsky growled menacingly, but there was a blush rushing up from his neck into his cheeks.

“S-sorry,” Hutch repeated, trying hard to swallow down the bubbles of laughter that kept tickling his throat.

Starsky glared a moment longer, then relented, an affectionate smile spreading across his lips as the blush faded. “You want that boot off or don’t you?” he asked, the suppressed amusement in his voice taking the impatience out of the demand.

Mutely, Hutch nodded, biting his lip to prevent himself from starting all over again when Starsky again turned away from him and bent. This time, he grabbed Hutch’s foot and lifted it himself.

Starsky resumed his battle of man against leather, tugging and tugging, changing his grip and tugging some more.

The imp, that Hutch suspected was the result of his relief at being both alive and home, took possession of him again when Starsky bent a little lower. “I think it’s about time you retired these jeans,” he advised, struggling to get the warning out before he started laughing again. “They’re looking a little threadbare from where I’m sitting.”

The boot suddenly slid free and Starsky staggered forward a couple of steps. He turned and raised it in mock threat, but then dropped it to the carpet and resumed that hands-on-hips stance. “Just how many pills did the nurse slip you before we left the hospital?” he asked.

“None. Cross my heart,” Hutch assured him. “I guess I’m just…” He let the explanation remain unfinished, unable to find the words to say how grateful he was that Starsky had found him. He had a fuzzy memory of saying thank you, but wasn’t sure if it had only been a drug-induced dream, and it suddenly seemed very important. “Starsk, I did thank you for finding me, didn’t I?”

“‘Course you did,” Starsky reassured him. He bent and pulled a light blanket up to Hutch’s chest. “You need anything?”

“Nothing I can think of at the moment,” Hutch replied, relaxing into the cushions.

Hutch wasn’t surprised when Starsky took that as his cue to occupy himself. He watched Starsky pick up the overnight bag, but didn’t track the journey as his partner carried it to the alcove. He closed his eyes and listened to Starsky unpack the small bag, following the opening and closing of drawers and the trip to the bathroom to put away shaving gear and other toiletries only by the sounds his partner made. Starsky was doing exactly what he always did when Hutch was incapacitated–taking care of practical matters. But he was easy about it.  No frantic energy, and no feeling Hutch could discern, that Starsky was anxious to be anywhere else. Maybe the few days in the hospital really had made all the difference.

Hutch realized he was drifting off to sleep, automatically tried to fight it, then relaxed. He was tired and he could sleep if he wanted. He had no doubt that Starsky would be there when he woke up.

~*~*~

Starsky wasn’t just in the apartment when Hutch woke up, but was right there, sitting on the floor with his back propped against Hutch’s hip. Next to him were Hutch’s crutches along with some scraps of material, scissors, and a sewing kit.

“Hey,” Hutch said to attract his partner’s attention that seemed to be on nothing in particular. “How long have I been asleep?”

Starsky turned his head and smiled indulgently. “Couple of hours,” he replied.

Hutch yawned and stretched, then cautiously turned until he lay on his side. “What’ve you been doing?” he asked, a wave of his hand indicating the items on the carpet.

Starsky picked up one of the crutches and handed it to Hutch. “I just put some extra padding around the top. I spent a whole summer on crutches once when I was a kid, and I remember how sore your armpits get.”

“You’re gonna spoil me,” Hutch warned. “And that reminds me, I have to write you a check for the car.”

“It’s okay,” Starsky said, a grin warning of some forthcoming outrageousness. “I can afford the fifty bucks.”

Hutch recognized what Starsky was doing–using humor to help them pull back a little, plant their feet firmly on the solid ground of their friendship and partnership, and leave behind the heightened mutual emotional dependency this latest incident had caused. To his surprise, Hutch realized he didn’t want to go back and would miss the unguarded openness Starsky had been giving him. He liked it. Liked it a lot. He knew, however, that they couldn’t work this way. It could cripple them on the street. They had to have a little distance, some objectivity, or they would be falling all over each other all the time. Wouldn’t they?

Hutch wasn’t sure he knew the answer to that question anymore, so he followed Starsky’s lead. He shook his head and sighed in mock-exasperation. “That salesman must have seen you coming. I never pay more than thirty-five bucks for a car.”

“I know,” Starsky agreed. “But it being the last condemned hunk of junk on the lot and all, I figured it wouldn’t kill me to splurge. And that horn, well, that really was the kicker. Knew you’d love that.”

“And so will every criminal we try to sneak up on,” Hutch pointed out, realizing only as a slow, evil grin spread over Starsky’s face that he had been led into this one with his eyes wide open.

“Guess we’ll just have to take my car from now on,” Starsky sprung the trap.

Hutch hit him with a pillow, and Starsky hit him back with it. This could escalate and, although it would be fun, Hutch also recognized–when Starsky easily scrambled clear of his next shot–that he was at a decided disadvantage. He stuffed the weapon back under his head.

“Christine called while you were napping,” Starsky told him as he climbed to his feet. “Wanted to know if you’d asked me yet. Asked me what?”

“Damn, I knew I forgot something,” Hutch said, although he suspected he might have forgotten on purpose. He wished he had been awake to take the call himself, but accepted that he would have to satisfy Starsky’s curiosity now. “She’s been wanting me to set you up with a friend of hers. When she visited me yesterday, she asked if it would be okay if they came over tonight. They’d cook and then maybe we could play Monopoly. I think she’s a little…uhm…” Hutch trailed off, not exactly sure how to explain Christine’s complaint that she sometimes felt like a spare tire when she spent time with both of them. A feeling that, actually, ought to belong to Starsky.

“In need of a little feminine reinforcement, huh?” Starsky finished diplomatically.

Hutch nodded, grateful for the unusual tact and Starsky’s understanding. Girlfriends of either of them who had trouble accepting their close friendship usually didn’t last long. Hutch liked Christine enough to want to continue seeing her, although he already knew that what they had wasn’t going to develop into anything serious. He had been surprised to discover that he was just as content with that state of affairs even if it did contradict his usual pattern.

Hutch knew he was a man who was always looking for love, for someone special to weave into idealistic dreams of forever. Maybe he was just maturing enough to accept some dreams had to come to you, that the harder you chased them, the more elusive they became. In the meantime, Christine’s undemanding presence in his life was comfortable enough. She seemed to understand that, when it came to his friendship with Starsky, there was no tape to break. Starsky wouldn’t even have to enter the race to win it.

“So, you wanna call her back. Feel like a home cooked meal?” Starsky asked.

“You mean you aren’t planning on feeding me?” Hutch asked, trying to gauge whether Starsky was interested or not. He didn’t seem to be. There was none of the alert focus that usually possessed him when a possible new conquest loomed on the horizon.

“You already know I can’t cook worth beans,” Starsky reminded him and, although he tried to cover it, he did seem just a little disappointed. “Huggy was gonna bring some stuff over later,” he added with a self-depreciating shrug for his shortcomings that tugged at Hutch’s heart.

Hutch accepted the telephone Starsky handed to him, but didn’t pick up the receiver. “Maybe it would be better if we waited until I’m a little more…mobile. I haven’t met this friend and, who knows, you might want to run for cover when you do.”

“Don’t worry, buddy, I wouldn’t leave you outnumbered,” Starsky reassured him, his mouth smiling to reinforce the teasing, but the eyes that held Hutch’s stripping away any suggestion of humor, making the words a solemn vow.

Hutch lifted the telephone and offered it back to Starsky. “Huggy’s leftovers sound good for tonight,” he decided even though he sensed that distraction might be what they needed, that they weren’t going to be able to find that necessary distance without it. It would, however, be weeks before the cast was removed from his leg, and longer still before he could return to the streets. Tomorrow was soon enough. “You can meet Terry some other time.”

Hutch knew he was still very drunk. Not as drunk as he had been when he made the call to Canada, but far from sober certainly. He was still inebriated enough that he wasn’t entirely sure of the exact progression of events that found him with a slowly calming Starsky in his arms, but the distance from their grief the alcohol had offered them both had been ripped away. Starsky was growing heavier in his arms now, however, and Hutch knew he had to find the energy to perform one more act of kindness tonight.

“Come on, Starsk. Time to sleep it off,” he whispered, gently easing his friend away from him. He scraped up a half-smile from somewhere under the grief and offered it to Starsky as he took in the flushed face.

“Be better in the morning, huh?” Starsk asked, for a few seconds, that not-quite-abandoned child that was a small part of him showed through the man trying so hard to be stoic.

It wouldn’t be better, of course. Not tomorrow morning or the next, but time would eventually take the edges off. Starsky knew that as well as Hutch, and wasn’t really looking for pretty lies.

“No, not tomorrow,” Hutch gave him the truth because pretty lies were never a part of what they were to each other. “Be hung over then, too. But some morning down the road, it’ll be better,” he promised. “Come on.”

Supporting each other, neither of them coordinated enough to make the climb to their feet anything but a sad, comic routine, they nevertheless eventually stood amid the shambles of the Monopoly game. Leaving the inanimate charge Terry had given him discarded on the kitchen floor, Hutch shepherded the other, far more precious legacy to his bed. Somehow, despite Starsky’s fumbling aid and his own fat, useless fingers, Hutch got his partner stripped down to tiny briefs and tucked under the covers.

“‘Night,” he said, almost certain he had enough steam left to make it to the couch.

“Don’t go,” Starsky mumbled.

The request confused Hutch’s beer-soaked brain long enough for Starsky to reach for his hand and give it a tug.

“Virtue’s safe,” Starsky reassured with drunken earnestness. “Just don’t wanna be alone.”

If he had been less drunk, less tired, or less grief-stricken himself, Hutch might have hesitated, but he wasn’t less of any of those painful emotions tonight, just a whole lot more of lonely and sad.

By the time he made it around to the other side of the bed, Hutch had managed to lose his shirt and shoes. The rest was going to bed with them. He knew he just didn’t have the sense to sort out the intricacies of belt and other complicated fastenings. He fell onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling until the room stopped swaying. He had forgotten to turn out the lights. “Let Ollie do it,” he mumbled, and rolled onto his side to face Starsky.

Dark blue and red-rimmed eyes regarded him seriously out of a face slowly going slack with approaching sleep.

“I’m not sorry, you know,” Starsky said, then paused as if realizing he hadn’t said what he had intended. “Sorry she died, but not sorry I loved her.”

Hutch nodded his understanding, his heart aching that he couldn’t find some way to take all of Starsky’s sorrow into himself. He was used to mourning love that died or went away or just never worked out. He had finally stopped looking for it, learned to accept fleeting moments of physical pleasure with some woman, and let Starsky be the balm that filled up all the other empty spaces inside him.

“Terry taught me somethin’ I never knew about…about me,” Starsky confessed, his expression an odd, sleepy mixture of wonder and disbelief. “Never thought I could be a lover and a friend. Not to the same person.”

“Yeah. Nothing like it when it all comes together like that,” Hutch agreed, trying to remember if he had ever felt that himself. He didn’t think so, but maybe the alcohol was clouding his memory. It was a lovely concept, nevertheless, that he could appreciate for all its possibilities. “Find somebody who’s everything.” He let himself dream aloud of some nebulous future perfection, then remembered that Starsky’s everything had been stolen away from him. “Christ, Starsk, I’m–”

An uncoordinated hand found its way out from under the covers and fell gently against Hutch’s lips, putting an end to his apology.

“‘S’Okay. Only had it a little while,” Starsky said, interrupting himself with a yawn. “But it was worth it. Worth the pain,” he mumbled, and then turned over onto his side away from Hutch. A moment later, he was snoring.

Poor baby, Hutch thought, still drunk enough for the image to make him laugh just a little. A very small sound that, if he hadn’t made it himself, he wouldn’t have heard. He felt so sad, for himself as well as Starsky, but there was also one tiny corner of his brain, maybe more drunk or less, that wouldn’t let him hide the whole truth. It made him face the fact that relief was also a part of what he felt right now. He had cared for Terry, too, but her death meant he didn’t have to share Starsky. You could only have one best friend at a time, and Hutch knew he needed to be Starsky’s.

With a groan of self-disgust, Hutch rolled over, too, pulled the pillow over his head, and hoped that tomorrow, while his head ached and his belly rebelled, he would be too busy suffering to remember he had ever had such a thought.

~*~*~

Hutch identified each of the guns he had collected, passing them over to one of the uniformed officers who were helping clean up the scene. ” Fargo’s. Williams’. Knight’s. Unknown.”

“Fargo. Williams. Knight. Unknown,” the officer echoed as he stowed each weapon into the evidence box in the cruiser’s trunk. “Anything else, sir?”

“No,” Hutch said, waving a hand to dismiss the officer, noticing that hand was still rock steady. He had started shaking inside the moment he realized Dobey might well have blown Starsky’s cover to one of the vigilantes, but that internal quaking was familiar. It was only adrenaline, and years on the street had taught Hutch how to make that biological flood work for him instead of against him. To let it make him sharp and fast and able to put it all together in time to ride like the fucking cavalry….

The leash was beginning to slip. Hutch recognized the symptoms of imminent adrenaline crash and forced himself to stop charging efficiently around the scene, to lean casually against his car, and find a little busy work for those rock steady hands of his. But, above all, to stop thinking. To turn off the loop of endless, gruesome scenarios that had clamored for his attention while he had raced from Ginny’s place, to Knight’s apartment, and finally to this would-be killing ground. To tune out the gibbering moron in his brain that had insisted on reminding him that the last words he had spoken to Starsky were a self-centered whine. He hadn’t even wished his partner good luck.

“Hutchinson, where’s Starsky?” Dobey demanded, joining Hutch as he thumbed a bullet into the last empty chamber of his gun.

“Looking for his rock,” Hutch said and slid the Magnum back into the holster under his left arm. He wondered if that could really be his voice, sounding so calm, so reasonably at odds with the frenetic rush of his thoughts.

“His rock?” Dobey echoed impatiently.

The captain couldn’t possibly be expecting Hutch to explain Starsky’s behavior. Dobey ought to know better by now. Hutch suppressed a bubble of amusement that, if he let it out, he feared might emerge as a giggle. “His rock,” he repeated, deadpan, as if the two words really ought to be self-explanatory.

Dobey shrugged, then pointed toward the dark recesses where Starsky had disappeared. “Well, go find him. He’s got a report to write.”

Obediently, Hutch trotted deeper into the disused storm drain. It got darker the further inside he went, the glow from the headlights of arriving and departing cruisers shortening and then lengthening his shadow on the graffiti embellished walls around him. He heard Starsky before he saw him clearly, the sound of his partner’s steps tracking back and forth was accompanied by an ongoing grumble of complaint, too muffled to be understood.

Starsky was probably stubbornly cursing the darkness instead of taking the time to get a flashlight out of the LTD’s glove compartment. Hutch hesitated, wondering if he should go get one himself. When he couldn’t make so simple a decision, Hutch realized that reaction had caught up with him. By the time he had penetrated the storm drain deeply enough to distinguish Starsky from the rest of the shadows, the inner shaking that had trembled decently out of sight until now had begun seeping insidiously into muscle and bone.

“Time for a breather,” Hutch mumbled, and leaned against the damp cement wall, his eyes on Starsky’s restless search.

“Come on, Iggy. Where the hell are you?” Starsky muttered. “Hutch? That you?” he asked without looking Hutch’s way. “Come on over here and help me find my rock. I know I threw it over here somewhere.”

Hutch didn’t reply immediately. He felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him, and he swallowed hard a couple of times to make sure his lunch didn’t follow. He remembered Starsky telling him that he thought his pet rock was ignacious. Was it only two days ago? Two days? Two years? Didn’t matter anyway. Hutch groped for the dangling thread of his thought, but couldn’t seem to catch it.

“Iggy saved my life,” Starsky reported, still searching the opposite side of the drain, his head down and swinging from right to left and back like a bloodhound trying to catch a lost scent.

Hutch caught the thread. Iggy. Short for ignacious. Which should have been igneous. Leave it to Starsky. That Hutch was able to follow his partner’s logic brought that hysterical giggle back into his throat. They were spending far too much time together, obviously. Or not enough. Every time they separated, it seemed one or the other of them ended up in trouble. The urge to laugh disappeared completely.

“Huggy has a whole bag full of rocks,” Hutch reminded Starsky impatiently, wanting out of this place now. The shadows Starsky threw on the walls reminded Hutch of the scenarios his adrenaline-charged imagination had conjured for him earlier. “You can buy another one.”

“No way,” Starsky insisted, bending to heave aside what appeared to be a set of rusty bed springs. “If it wasn’t for Iggy, I’d be….”

…Helplessly bound with wire around his wrists. Forced to kneel in supplication. A gun put to his head and then….

“Found it!”

Hutch forced his eyes open, uncertain exactly when or why he had closed them. Trying to force away the all too vivid image of arriving too late and finding his partner methodically slaughtered? He struggled to make the reality of Starsky–alive and well–striding toward him superimpose itself over the bloody ghost of might-have-been.

“I still can’t believe Fargo fell for it,” Starsky said as he approached. He tossed the rock up into the air, caught it, and gave it a smacking kiss.

Alive and well and running off at the mouth. Dissipating adrenaline was taking its own unique path out of Starsky’s system. A flood of words often provided Starsky with catharsis. The familiarity took a little of the quake out of Hutch, drove his worst nightmare back a few unwilling steps. The wall at his back was still more necessary support than Hutch wanted to admit but, cell by cell, the static seemed to be clearing from his brain.

“Fell for what?” Hutch asked when Starsky reached him. He didn’t think he was quite ready to record the details, wasn’t entirely sure he cared what miraculous progression of events had ended in Starsky marching Fargo out of the shadows, but he definitely wanted Starsky to keep talking. The sound of the familiar voice was resonating the post-rush buzz in Hutch’s head into a soothing mental massage.

“Hutch?” Starsky asked instead of answering the question.

Starsky was close enough that Hutch could see his face now, and if he could see Starsky, that meant Starsky could see him. Explanation enough for the sudden drop of his voice into that deepest, most intimate tone that posed a dozen unspoken questions. More than enough reason for the hand that reached out and came to rest on Hutch’s shoulder.

Caught out. Starsky had to be able to feel the trembling that coursed through Hutch’s body. There was no sense trying to deny it. “Adrenaline,” he admitted to the concerned inquiry Starsky’s tone had made of his name.

Starsky’s hand tightened. “Mashed potato knees, too, huh?” he confessed and sympathized with the same brief acknowledgement.

Hutch found a weak smile and gave it to his friend, accepting the same in return and the silent understanding of the strong grip that remained on his shoulder. They had done this so many times. Allowed a single point of contact and a few moments of silence to communicate their shared relief. Beat the specters into submission. Just ghosts. Without form. Without substance. Until next time.

Hutch sighed. He had taken it one step too far. Peeked into the future instead of just accepting the present triumph. Damn.

“I didn’t think…I was afraid I wouldn’t get here…” Hutch couldn’t finish the mumbled confession, as if expending the breath to speak it would give the fear more power over him than it already possessed.

“You were just like the cavalry,” Starsky reassured him.

“Yeah, that’s me. General Custer,” Hutch tried to joke, the intended humor ground up by the gravel in his throat and spat out instead as a bitter indictment. He felt Starsky’s grip loosen and wanted to grab at his hand. He still needed the lifeline as much as he needed the clammy cement at his back. If Starsky let go now, Hutch was going to sink beneath an incoming tide of despair.

“Yeah. Old Yellow Hair,” Starsky agreed, his hand sliding up into the back of Hutch’s hair and finding a new grip there. “Com’ere ya big mushball,” he demanded, and pulled Hutch into his arms.

Hutch clung to the warm, solid, breathing reality, feeling the regular rhythm of Starsky’s heartbeat invade him, crossing his heart like an electrical current and slowing it, easing the panicked racing that had thrummed in his chest while he had enforced calm on his brain. Safe. Starsky was safe, and therefore, so was Hutch. He could let the fear possess him, the trembling own him. He could be, for a few minutes, as nakedly vulnerable as he would have been if he hadn’t arrived in time.

“Shhh. ‘S’Okay. ‘S’Okay. Didn’t happen. Just let it go.” Starsky chanted the reassurance, the strength of his arm around Hutch’s back tempered steel, while a velvet hand stroked and petted his hair.

With a weary sigh that tried hard to be a sob, Hutch surrendered to that hand and laid his head on Starsky’s shoulder. The scent of sharp, acrid fear sweat stung his nostrils, but beneath it, strong and familiar and reassuring, was Starsky’s personal aroma. Gun powder and cologne and healthy male. Starsky.

“Hutchinson! Did you find him?”

Dobey’s bellow shattered the spell that surrounded Hutch. He wasn’t ready to be separate yet, to have to live, unconnected and alone, inside his own skin again, but he had to be. He tried to straighten, to lift his head from Starsky’s shoulder, but Starsky’s grip tightened and he gave a low-voiced growl of wordless protest.

Hutch could ignore his own needs, but not Starsky’s. For the first time, he realized that the body pressed to his was shaking, too, the heartbeat that had felt so steady while his own raced, was now a double-timed echo.

The captain was just going to have to wait.

“Shhh. We made it, buddy,” Hutch murmured, realizing his reassurance was also echo. A barely heard prayer of thanksgiving that, not so long ago, had acknowledged the duality of their lives. We. Us. That’s the way it always was. Together. As long as they stayed together.

“Hutch. Oh, babe, I–”

“Hutchinson! Starsky!”

Instinctively, Hutch started to reach out as Starsky pulled away, the whisper that had been almost drowned out by Dobey’s summons echoing in his head. He let his hand fall to his side when he saw the panic on Starsky’s face.

“Starsk. What…what were you going to say?” he asked, somehow certain that whatever Starsky had been about to confess was far more important than the reports Dobey was so anxious for them to write.

“Nothing,” Starsky mumbled, retreating a step. His head was bent, hiding his expression, and his fingers fumbled with his pet rock for a moment before he stuffed both hands into his pockets. “Just thanks. For saving me, I mean.”

Starsky was lying. Hutch knew it. There had been more in the grip of Starsky’s arms than gratitude. A kind of terrified wonder in his voice that made the truncated sentence reverberate in Hutch’s head, almost prompting him to demand its completion from Starsky.

Then Starsky’s head came up, his eyes meeting Hutch’s in a silent plea. The same plea that was in the hunched shoulders and the hidden hands: Let it go.

Respecting that plea, Hutch backed off. “Our master’s voice,” he quipped, his voice flailing for humorous irony but falling a little short of the mark.

Starsky backed away a couple of steps and turned toward the mouth of the drain, his out-thrust elbow brushing against Hutch’s. It was a subtle invitation that Hutch hurried to accept, falling in beside him to hold that tangible point of connection.

“You think there’s any chance we can talk him into letting us file our reports in the morning?” Starsky asked, inviting Hutch to leave the moment behind them in the shadows with the familiar game of trying to outfox their superior.

“Dreamer,” Hutch accused him, his tone coming out right this time as he struggled to accept the invitation back into the light. “But I’ll let you buy me a beer at Nellie’s when we’re done,” he issued his own invitation, knowing that he couldn’t let Starsky out of his sight for a while.

“For coming to the rescue like the cavalry?” Starsky asked after a brief hesitation.

Hutch shivered, a ghostly chorus of voices trying to catch his attention. He pulled his hand from his pocket and slung his arm over Starsky’s shoulder, letting the whisper of leather on leather as they walked drown out the refrain. “And for forgetting to pull your punches,” he challenged.

“So, I’m a method actor,” Starsky defended himself with a grin.

When they had almost reached the open air, Starsky waved his hand toward where Dobey waited for them, half-bent over the trunk of Hutch’s car, hands spread and graying head down. “Poor bastard,” he sympathized. “Fargo was his friend. That’s gotta hurt.”

“Like a bitch wearing spurs,” Hutch agreed, wondering if that was why their reactions had been so extreme tonight. Fargo. Cops. The guys they were supposed to be able to trust.

“Lucky thing we got each other, partner,” Starsky reminded him as if he had reached into Hutch’s head and plucked the bitter thought right out.

Hutch’s arm tightened in agreement and then fell away as they cleared the protective darkness. Each other. That was their magic charm against the fickle finger of fate. As long as they stuck together, the bitch could do her worst, and Starsky and Hutch would still be standing. Together.

~*~*~

Starsky pulled the Torino up in front of Nellie’s and shut down the engine, wishing he hadn’t agreed to come here tonight. When Hutch had made the suggestion, Starsky was in panic mode, overcome by the emotions that had possessed him in Hutch’s arms and certain he had no hope of hiding these powerful feelings. But he knew Hutch wouldn’t be willing for them to go their separate ways so soon after a close call, and a beer at Nellie’s, surrounded by other people, had seemed a safer compromise than being alone together.

It was only as the panic receded that Starsky had realized there was no need for safe compromises. The instinct to hide had been only a conditioned response to hide the desire Hutch aroused in him. But it hadn’t only been his body that had responded to Hutch’s embrace tonight, his heart, perhaps his soul, had finally been way ahead of his baser instincts. He was in love with Hutch, he had discovered in that impulsive embrace. As head over heels as he had ever been in his life, and this was an emotion he didn’t have to be ashamed of.

“This isn’t a drive-in, Starsky. No barmaid on roller skates is going to hang our beers on the window,” Hutch teased as he climbed out of the car, bending at the waist to look back into the car and grinning at his own wit. “Are you coming, or not?”

Starsky left the car and followed Hutch to the door, holding it open to let Hutch precede him into the crowded bar, barely resisting the impulse to bow grandly, to play the fool. He felt giddy, almost light-headed, and couldn’t seem to help grinning every time he looked at Hutch. He could feel that grin on his face again as he caught up with Hutch at the bottom of the stairs.

“I’ll get us a table,” Hutch suggested and started to move away.

Starsky grabbed the back of Hutch’s jacket. “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not facing the music alone. We’ll both get a table,” he insisted, letting Hutch believe he was being towed along because Starsky was too chicken to explain their act to Nellie alone. There was nothing official about Starsky’s motives. He just couldn’t bear to have Hutch more than a foot away from him, could hardly keep his hands to himself for five seconds.

“Okay,” Hutch agreed as they reached an empty table and sat down. “But you’re buying.”

“You bet,” Starsky agreed, relinquishing the jacket, but retaining the contact, patting Hutch’s arm as if he thought his partner needed reassurance of his intentions.

“Ah, that’s good,” Hutch said with a contented sigh after the waitress had delivered their order and he had taken the first cold swallow. “Thanks.”

“I owed it to you,” Starsky dismissed the gratitude. His eyes touched on the small discoloration on Hutch’s jaw, then took in the slight swelling of the full bottom lip. He wanted to gently caress the wounds he had inflicted, heal them with the power of the love that was so strong inside him.

“I owe you an apology, too. I shouldn’t have hit you so hard,” he offered instead, knowing that even as high on this wondrous emotion as he was, he couldn’t get away with such a tender gesture as he wanted to offer in a public place. Soon, though. He had promised Hutch a beer, but it was only going to be one.

“So, you’re a method actor,” Hutch dismissed the contrition generously, echoing Starsky’s self-defense with a wink and tapping the edge of his glass against Starsky’s in a wordless toast. All is forgiven, the gesture and his smile seemed to say.

That smile drew Starsky like a magnet. He had come so close to kissing Hutch tonight. Less than an hour ago, he had been held in Hutch’s arms while his heart had felt like it was swelling in his chest, full of a new emotion that wasn’t really new at all. The love he had discovered in the dank storm drain tonight was really only the sum of all the parts that had, one at a time, been true for years.

Starsky caught himself as he leaned toward Hutch, changing the movement into a theatrical stretch and a reach for his glass, consoling his heart with a soothing promise of “soon.” Just as soon as Hutch finished his well-earned reward.

“Do you think Dobey will join us like he said?” he asked just so Hutch would have to speak again. So Starsky could watch his lips move and anticipate how they would feel. He had already forgiven Hutch for issuing the invitation that might mean a delay in Starsky’s plans for the night. Tonight, Starsky could forgive Hutch anything.

“I doubt it,” Hutch said. “He probably realizes you’re just in love with life at the moment and doesn’t want to take advantage.”

The amendment sat on the tip of Starsky’s tongue. Not in love with life, he ached to tell his unsuspecting friend, in love with you. Soon. “Maybe it seemed too much like celebrating.”

“Maybe,” Hutch agreed, sobering and looking down at the glass in his hand.

It felt to Starsky as if all the light had suddenly gone out of the room along with Hutch’s smile, leaving behind a murky dusk. He searched his brain for some way to ease the mood, to bring back that light and warmth to Hutch’s face. “It got us out of writing our report tonight,” he pointed out.

The reminder didn’t bring the smile back to Hutch’s face, the handsome features actually becoming more grim. “It was the least he could do after almost getting my partner killed,” Hutch growled.

Although the possessive protectiveness gave him that pleasant, tight-stomach feeling again, Starsky didn’t want Hutch revisiting the land of might-have-been tonight. “Let it go, Hutch,” he advised gently as he had in the storm drain.

The hard edges disappeared from Hutch’s face, the planes and angles softening into the beautiful vulnerability that had looked out at Starsky in the storm drain. It had been that vulnerability that had motivated Starsky to take Hutch in his arms, but it had been the utter trust, when Hutch laid his head on Starsky’s shoulder, that had captured the one little corner of Starsky’s heart that Hutch didn’t already own.

Looking into Hutch’s eyes now, Starsky felt the confession Dobey’s bellow had interrupted come back into his mouth. “I love you” sat on his tongue, impatient to be free.

“Yeah, let it go,” Hutch agreed softly, his expression becoming a little puzzled as their gazes held. “Starsk?” he murmured, his hand releasing his glass, the long fingers beginning to reach out.

“Well look what the cat dragged in,” Nellie declared dramatically from right beside the table, making both of them jump.

“Christ, Nellie, don’t do that to a guy,” Starsky protested, picking up his glass and letting “I love you” be washed down his throat with a mouthful of beer.

Nellie shrugged an apology, then gave the two of them a long, slow appraisal. “I guess it’s safe to assume you two have kissed and made up.”

“Kiss him? Come on, Nellie, you know I’ve got better taste than that,” Hutch protested in pretended outrage, his eyes inviting Starsky to join in the teasing.

Starsky remained silent, feeling the heat of a fiery blush rush into his face and unable to think of any banter to dismiss the image Nellie’s teasing observation had evoked. Kissing Hutch. He wanted it too badly to pretend he wouldn’t jump at the chance, even if it earned him a puzzled, silent inquiry from Hutch.

Nellie gave a disgruntled hrumph and then laughed, her attention centering on Starsky as if she was assessing his kissable potential. “I don’t know,” she pronounced judgment after a moment. “You could do a lot worse.”

“No way,” Hutch protested again, but the laughter had gone out of his voice, the teasing disappearing from his eyes. “You don’t mess up a perfect friendship with romance. Right, partner?”

Heart-punched, staggering mentally, all Starsky could do was nod while he scrambled to keep the pain off his face. He felt wounded. Hutch’s one sentence had popped Starsky’s giddy bubble of fantasy and brought him back to earth to find himself wading in quicksand. He picked up his glass to hide behind, giving a mumbled, “Sure, partner,” to appease the man whose instincts were so often too damned finely tuned to Starsky.

“You okay?” Hutch asked when Nellie had returned to her place behind the bar, reaching out toward Starsky.

“Huh? Sure,” Starsky replied automatically, turning in his chair just enough to avoid Hutch’s hand. If Hutch touched him now, he was going to explode like a bottle dropped on concrete, the shattered shards of Starsky’s foolish fantasy flying in a million directions. He tried to meet Hutch’s eyes, but failed, fearing what Hutch might read. They were so attuned at the moment, the way they always were after a close call, making the fanciful game Starsky had been playing doubly dangerous.

“What makes you think I’m not okay?” he asked when his two syllable reply didn’t remove the concerned probing from Hutch’s eyes.

“I don’t know,” Hutch admitted, leaning back in his chair and looking around as if he could find an answer in the bar’s other patrons. The worry dent had appeared between his eyebrows when his attention returned to Starsky. “You just looked…sad all of a sudden.”

If “sad” was all that had shown on Starsky’s face, then he was a better actor than anyone gave him credit for. And if he wasn’t going to give himself away, was going to keep his love as secret as he had kept his desire, it was time he turned in an Oscar winning performance.

“Sad?” he echoed, forcing an innocent inquiry into voice and eyes and puzzled smile, pushing the wounded would-be lover down deep inside himself and giving Hutch the friend he so obviously valued. “What have I got to be sad about? The cavalry charged to my rescue, a bunch of bad cops are on the wrong side of the bars where they belong, and best of all…” He drained the last mouthful in his glass and then slid it toward Hutch. “…it’s your round.”

Hutch laughed, standing up and then bending to ruffle Starsky’s hair before he picked up both glasses and made his way to the bar for refills.

Starsky felt the smile fade from his face as he watched Hutch walk away, his heart and his body both yearning for the long-legged grace and golden beauty. This feeling was so much stronger, so much harder to control. So damned dangerous. He didn’t know how he could hide it from Hutch, not when they spent damned near every waking hour together. Maybe, if they….

“I thought I told you not to bring those things in here no more.”

Starsky allowed himself to be distracted from his painful thoughts by Nellie’s complaint, even felt a small smile quirk his lips when he saw Huggy spread his empty hands and then join Hutch at the bar. The two men exchanged a few words and then Hutch dug into his pocket and handed over a bill.

His curiosity aroused, Starsky caught Huggy’s eyes and signalled him over. “Hi, Hug. What’s shakin’?” he asked when Huggy joined him at the table.

“Whatever it is, I think it shook your partner’s marbles loose,” Huggy reported, folding his skinny frame into Hutch’s empty chair. “He just gave me twenty bucks. Said you didn’t pay me enough for Iggy. Who’s Iggy?”

Starsky was melting. In a minute, he was going to be a big puddle under the chair. Oh, yes, this feeling was so much more dangerous. “My rock,” he answered Huggy, his eyes on Hutch, his gut clenching as he watched Hutch throw back his head and laugh, his ears straining for the sound of it, his mouth aching for the taste.

“Okay, which one is it?” Huggy demanded, pulling Starsky’s attention back to him. “Which lady has you looking like a hungry stray at the butcher’s window? The redhead beside Hutch?”

For half his life Starsky had been letting himself be distracted from guys who could turn him on by girls who could do the same thing. The same way his substitute Hutches had allowed him to hide the truth from himself for so long.

Starsky’s head was out of the clouds now. Hutch didn’t want his whole heart, he was content with the friendship and partnership they shared. “…You don’t mess up a perfect friendship…” was a pretty clear statement of where Hutch stood, and if Starsky wanted to keep standing beside him, he was going to have to find someone who could distract him.

“Yeah, Hug. It’s the redhead,” Starsky finally lied. Hutch always said Starsky was a lousy liar except under cover, but he was getting better at it, had been adding more floors to his house of cards. At least he finally saw clearly where the truth ended and the lies took over.

“That’s funny. I always thought you went for blondes,” Huggy said.

Blonde. Brunette. Redhead. It wouldn’t matter. Starsky knew what he had to do. Even if it broke his heart.

To hear Starsky tell it, his latest conquest, Assistant District Attorney Sharon Freeman, was hot enough to sizzle the cock right off a man. But did he have to tell it, and tell it, and tell it some more?

“Let me tell you, when Sharon shimmies out of that three piece suit and kicks off those sensible shoes, man, forget DA lady, I’m talking tiger woman,” Starsky revealed with the purring satisfaction of a guy whose balls were thoroughly wrung dry.

It wasn’t that Hutch was a prude. He and Starsky had often shared “morning after a lucky night” stories. It just seemed that, lately, Starsky’s tales were getting more and more explicit. Not to mention continuous. He had hardly paused for breath since they left the squad room.

“I hope Oscar has something useful for us for a change,” Hutch dropped into one of those infrequent inhalations.

“Isn’t that why we never bust him?” Starsky replied, and then, without missing a beat, “I think the lady might be the death of me, but what a way to go.”

One track mind. And that single minded, obsessive focus of Starsky’s had been on sex, sex and more sex for weeks now. Like Starsky had suddenly turned into a tomcat and every female in Bay City was in heat. Or a fifteen-year-old in the first flush of adolescence, complete with the compulsion to brag of every conquest. Hutch tried to tune out the monologue, but there was a part of him that wanted to hear all the sexy details Starsky was suddenly so willing to share. The part ruled by his cock. As much as he hated to admit it, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, Hutch was fiercely aroused by Starsky’s almost daily blow-by-blow recitals of his sexual adventures.

Hutch glanced at his partner surreptitiously, relieved to see that Starsky’s eyes were on the road and he was, therefore, unlikely to notice Hutch’s condition. At least today Starsky was driving. Hutch had nearly run them through a red light on the way to work one morning last week when Starsky had been describing, in enthusiastic detail, how the athletic bimbo he had picked up at the Saddle Club had wanted to play “ride ’em cowboy” all night long.

That image had been particularly vivid and stayed with Hutch for the rest of the day, slipping into his sleep that night and giving him the first wet dream he had experienced in years. It was embarrassing to be so turned on by someone else’s action. Maybe he was getting kinky in his old age, getting his kicks vicariously. Or maybe he just needed to add a little more desiccated liver to his morning shake. Or maybe some Vitamin B12.

“That woman gives all new meaning to perpetual motion. She can move her hips–”

Enough was more than enough. “For Christ’s sake, Starsky! Haven’t you ever heard a gentleman never kisses and tells,” Hutch snapped, more irritated with his reaction to Starsky’s crude behavior than with his friend.

“Who says I’m a gentleman?” Starsky shot straight back as if he had been anticipating the outburst. He turned his head to leer at Hutch.

“Would you keep your eyes on the road and your mind out of your shorts!” Hutch demanded, hearing the anger in his voice that was way out of proportion considering just how many days he had listened, unprotesting and unadmittedly aroused, to the intimate details of Starsky’s sex life. “You’re gonna wrap us around a telephone pole,” he accused unfairly, making a grab for the steering wheel.

Starsky fended him off with an elbow and an unintelligible protest, and Hutch settled back on his side of the car. He turned his head, pointedly looking out the side window, pretending to watch the familiar streets pass by and trying to concentrate on the coming meeting with their snitch. But he could feel Starsky’s eyes on him, and knew his partner was cutting him quick glances, probably speculating and adding up two and two.

“You’re just jealous,” Starsky mumbled several blocks later. He said it with just enough volume to be heard above the traffic noise, but not quite loudly or clearly enough to make the accusation a challenge.

Adding up two and two and coming up with three and a half. Hutch winced because Starsky was close enough to right. He was jealous. It wasn’t the harem Starsky had acquired, however, or even his sudden propensity to generously share every little detail, that Hutch resented. He was jealous of all the time Starsky was spending with those women. Time that used to be spent with Hutch. They still worked together as well as ever, but if Hutch wanted to see Starsky off duty, he had to agree to blind date the sister or friend or long lost cousin of whoever Starsky happened to be romancing that week.

“You wanna talk about it?” Starsky asked in that same undemanding tone.

Hutch sighed and turned his head enough to look through the windshield. He didn’t want to look right at Starsky, afraid that that nasty, mean-spirited emotion might be stamped on his forehead in indelible ink. “Talk about what?”

Starsky shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe whatever’s curdled your goat’s milk every morning?” He paused, his hands shifting on the steering wheel from ten and two down to seven and five and then sliding back up again, his mouth set in a grim, flat line. “You’d tell me if there was something wrong, wouldn’t you, Hutch?” he finally asked hesitantly. “I mean, if you were sick or something?”

Damn. Now Hutch felt like a louse. For that question alone, that revealed Starsky wasn’t quite as oblivious as it seemed, Hutch could almost forgive him the lady cab driver. Not quite, but almost. He did give up his self-imposed exile, turning toward Starsky and settling back against the door. “No, I’m not sick. I’d tell you if I was,” he promised.

Maybe he was sick or something, Hutch thought, rocking with the familiar motion of the car as Starsky took a right turn just a little too fast. Sick in the head, if not the body. Had to be, when he found Starsky’s gloating ramblings more arousing than the interest in the eyes of a pretty lady.

“So, maybe we could go to Nellie’s tonight,” Starsky suggested hesitantly. “Buy each other a couple of rounds and play a few games of pool.” There was another hesitation, then Starsky continued, his tone and expression contrite. “I guess it’s been a long time since you and me had a stag night.”

Hutch closed his teeth over the “who’s fault is that,” but still asked suspiciously. “What about Sharon? She won’t be showing up with a friend, will she?”

“No girls. Just the two of us. Scouts’ honor,” Starsky swore, lifting his right hand off the wheel in the three-fingered scouting salute.

“You already told me you were never a scout,” Hutch reminded him, but he had to laugh, his partner’s clowning, even if it did seem a little forced, and the prospect of spending some off duty time with Starsky improving his outlook on the day considerably.

“Okay. Hoodlums’ honor,” Starsky amended, folding in two more fingers into his palm and leaving the middle one extended. “Whaddya say?”

“I say,” Hutch began, pretending to waffle, as if he might actually say no. As if he had an offer so much better than this one he had been missing so much. Needing it so much it scared him, but not enough to refuse. “I say loser buys dinner.”

~*~*~

Starsky stood at the two-way glass looking into the interrogation room, his left arm propped on the pane, his forehead almost resting on it as well. His gaze was intent upon one of the two men who sat in the room beyond–the tall blond Sharon Freeman had hired to impersonate Hutch. A Hutch substitute who was uncannily familiar. Not because, as the uniformed officer had insisted, he resembled Hutch so closely he could have been a brother. Beyond height, build and coloring, Starsky didn’t personally see any resemblance at all. The man was nothing but a pale imitation. The feeling of familiarity arose from the fact that he was the exact type of man Starsky had sought out when he needed a substitute to fuck his yearning into. Close, but not too close.

Starsky heard the door behind him open and he straightened, pushing away from the glass and turning his head to watch Dobey lumber into the room.

The captain waved a hand toward the observation window. “How’s it going?” he asked, then frowned in puzzlement. “Why aren’t you listening?”

“Who needs to hear ‘I just did what the lady lawyer told me to do’ a hundred times?” Starsky explained the muted intercom. He knew who the brains behind the scheme to discredit him was–his latest meaningless conquest. He should have known she had been way too willing to fall into bed with him, but he hadn’t really cared. Starsky had been far more interested in continuing the pattern that had served him so well in high school and again when he had decided to enter the Academy. Women. A long line of distracting females.

Starsky took Dobey’s non-committal grunt as agreement and turned back to the window, his gaze settling this time on his partner. The interrogation was almost over. Hutch was rubbing the back of his neck, a sure sign that he was fed up with going nowhere fast and about to quit wasting his time. Damn, Starsky knew him so well, interpreting easily the meaning behind every little quirk and gesture.

Dobey seemed content to simply watch the pantomime being enacted beyond the glass, but Starsky wasn’t anxious to let his mind climb back aboard its previous train of thought. Lately, that mental locomotive seemed to have only one track and a single destination–Hutch.

“Anyone else having any luck?” Starsky asked just to avoid buying yet another one-way ticket.

“Your double is singing the same song as Hutch’s, and Freeman is refusing to say a word,” Dobey reported. “But Ryan’s getting plenty of details from Mr. Ronstan. He’s probably hoping for a deal that won’t land him in the same jail cell as his pervert of a son.”

“I still don’t see why Ryan couldn’t have trusted us,” Starsky grumbled. The way the chief had treated them still rankled. “Or you, if not us. How long have you known him? And aren’t we all supposed to be on the same side?”

There was agreement in Dobey’s somber eyes but dissent on the well-known features. “Supposed to be, but it doesn’t always work out that way. I’d known Fargo better than twenty years.”

Starsky turned back to the window to hide his grimace. He didn’t want to remember the vigilantes. Didn’t want to think about the embrace he had shared with Hutch in the storm drain following Fargo’s arrest. Couldn’t afford to dwell on how Hutch had come into his arms so willingly and clung to him so tightly. The memory visited his dreams and fantasies often enough. Any unguarded moment, any space of time longer than a minute when work or a woman or some other desperately grabbed diversion couldn’t stop it from creeping out of its hiding place in his heart.

“Ryan still should have trusted you,” Starsky grumbled, wishing Dobey would continue to argue with him just for the distraction.

“I’ll remind him of that next time,” Dobey agreed. “I can’t say I mind having a stick to… Looks like Hutch has had enough.”

As Starsky had expected, Hutch was ending the interrogation, signaling the uniformed officer into the room to take charge of the double and closing the door behind him. In a minute, he would come through the door behind Starsky. Anticipation lifted Starsky’s pulse into a flat out run until it beat in his ears, almost drowning out the sound of the opening door.

“‘I only did what I was told,'” Hutch mimicked as he stalked through the door. “He must have seen Nuremburgh too many times.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dobey dismissed the uncooperative conspirator. “He’ll implicate Freeman and that’s all we need. I’m sure her lawyer will advise her, if she hasn’t figured it out herself, that confession is good for the soul. She’ll start plea bargaining soon.”

“All over but the shouting,” Hutch concluded, his tone a little less frustrated than it had been a moment before.

“And the report writing. On my desk in triplicate, gentlemen, before you leave the station,” Dobey reminded them. “The DA isn’t going to want to wait to start trying to wipe the egg off their faces.”

Starsky didn’t turn around when he heard Dobey leave, but continued to watch the double on the other side of the glass. The man shook a cigarette out of the pack on the table, and the uniformed officer lit it for him. Another difference–Hutch didn’t smoke. Starsky tried to remember if any of his Hutch duplicates had smoked, but he had deliberately fogged the memories of those brief encounters in his mind. There weren’t going to be any more Hutch doubles in his arms. And now he knew there wouldn’t be any more casual bimbos either. They had drained his balls, given him a raunchy shield to hold up between himself and Hutch, but they couldn’t keep Hutch out of his heart.

“You comin’, partner?” Hutch asked.

Starsky shifted his gaze from the double to Hutch’s reflection in the glass. It was Hutch who was the insubstantial imitation now, but Starsky couldn’t hold onto that image. Even fuzzy and indistinct, Hutch’s features drew him like a moth to a flame. To look was to want, and the want was a vampire that Starsky had already allowed to bleed their friendship white. He had let its lifeblood be siphoned away by all the time and energy he gave to everyone but Hutch. Distraction hadn’t worked. It had only led him into making an ass of himself.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” Starsky replied, gesturing an “after you” and following Hutch out the door.

“What do you think about going to Nellie’s when we’re done?” Hutch asked as they made their way to the squad room. “We never did have that stag night.”

Alone with Hutch. The idea terrified Starsky even as it created an ache in his belly for it that was almost physical. Maybe, like Sharon Freeman, Starsky should consider unburdening his soul. He knew he couldn’t carry this yearning around much longer without giving himself away.

~*~*~

Hutch laughed at Starsky’s dramatic groan of disgust when the three ball skittered right past the side pocket and then, as if to add insult to injury, the cue ball sank into the pocket instead.

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you so far off your game,” Hutch commiserated, his sympathy unfeigned despite the fact that Starsky’s loss would be his gain.

“Best two out of three?” Starsky proposed, stepping away from the pool table to lean against the back of a chair, his stick propped on his shoulder.

“Sure,” Hutch agreed as he retrieved the cue ball and began circling the table, eyeing the remaining possible shots. As far as he was concerned, they could play best three out of five or five out of seven, or thirty-one out of sixty. In other words, all night long. Or forget the bet altogether. He was content just to have Starsky all to himself for a change, without the distraction of feminine company.

Perhaps that was what had been wrong with Starsky all day. He was probably feeling like an idiot for trusting scheming Sharon. Hutch remembered how humiliated he had felt when Starsky had been forced to reveal the truth about Gillian Ingram. No guy liked to think he could be led around by his balls, even when it was, sometimes, the nature of the beast. Or maybe Starsky was still thinking with his hormones. Sharon’s incarceration left Starsky single once again, and that was a state he could no longer seem to tolerate for more than a few hours.

“Are you planning your next still life or are you going to take a shot some time soon?” Starsky asked, sounding a little testy. Not quite annoyed, or even impatient, but not as if he was teasing Hutch just for the fun of it or employing his ‘talk a little, win a lot’ strategy either.

“Don’t rush me,” Hutch replied automatically and then realized that, despite having more of his attention on his thoughts than the seven balls remaining in play on the table, he had chosen his next shot.

“Three ball, corner pocket,” he announced, placed the cue ball, lined up his shot, and promptly blew it.

“Looks like I’m not the only one off his game,” Starsky crowed, laughing as he stepped back up to the table.

“Best two out of three,” Hutch reminded him, taking a playful swing at the curly head as he moved back, staggering a step when Starsky eluded him.

“One of us has to sink that sucker yet,” Starsky insisted, still laughing. “Three ball, side pocket,” he predicted and bent over the far edge of the table to line up his shot.

Hutch’s amusement faded as he realized that that wasn’t the first time today Starsky had performed an adroit little two-step when Hutch reached out to touch him. It hadn’t been anything blatant, just a very subtle avoidance, but it had been happening all day. What Hutch couldn’t remember was whether it had happened the day before or the day before that. Physical interaction between them was such an ingrained habit, so much a part of the way they communicated, surely Hutch would have noticed before now if Starsky was avoiding coming into contact with him.

“Goddamn!” Starsky growled when, for a third time, the three ball refused to cooperate, rolling past the same side pocket it had evaded on Starsky’s last shot. “I think the stupid ball is jinxed or something.”

“Or we already used up our luck for today. Why don’t we take a break?” Hutch suggested. He tossed his stick on the table where, as if to prove them both wrong, it caught the recalcitrant three ball a glancing blow that sent it spinning into the corner pocket.

“Good idea,” Starsky agreed before Hutch could lay claim to the shot. He practically pounced on their empty glasses, scooping them up one handed from where they sat on the edge of the table. “You get a booth, I’ll go buy a couple of refills.”

Briefly, Hutch considered protesting the convenient retreat, then gave it up. Neither of them was playing well enough to make the game even remotely interesting, they might as well give it up for now as he suggested. Maybe another beer would give them a chance to unwind, and it might also be an opportunity to do a little probing. See if he could figure out what exactly it was about Starsky that was setting off his radar.

Hutch chose an empty booth from which he could watch Starsky at the bar, but he couldn’t say he saw anything unusual. Starsky flirted mildly with Nellie, briefly eyed a couple of women sitting at the end of the bar, and then started digging into his pocket for the money to pay for the beers Nellie delivered. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Starsky always flirted with Nellie, he always checked out any female in sight, and he always turned the front pocket of his too-tight jeans inside out trying to get anything out of it.

Nothing unusual, until Starsky turned with a glass in each hand and their eyes met. It seemed to Hutch that his partner froze for a second, as if the last thing he had expected was to find Hutch watching him. Then he gave a smile that seemed just a shade too bright, and sauntered up to the table.

By the time he had set the brimming glass in front of Hutch and slid onto the opposite bench, whatever it was that had momentarily thrown Starsky off his stride seemed to have been assimilated. He took up a familiar pose with his back to the wall, both legs stretched out on the seat and his right arm resting along the back of the bench.

Perhaps they were both just off their game tonight, Hutch concluded, and picked up his glass, enjoying the first sip of the fresh, cold brew. Who wouldn’t be after the last couple of days? “You know, I’m glad it turned out Ryan wasn’t behind the frame up after all,” he commented.

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed, and then frowned, his eyes on his glass as he carefully wrapped his fingers around the bottom of it. “Even if he was ready to believe the worst of us fast enough,” he grumbled.

“Unless you’re up for a change of attitude and a haircut, not to mention a whole new wardrobe, I don’t think Ryan’s opinion of us is likely to change any time soon,” Hutch pointed out.

“Got better things to spend my money on,” Starsky grumbled, then, as quickly as it had settled, the gloom lifted and Starsky suddenly brightened. “Hey, speaking of money, I talked to my cleaning lady today and she said that Fats Domino record I bought arrived in the mail.”

“Already?” Hutch asked, willing to go along with the change of subject if it would improve Starsky’s mood. The purchase itself puzzled him and maybe he could get Starsky to shed some light on it. “I have to admit, I was surprised when you told me you bought it. I didn’t think old records were something you’d be willing to spend your money on.”

Starsky shrugged, as if laying out that much money for a vintage album was unworthy of comment. “I wanted it,” he said, his tone just this side of a challenge.

It wasn’t much of an explanation for a man whose taste usually ran to flashy cars and obviously expensive watches. Perhaps Starsky was regretting the impulsive purchase because his mood had changed again. Even though his friend was looking straight at him, Hutch had the feeling the blue eyes weren’t seeing him, were fixed instead on something that pulled down the corners of his mouth and drew the heavy brows together into one brooding line.

“I wanted it,” Starsky repeated as if Hutch had denied him the right to own the coveted album.

“No reason you shouldn’t get what you want,” Hutch agreed mildly.

“You think so?” Starsky asked without any particular emphasis, his eyes still on that fifth dimension horizon.

“Go for it. That’s my motto,” Hutch joked, realizing when Starsky’s eyes suddenly cleared, that he and Starsky might not be talking about the same subject, that they might, in fact, be having two different discussions altogether. Whatever subject Starsky had been debating in that head of his, likely all day, it appeared that Hutch had given him the answer he had been seeking.

“You’re right,” Starsky agreed abruptly, reinforcing Hutch’s tentative conclusion. He waved a hand toward the pool table. “Since neither one of us can sink a ball tonight to save his life, why don’t we split?”

“But–” Hutch began to protest, unwilling, despite Starsky’s strange mood, to give up his partner’s sole company. He subsided when Starsky continued as if there had been no interruption.

“Yeah. Let’s grab a pizza, go to my place, and listen to Blueberry Hill a couple o’ hundred times,” Starsky invited with more enthusiasm than he had shown all day.

There was something going on here that Hutch couldn’t quite get a handle on that made the immediate agreement hesitate on his lips. Starsky had made a decision, it was there in every line of his suddenly animated face, and yet, at the same time, he seemed uneasy with the invitation he had just issued, as if he wasn’t sure he should be making it or he expected rejection. Before Hutch could decide whether he should just go along and see what might happen or try to pry what was going on out of Starsky first, both options were taken away when four of their fellow officers arrived, clattering down the stairs and shouting a greeting.

“Will the real Starsky and Hutch please stand up,” demanded Simmons as he and his partner joined them at their booth. Without so much as a “beg pardon,” he shoved Starsky’s feet off the bench and plunked down beside him, while his partner, Babcock, claimed the empty space next to Hutch.

“I think they’ve got the wrong guys in the lock up. These two look like criminal desperados to me,” Tedesco added, completely cutting off any hope of escape when he and his partner, Rogers, dragged over a couple of empty chairs to complete the circle.

“You’re a riot, Alice,” Hutch grumbled, pushing an elbow into Babcock’s ribs. “Do you have to sit on top of me, Chris.”

Ignoring the elbow, Babcock pushed in a little closer, throwing an arm across Hutch’s shoulders and batting his eyelashes at him. “Admit it, Kenny, you love it,” he teased.

“I’m not that kind of boy,” Hutch insisted, laughing at Babcock’s high-spirited clowning, but shrugging off the arm and giving the encroacher another elbow shot. “Give a guy room to breathe, will you.”

“Yeah, guess you two have had enough of tight corners this week,” Babcock sympathized, giving up a couple of inches of bench. “Ryan sure wanted your balls on a platter.”

Hutch sought Starsky’s eyes, but Starsky didn’t seem anxious to give them up. Despite the fact that he was usually the more social of the two of them, more willing to engage in the barbed banter that passed for humor in the squad room, Starsky had withdrawn, physically pulling into the corner, a neutral expression masking his thoughts as he concentrated on drinking his beer. Whatever that decision was Starsky had made, he obviously didn’t welcome the interruption any more than Hutch did. It looked, however, as if he planned on nursing his disgruntled mood, leaving Hutch to engage in one-liner one-upmanship.

“Take my advice and get a haircut, or you’ll be the next guys on his shit list,” Hutch warned the shaggy headed duo.

“Hey, Nellie, bring us a couple of pitchers and more glasses. We’re celebrating,” Rogers bellowed.

Hutch sighed mentally, relinquishing what little hope he had had of them making their excuses and salvaging some part of this strange evening. Whatever mood Starsky was in, pizza and Fats Dominio had sounded good to Hutch. He shouldn’t have blown their chance to escape trying to figure out where Starsky’s head was at. He could have done that, and probably far more successfully, once they were alone in Starsky’s apartment.

“So, what’s the penalty for impersonating a police officer now?” Tedesco asked.

“You oughta know, Mike,” Rogers quipped. “You’ve been doing it for ten years.”

A push and shove tussle erupted between the partners that ended when Nellie arrived with their orders.

“How about lousy pay and worse hours,” Hutch suggested, wishing he could think of some way to extricate them from their colleague’s company. It really wasn’t a good sign when Starsky became this quiet.

“You know what, though, Hutch? I saw your double and he could have passed for your brother,” Simmons insisted stubbornly.

“What?!” Hutch exclaimed, allowing himself to be distracted by the claim, outraged all over again that several eye witnesses had mistaken the nefarious double for him. Okay, so height, build and coloring might have been similar, but not his brother.

“He doesn’t have a brother,” Starsky muttered sourly.

“That’s right. You tell ’em, partner,” Hutch agreed. “That guy wasn’t anywhere near as good looking as me.”

For a flicker, so fast Hutch was sure no one noticed it but him, there was panic on Starsky’s face, as if the direct appeal had triggered an adrenaline rush that set off an immediate fight or flight chain reaction. The recovery was immediate, however, and a zinger delivered right on its heels. “Well,” Starsky drawled, reaching for one of the pitchers Nellie had delivered. “If he parted his hair on the other side….”

“Thanks a lot, buddy,” Hutch mumbled beneath the raucous laughter that erupted.

Starsky shrugged, tipped his glass toward Hutch in an ironic salute, and then sat back in his corner with it. He brought the glass to his mouth and swallowed rapidly a few times until he had drained over half. His eyes met Hutch’s as he set the glass back on the table, a challenge in the blue eyes that Hutch had only seen a few times before. Starsky was planning on getting drunk. Very drunk, if the way he immediately lifted the glass and drained it was any indication of his intent, and he seemed to be daring Hutch to try to stop him.

Briefly, Hutch considered making the attempt, then shrugged. It wasn’t like Starsky made it a weekly habit to tie one on. Maybe a good drunk was what Starsky needed, along with a miserable hangover tomorrow to remind him there were other ways to deal with a bad case of the moody blues.

“Come on, Hutchinson, drink up. You’re falling behind,” Tedesco admonished him, picking up the pitcher and aiming it toward Hutch’s almost full glass.

“I’m driving,” Hutch protested and covered the top of the glass with his hand. If Starsky was planning on getting drunk, then it might be a good idea for Hutch to abstain. Whatever was chewing on Starsky’s rear hard enough to decide the bottom of a glass was a good place to drown it, Hutch really should stay sober enough to watch his partner’s back for him.

“Don’t be a party pooper,” Starsky insisted, flicking at the hand Hutch held over his glass. “We’re celebrating, right?”

It was a definitely a challenge. A direct, I-dare-you-to-blink gauntlet. But Hutch didn’t understand the rules Starsky was playing by tonight. He sensed his partner needed something from him, but whether it was a drinking companion or a guardian angel, Hutch wasn’t certain.

“Yeah, Hutch. Don’t worry, we’ll call you a cab,” Babcock offered.

Whether he was a cab or an idiot, Hutch recognized when he was outnumbered. Against his better judgment, he let his hand fall to the table. Whatever hopes he had had that tonight might see his and Starsky’s relationship back on track, they were obviously going to have to wait for another day.

Hutch woke up pleasantly aroused, his body tingling with sexual anticipation. He lay quietly for a while, enjoying the sensation, before he opened his eyes and remembered where he was. There wasn’t much light to see by, just enough for him to recognize his surroundings. Not his apartment, or Dobey’s cabin at Pine Lake, but an above-average room at the Playboy Island resort hotel.

He must have been dreaming. Surrounded by more beautiful women than Hugh Hefner had bunnies, that was hardly surprising. Hutch smiled into the darkness, wondering which one of the ladies from the hotel’s feminine smorgasbord his subconscious had been putting the moves on.

It was too bad the BCPD was too cheap to spring for separate rooms. If he were alone, Hutch wouldn’t have hesitated to masturbate. It seemed like a long time since he had conjured up a sexy scenario and made love to himself. His breathing quickened a little, lifting his chest as his fingers caressed his sweat-slick skin, skimming over peaked nipple and ribs and taut belly until his baby finger brushed the waistband of his shorts.

If he was alone, he would….

But he wasn’t alone. Hutch sighed and tucked his wandering hand under the pillow away from temptation. He could do it in the bathroom, but he hated the cold sterility of jerking off over the toilet, especially in an impersonal hotel room. If they were at one of their apartments, he might even risk it, but not with Starsky sleeping hardly more than arm’s length away on the room’s other single bed.

Hutch closed his eyes and told his too-active mind to put it on hold for a few hours. His brain might be inclined to obedience, but his body had other ideas. It was damned hard to fall asleep with a hard-on. Hutch almost laughed at the unintentional pun, but this wasn’t funny. The arousal that had felt rather pleasant when he had first awakened was now an uncomfortable irritant that, he knew from experience, could keep him wide-eyed for hours and leave him groggy and irritable in the morning.

Starsky was usually a pretty sound sleeper. If Hutch didn’t indulge in any elaborate fantasy and just gave himself a little quick relief, he might be able to get away with it. But Starsky’s sleep was restless tonight. His partner’s tossing and turning and uneven breathing were all details that Hutch had been unconsciously aware of since he woke up.

Hutch wondered if Starsky might also be dreaming up a steamy encounter with one of the barely-dressed bell hops. He was trying to distract himself, speculating which one of the multitude of pretty ladies Starsky’s subconscious would most likely have chosen, when Starsky moaned. A balls-deep, chocolate-tort, triple X-rated moan that hit Hutch’s ear drums and vibrated directly into his suddenly rock-hard cock.

In all the years he had known Starsky, Hutch had never heard his friend make such a sound, but he recognized it nonetheless. It was the exact same, sex-drenched moan his dreaming imagination had orchestrated for the almost nightly wet dreams that had plagued him during the period when Starsky had been providing daily erotic recitals. But those dreams had disappeared–for the most part–when the monologues had stopped. And this was no dream.

Hutch tried to reassure himself that it was just…coincidental. He had already been simmering, and his response to Starsky’s moaning was just…circumstances. Hutch had, after all, always been turned on by vocal lovemaking. He didn’t necessarily like a screamer, but a throaty, sexy moan could zip along his appreciative nerve endings right into his balls.

Oh, God. A throaty, sexy moan like the one that had just erupted out of Hutch’s restlessly writhing partner.

“Christ, Starsky, cut it out!” Hutch begged, then winced. He hadn’t intended to let the plea out into the dark, humid night, and certainly not at a volume that ought to raise the zombies right out of their crypts.

“Huh? Hutch?” Starsky gasped before Hutch could even hope the noise wouldn’t wake him. “Wha’s wrong?” he slurred, struggling upright while his left hand groped inside his gaping shirt. After a moment, he seemed to realize he had gone to bed unarmed and quit fumbling at his armpit, then just sat there panting. There was enough light coming in through the window for Hutch to see the dopey, mostly-asleep expression on Starsky’s face.

“Whatcha want?” Starsky mumbled around a jawbreaker of a yawn.

The garbled speech was, however, clearer than it had been a moment ago, and Hutch realized that this could become a very embarrassing situation if Starsky woke up enough to become both coherent and observant. Hutch wasn’t exactly ashamed of his condition; he just didn’t want to give Starsky any more reasons to tease him. Hutch’s recent lack of interest in making a genuine effort to pursue the ladies was already more ammunition than Starsky needed.

“I didn’t want anything. You must have been dreaming,” Hutch said, assuring himself that if it was a lie, it was a white one. Starsky had certainly sounded as if he was dreaming. “Go back to sleep.”

Starsky voiced another incoherent grumble that had a few too many syllables in it for a simple “okay”. He flopped back down onto the bed where he continued to mutter something that sounded suspiciously like the chant Papa Theodore had recited over their writhing bodies the night before.

The brief conversation, and the possibility of embarrassing discovery, had cooled Hutch off as effectively as a cold shower, and he turned over onto his side, his back to the other bed. If Starsky would just stay quiet for a few minutes, Hutch would, hopefully, be able to go back to sleep. He had just begun to drift off when Starsky started moaning again and, like Pavlov’s dog, Hutch’s cock sat up and took hard, insistent notice.

Giving a groan that blended in eerie harmony with Starsky’s next moan, Hutch rolled onto his stomach and pulled the pillow over his head. As soon as they got back to Bay City, he promised his throbbing cock, he was going to find a willing lady and quit living as if he had taken a vow of chastity. If, that is, they ever got off Voodoo Island alive.

~*~*~

Climbing the long flight of metal stairs from the steaming tarmac to the open plane door, Starsky wished he had had the foresight to insist on going ahead of Hutch. It seemed to be taking forever for the long line of passengers to make their way up the stairs and into the plane, and standing practically nose to butt with Hutch wasn’t the best idea right now.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Hutch asked during yet another delay in boarding. “We could still wait for the non-stop.”

“No way,” Starsky vetoed the idea. He turned his head, trying to convince himself that watching the lazy loading of luggage was much more fascinating than the sight of Hutch’s muscular ass encased in tight, white linen.

“Four connections is a lot,” Hutch reminded him. “If we miss even one–”

“Then at least we’ll be somewhere in the USA,” Starsky insisted. “Where people don’t put nasty curses on other people,” he added under his breath. If Papa Theodore could make him try to kill Hutch by pinning two dolls together, Starsky wasn’t anxious to hang around to find out what his next trick might be.

Starsky’s mind might not remember the fight with Hutch, but his body did. The sensory memory, imbedded in his cells it seemed, of writhing and struggling and thrusting against Hutch was vivid. Way too vivid for Starsky to spend another night in the hotel room with him. He had been lucky so far that Hutch hadn’t noticed his perpetual hard-on. If it was voodoo gods keeping Hutch oblivious, maybe they weren’t all bad after all.

The line ahead of Hutch started moving again and he climbed two more stairs. Starsky hung back, hoping that a little less proximity might help him control himself. It did help a little, removing at least the temptation to “accidentally” grope Hutch, but the reprieve didn’t last long.

“Would you move up, please,” the lady behind Starsky requested, giving him a less than gentle nudge in the back. “It’s hot out here.”

Starsky had to agree. It was hot out here. But he wasn’t expecting his internal temperature to drop much once he was sandwiched side by side with Hutch in the cramped seats. Smelling that clean scent, feeling Hutch’s warmth, seeing all that tanned gorgeous skin….

Reluctantly, Starsky moved up, just as Hutch reached back and pulled at the waistband of his pants, stretching the white material even tighter across his ass. Starsky closed his eyes and gave a silent groan.

Ignore Hutch. He’s not that kind of boy. He said it himself. Just don’t look. If Starsky chanted it long enough, maybe the commands would become fixed in his brain. He feared, however, that the only way he could enforce them would be to have all his senses removed.

Too many torturous minutes later, they finally reached their seats.

“I suppose you want the window seat as usual,” Hutch said as he heaved his carry-on bag into the overhead bin.

Starsky looked at the tiny space he was going to have to share with Hutch for the first hour of a very long trip and shook his head. “You take it this time, Hutch. I think that beer I had while we were waiting is going to go right through me.”

“As usual,” Hutch teased, giving Starsky a sunny smile as he slid into the seat.

In Starsky’s opinion, that smile ought to come with a potential mental health warning. He could fall into it and spend the rest of his life….

Glancing at the little door at the back of the plane with its green “unoccupied” sign, Starsky wondered desperately if he could get away with jerking off in the bathroom all the way back to Bay City without arousing Hutch’s curiosity. At the very least, it ought to qualify him for the mile high club.

~*~*~

Starsky sat beside Hutch’s hospital bed, watching as the blue eyes slowly closed. The last shot the nurse had given Hutch to help with the pain of the deep stab wound in his arm must finally be working.

Almost. Almost. There, the pale lids were all the way down now. Starsky gave a mental sigh and resisted the temptation to squirm in his chair. Hutch was finally going to sleep, and in Starsky’s opinion, not a minute too soon. After spending all day with his alternately suffering or high as a kite friend, Starsky felt as if he had sent his skin out to be cleaned, and they had shrunk it. He had to get out of this room–away from Hutch–before he did something stupid. Like kiss Hutch.

Starsky couldn’t stand to see Hutch suffer. It made his gut cramp and his heart ache to somehow ease the pain. Or kiss it away. But when the Demoral kicked in and Hutch began floating from cloud to cloud, the temptation to wrap his arms around his partner and find out if the drug-induced smile tasted as sweet as it looked, became its own unique brand of misery.

With what patience he could muster, Starsky remained completely still while five minutes passed, studying the beautiful man he had failed so miserably. He had been too successful at ignoring Hutch, and now Hutch was paying the price.

At last, the five-minute life sentence passed and Starsky eased from the chair.

Hutch’s eyes popped open. “Where’re you going?” he demanded.

“I was just gonna let you get some rest,” Starsky explained, feeling as if he had been caught in some particularly juvenile prank.

“No. I’m awake,” Hutch insisted, dragging at the rail with his bandaged right hand to pull himself upright.

“Come on, Hutch, you need to sleep,” Starsky protested. “And I was gonna go over to your place and clean it up a little. You don’t want to go home to that mess when you get out of here.”

“No,” Hutch repeated more firmly. “I hired Huggy and his cousins to do it.”

“But,” Starsky began to object, remembering the callous way Huggy had handled Hutch’s shattered guitar, but unable to offer it as an excuse. His intentions weren’t honorable enough for that. Sure, he didn’t want Hutch to have to return to the blood-spattered shambles Diana Harmon had made of his home, but his motives were also selfish. Repairing the damage Diana had done would give him an opportunity to relieve a little of his guilt, and hopefully drain off some of the energy that writhed inside him.

“Please, Starsky. We’ll play cards or something,” Hutch pleaded.

If Starsky had a snowball’s chance in hell of resisting the plea in those begging eyes, it vanished completely when the door opened and a nurse, pushing a cart, bustled into the room. Starsky couldn’t miss the way the vivid blue eyes tracked every movement the nurse made as she poured fresh water into the glass on the bedside table, nor fail to read the fear in that fascinated gaze. There was absolutely nothing about the middle-aged woman that even remotely resembled Hutch’s attacker, but it was obvious that all Hutch saw was the uniform she wore.

“Can I get you anything, Sergeant Hutchinson?” the nurse asked when her task was completed.

“No. Nothing. I’m fine,” Hutch assured her hastily.

Starsky slowly sank back down into the chair as the woman departed. He couldn’t desert Hutch now. He had already failed to protect Hutch from the real and deadly threat Diana Harmon had represented; Starsky couldn’t compound that neglect by running out on him when he felt so vulnerable.

“You’re staying?” Hutch asked, his surprised delight adding another brick or two to the load Starsky already carried.

“Yeah, sure. You thought I was gonna pass up a chance to beat you at gin rummy,” Starsky demanded, reaching for the deck of cards and beginning to shuffle. “And no hiding any cards up that sling.”

Starsky stayed in the torture chamber of Hutch’s hospital room until Hutch finally gave in and accepted a sleeping pill. Hours seemed to pass before the pill took effect, Hutch obviously fighting its lethargic magic until even his strong will couldn’t lift his eyelids one more time.

It was almost 11:00 p.m. when Starsky guided the Torino out of the almost empty visitor’s parking lot. Late, if you considered it in terms of the official end of visiting hours, but way, way too early for Starsky to even think of taking all this pent up energy home with him.

The Down Under would be bursting at the seams about now. As if it had an autopilot linked directly into Starsky’s thoughts, the Torino began turning right as it pulled out onto the street.

“No fucking way,” Starsky cursed and yanked on the steering wheel, pulling the car left, toward home. Or toward Venice.

Diana’s psychotic fury had made a shambles of Hutch’s home. Maybe, if Starsky’s luck would turn just a little in his favor, Huggy and his cousins wouldn’t be finished cleaning it all up yet.

Starsky pulled up in front of Venice Place just as a battered pick-up truck, full of Hutch’s broken possessions and some very weary looking cousins, pulled away.

“Damn,” Starsky muttered. It looked like he was too late. But lights still glowed from the windows of the apartment. Hopefully, Huggy and company weren’t miracle workers, and there would still be plenty of hard, mindless work left to do.

Starsky’s heart sank when, after taking the stairs two at a time and hurrying down the hall, he let himself into Hutch’s apartment and discovered that his hopes had been in vain. Huggy might make a lousy magician and an even worse psychic, but the clean and uncluttered apartment was proof positive that he was a great foreman.

“Hi, Starsky. How’s Hutch?” Huggy asked as he emerged from the bathroom.

“He’s fine,” Starsky answered, catching a glimpse of the new shower curtain, shuddering when he remembered the blood that had streaked the old one. Starsky was no stranger to spilled blood, but the sight and smell of Hutch’s blood while they waited for the ambulance had nearly made him puke. He had been able to swallow down the acrid bile then, focused as he had been on providing first aid to his partner, but it was a harder struggle to do it now.

Mesmerized by the memory, Starsky moved like a sleepwalker to the open door and paused there. Every trace of the ordeal Hutch had suffered had been scrubbed away by Huggy’s crew of miracle workers, but the sparkling clean reality couldn’t erase the imprinted image no matter how hard Starsky blinked.

“Leo did a good job, huh, Starsky?” Huggy said, coming to stand beside Starsky. “I bet this place is a helluva lot cleaner than Hutch is used to.”

Recognizing that Huggy was waiting for some sort of response, Starsky managed to produce a grunt of agreement. He lifted his hand and skimmed a finger over the spot where he remembered Hutch’s bloody handprint had been. There wasn’t a trace, and blood was damned hard to remove. Leo really had earned whatever Hutch had paid him for tonight’s work.

“I should’ve been the one to clean this up,” Starsky muttered. “I never should’ve let it happen in the first place.”

“You?” Huggy asked curiously.

“Yeah, me,” Starsky growled, forcing his hand down to his side, his body to turn, and his eyes to take in the restored order in the rest of the apartment. He knew this place as well as he knew his own and every missing item was immediately apparent to him. Every plant that wasn’t in its accustomed place on shelf or table, every missing canvas that no longer leaned against the wall, every sign of hastily repaired damage, landed like a fist under his heart knocking its rhythm out of synch.

“How did Hutch playing fast and loose with the wrong lady get to be your fault? Last I heard, Hutch was well over twenty-one,” Huggy reminded him.

“I should’ve listened to him. I should’ve taken it more seriously when she busted up this place,” Starsky insisted. “I should’ve–”

“Okay,” Huggy conceded, taking Starsky’s arm and leading him toward the door. “So, maybe you should’ve, and I should’ve and Hutch should’ve. Hell, even Dobey should’ve. None of us did. Maybe we were all payin’ too much attention to the case.”

It was a good theory. They had all been focused on Linda Baylor’s attempts to lure Frost into a jail cell where he belonged. Starsky knew the case couldn’t take all the blame for his neglect, however, or even the lion’s share. He had been so busy hiding his secret that he hadn’t recognized the danger until it was way too late.

“Starsky?”

“Huh?” Starsky grunted, pulled from the path too often traveled over the past few days. He gave Huggy the most innocently inquiring expression he could manage and willed his curious friend to just let it be.

“I asked if you’d give me a lift back to the Pits,” Huggy repeated. “I was gonna call a cab, but since you’re here….”

“Yeah, sure,” Starsky agreed, but couldn’t seem to make his feet travel the last few steps to the door.

“Tonight?” Huggy asked.

So far, Huggy had shown admirable restraint for a man who made it his business to know everything there was to know, but if Starsky didn’t get his act together and stop mooning over this place like a love sick teenager, that restraint wouldn’t last. Starsky turned on his heel and stalked to the door, paused there after he had opened it. “Well?” he demanded with his hand on the light switch. “You comin’ or not?”

Huggy rolled his eyes and shook his head, but hurried to follow Starsky down the stairs and out into the street. They made the trip to the Pits in silence while Starsky continued to chase his own thoughts around in ever tightening circles. Circles that orbited relentlessly around Hutch, the sun in Starsky’s universe of need.

“You want to come in for a beer?” Huggy asked when they pulled up in front of the Pits. “You look like you could use one.”

Starsky considered the option. A beer or two or six to take the edge off. But only an idiot would throw alcohol on a bonfire. “Thanks, Hug, but not tonight. I wanna get into the station early just in case Hutch talks the doctor into letting him out tomorrow.”

Huggy shrugged, opened the door, but then turned back to face Starsky, his expression serious. “I know you and Hutch pay me to tell you other people’s business, but I can keep my mouth shut, too. If there’s something chewing your ass you might want to talk about, I just want you to know that your credit is good with me.”

Starsky was tempted. Almost as tempted as he had been by Hutch’s sweet smile. Huggy was virtually unshockable. It would take a deeper, darker secret than falling in love with his partner before Starsky could hope to surprise the worldly-wise entrepreneur. Resisting temptation, however, had become Starsky’s new career.

“Thanks, Hug. I’ll remember that the next time you tell me you didn’t ask where the watch came from,” Starsky dismissed the offer, smiling to let Huggy know he wasn’t really still carrying around that ancient grudge.

“Have it your way,” Huggy accepted the rejection and climbed out of the car. He closed the door and then leaned back in through the open window. “Tell Mr. America hello for me.”

Starsky pulled away from the curb, a glance in the rearview mirror showing him Huggy still standing on the sidewalk, watching him. Maybe he should have gone in, gotten drunk, and spilled his guts to Huggy. But Starsky knew he couldn’t give the confession to Huggy, or anyone else, that he withheld from Hutch.

The illuminated dial on his watch caught Starsky’s eye as he made a right turn. Still an hour to closing time. Starsky knew what he needed to do. Now that the crisis was passed, find a handsome, willing blond and let spurting semen firehose the flame inside him back into an ember. When it had seemed a matter of his balls, a string-free scratching of an itch, Starsky could lie to himself, but he knew he loved Hutch now. Occasionally fucking a substitute wasn’t just an aberration anymore; it was a betrayal.

And it wasn’t ever going to happen again.

Determined to keep the promise he had broken too many times in the past, Starsky turned the car toward home. He would spend all night jerking off if he had to. Find some way to keep Hutch out of his fantasies while he drained his body of the obsession that possessed him. By tomorrow, when he picked Hutch up and brought him safely home, the fire of desire had to be banked into the comfortable glow of friendship once again.

~*~*~

“No. No. I can manage,” Hutch assured the nurse who was insisting on helping him dress, giving her a smile that had considerably less wattage behind it than he usually offered such a pretty woman.

Just lately, however–and for a long time to come, Hutch suspected–he was feeling a little gun shy of nurses. Intellectually, Hutch was sure this woman didn’t have a psychotic thought in her head, but he still didn’t want her zipping his pants for him.

“Both your right hand and your left arm out of commission, but you can manage?” the nurse asked dubiously, eyeing him up and down as if she could visually assess his level of sanity.

“I can manage,” Hutch repeated, wriggling the fingers of his bandaged right hand and lifting his sling-supported left arm, valiantly keeping any sign of pain from his face. Christ, it did hurt. But he wasn’t about to reveal that to this helpful young lady if it killed him.

“Well, all right. If you’re sure,” the nurse conceded and turned away, although it was apparent she was leaving him to his own devices against her better judgment. “Just ring if you need help.”

“Oh, I will,” Hutch promised, waiting until she was gone and the door closed behind her before adding, “When Hell freezes over.”

“Alone at last,” Hutch muttered as he eased off the bed, eyeing the pile of clothes the nurse had left on the chair. Shorts, socks, shoes, shirt, jeans and belt.

“I can manage,” Hutch mimicked his blithe reassurances, the simple task of dressing himself taking on the daunting prospects of climbing Mount Fuji in the winter. “You moron,” he chided himself and reached for his shorts, hooking them on one finger and sighing when even their negligible weight set up a burning throb in the re-stitched wound in his hand.

He couldn’t manage. He probably shouldn’t even try in case he ripped something loose. But Starsky was on his way to pick him up, and Hutch wanted to be ready. It had taken him the better part of the day to talk the doctor into releasing him, and Hutch wasn’t taking any chances that the man might change his mind. Whatever nightmares awaited him at home, they had to be better than lying awake all night listening to the soft squeak of the nurse’s rubber soled shoes as she made her endless rounds.

To Hutch’s surprise, once he got started, dressing himself didn’t turn out to be the impossibility it had seemed. His right hand hurt like the devil, but it did what he demanded of it. Mostly. He couldn’t manage the buttons on his jeans or his shirt, and tying his shoes was impossible, but Starsky could do those when he arrived.

Wanting to shave yet a few more minutes off his hospital stay, Hutch started packing up the bag Starsky had insisted upon bringing him. Gathering his scattered possessions from drawers and bathroom and locker, Hutch stuffed everything haphazardly into the bag. He was trying to work out the logistics of closing the bulging results when Starsky arrived. And immediately began raising hell.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Starsky demanded, taking custody of the bag and zipping it closed with the enviable ease of a person who still had the use of both hands. “I’d’ve done it. I even parked out in the lot so I wouldn’t have to rush you.”

“I’m not completely helpless,” Hutch defended himself, but in his gentlest tone. He didn’t need the magazines or the novel or the flowers Starsky had bought him. He didn’t, despite the impossibility of the buttons and laces, really need a nurse to dress him. And he certainly didn’t need Starsky doing wheelies of efficiency all over his apartment once they got home. Not for the sake of Starsky’s over-active conscience or any other reason. What Hutch needed, desperately, was the comfort of his friend. He might be managing all right physically, but Hutch knew that, emotionally, he was still on very shaky ground.

“I’m sorry, Hutch,” Starsky apologized just as he had been asking forgiveness it seemed like every five minutes since Hutch had come out of the anesthetic. He released the bag and backed off a step, his hands spread before him to demonstrate his intention to allow Hutch his independence, then pointed at the gaping shirt. “Ah, Hutch. You should do that up. You don’t want to catch a cold on top of everything else,” he advised, grimaced, and then apologized again.

Hutch sighed, recognizing that Starsky was probably already too wired for calm-voiced reassurances to have any positive effect. They were just as likely to bounce off the bubble of static-charged energy that surrounded him. Hutch, however, was willing to keep trying, at least long enough for Starsky to get him out of here. “I would if I could,” he said, inviting Starsky’s assistance with a brush of his bandaged hand down the front of his unbuttoned shirt.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry,” Starsky muttered, his face turning an interesting shade of red as he shuffled close enough to pull the edges of the white shirt together and start working the buttons into their holes.

Briefly, Hutch considered re-opening the debate over the never-ending apologies, but abandoned it almost immediately. Starsky seemed to be having enough trouble buttoning the shirt, his fumbling fingers making a minutes-long ordeal out of what should have taken only a few seconds, and failing completely with the snap on his jeans even when Hutch sucked his stomach in so hard he could barely feel the warmth of Starsky’s hand.

“Maybe you should just leave that,” Hutch suggested.

“Okay, let’s go,” Starsky agreed quickly. He gave up on the snap, pulled Hutch’s shirt down to cover the unsealed waistband, and grabbed up the over-stuffed bag.

Hutch’s first step reminded him of the far more potentially dangerous hazard of his untied shoes and he hesitated. Starsky, however, already had the door open and was fidgeting impatiently, waiting for Hutch to precede him.

“Did I forget something?” Starsky asked anxiously, beginning to close the door again.

“No. Nothing. Just get me the hell out of here,” Hutch insisted, deciding he would rather walk carefully than listen to one more apology.

“I’m really sorry, Hutch.”

Hutch resisted the temptation to sigh, rested his head against the back of the couch, and closed his eyes. “You said that already,” he said, just as he had tried to reassure his contrite friend every one of the times Starsky had offered the apology. Hutch didn’t want any more apologies. What he wanted was for Starsky to sit down beside him, relax, and just be there. Starsky seemed incapable of any one of the three.

“I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with me,” Starsky continued as if Hutch hadn’t spoken. “Should’ve listened to you. Hell, should’ve seen it myself. Should’ve–”

“Should’ve what, for Christ’s sake?” Hutch snapped and opened his eyes. Unable to see Starsky, he lifted his head and looked around until he found him in the alcove, stuffing Hutch’s dirty laundry into the bag. Care and concern delivered with frenetic efficiency. Having experienced that same care and concern without the super-charged static electricity after Vic Humphries attempt to kill him, Hutch found he had even less patience for it than ever before.

“You see, I’m right,” Starsky insisted, finishing with the laundry and moving to stand over Hutch. “I can tell by the look on your face. You think it’s my fault, too.”

“Yeah, right, Starsky,” Hutch agreed sarcastically, now irritated enough by this wired-for-sound partner to let bad temper get the best of him. The wounded expression on Starsky’s face, however, helped Hutch curb his tongue long enough to file the edges off it. “It’s not your fault I hooked up with a psycho bitch,” he insisted wearily.

“But if only I had–” Starsky began again.

“Okay. Okay,” Hutch interrupted, hoping to put an end to this useless treadmill of guilt. “Maybe we both screwed up. But if you really want to make it up to me–”

“What? What can I do?” Starsky demanded so eagerly it was painful to hear.

“Just…stop apologizing and relax,” Hutch pleaded, seeing the immediate rejection of so simple an atonement in Starsky’s face. “Just be…easy.”

“Easy?” Starsky echoed dubiously.

“Yeah, easy. Relax. Quit charging around like you’re stuck in overdrive.” Hutch paused, groping for something that might put them both in a more mellow mood. “Why don’t you put on some music.”

“Right. Sure thing,” Starsky agreed and hustled to the stereo.

Starsky wasn’t going to relax. Hutch knew that. There was no sense fooling himself. It made Hutch tired just watching Starsky searching through his record collection, busy fingers flipping album after album, giving each one only a cursory inspection. It wouldn’t be long now before Starsky was ready to climb the walls, and even doubly handicapped, Hutch would be right behind him. When the first strains of the opening track of Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits–a duo Hutch knew Starsky didn’t care for–emerged from the speakers, Hutch accepted defeat. It was time to boot Starsky out before they ended up snarling at each other like a couple of strange dogs on tight leashes.

“Do you want–?”

“Starsky.”

Their voices clashed. It was an off-key harmony that made Hutch wince, but the anxious expression on Starsky’s face also reminded Hutch that he had his own capacity for guilt. If Starsky was the one in the sling, Hutch knew he would be feeling just as responsible, just as anxious to make Starsky as comfortable as possible. Maybe all Hutch needed to do was come up with a little make work to let Starsky discharge some of that remorse.

“Sorry,” Starsky apologized. “Did you want me to do something?” he asked eagerly.

Every task Hutch managed to come up with, however, was performed efficiently without seeming to deplete the store of energy. A sandwich that Hutch really didn’t want was prepared in record time. Simon and Garfunkel were whisked off the turntable and tucked back into their cover. The TV was turned on and the channels flipped until Hutch began to feel a little queasy at the rapidly changing scenes on the screen. It was a relief when it finally went black.

If he didn’t feel so sorry for Starsky, Hutch could have cheerfully strangled him, if only to put an end to the ongoing stream of chatter, interspersed with yet more apologies. After an hour of it, he just couldn’t think of one more task. Maybe he shouldn’t have hired Huggy and the cousins. Cleaning up the mess Diana had left behind her certainly would have used up some of the fuel in Starsky’s rockets. But there was no mess, and Hutch couldn’t stand to put either one of them through this anymore.

“You know what,” Hutch finally said. “I think all I really want is to go to bed.”

“But…” Starsky immediately began to protest, looking around a little desperately. “It’s kind of early,” he finished when it seemed the apartment refused to offer him any inspiration.

“I didn’t sleep very well in the hospital,” Hutch confessed, struggling up from the couch.

Starsky moved toward him, reaching out, but then backing off, a near-panicked expression on his face, his hand curling into a fist against his leg. “I didn’t think you’d want to be alone so soon after….”

Hutch suppressed the internal shiver Starsky’s hesitant reminder caused. No, he didn’t want to be alone here to face his ghosts, but he had to do it sometime. Starsky couldn’t hold his hand forever. “I’m a big boy,” he tried to reassure his anxious friend.

“You don’t need my help?” Starsky asked plaintively.

“Of course I need your help,” Hutch assured him quickly. He definitely didn’t want to give Starsky the impression Hutch didn’t need him. It wasn’t Starsky’s fault that guilt had him too wound up to give Hutch what he needed in exactly the way he needed it. God knew, the poor guy was trying hard enough. “You’re coming back tomorrow, right.”

“Of course,” Starsky agreed immediately. “I could stay tonight,” he added doubtfully. “If you want.”

For a moment, Hutch was tempted. Once the lights were out, maybe Starsky would calm down. They could talk, the darkness perhaps providing them both with a calming cushion. More likely, however, Starsky would toss and turn on the couch all night long and neither of them would get any sleep. “Just come back tomorrow.”

Starsky seemed about to agree, then hesitated, a stream of fleeting emotions darting over his face that left Hutch groping for recognition. “Yeah. Guess you’re right,” he said, brisk movements that didn’t quite disguise an odd discomfort bringing him to the chair where he gathered up his jacket. “But…” Again Starsky hesitated while the emotional battle waged on his face, then he shook his head. “Tomorrow,” he echoed, and then he was gone.

The door had barely closed before Hutch wanted to call Starsky back, but he resisted this temptation as well. Hutch went to the kitchen instead, searching for the bottle of painkillers he had been given, and found that Starsky had already put two pills out on the counter for him. He wanted to resent the efficiency that had been unaccompanied by the calm Hutch had craved, but found he couldn’t be that petty, even in his own thoughts. Starsky would be better in the morning. He always was.

Stretching out on the bed, trying to relax and let the drugs work their magic, Hutch waited for Diana’s specter to appear. To hear again her crazed accusations and threats, and his shocked, feeble attempts to reason with her. They came, shuddering through him, but hard on their heels was the memory of Starsky charging to his rescue, and the strong arms that had wrapped around him as consciousness had slipped away. Almost asleep, Hutch felt those arms again, holding him in their protective circle of security, pressing him into an entwined puzzle with warm, furry flesh.

Dimly, Hutch realized that he was fantasizing being held in a lover’s embrace by Starsky. Even less substantial was the concept that the scenario ought to be freaking him out. That he should be backing away from the image, hands raised to defend himself from such an alien concept. But he was too damned tired and needy tonight to whip up any machismo-inspired posturing. Maybe, if he even remembered the fantasy, he would be righteously offended tomorrow. Tonight, Hutch needed the comfort only Starsky could give him. If he couldn’t have Starsky in his arms, who would it hurt to have Starsky in his head?

Tomorrow. When he didn’t hurt so much and Diana’s memory began to fade. Hutch would worry about it tomor….

~*~*~

“Buy you a drink?”

Starsky didn’t look to his left where he could feel the warmth of the generous stranger who had just insinuated himself between Starsky and the man on the next stool. He kept his eyes on the mirror in front of him, the same place they had been since he entered the bar about half an hour ago. He had watched this blond’s reflection obsessively, seen the interest and willed the other man to make the first move. He met the green eyes and then slowly, silently, shook his head. With hardly a missed beat, the stranger turned slightly and made the same offer to the man beside Starsky.

When the bartender had delivered their drinks, the prospective, temporary couple retired to a table, leaving Starsky in relative privacy with a stool now empty on either side of him. Private except for the curious scrutiny of the bartender himself.

“‘Nother beer,” Starsky ordered in hopes of ridding himself of the unwanted presence. It worked only long enough for the man to draw the draft and return to perform a professional sleight of hand replacement with Starsky’s empty glass.

“Haven’t seen you in here before,” the bartender said as he hitched his butt up onto the stool behind the polished mahogany bar. “From out of town?” the persistent snoop continued.

Starsky nodded a curt confirmation. Out of town, all right. He had driven two hours to reach this place and had spent every minute of it trying to talk himself into turning back to Bay City. A useless, circular argument because he had known, despite his promises to himself, that he was going to do it again. At least this time he hadn’t lied to Hutch. No spoken lies to add to the burden of the betrayal he was about to commit.

“You can tell me to mind my own fucking business if you want,” the bartender invited, and then, as was the way of people who made such an offer, left no opportunity for the offeree to take him up on it. “But I’ve been doing this job all over the country for twenty years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy who needs it as bad as you do.” He waved a hand toward Starsky’s rejected suitor. “So how come the brush off? You’ve watched him like a hawk since the minute you walked through the door. You suddenly decide you don’t like blonds?”

Telling this nosey bastard to mind his own fucking business was probably the smart thing to do, but Starsky wasn’t feeling particularly brilliant tonight. “What’s your name?” he asked instead.

“Bill.”

“Well, Bill, I like blonds just fine,” Starsky continued. Love ’em, love one, in fact, he added silently. A big, blond, clumsy partner with bad taste in women and a habit of getting damaged or lost or both. “Yeah, blonds,” he repeated and looked past Bill’s expectant face to the mirror, scanning the reflected images until he spotted another golden head to watch.

“So, what was wrong with that one?” Bill asked curiously.

“Green eyes,” Starsky revealed, making it sound as if it were some sort of an unfortunate affliction.

“What color eyes should blonds have?” Bill pursued the subject in a tone that brought Starsky’s eyes back to him. “Blue, right?” he asked sarcastically.

“‘Course. Sky blue. Baby blue. Blue so blue it practically glows in the dark,” Starsky agreed. Hutch blue, that could sparkle like the sun on the ocean when he was happy, or the moon on ice when righteous fury rode his idealistic soul. Starsky went back to studying the new object of his blond fascination.

If once, just once in the past eight months, Starsky had seen even a hint of desire in those blue eyes that so often revealed everything Hutch was inside to him alone, Starsky wouldn’t be here now. Instead, perhaps… But there had been no hint, not so much as a brief flicker of heat. Not for him. Not for friend and partner. No, Hutch let some bitch with a fondness for sharp objects and a precarious hold on sanity rouse that heat in him instead.

That’s right, Starsky chided himself bitterly, trying to see if option number two had blue eyes. If he got mad at Hutch, blamed it all on Hutch, then he could use it as an excuse to pretend fucking all of this need into some duplicate wasn’t any kind of betrayal of the love he felt. You couldn’t betray a love that wasn’t wanted.

Starsky’s breath caught in his throat as number two finally met his eyes in the mirror. Oh yeah, blue. Blue, blue, blue.

“So, he’s gotta be blond and blue-eyed,” Bill summarized. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find. God knows there’s no shortage of blond, blue-eyed beach boys in California. Or lawyers. Or doctors. Or any other damned thing blond and blue-eyed in this state. Male or female. Must be a law or something.”

Starsky grunted an obliging laugh in response to Bill’s complaint. It was the same complaint Starsky had privately made to himself even while he competed with Hutch for some lady’s attention as if he had all the confidence in the world. He didn’t, especially since he had learned to appreciate and crave Hutch’s sun-kissed beauty for himself. Appreciate it, crave it, and love everything that lived beneath it.

Everybody loves you. Why can’t you love me?

Diana had screamed the accusation at Hutch when Starsky had torn her away from his wounded partner. As much as he hated the crazy bitch, Starsky could sympathize. Why couldn’t Hutch love him? Because he did. Loved Starsky as a best friend and the brother he had never had. And if Starsky didn’t find some way to deal with his obsession–something more permanent and reliable than picking up a substitute or hopping from one bimbo to the next–it was going to cost him that love.

For most of his life, Starsky had assumed that he would someday end up with a wife, kids, dog and a white picket fence. Though he had slept with many women, Starsky had loved only a few. With his heart committed to Hutch, he had stopped looking for that faceless wife, had all but given up ever fathering those sexless children.

“Anything else?” Bill asked.

“Tall. Built. And hung,” Starsky whispered, sick in his soul, but his body coming to life as, in the mirror, he watched number two rise to his feet. Hutch’s 6’1″ at least, broad shouldered and…packing a magnum

“Here comes Mr. Wonderful,” Bill observed ironically. “You gonna brush this one off, too?”

“No,” Starsky whispered. “No brush off.” Tonight, once and for all, he was going to purge this need he couldn’t offer to the man he loved. Drain it into the approaching man who could be Hutch’s cousin. Quiet it long enough to do everything in his power, spending every waking minute if that was what it took, to make Hutch’s recovery as easy as possible. But, as soon as Hutch was back on his feet, Starsky was going to find a face to put to that imaginary wife.

And she wasn’t going to be blonde.

Peripherally aware of the bartender’s scrutiny, Starsky turned to face the blond, letting his eyes sweep down and then up the tall frame in a blatant appraisal, feeling his cock throb an impatient approval in his jeans.

“Hi,” the substitute greeted Starsky, holding out his hand. “My name’s–”

“Blondie,” Starsky interrupted, ignoring the polite offer of a handshake, grieving as he realized he would never be able to call Hutch that again. The pet name was tarnished now, cheapened, something special lost, that could never be reclaimed.

The rejected hand was dragged back through the blond hair and the blue eyes became a little less friendly. “Okay. Blondie it is,” he agreed. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“You wanna drink or fuck?” Starsky demanded crudely. He wasn’t interested in exchanging pleasantries, didn’t want more to forget than the mechanics of the sex acts needed to quiet his yearning for Hutch. He wanted this stand-in to understand that, to Starsky, he was little more than an animated sex toy.

“Not big on small talk, huh?” Blondie complained, but it wasn’t a dismissal, more of an observation. He looked around as if checking out other options before his blue eyes came back to Starsky and he shrugged. “My place is close. Do you want to follow me?”

Starsky nodded, fished a few bills out of his pocket and threw them on the bar. He gestured an after-you and followed the other man out of the bar, that spirit-sickness growing worse with every step he took.

“That’s me,” Blondie said, pointing to a green corvette. “You want the address in case I lose you?” he asked, a dare in his voice.

Starsky walked away, ignoring the veiled threat and the challenge, and climbed into the Torino. Sitting behind the wheel, feeling the engine’s idling rumble vibrate through his body, Starsky waited until the sports car pulled out of its slot and cruised slowly to the exit ramp, but didn’t follow until it had made a left out onto the road. Putting the car into gear, he followed, braking at the exit and watching the tail lights growing dimmer.

Starsky lifted his foot off the brake and let the car roll forward, turning the wheel but not giving it the gas until the long nose was pointed back toward Bay City. He was a fool, tempting fate to rob him of what he valued most, but Starsky couldn’t go through with it.

Substitute Hutches had never been good enough. Now they were no good at all.

~*~*~

Hutch counted out the multi-colored bills from the stacks in front of him and handed them across the board to Starsky. “There you go, tycoon. Sixty bucks for landing on the Waterworks.” He leaned back on both hands and was pleased to find that, though he could still feel the pull of the new scar on his left arm, there was no longer even a twinge of pain to remind him of Diana’s attack.

“Shit!”

Starsky’s exclamation of disgust drove Diana into the shadows of Hutch’s memory where she belonged. He checked out the board and visually counted the spaces Starsky’s throw of the dice would move his little pewter car. Boardwalk. Owned by Hutch, and sporting a hotel.

“Tough luck,” Hutch commiserated, almost, but not quite, keeping the gloating triumph out of his voice. He really should stop playing this game with Starsky. It was too much like taking candy from a baby.

“Well, that’s it. I can’t pay,” Starsky admitted, beginning to sort the few bills he possessed into the banker tray in the box. “Game’s over, Mr. Hughes.”

“Just as well,” Hutch said, gathering up the titles to the properties he had bought and scooping the little red hotels off the board. “Work in the morning,” he added with satisfaction. He was going to be glad to get back to work. He had been going stir crazy, especially this last week when, in his opinion, he had been completely recovered, but the physiotherapist wouldn’t release him for even light duties. If it hadn’t been for Starsky’s company, Hutch would have gone insane with boredom.

“It’s gonna be so good to have you back,” Starsky confessed with the same satisfaction in his voice.

“Ah, partner, I didn’t know you cared,” Hutch teased. Which was a great big fat lie. Starsky had been doing a fine job the past few weeks of showing how much he cared, and Hutch, after the months before of having to practically beg, borrow or steal five minutes of Starsky’s free time, had been wallowing in it. He suspected it was going to be a long time before he took his friend’s company for granted. At the very least, until they ended up imprisoned together in the Torino on some interminable stakeout.

“Who said I cared,” Starsky countered immediately. “Babcock can’t type worth a damn.”

Laughing, Hutch grabbed up one of his stacks of play money and threw it at Starsky, the hands that Starsky instinctively lifted to fend off the missiles sending the multi-colored bills scattering all over both men and the floor. The laughter faded slowly, both of them giving intermittent chuckles, while they finished packing the well-used game away.

Hutch was more content than he had been in a long time. This had been such a good evening, as had all the other evenings before it. It had almost been worth getting stabbed just to find himself the recipient of the reward of Starsky’s complete attention. Even knowing it couldn’t last and that it was underserved regret driving Starsky’s engine, couldn’t take Hutch’s pleasure out of their time together. If occasionally Starsky grew a little introspective, or once in a while a little edgy, Hutch understood that an over abundance of sedentary activities could do that to a guy with Starsky’s energy.

Hutch put the top on the game and slid it away under the couch before he climbed to his feet. He waited while Starsky yawned and stretched until a few tendons popped, and then offered a hand to haul him to his feet. He released the grip, but then rested his hand on Starsky’s shoulder while he walked him to the door.

“Thanks for the company,” Hutch said, hoping Starsky would understand he wasn’t just talking about tonight’s game, or last night’s movie, or any of the other nights singly that they had spent together, but would understand how grateful Hutch was for the sum of all those individual parts.

“Not like it’s a hardship,” Starsky mumbled, ducking his head and sliding out from under Hutch’s hand. He opened the door and then gave Hutch a guileless smile. “Pick you up in the morning?” he asked innocently.

“Pick me up?” Hutch immediately protested, allowing Starsky to avoid the soapy moment. “You said you’d come early. Start running with me.”

“Damn, Hutch. Do I have to?” Starsky whined while he backed out into the hall. “Only chickens run around in circles going nowhere.”

Hutch wrapped his hand around the edge of the door and glared a mock threat at his reneging partner. “Are you calling me a chicken?”

“If the cluck fits, wear it,” Starsky advised.

“Six a.m. Be here,” Hutch growled and closed the door in Starsky’s face. He waited until he heard Starsky take a step away from the door. “‘Night, Starsk,” he called through the panel.

“‘Night, babe,” came the muffled reply, and Hutch flipped the lock.

Hutch tidied the living room, and then went around turning off lights until he came to the bathroom. By the time he had finished brushing his teeth and began undressing beside his bed, the anticipation that had started building the moment he had closed and locked his door behind Starsky, had completely overtaken him.

Starsky wasn’t the only one in their partnership with an over-worked conscience. Hutch had a guilty secret of his own. The comforting fantasy that had eased him to sleep the night he was discharged from the hospital hadn’t just been recalled, it had re-visited him every night since.

The scenario wasn’t exactly sexual. Not the kind of fantasy that made his cock hard or put a restless yearning in his body that wouldn’t let him sleep. But neither was it entirely innocently platonic. Every night, the fantasy possessed him, sensory memory providing the familiar sensations of the springy texture of Starsky’s hair and the smooth warmth of his skin, while Hutch’s imagination extrapolated unknown details like how that furry chest might feel against Hutch’s own naked, hairless skin.

Hutch knew he ought to be disturbed by the recurring fantasy, and even more panicked by the anticipation that grew in him every night as he prepared for bed, but he couldn’t seem to conjure either fright or panic. Careful not to probe too deeply into his own psyche, he had even managed to rationalize it. It wasn’t all that surprising that he would summon up the one person he could trust absolutely not to slice and dice him to keep the bogeywoman out of his dreams.

Prolonging the pleasant anticipation a few moments longer, Hutch dawdled over turning back the bedspread, folding it neatly at the end of the bed, then slid his briefs off and climbed between the cool sheets. He knew he could make the fantasy disappear if he really wanted to, but the honest truth was that he simply didn’t want to give it up. It wasn’t hurting anyone. Starsky didn’t know, need never know, and it wasn’t as if Hutch really wanted to cuddle up every night with his friend. It was just a harmless little placebo, and a lot less expensive than sleeping pills.

Sighing softly, rolling onto his side and closing his eyes, Hutch was immediately enclosed in the warmth of Starsky’s comforting embrace.

~*~*~

Shelby, Frank Malone’s biggest underworld competitor, straightened his tie while he glared at Starsky and Hutch. “Let’s get this over with, gentlemen,” he demanded. “I have an appointment with my barber this afternoon.”

“No kidding,” Starsky said, looking through the fistful of betting slips he held. “I’ve got a luncheon date myself. I think I’ll make mine,” he added with a smirk. He went back to studying the evidence as Hutch handed Shelby over to a uniformed officer.

“The fact is, he probably will be out in time for his appointment,” Hutch said with disgust when Shelby was out of earshot, moving in closer to Starsky.

“No kidding,” Starsky repeated, keeping his attention on the markers to prevent himself from stepping back and opening a little more comfortable distance between them. He felt the curiosity in Hutch’s scrutiny and braced himself for the interrogation.

“What’s with your lunch?” Hutch asked just as Starsky had expected him to.

“It’s a lunch, that’s all,” Starsky tried to dismiss the significance of the fact that this was the first Hutch was hearing of his plans.

“That’s all, huh?” Hutch asked ironically, his disbelief in his voice even if Starsky refused to look at it on his face.

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed, still trying to maintain the disinterested attitude.

“Then you wouldn’t mind some company,” Hutch pushed a little harder.

“I think I’ve got enough company for this lunch,” Starsky insisted. He pushed the markers he held against Hutch’s chest, barely waiting for Hutch to lift a hand to take them before he walked away.

“Hey, Starsky,” Hutch called after him when Starsky had almost made it to the door of the converted warehouse.

Starsky waited for his partner to catch up. Short of pretending to go suddenly deaf, he really had no other option, but he wished Hutch would just let it drop.

“Were you going to leave me here, partner?” Hutch asked, sounding peeved. “Did you forget I came with you?”

Starsky hadn’t forgotten. He couldn’t seem to forget Hutch for two minutes. Even last night, with Rosey Malone in his arms, Starsky hadn’t been able to keep Hutch out of his mind. The aroma of Hutch’s cologne must be imbedded in the leather seats of the Torino the way it seemed to over power the perfume Rosey wore and even that damned hot sauce. But Starsky knew it wasn’t the leather that held onto the smell, it was his own memory.

If only Rosey wasn’t a blonde.

“Of course I didn’t forget,” Starsky grumbled as they reached his car.

“Then you won’t mind dropping me off at the station before your lunch,” Hutch said, opening the door and sliding into the passenger seat before Starsky could think of an alternative.

Recognizing that he had been out maneuvered, Starsky joined Hutch in the car and guided the Torino out of the lot. He let the silence sit between them, acutely aware that Hutch was still watching him, but keeping his attention firmly fixed on traffic. If he looked at Hutch, saw the concern that Starsky knew was on his face, then he might forget that Hutch wasn’t in love with him, too.

It would be the same kind of convenient memory lapse Starsky had been suffering all through Hutch’s recovery. He had almost slipped up so many times, catching himself reaching out in the darkness of the movie theater to take Hutch’s hand in his, and suppressing the impulse to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind Hutch’s ear while he studied the chess board. There had been nights when Starsky couldn’t believe what he felt for Hutch wasn’t written all over his face in neon orange.

“I assume your lunch is with Rosey,” Hutch ventured after a few minutes, during which the silence became more awkward and strained.

“You assume right. That’s my job right now. Remember?” Starsky reminded him, knowing he was being far too aggressive. Hutch was only trying to watch his back for him. “Sorry,” he muttered, feeling truly contrite, but stepping harder on the gas nevertheless to make the light. He couldn’t afford to let this ride take any longer than it had to.

“I know I sound like a broken record,” Hutch tried gentle reason once again. “But if Rosey is part of her father’s operation–”

“She isn’t,” Starsky insisted, although he knew no such thing. Rosey seemed sweet and good and painfully vulnerable, but for all Starsky knew, she might be the greatest actress since Katherine Hepburn.

Starsky wasn’t willing to consider that possibility, however, because he desperately needed her to be as innocent and vulnerable as she appeared. If he could fall in love with her, marry her, have a couple of kids and buy a dog and a house with her, then maybe he could stop loving Hutch.

“My instincts tell me she’s not, and what the hell else do I have to go on,” he muttered the self-defense as he pulled up in front of the station, hoping again that Hutch would just let it drop.

“Granted,” Hutch agreed, but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get out of the car.

Starsky tried to wait him out, but eventually had to turn his head, knowing as he met Hutch’s concerned eyes, that he was fooling himself. He was never going to stop loving Hutch. But if he could make himself fall in love with Rosey, then maybe Hutch would go back to being friend and partner and better than brother, and stay the hell out of Starsky’s dreams.

“I just don’t want to see you hurt,” Hutch murmured, his voice deep and intimate, his expression conciliatory.

Starsky felt himself falling in love all over again. “I know,” he acknowledged in the same intimate tone, forgetting what Rosey even looked like as the expression on Hutch’s beautiful face fed something starving inside him.

The moment stretched and stretched, both of them oblivious to the bustle of pedestrian traffic around them until Hutch lifted his hand and Starsky panicked. If Hutch touched him now….

“So, get outta here and let me do my job,” Starsky commanded, turning his head to stare through the windshield, his fingers wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel it creaked.

“All right,” Hutch agreed, and Starsky heard the click as the door was opened, the rustle of cloth against the leather as Hutch climbed out. “I’ll see if I can find out where that tip came from,” he added before he pushed the door closed.

Starsky pulled away from the curb, refusing to let his eyes stray to the rearview mirror. Rosey Malone was waiting for him. Whether she was as innocent as she seemed, Starsky had to fall in love with her. Somehow he knew she was his last chance.

“Hutchinson, where’s your partner?” Dobey demanded as he came through the door to the squad room.

It seemed to Hutch he had been hearing that question a lot the past five days. “Sorry, Captain. Same answer as last time. I don’t know.”

“Starsky’s your partner. You’re supposed to know,” Dobey reminded him, glaring at Starsky’s empty chair as if his missing officer would appear like magic, conjured by the force of his will alone.

Hutch spread his hands in a silent appeal. “I bought a choke chain and leash, Captain, but Starsky won’t wear them,” he reported in an aggrieved tone.

The joke earned him a grudging grunt of amusement from Dobey and a few chuckles from the other officers in the squad room.

“Well, if he ever remembers how to dial a telephone, tell him to get his butt in here,” Dobey ordered. “The case is closed, so he can romance Rosey Malone on his own time from now on.”

“Yes, sir,” Hutch agreed meekly as he watched Dobey disappear into his office. The case was closed, but Hutch couldn’t seem to stop worrying about his partner.

“So, what else is new,” Hutch grumbled as he turned back to the typewriter and the report he was trying to finish. He had been worrying ever since Chambers and Goodson had backed Starsky into the unforgiving corner of duty versus self-interest, and couldn’t seem to shut down that protective impulse. Starsky had been acting like a runaway jet during most of the case, and Hutch feared his friend was way overdue for a crash landing.

Trying to quiet the insistent voice of doom in his head, Hutch re-read what he had typed, rubbing at his aching neck and wishing Starsky would come back so they could get this over with and go home. He had already filled in everything he could, but there was some information only Starsky knew. Tiredly, Hutch rolled the incomplete report out of the machine, slipped it into a folder, and tossed it over to Starsky’s side of the desk.

As if Starsky had finally, belatedly, been summoned by Hutch’s thoughts, he appeared just as the file folder skidded across the table and landed on the floor. One look at him, as Starsky bent to pick up the folder and slumped into his chair, was all Hutch needed to confirm his fear that Rosey Malone had somehow brought Starsky back down to Earth with a resounding thump.

“Hey,” Hutch greeted him, dropping his voice into its gentlest tone as he took in Starsky’s unhappy face and rumpled, sweaty appearance. His partner looked like he had been running for miles, pursued by some demon that, despite his best efforts, had clung tenaciously to his back. “You okay?” he asked, pitching his voice even lower. This wasn’t for the eager ears or gossiping lips of their colleagues. This was Starsky’s pain, and Hutch had to shield it, protect it, heal it. Somehow.

“Yeah. Sure. Just…rosey,” Starsky muttered bitterly. His eyes strayed to the file he had retrieved from the floor and narrowed before he, too, flung it onto the table. His head lowered a little farther, until the flipped up collar of his jacket rode even with his ears. “She dumped me,” he added even more quietly through lips that moved barely enough to form the words. “Running off to Mexico with Malone.”

Damn, Hutch thought, investing every emotion into feeling sympathy for his partner, refusing to acknowledge the imp of relief that cavorted inside him at the news. That relief had nothing to do with Rosey’s departure, it was just… When Hutch couldn’t come up with a plausible excuse, he stepped on the little devil even harder, and scrambled for something comforting to say. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Starsky echoed, a sudden flare of fury burning the resigned exhaustion from his face. “Don’t you mean I told you so?”

The angry accusation hurt, but it wasn’t hard for Hutch to keep the pain off his face. Starsky was just lashing out at the nearest target. Hutch knew that. He had done it to Starsky the night Gillian had been murdered, only he hadn’t limited his unfair assault to words.

“I’m sorry, Hutch,” Starsky apologized almost immediately. “You did try to warn me, but I didn’t listen.”

“Sometimes, I guess you just have to follow your heart,” Hutch offered absolution. It had been out of character for Starsky to refuse to listen to Hutch. But then it wasn’t like Starsky to fall so hard and so fast for any woman, either. There had seemed to be a desperation in Starsky’s determination to win Rosey, despite the odds against them, that Hutch had never seen in his friend before.

“At least…” he began, hesitating when Starsky pinned him with tortured eyes. He wanted to reach out so badly, connect with Starsky in the physical way that didn’t need words he couldn’t invest with any sort of sincerity, but sensed that Starsky was likely to reject any physical overtures right now. “But at least you know she’ll be safe from Shelby,” he finished awkwardly.

Anger flared for a moment in Starsky’s eyes, but couldn’t seem to find a foothold on his tired face. It faded quickly, and Starsky shook his head. “I coulda protected her,” he mumbled, but there was no more conviction in the protest, no more sincerity, than Hutch had been able to put into his lame reassurance. “Let’s get this done and get the fuck outta here,” he added, flipped open the cover on the file, and snatched up the almost-completed report. He rolled it into the machine and began pecking out the facts that Hutch hadn’t known.

Hutch left Starsky to it, keeping an eye on him while he tidied their desk. He knew as soon as the report was done, Starsky was going to want to split. In fact, Hutch felt he could predict exactly what Starsky was going to do: jump into an emotional foxhole and pull it in after him, and Hutch wasn’t willing to let that happen.

“Hey, Starsk,” Hutch said, giving himself no chance to second guess the impulsive invitation. “How about dinner at my place tonight?” he suggested, wondering belatedly if he even had anything edible to offer. It didn’t matter. They could pick something up.

Starsky didn’t even look up from the typewriter, he just shook his head and mumbled a curt, “Not tonight.”

“Hey,” Hutch repeated, leaning over the desk and laying his hand on Starsky’s arm, waiting to continue until Starsky met his eyes. “Let me help.”

Starsky’s lips twisted into an ironic quirk. “The three most important words in the universe?”

“What?” Hutch asked, almost certain it was some reference he should remember, but unable to place it.

Starsky’s smile softened a little, the mask tugged askew by the affection in his eyes. “I’ll tell ya later. Over dinner.”

It took only a few minutes for Starsky to finish the report and hand it in to Dobey, marking the official end of their work day.

“I’ll pick up something for dinner and meet you at my place,” Hutch suggested as they reached their cars, parked side by side in the station garage.

“Maybe I should just go home,” Starsky said, his head down, his fingers fumbling with his car keys. “I don’t think I’m gonna be very good company.”

Hutch bypassed the first humorous retort that came to mind, knowing already that Starsky wasn’t in a joking mood. “I’m not going to arrest you, but I really don’t think you should be alone tonight,” he admitted honestly.

Starsky looked up, cocked his head and studied Hutch with serious eyes. “You afraid I’ll eat my gun?” he asked bluntly.

“You’re not the type,” Hutch countered immediately. Starsky might withdraw, go into emotional isolation behind walls of silence, but he wasn’t likely to kill himself over a five-day romance gone down the tubes. The instinct that was pushing Hutch to be so persistent had nothing to do with Starsky’s physical safety. “If it was me, would you let me go home and brood?”

Starsky started to move away toward his car, but not before Hutch heard the muttered, bitter, “I have,” with which Starsky indicted himself.

Hutch chose to ignore it. “So, what’ll it be?” he asked before he slid in behind the wheel of his car.

“Anything but Mexican,” Starsky requested bitterly.

~*~*~

Hutch had stopped at the first decent place on the way to Venice and picked up Chinese take-out. Now he and Starsky sat in morose silence at Hutch’s table, pushing sweet and sour pork and moo goo gui pan around on their plates. Hutch hadn’t been able to coax more than a syllable or two out of Starsky in response to any of his attempts to start a conversation, and he was running out of safe subjects. In fact, he was just about down to “some weather we’re having,” and he absolutely refused to discuss the scarcity of rain with Starsky like they were chance-met strangers.

Hutch searched his brain for yet another topic of conversation and remembered the promise of an explanation. “You said you’d tell me what you meant by ‘let me help’ are the most important words in the universe,” he reminded his uncommunicative partner.

“More important than ‘I love you,'” Starsky murmured, as if he was only half-aware of Hutch’s presence, then blinked and shook his head like a sleeper who had been rudely awakened. “I just heard it some place. Doesn’t matter,” he dismissed the subject curtly. He picked up his fork and went through the motions of filling it with sticky pink sauce and congealed chow mien.

Maybe this had been a mistake. Perhaps Hutch should have let Starsky go home. There had been a time when Hutch might even have been able to do that, but it was so far in the past of their relationship, he could barely remember what that disconnected autonomic existence felt like. Their colleagues often teased them that they were joined at the hip, but most of those outsiders had no idea how accurate their taunts were. Cut Hutch, and you might as well put the bandage on Starsky. Break Starsky’s heart, and Hutch’s chest ached with empathy.

The problem was, Hutch wasn’t sure he believed Starsky’s heart was really broken. He had seen Starsky in love, maybe only once or twice, but Hutch knew how Starsky behaved when he was in love. That wasn’t how he had been acting the past five days. Even discounting the unusual circumstances of the undercover operation, Starsky had been acting more as if he was driven by desperation than love.

That was a judgment, however, that Hutch really had no right to make. He hadn’t been in Rosey’s bedroom, had no real reason to doubt Starsky’s commitment to the lady. It didn’t matter in any case. Starsky was hurting, and that was all Hutch really needed to know.

Starsky’s fork clattered against his plate as he abandoned dinner. “Sorry I’m such lousy company,” he apologized.

“That’s okay. I understand,” Hutch reassured him quickly, fearing the apology was just a prelude to an imminent departure. “You did warn me,” he added with a wry smile. The truth was, he would rather have Starsky’s company, even morose and silent, than anyone else Hutch knew. Rosey Malone might have been too stupid to recognize Starsky’s value, but Hutch had more sense.

“Is it so much to ask?” Starsky suddenly asked out the blue. “Wanting someone to love who doesn’t die or go away? Someone who wants to be loved?”

For the first time since they had sat down at the table, Starsky looked at Hutch directly, pinning him with eyes that probed for Hutch’s secret soul, and yet offered no reciprocal revelations in exchange, the dark blue irises a reflective shield that guarded the thoughts behind them. Hutch wanted to squirm beneath the intensity, but, at the same time, pry open every secret well of disappointment or disillusionment he had ever suffered if they would erase that barricaded distance from Starsky’s eyes.

“Never mind.” As suddenly as he had opened the subject, Starsky absolved Hutch of the responsibility of replying. “I know you don’t have any answers. I guess we’re just a couple of losers at love,” he concluded, pantomiming scooping up a pair of dice and throwing them. “Snake eyes,” he pronounced the result of his imaginary gamble.

The bitterness, so unlike Starsky’s usual disposition, disturbed Hutch more than all the emotions that had preceded it. He wanted to grab his partner and shake him, rattle loose the optimism that so often pissed him off. Or hug him until his ribs creaked. “Maybe we should become monks,” he suggested with an acrid edge to his black humor.

Starsky gave him a grunt of amusement with a bite to it as razor sharp as Hutch’s tone. “Don’t think I could stand the diet,” he rejected the suggestion, pushing his plate away. “I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it, but I just…” Starsky left the excuse unfinished, making his intentions clear, however, when he rose and pulled his jacket from the back of the chair. “I’m sorry, Hutch, I gotta–”

Hutch caught the battered leather and gave it a tug before Starsky could take his first step toward the door. “Please don’t go. Camp out in front of the TV, shower, do whatever you want. I won’t bug you. Just…hang around,” he pleaded, obeying once again the instinct that demanded he not let Starsky out of his sight tonight. It clamored that, if he did, it would be the biggest mistake of his life; the consequences far more personally devastating than marrying Vanessa or falling in love with Gillian.

Mutiny hardened Starsky’s exhausted features while he pulled his jacket free of Hutch’s grip, and then softened into something a little less forbidding–resignation, if not acceptance. He watched his own hands carefully re-hang the jacket over the back of the chair, his head staying down while he announced, “I’m gonna take a shower.” A blink later, Hutch was watching him disappear behind the bathroom door.

Hutch left the table and began cleaning up their unwanted meal. There was no logical reason for him to be so certain keeping Starsky here tonight was crucial, but as he puttered around, listening with peripheral attention to the whine of the shower, Hutch couldn’t discount that instinctive alert. Too many times, heeding that unexplainable need for caution had saved his or Starsky’s life on the street for Hutch to even consider dismissing it out of hand.

Eventually, Hutch ran out of things to keep him occupied and realized that the shower was still running. The hot water supply just wasn’t that good at Venice Place. By now, Starsky had to be standing under an icy deluge designed to freeze the blood in a man’s veins. Or wash away unwilling tears. Hutch had his hand on the bathroom doorknob, driven by the need to comfort Starsky’s grief, before his understanding of his friend caught up with him. He hesitated, his fingers gripping the brass ball convulsively, but not turning it.

Although Starsky hated to admit it, for a tough New York kid, he teared up pretty easily. Letting those tears fall, however, almost took a direct order from the Commissioner himself. If Starsky was hiding his tears in the shower, he wouldn’t appreciate Hutch barging in, however good his intentions. While Hutch was waffling, second guessing his actions yet again, the shower thumped off and he heard the rattle of the curtain.

Balancing between concern and respect for Starsky’s privacy, Hutch took the middle road. “Do you want me to get you some clothes?” he asked through the door.

There was a second or two of silence, followed by an audible throat clearing, before Starsky replied. “I’ll get ’em in a minute.”

Reluctantly, Hutch retired to his greenhouse before Starsky emerged from the bathroom, leaving his friend the undisturbed run of the rest of the apartment as he had promised.

Tracking Starsky’s movements only with his ears, Hutch busied himself with his plants. Most of the damage Diana had inflicted on his jungle had repaired itself with his help, but there were still a few that needed a little extra TLC. He doled it out generously, listening to Starsky’s movements as he worked and glancing up occasionally to confirm that a particular sound corresponded with the activity he assigned to it.

The comfort and familiarity of going about his own preferred activity while Starsky did the same, soon soothed the ragged edges of Hutch’s nerves. In some ways, the two of them were like an old married couple, sharing divergent interests within the comfort of the same space.

“Maybe that’s the solution,” he quipped to his spider plant as he carefully clipped off a dangling baby. “We should both stop shooting craps and just settle down with each other.”

Hutch laughed softly at the domesticated image that was so at odds with their eligible bachelor reputations. But the notion kept circling in his brain while he finished up with his plants, set a fresh canvas out on his easel, and sat on the stool in front of it.

The rush of water into the kitchen sink drew Hutch’s attention from his fruitless study of the intimidating blank expanse of the canvas to check what Starsky was doing. Making coffee, from the looks of it.

Perhaps because he had been thinking about painting, Hutch found himself appraising his friend with an artist’s eye. Starsky had pulled on only a pair of loose running shorts after his shower, leaving the broad expanse of his tanned shoulders and back exposed. He watched the interplay of muscles as Starsky moved, following the prominent trapezius to lean ribs and the narrow waist. Memories of communal showers sketched in the details the thin material of the shorts pretended to camouflage and led Hutch’s appraisal to thighs and calves equally as muscular, the sharp cut of the quadriceps and hamstrings, when Starsky squatted to retrieve something from the floor, providing visual evidence of the strength the deceptively slim body possessed.

It wasn’t until Starsky returned to the living room that Hutch realized his appraisal of his partner’s body had aroused more than his artistic interest. His pulse had picked up speed and his erection was swelling in the crotch of his jeans. The restless ideas that had been circling in his brain landed with the grace of a hippopotamus–he would be willing, no eager, to settle down with Starsky. Permanently. With all the benefits and responsibilities implied by the term. To love, honor and cherish.

Hutch knew he ought to be backing away from this. He should be completely appalled by this forbidden desire, but couldn’t seem to find even a weak echo of surprise, except perhaps that it had taken him so long to recognize the depth of his feelings. In fantasy, he had been welcoming Starsky into his bed for so long now that it felt almost anticlimactic to feel the yearning finally rouse his body to desire. The not quite sexual quality of his fantasy had finally become erotic.

It seemed impossible that something so well known could suddenly become such a turn on. Hutch had been looking at Starsky–the same hairy chest, the same dark five-o’clock shadow, the same bandy-legged stride–for years, and never wanted to possess them with the fierce passion that raged in him as he watched Starsky come toward him.

“You want some coffee?” Starsky asked, leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his naked chest.

“No, thanks. I’m good,” Hutch replied with a smile. He was amazed that he could speak so casually, that his lips could form the mundane words when they ached for the taste of Starsky’s mouth, tingled with the yearning to discover the flavor of what was so visually familiar.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Starsky asked, tipping his head until his curls just barely brushed the frame as well. “You’re lookin’ at me funny.”

“I was just thinking…” Hutch began, for one terrifying moment fearing that what he was feeling was about to come spilling off his tongue. “Uhm, that you need a haircut. You’re starting to look like a neglected poodle,” he was relieved to hear himself say. He could almost feel those soft curls against his own fingers as Starsky ran a hand back through them.

“Yeah. I’m surprised Dobey hasn’t been riding my ass,” Starsky agreed, but he didn’t look as if he cared one way or the other what Dobey thought. He tipped his chin toward the canvas in front of Hutch. “You gonna paint?”

“Maybe,” Hutch agreed, painting pictures in his head. He had drawn Starsky many times, but he had never been quite satisfied with any of the images he had produced. Perhaps the emotions careening inside him tonight would give him new talent.

Starsky nodded and then went back to the living room, stretching out on the couch. Unable to look away, Hutch watched every movement his friend made, completely possessed by these new perceptions.

Try as he might, Hutch couldn’t find any shocked horror of offended machismo to throw up as a levee against his desire. He had never before wanted another man, had only an outsider’s knowledge of what homosexual lovemaking might entail, but he knew he could make love to Starsky right this second and relish every never before contemplated act. Because he didn’t just want Starsky, he loved him.

Love had a nasty habit of exploding into Hutch’s life. It usually knocked him on his ass and left him nursing yet another set of bruises. What he now realized he felt for Starsky was neither new nor destructive, and it had been nourishing the roots of his life for a long time even if Hutch had only recognized it now.

But his timing couldn’t have been worse, Hutch realized as he saw Starsky get up and impatiently flip through the channels. Starsky was hurt. Whether his heart was truly broken, or he was only suffering from battered pride, still remained to be seen. Certainly, however, he wasn’t in the right frame of mind for Hutch to suddenly start declaring undying love and passion.

Tearing his gaze from Starsky, Hutch studied the blank canvas in front of him. In his mind’s eye, he saw the painting he wanted to create, but reached for his sketchbook and pencils instead, more certain of his abilities with these simpler tools.

He was going to have to give Starsky time to heal. Watch his friend even more closely than usual and await an opportunity to reveal this new secret that was settling into a warm glow inside him. Oddly, Hutch felt no impatience, no urgent need to grab at this new possibility before it slipped away. Tonight, he was going to channel the desire inside him onto the pages of his sketchbook and then secret it away until the right moment came to reveal it to Starsky.

~*~*~

“You’re certifiable,” Hutch accused his partner a little desperately. He winced when Starsky flashed him a triumphant grin, realizing he had just played straight into Starsky’s hand.

“That’s gotta be an asset out at Cabrillo State,” Starsky agreed, quick to monopolize on Hutch’s strategic error. “I won’t have to act hardly at all.”

“You’re crazy,” Hutch muttered, rolling his eyes because he had just done it again. He turned his head to look out the window at the rest of the idiots stuck in traffic just like he and Starsky were.

“You didn’t think so when we first got wind of what Bay City’s answer to Lois Lane had been snooping into out there,” Starsky reminded him.

“That seems like a long time ago,” Hutch objected. Before Hurricane Diana had blown through his life, and certainly before Hutch had discovered he was in love with Starsky. Since Rosey had flown off to Mexico with her father, Hutch had been looking for an opportunity to tell Starsky how his feelings had grown, but so far, the right moment hadn’t arrived.

“Come on, Hutch. You know it’s important,” Starsky appealed, easing the car forward a few inches until the Torino’s bumper almost touched the Gremlin in front of them. “After the first time we talked to Jane Hutton, we worked up this operation together. Now that there’s been another death, and Dobey’s finally ready to give us the green light, you’re getting cold feet? Something rotten’s going on in Cabrillo. And you know it, too.”

Hutch wished the damned traffic would move, deliver him from this conversation and the persuasion he knew he was going to have to give in to eventually. He glared at the driver in the next car, earning himself a one-fingered salute, but turned his head before he surrendered to the temptation to belt the rude s.o.b. out of sheer frustration. That, unfortunately, meant he couldn’t pretend to ignore Starsky.

“It’s too dangerous,” he repeated for about the tenth time. Their plan to infiltrate Cabrillo State Mental Hospital was too dangerous, but it was also necessary and had a decent chance of success. Two weeks ago, that would have been all Hutch needed to know to agree to go for it, considering the risk acceptable. That was before Starsky had moved to the top of a very short list of people Hutch knew he couldn’t bear to lose. In fact, Starsky’s was the only name on it.

“And important,” Starsky repeated stubbornly. “If you don’t like the odds, I can ask Dobey to assign Simmons. He’s got the paramedic background to fake it.”

“Damn it, Starsky!” Hutch sputtered, glaring his offended outrage at Starsky.

“Okay. Okay,” Starsky soothed, lifting both hands off the wheel in a placating gesture. “I’m sorry. That was outta line,” he apologized sincerely.

“Damn right it was out of line,” Hutch muttered, stung that Starsky would even think Hutch would let him take on such a dangerous assignment with some other partner. “Are you trying to tell me you’re not scared?” he demanded in revenge.

“Of course I’m scared. Do you think I’m crazy?” Starsky asked with a maniacal grin that faded almost immediately. “Yeah, I’m scared shitless,” he admitted seriously.

“But it means that much to you?” Hutch asked, trying hard to be objective, to focus on the goal rather than the vulnerable position Starsky’s role would put him in. Because of the pre-med courses he had taken, Hutch couldn’t even offer to take on the more dangerous persona of patient. Starsky simply didn’t have the kind of background Hutch had that would be necessary to play the orderly role convincingly.

“Four people have died at Cabrillo State under suspicious circumstances. Helpless people, Hutch, with no way out. That’s not important to you?” Starsky countered in a puzzled tone.

“Not enough to add your name to the list,” Hutch insisted, then sighed, knowing exactly what Starsky was going to say next.

“I can take care of myself,” Starsky said as if he was reading from the script in Hutch’s head. “And it’s not like I’m gonna be in the nuthouse all by myself. If anything happens I can’t handle, you’ll save me,” he added with a cocky grin.

“I won’t be there all the time. The orderlies only work eight hour shifts and…” Hutch didn’t even bother to finish the protest. He could see Starsky’s mind was made up, and the bottom line was the risk was definitely worth taking. Just not worth it to Hutch now that he had all his eggs in one Starsky-basket. “Dobey’s only agreeing to one weekend,” he said. “Do you really think a couple of days is going to be enough?” he asked in a last ditch effort to inject a little caution into his reckless partner’s confidence.

Starsky waved the objection aside. “You know Dobey will give us more time if we find anything promising,” he pointed out what Hutch already knew. Dobey wasn’t always happy about the risks they took, but he seldom interfered once the two of them started to run on a case. “He won’t yank me out of there unless my cover is blown.”

Hutch knew he was fighting a losing battle. He could continue to argue for as long as it took this endless traffic jam to clear, but in the end, he was going to have to give in.

But he didn’t have to like it. Not one little bit.

This wasn’t the first time Starsky had wished he had listened to Hutch’s advice. Finding himself trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey ready for the oven, however, just might be the memory that stayed with him the next time Hutch was counseling caution and Starsky was arguing for full steam ahead. Still, Starsky thought he was holding it together pretty well despite his situation.

“Yeah. Holding it together,” Starsky congratulated himself. No panic attacks. No irresistible urge to dislocate a shoulder to see if that was really how Houdini had accomplished his miraculous escapes. No uncontrollable need to bellow his demand for release to the unheeding walls of his temporary prison. It was even a little comforting, in his current helpless state, to know that the door was locked.

Until the lights went out.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Starsky yelled as primal fear caught him, straining the muscles of his arms against the canvas that restrained them and thrashing his helplessly bound body on the narrow bed. He managed to trap the scream of terror in his throat when he remembered just who did have a key to his cage, but continued to fight his restraints.

Slowly, the panic receded when Starsky remembered that, the night before, the lights had been doused without warning at exactly 11:00 p.m.

“Early to bed and early to rise makes healthy little loonies?” he wondered, feeling his heart regaining its regular rhythm, the mad racing of his pulse no longer echoing in his ears.

“I should have listened to Hutch,” he told the shadows, just to hear the sound of his own voice, and wished his partner were here to say “I told you so.” And unbuckle the straight jacket. And untie his ankles. And turn on the fucking lights!

He was losing it. Starsky forced himself to take deep, calming breaths and keep his eyes closed so he wouldn’t continue straining them for some familiar outline in the strange room. When his panicked panting had eased, he demanded that his brain skip back a sentence or three and take a different path.

“I should have listened to Hutch,” he repeated. “Maybe this was too dangerous.”

He had been a stubborn, pigheaded idiot, refusing to listen, hell bent on grabbing at whatever vine happened to drop into the pit of despair he had been floundering in. If the job was risky enough, it could focus all his attention. Let him forget that Rosey was his last chance, and blind him to the inescapable fact that some day in the not too distant future, he was going to slip up, betray himself, and Hutch would walk out of his life forever.

“Someday. Not today.” Starsky chanted the reassurance as he calmly and methodically tested the strength of his arms and shoulders and back against the straightjacket’s restraints.

“Damn it, Hutch. Did you have to tie me up so tight?” he complained to his absent partner, but followed it up with an immediate silent apology. Working beneath the watchful eyes of Dr. Matwick himself, Hutch hadn’t had any choice. The same lack of viable options that had forced him to clock out at the end of his shift and leave Starsky behind in this tacos-before-bedtime nightmare come to life.

“Don’t go too far, partner,” Starsky muttered a fervent echo of the request he had made of Hutch the night before. “Damn, this place has me talking to myself.”

If he wasn’t careful, he just might find himself a permanent resident of Cabrillo, left behind to weave baskets and play poker for matchsticks for the rest of his days while Hutch went back to Metro. He really was losing it if he could entertain such a disloyal idea. Starsky sent another mental apology to his guardian angel, hoping Hutch was still on the job. If he had ever needed a guardian angel in his life, it was now.

The image that appeared in his head made Starsky smile despite his desperate circumstances. Hutch, dressed in the traditional flowing robes, complete with halo and wings. Handsome. God-like. Glowing with the inner fire of his devotion to his duty to protect his partner. A lovely fantasy, and one Starsky didn’t even have to chase out of his mind before it was fully formed. A perfectly acceptable, non-sexual fantasy, especially when, in his mind’s eyes, Starsky replaced the customary harp with the no-nonsense, reassuring presence of Hutch’s .357 Magnum. Definitely a guardian angel who meant business.

The fantasy, however, broke up, the image of Hutch’s angel face fractured like the pattern in a kaleidoscope by the surge of adrenaline that flooded Starsky’s veins when he heard the sudden rattle at his door. It took eternal seconds for Starsky to overcome the wet-himself terror and offer a challenge.

“Who’s there?” he demanded of the unknown intruder with all the bravado he could muster while acutely aware of his own helplessness. He had always believed that the best defense was a strutting offense, but it was damned hard to remember that when the only offense you had left was to spit in your opponent’s eye.

“Freddy,” came the muffled reply from the other side of the prison door.

“F-Freddy,” Starsky echoed, stuttering in relief when he recognized the voice of the self-styled Sam Spade. The guy was harmless, if delusional, and, most importantly, he didn’t have a key to the door. Suddenly, being locked in, protected by that wooden panel from all the disturbed minds lodged at Cabrillo, seemed like a very good thing indeed. “What are you doing out of your room?”

There were a few scratching sounds, followed by a click that sounded to Starsky louder than the crack of a rifle, then he was nearly blinded by the light flooding from the corridor directly into his dark-adjusted eyes.

Forcing open eyes that had immediately squinted against the light, Starsky watched the darker shadow approach. “Where the hell did you get a key?” he demanded, pure bullshit bravado driving the quiver of terror out of his voice. Sure, Freddy was harmless. That’s why he was incarcerated in Cabrillo.

“You kidding? What gumshoe worth his expenses don’t carry a lock pick?” Freddy demanded. “Brought ya somethin’. Cutest little dame in shoe leather shows up in my room after lights out. Panting like a broken winded nag. Gotta be spooked outta her wits, I figure, with maybe the Big Cheese on her tail. I play it cool, ya see. Pretend I’m asleep.”

“Who was it?” Starsky asked after a moment spent wading through the cheap-thriller lingo to decipher Freddy’s meaning. “Was it Jane? Did she give you a message for me?”

“Told ya, I pretended I was asleep,” Freddy reminded him petulantly. “How’m I supposed to know who it was? You want the skinny or don’t ya?”

“Yeah, sure, Freddy,” Starsky agreed hurriedly. “The way they got me trussed up musta cut off the circulation to my brain.”

“She didn’t leave no message,” Freddy finally relented after a silence that had Starsky squirming in his jacket. There was the rattle of paper before Freddy’s shadow moved to loom directly over Starsky and something was held over his face. “She stuffed this in my drawer and then hightailed it.”

“What is this?” Starsky very nearly bellowed.

“Hey, if ya don’t want–”

“I’m sorry,” Starsky apologized immediately, halting Freddy’s withdrawal. “Can’t see what it is in the dark,” he explained, hoping Freddy was still capable of absorbing the obvious.

“Oh, yeah,” Freddy muttered before Starsky was blinded for a second time. “Sorry,” he grumbled, switching the flashlight’s beam from Starsky to the papers he held. “It’s the skinny on Matwick. Just like I thought….”

Starsky tuned out Freddy’s ramblings, straining his eyes to read the newspaper article’s small print in the wavering light. Freddy didn’t give him time to read it all, just enough to know that Jane had found what they were looking for. It wasn’t proof, but it was certainly incriminating enough to justify continuing the operation. He had to get this to Hutch. But first he had to convince Freddy to leave it with him.

“Damn, Freddy, think you might be close to breaking the case,” Starsky complimented the detective wannabe. “But we gotta get this to the outside.”

“You got a homing pigeon?” Freddy asked. “Mail’s censored, ya know.”

“Uh, no. No homing pigeon, but I do have a…uhm…pipeline to the outside,” Starsky said, hoping he wasn’t mixing up his B-rated movies. Was pipeline gumshoe talk or prison-break lingo? “If you put it…” He paused again, trying to decide where the safest place might be. “…ah, up my pant leg, I’ll get it to the outside in the morning,” he suggested, trying to look both trustworthy and competent, nearly giggling at the impossibility of inspiring any confidence restrained the way he was.

But it seemed to be enough for Freddy. Without further protest, he did as Starsky instructed and then hurried to the door. “Got ya covered, partner,” he reassured Starsky, and then, with another brief flash of corridor light, he was gone.

“Oh, wonderful,” Starsky groaned. “Now I’ve got a fruitcake for a partner.” But that fruitcake had brought them their first solid lead, and Starsky wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. When he got this to Hutch in the morning… In the morning. That seemed like a very long time from now.

Starsky wriggled a little, trying to find a more comfortable position, a nearly impossible task laying flat on his back. Surprisingly, however, his body was growing heavy with approaching sleep, and Starsky realized he wasn’t scared anymore. For no good reason he could think of, he felt safe, protected, certain that, though Hutch’s shift was over, his partner was still close, watching over him. It was a ridiculous idea, of course, but it certainly seemed to be having a calming effect on him. Or maybe his adrenaline gland had just run out of juice.

“My own personal guardian angel,” Starsky murmured with a soft chuckle, his fantasy be-robed Hutch reappearing in his mind. He was disconcerted to discover, however, that he was having a little trouble keeping Hutch decently buttoned up in his angelic costume.

One way or another, this was going to be a very long night.

~*~*~

 “I knew this was too dangerous. Why did I let that moron talk me into it?” Hutch muttered under his breath, though there was no one around to overhear him.

He shifted around, trying to find a marginally more comfortable position on the LTD’s worn seat, but only succeeded in smacking his left knee on the steering wheel. He cursed and groaned, rubbing at the throbbing ache, and feeling a little embarrassed by his complaining. His present discomfort was nothing compared to what Starsky had to be enduring. The hardest thing Hutch had ever done in his life was to walk out the doors of Cabrillo State at the end of his shift and leave his helpless partner unprotected.

“Zebra Three.”

Hutch jerked so hard in reaction to the unexpected squawk from the radio, he almost gave himself whiplash. He leaned over and grabbed up the mic before the dispatcher could repeat the summons. “Zebra Three,” he acknowledged into the unit.

“Stand by for patch through from Captain Dobey,” the voice of one of the night shift dispatchers instructed.

Hutch grimaced. Now he was in for it.

“Hutchinson, where the hell are you?” Dobey demanded less than ten seconds later, the familiar growl only slightly filtered by the radio.

Hutch glanced around the deserted patch of bushes he had found to park in behind the institution, the scraggly foliage little more than shifting shadows illuminated only by the security lights from Cabrillo. “In my car,” he answered Dobey, choosing to take the captain’s inquiry literally.

“I know that,” Dobey sputtered. “Where in your car?”

For an insane moment, Hutch considered continuing the verbal evasion by answering that he was in the front seat of his car. Dobey, however, already sounded irritable enough to stop threatening and start arranging a transfer to traffic control. “Parked in a bush behind Cabrillo State,” he admitted, intending for the confession to come out appropriately sheepish, but delivering a belligerent challenge instead.

The information earned him a few seconds of static-filled silence, and Hutch relaxed a little, relieved that Dobey wasn’t going to point out the obvious. He already knew staking out the hospital was a futile gesture. Knew he couldn’t protect Starsky out here. It wasn’t as if Starsky could send up a flare if he got into trouble. Hutch just simply couldn’t go home and sack out while Starsky was so vulnerable.

“You should get some sleep,” Dobey suggested gruffly.

“I will,” Hutch promised, aware that both of them knew he was lying. “What do you want, Captain?” he asked quickly, before Dobey could call him on it.

“An up-date, Hutchinson,” Dobey explained testily. “You were supposed to call in when your shift ended at eleven.”

Hutch had been so busy immediately after his shift looking for a good place from which to stakeout the hospital, he had completely forgotten his promised check-in. During his last conversation with Starsky before he left for the night, Hutch had threatened to call Dobey and pull the plug on the operation. Despite his promise, Hutch was tempted. One sentence from him, and the danger to Starsky would be over. But he had to respect his partner’s commitment to this assignment.

“Promising, Captain,” Hutch summarized succinctly, smiling at the dissatisfied grunt that greeted his abbreviated report. “I think Swieteck’s murder might have stirred things up. I’m hoping to know something a little more concrete in the morning.”

“One more day, Hutchinson,” Dobey reminded him. “If you and Starsky can’t break the case by Monday morning, I’m aborting the assignment.”

Hutch’s own personal deadline was sooner than that. Midnight Sunday, to be exact. There was no way he was going to let Starsky end up in a treatment room alone with Matwick. The doctor gave him the creeps.

“I’ll try to report in on my lunch break tomorrow if I can,” Hutch promised, hoping Jane Hutton would find something tonight. “‘Night, Captain,” he signed off and re-hung the mic on its hook.

Hutch sighed as he leaned back in his seat, his eyes scanning the windows of the second floor. He counted the dark, barred rectangles, trying to determine which one was Starsky’s prison and trying harder not to worry. An impossible task while he knew Starsky was in danger, made infinitely more difficult by the knowledge that Starsky might die never knowing how much Hutch loved him.

“When I get you out of this one,” Hutch promised, then forced himself to put the subject on the back burner of his mind, where he was certain it would continue to simmer. First things first. They had to solve this case so Hutch could get Starsky out of harm’s way. He would worry about future confessions of newfound devotion when Starsky was out of Cabrillo State alive, and with all his marbles still in the game.

~*~*~

Starsky hovered in the background, waiting for the paramedic to finish examining Hutch. As soon as the young man began to take the blood pressure cuff off Hutch’s arm, Starsky darted forward. “Is he okay?” he asked anxiously.

“He’s fine,” the paramedic reassured him as he packed away his equipment. “BP, pulse and heart rate are all normal. For someone doped to the eyeballs, that is,” he added with a grin.

Starsky wasn’t amused by the humor. “You’re going to take him in. Let a real doctor check him out. Right,” he demanded, glaring his dissatisfaction at the would-be comic.

“We can if you insist, but all he really needs is to sleep it off.” The paramedic rose to his feet and put a calming hand on Starsky’s shoulder. “How much does your partner like hospitals?”

“Not very much right now,” Starsky admitted, shrugging away the other man’s hand.

“No hospitals,” Hutch mumbled, proving he was more aware of what was going on around him than his lethargic sprawl indicated.

“Take him home and let him sleep it off,” Dobey, who had also been hovering awaiting the verdict, ordered. “Matwick admitted he didn’t give Hutch that much of the drug. He wanted him groggy, not out of it.”

“No hospitals,” Hutch repeated stubbornly. “Please,” he pleaded with Starsky, an uncoordinated hand flailing until it found Starsky’s thigh. “Don’ wan’ no nurses….”

“Okay,” Starsky relented, hoping he was making the right decision. “No hospitals,” he promised Hutch. “Can one of you help me get him to the car?”

The paramedic volunteered and they quickly had Hutch safely buckled into the passenger seat of the LTD.

“Try to keep him awake until you get him home,” the paramedic advised as Starsky started the car and put it in gear. “Once he goes under completely, he’ll be out for the count.”

It was a task easier said than done, but Starsky managed it, pulling up in front of Venice Place with his passenger still somewhat awake.

“Come on, big fella, up you come,” Starsky encouraged his partner. He had manhandled both of Hutch’s feet out onto the pavement and now heaved on both hands, putting all his strength behind hauling Hutch out of the seat. Without Hutch’s cooperation, however, Starsky could hardly budge his dead weight.

“Maybe I shoulda made them take you to the hospital,” he muttered to the vacant expression on his spaced out partner’s face.

“No hospitals,” Hutch repeated yet again, delivering the veto with the serious intensity of the totally high.

“Well, you don’t wanna sleep here,” Starsky reminded him. “But that’s where you’re gonna be stayin’ if you don’t help me, babe,” he threatened. He released one of Hutch’s hands and grasped the bobbing chin, turning Hutch’s face up to him. He tried to see if Hutch’s pupils were still as dilated as they had been when Starsky rescued him from Charlie Deek, but the light outside Venice Place was too dim to tell.

“I’m good,” Hutch insisted, making an uncoordinated effort to reclaim both his chin and his hand. He couldn’t seem to figure out the logistics of either, however, and soon gave up the effort, gazing up at Starsky as if he would be content to sit there and do it all night.

“Come on, Hutch. Just stand up, okay,” Starsky pleaded.  He couldn’t just let Hutch sleep out here, the poor guy would be a pretzel by morning.

Starsky’s tone, however, must have penetrated Hutch’s happy fog, because the next time Starsky pulled, Hutch made an effort to aid in his extraction from the car, enabling Starsky to heave him more or less upright onto the sidewalk. Steadying his swaying partner with one hand, Starsky locked and closed the car door, then wrapped his arm tight around Hutch’s waist and half-dragged him up to and through the street door.

The long flight of stairs looming in front of them looked like a fair imitation of Mount Everest to Starsky.   “And I thought getting you up there in the cast was fun,” he mumbled. Starsky had had Hutch’s cooperation then. What he had now was a sagging-at-the-knees rag doll who seemed to have suddenly grown more arms than an octopus.

“Ah, Starsk, wanna tell you…” Hutch mumbled as he flung an arm across Starsky’s chest.

Starsky gently removed the arm and placed the big hand firmly on the banister. “Hang on here,” he instructed and saw the fingers obediently curl around the smooth wood. “That’s good. Now lift your foot onto the step.”

“Sure thing, babe,” Hutch agreed happily. “Anything for you.” He looked down, his head waggling back and forth, but if he was looking for his feet, he obviously couldn’t figure out that the white-shod appendages at the ends of his legs belonged to him. He lifted his head, a beatific smile on his face as he gazed with wide, affectionate eyes at Starsky. “You saved me,” he informed Starsky with a sappy grin.

Starsky grinned back. “And you saved me,” he reminded his forgetful partner. “And if you just climb the stairs for me, I’ll tuck you in bed and let you sleep it off.”

“No,” Hutch insisted, mutiny trying to take over the smiling muscles of his face but having to settle for a comical draw. “You’ll go,” he protested, released the banister and flung his arm back around Starsky, inadvertently giving Starsky a solid smack on the nose.

Starsky stood within the circle of Hutch’s arms while he rubbed the sting out of his nose and then patiently re-positioned Hutch’s hand on the rail. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. “Just lift your foot, we’ll get upstairs, and we’ll both sack out. It’s been a long day, Mr. Hansen.”

“Promise?” Hutch demanded suspiciously.

“Promise,” Starsky confirmed, giving Hutch’s hand an encouraging pat.

Apparently satisfied by the promise, Hutch lifted his foot but couldn’t seem to connect with the stair. Starsky grabbed the white pant leg above the knee and led the foot to the riser. “Okay, now. Up we go,” he said hopefully, tightening his grip around Hutch’s waist and securing another handhold around the wrist of the arm hanging over his shoulders.

They made it halfway up the staircase before Hutch lost track of their joint purpose or his balance failed him. He suddenly leaned back, his weight pulling at Starsky and nearly toppling them both back the way they had come.

“Whoa!” Starsky yelped as they backtracked two steps, flailing for the banister on his side and fisting the white tunic at Hutch’s waist. “Stand up straight,” he panted, relieved to feel the shift of Hutch’s weight as he was obeyed.

This wasn’t going to work. If Starsky didn’t change tactics soon, they were going to end up a tangled heap of broken bones at the bottom of the stairs.

“‘M sorry, buddy,” Hutch apologized mournfully. “‘M tryin’.”

“I know you are,” Starsky reassured him, hoping Hutch wasn’t about to dissolve into a maudlin heap. “We’re doin’ okay.”

“Me ‘n thee,” Hutch sing-songed, swaying dangerously, staggering them back down another step.

Pulling Hutch’s arm from around his shoulders, Starsky led the flopping hand at the end of it to the opposite banister, then ducked under the outstretched arm and down one step, positioning himself behind Hutch. Planting both hands on Hutch’s back, he gave him a push. Obligingly, Hutch bent over and Starsky’s hands slid down.

“Oh, Christ,” Starsky groaned, finding himself suddenly cupping the firm cheeks of Hutch’s ass, unable to let go for fear that Hutch might topple.

“Naughty,” Hutch pronounced gravely, then followed the accusation with a giggle.

The temptation was just too great to resist. Starsky’s fingers tightened on the muscular curves as if they had a mind of their own, squeezing the pliant flesh a moment before he regained control of them. “Up,” he instructed Hutch a little desperately, the flex and stretch of the solid muscles caressing his palms as Hutch obediently surrendered to the pressure and began climbing the stairs.

By the time they reached the landing at the top and he could pry his fingers loose, Starsky was sure the imprint of that sweet, long-admired ass was going to be forever branded into the palms of his hands.

“Naughty. Naughty,” Hutch chided with another giggle, wraggling a finger under Starsky’s nose.

Starsky grabbed his hand and tugged him along the hall to his door, feeling the blush burning his face. Hopefully, Hutch wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning.

For once grateful that Hutch still insisted on hiding a key above the door, Starsky groped for it and fitted it into the lock with fingers that trembled. When the door opened, he pushed Hutch through and then followed, leaning against the wood as it closed for a badly needed breather. The reprieve lasted only a few seconds before he had to hurry after Hutch, grabbing his arm to prevent him from sinking down on the couch.

“Uh-uh,” Starsky grunted, leading his weaving charge toward the bed. “Your back wouldn’t thank you.”

Stripping away the white pants and tunic proved to be surprisingly easy, despite Hutch’s fumble-fingered attempts to help. What was harder was ignoring the golden flesh he was revealing, the adoring expression on Hutch’s face, and the even more uncoordinated attempts Hutch kept making to wrap his arms around Starsky.

“Was scared, Starsk. So damned scared,” Hutch muttered, leaning into Starsky instead of away when Starsky tried to sit him down on the bed. “Kept thinking….”

Starsky pushed gently until the long, slim body finally folded in the middle and Hutch sat down with a startled oof. “Kept thinking what?” he asked as he knelt to rid Hutch of shoes and socks so he could pull the white pants off over his feet. He looked up when he felt Hutch’s hand in his hair, and found Hutch gazing at him with that rapt, adoring expression once again.

“Gotta tell ya…” Hutch began, interrupting himself with a sudden, prolonged yawn.

“Good night?” Starsky suggested as he levered up to his feet. He stood looking down at Hutch, the desire that had been heating his blood while he was stripping Hutch subsiding a little, cooled by the affection he felt for his incapacitated friend.

Hutch blinked owlishly. “Don’t think so,” he said, the crease between his eyebrows deepening as he tried to locate his hijacked train of thought.

“You can tell me in the morning,” Starsky promised, eased the long legs onto the bed, and then pulled the sheet up to Hutch’s waist.

“No. Gotta tell you now,” Hutch demanded petulantly, pouting like an over-tired five-year-old up way past his bedtime.

“Okay,” Starsky capitulated, deciding it would be easier and faster to just let Hutch talk himself to sleep. He perched on the side of the bed and patted Hutch’s arm. “Go ahead and tell me, Hutch, then go to sleep.”

The pale lids came down over Hutch’s eyes as if they could no longer sustain the weight of the fine lashes and, for a minute, it looked like he might have finally succumbed to the drug. But when Starsky started to stand up, the eyes popped open again, a flailing hand grabbing for him.

“No!” Hutch protested urgently.

Starsky caught the aimless hand before it could inflict any more damage on him. Even for Hutch, Starsky was only prepared to take one unintentional belt in the nose. “So tell me so we can both go to sleep,” he invited.

“Just tryin’ to tell you I love you, Starsk,” Hutch said mournfully, staring at Starsky as if he feared he might suddenly disappear.

“Ah, Hutch,” Starsky whispered, sliding his fingers into the blond hair, petting the soft strands and filled with regret that Hutch didn’t mean those words the same way he did. He had to swallow hard a few times to ease his tight throat before he could reply. “I love you, too,” he whispered, but saw that his confession had gone unheard. Hutch was finally asleep.

“Just as well,” Starsky murmured as he stroked the bright hair, knowing he should grab a pillow and go sack out on the couch well away from temptation. But he stayed where he was, feeling the forbidden desire fade, crowded out by the love this precious friend inspired.

“It hurts like a bitch sometimes to love you so much, baby blue,” he whispered. “But damned if it isn’t sweet, too.”

Hutch watched as Maggie Blaine was shepherded away from her husband’s grave by the Dobeys, closely followed by the handful of mourners who had also been invited to the private service, until only he and Starsky were left standing alone.

“It seems kind of…sad,” Starsky said, and Hutch turned to find Starsky was also watching as the cars began to move slowly toward the cemetery entrance. “So few people to pay their respects to a man who was everybody’s hero.”

“It was what Maggie wanted,” Hutch reminded him quietly.

“Guess you can’t blame her,” Starsky agreed, waving a hand toward the media vans beyond the gates and the cruisers that had kept the reporters at bay. “Fucking vultures,” he added with a brief flare of fury before his gaze turned back to the grave.

Hutch withheld his own opinion of the ladies and gentlemen of the press. They were of no interest to him. Neither, if he was completely honest, was John Blaine. Hutch’s only concern was Starsky. That concern had brought him here today, and it allowed him to continue to stand, sweltering in the heatwave that wouldn’t break, while Starsky said his goodbyes.

Starsky was still so angry with his mentor, but there was little Hutch seemed able to do to help him. He couldn’t give Starsky the explanations he needed from Blaine, all Hutch could do was continue to answer the probing questions Starsky asked as honestly as he could, be with him when Starsky wanted him there, and back off–but not too far–when Starsky wanted to be alone.

Despite the urgency that possessed Hutch that time was a precious commodity he shouldn’t waste, he recognized that time was exactly what Starsky needed. He was sure that Starsky would eventually make his own peace with the lie John Blaine had lived. Until then, Hutch had to put aside his own desires and be the friend Starsky needed him to be.

“Damn. I can’t think of anything to say,” Starsky admitted, his voice hushed, a tightness of grief to it that almost concealed the anger beneath it. “He meant more to me than my own father, and I can’t think of anything to say.”

Aching for his friend, wishing he could somehow ease the painful bafflement on Starsky’s face, Hutch laid his hand on the bowed shoulder and felt the taut muscles relax beneath his touch. “Then I guess all you can say is goodbye,” he advised.

Starsky’s mouth tightened, his eyes narrowed, and then he slowly nodded. “Goodbye, John,” he whispered. “I wish….”

Hutch tightened his grip, said his own silent farewell, and then turned them both away from the grave. Starsky moved easily beneath his hand, falling into step with him, and Hutch concentrated on that acceptance. Starsky wasn’t shutting him out and, for now, Hutch could let that be enough to soothe the urgency inside him.

~*~*~

Starsky had known of the existence of the Green Parrot almost since the day it opened, although he had never been tempted, however urgent his need, to go there. He knew he would never be looking for a blue-eyed, blond in a bar again. Even if he hadn’t already decided that, finding out about John the way he had would have made that decision for him. He couldn’t do to Hutch what Blaine had done to him.

But Starsky was visiting the Green Parrot tonight, and he was looking for a man. A very specific man, whose love hadn’t been enough to coax John Blaine out of the lonely prison of his closet. Starsky was hoping, despite what he had said about not cruising the bars, that tonight Whitelaw might come to the place where, for a time, he had been happy with his lover.

It was almost 8:30, however. In a few minutes, Sugar would be appearing for the show she had insisted neither he nor Hutch would survive. Whether she was right about that, Starsky was in no great hurry to discover. He finished his beer, slid out of the dark booth, and made his way to the door.

He had just reached for the handle when the door swung open toward him, forcing him back a step and revealing the man he had been waiting for. Whitelaw’s hazel eyes widened, a suspicious expression tightening his features as his gaze skipped past Starsky.

He was looking for Hutch, Starsky realized with an immediate stab of jealousy. He suppressed it. Whitelaw wasn’t interested in Hutch. The former teacher just didn’t trust Starsky as far as he could throw him. He was probably hoping Hutch was there for no other reason than to hold Starsky’s leash.

“Sergeant Starsky.” Whitelaw nodded curtly, remaining wary as he stepped clear of the door to let Starsky pass through it.

Starsky caught the edge of the door and held it open, while behind him the disco music ended and he heard the MC begin Sugar’s introduction. Whitelaw’s timing couldn’t have been worse. “Whitelaw,” he acknowledged.

“Are you planning on arresting me, Detective?” Whitelaw asked, aggression in the jut of his chin, but wary uncertainty in his eyes. “As far as I know, it isn’t against the law to have a quiet drink in a bar, even if you are queer.”

Starsky pulled the door wider. This was a waste of time. Whitelaw obviously had little use for him, and even less trust. It had been stupid for Starsky to think he had any hope of finding his answers from someone who apparently had every reason to hate him, and perhaps everything he represented.

“Forget it,” he muttered, as much to himself as to Whitelaw, and started through the door. A firm grip on his arm halted his exit.

“Forget what?” Whitelaw asked, still wary and cautious, but less of both than he had been only a moment ago. “What’s your first name?”

Startled by the unexpected question, Starsky stopped his instinctive attempt to free himself and met eyes that were alert and focused, as if his answer had suddenly become a matter of great importance to Whitelaw. “Dave,” he said, and saw revelation and understanding sweep across the young man’s face.

“Damn,” Whitelaw muttered, but the blare of Sugar’s introductory music drowned out the rest of what he said.

Starsky couldn’t read lips, especially in the dark. He pulled free of Whitelaw’s grip and stepped out into the street, surprised when the other man followed him.

“You came here looking for me, didn’t you?” Whitelaw asked, keeping pace with Starsky as he moved away from the Green Parrot’s entrance.

Starsky shrugged. “What if I did?” he asked, his belligerence an instinctive reaction to Whitelaw’s sudden about face.

“You wanted to talk to me about John,” Whitelaw pursued the subject that, despite having come here for just this purpose, Starsky now wanted to dismiss.

“I…yes,” Starsky heard himself say. “But… Oh, fuck, this is stupid. What the hell…” He started to move away, but again Whitelaw followed him.

“But what could I tell you that you don’t already know about John?” Whitelaw asked. “Maybe nothing. I didn’t realize when I talked to you before that you were John’s friend. Didn’t realize, and I really should have.”

His curiosity aroused, Starsky delayed his retreat for a second time. He glanced around, feeling more exposed out here on the street than he had felt inside the bar. He spotted a diner a little further down and on the other side of the street. “Why don’t we have a cup of coffee,” he suggested cautiously.

They crossed the street together, and Starsky held the door to the diner to let Whitelaw precede him. It was a small place and about as clean as you would expect to find in the area. Certainly, Starsky had eaten in worse restaurants. He didn’t even care if the coffee was any good. Kelsey’s Diner was quiet, not particularly busy, and there was an empty table in the back. At the moment, that was all Starsky needed to know.

“What did you mean you should have realized I was John’s friend?” Starsky asked as soon as they were seated and the waitress had left with their order.

“You didn’t hear what I said in the Parrot?” Whitelaw asked, but didn’t wait for Starsky to reply. “John talked about you. Described you once, although I don’t remember why.” He stopped speaking while the waitress delivered their coffee, and then continued. “He was very fond of you.”

“Maybe that’s why you didn’t make the connection,” Starsky suggested bitterly. “I wasn’t acting like someone John would be proud to know.”

“Actually, you were,” Whitelaw said with a bitter twist to his lips, the belligerence that had marked him during the interview at his campaign office once again sitting like a chip on his shoulder. “John wanted nothing more than to be just like you and all the other fine police officers he served with.”

Starsky concentrated on stirring his black coffee, letting himself feel that confusion of conflicting emotions again. He had no right to condemn Blaine for his desires when he shared them, or for living the same lie Starsky had chosen to live. And yet he did. Despised the man he had once looked up to.

That was why he was here, Starsky realized. Why he wanted to dig into Whitelaw’s grief. He needed answers he couldn’t find himself and that he couldn’t get from Hutch without revealing his own secret. Starsky needed Whitelaw to give him back his faith in John Blaine. Now that he knew their shared secret, Starsky needed that belief to go on living with himself.

“Is that why you didn’t fight for him?” Starsky asked, feeling the fury that had roiled inside him beginning to bubble again. He tried to control it, but the flash of anger on Whitelaw’s face goaded him on. “Why you let him walk away?  Put your career, your campaign, ahead of him,” he demanded, issuing his own challenge to this man who was supposed to have loved John Blaine, who might have saved his life. “Why you didn’t love him enough to–”

“You arrogant bastard. What right do you have to sit there and make that kind of assumption?” Whitelaw hissed. He leaned forward, his hand coming up and then dropping to the table as if he was also trying to control an undeniable fury. He shook his head in disgust. “I understand you’re grieving. That, in a way, you’ve lost John twice, but that doesn’t give you the right to….”

Whitelaw closed his mouth so hard Starsky heard his teeth clash. He looked away, visibly regaining control of himself before his eyes returned to pin Starsky to his chair. “I know you loved John, but he was a coward,” he said with the weariness of painful knowledge carried around for far too long. “It wasn’t me who wouldn’t fight. It wasn’t me who wouldn’t sacrifice. It was John. It was John who was afraid.”

In stunned silence, Starsky watched Whitelaw rise from his chair, looking as if he had aged twenty years in the few minutes since they had nearly collided at the door of the Green Parrot.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Starsky, but you were right. The only thing I can tell you about John, you don’t want to know. Maybe someday John might have regretted the decisions fear drove him to. No one will ever know now. But I don’t have any regrets, because, Goddamnit, I tried,” he insisted wearily, turned his back and walked away.

Starsky followed the former teacher with his eyes, seeing the way Whitelaw stiffened his spine and squared his shoulders before he stepped out into the street.

Starsky had come here tonight looking for answers, but Whitelaw had only told him what he already knew. Starsky understood John Blaine well enough because, in so many ways, he was John Blaine. He hadn’t fought for Hutch. Just like Blaine, he had risked his career, maybe even his life, accepting cheap substitutes for the man he loved. He had even been willing to do to Rosey Malone what Blaine had done to Maggie. That their reasons were different didn’t make Starsky’s cowardice any more noble.

“Can I get you something else?”

Starsky looked up into the uncaring inquiry on the waitress’ face and shook his head. “Not unless you sell courage in a take out carton,” he said, stood and handed over a few bills to cover the check, before he followed Whitelaw out into the neon-bright street.

He couldn’t buy it from the waitress, borrow it from Blaine, or steal it from Whitelaw, and Starsky already knew he didn’t have the courage to fight for Hutch and the love and future they could have together. He was too afraid to risk what he already had.

~*~*~

The first thing Hutch saw when he opened his eyes was his own hand lying limp and useless in front of his eyes. The first thing he felt was the pain in his chest. He wasn’t dead. Yet. Soon though.

“Are you awake?”

Starsky’s voice, then Starsky’s face filling his field of vision. Then–oh, so wonderfully welcome that Hutch wanted to weep–the warmth of Starsky’s hand surrounding his. Skin on skin. Fingers lacing with his, palm moist against the dry heat of his. Together. Connected. The last few minutes. He didn’t have to die alone. Starsky was here.

Then Hutch remembered why he was dying. He tried to pull his hand away, but couldn’t seem to force the signal from brain to limb. “Don’t,” he croaked, his spasming lungs burning in protest as he forced them to inhale deep, give him the air to shout his warning. “You’ll die, too.”

“Shhhh,” Starsky soothed him.

There was more warmth then, brushing his lips, skimming his cheek, slipping into his hair.

“It’s okay, baby blue. Nobody’s dying. Promise.”

Starsky’s promise. Despite the pain, Hutch relaxed, fear and panic receding. No one was dying. Not even him. Starsky said so. Met his eyes and promised.

“Don’t…go,” Hutch whispered, his eyelids coming down ever so slowly, like the curtain on a stage. The hand holding his tightened.

“Not going anywhere,” Starsky whispered. His voice sounded funny, but Hutch couldn’t find the strength to lift his eyelids again to find out why. “Sleep, sweetheart. Get well.”

He was slipping away, but didn’t have to fight it. Safe now. Starsky’s here.

Sweetheart?

~*~*~

He had to wake up. He didn’t want to, but he had to. Someone was clear cutting a forest, and Hutch had to stop it. Better reconnoiter first. Cautiously, he lifted his eyelids, but all he saw was his partner.

“Are you awake?” he asked because Starsky’s eyes were closed, but he couldn’t hear his own voice above the racket.

But Starsky did. Slowly, his eyelids lifted, followed by a grin that looked as if it had been dragged a few miles behind the Torino. Why was Starsky so tired?

“Hi, buddy,” Starsky said.

At least that’s what Hutch thought he said. He couldn’t hear, and lip reading Starsky was an iffy proposition under the best of circumstances.

“You thirsty?”

Actions spoke louder than mumbles when Starsky picked up a glass from the bedside table and leaned forward to hold the straw to Hutch’s lips. Thirsty? The first cool flood into his mouth convinced Hutch that he had, indeed, been thirsty. How thoughtful of Starsky to know it before he did.

“What…?” Hutch was pretty sure his first guess had been wrong. No forests in hospitals, and he remembered now that was where he was. Hospital. Isolation. Dying. Nobody’s dying. Encroaching panic faded, driven into submission by the memory of Starsky’s promise.

“That’s your roomie,” Starsky told him, leaning closer until he was all Hutch could see.

That was okay with Hutch. All he needed to see was Starsky. Promise. “Does he have a volume dial?” he wondered, then wished he hadn’t when Starsky rocked back in his chair to laugh at the feeble joke. It wasn’t that funny, Hutch wanted to protest. Not funny enough to take Starsky away from him. But Starsky seemed to be enjoying his hilarity, so Hutch left him to it, laboriously turning his head on the pillow to see if he could locate this chainsaw roommate for himself. A man-sized bump under the covers in the next bed didn’t tell him much, nor could it hold his interest when Starsky spoke again.

“Want me to put a pillow over Mr. Tabbert’s head?”

Hutch turned back, found Starsky had come close again. So tired. There were bags under Starsky’s eyes that could pass for steamer trunks. A yawn caught Hutch then, stretched his jaws until they ached and brought tears to his eyes. “Nah. Think I’m goin’ back to sleep.”

Starsky smiled at him. One of those smiles that were Hutch’s reward for being particularly pleasing. It made Starsky look a little dopey, but it always gave Hutch the feeling he could accomplish miracles without even trying.

“Sleeping usually means closing your eyes,” Starsky reminded him.

Obediently, Hutch let his eyelids fall, cutting off the sight of that smile. But they wouldn’t stay down. Despite how weary he was, Hutch’s eyes refused to stay closed. He tried to puzzle it out, and after a few moments, realized he was waiting. For something. He didn’t know what that something was until Starsky gave it to him, reached out and enclosed his hand in warmth. No longer an untouchable. His partner’s heat seeped into Hutch and thawed all the cold places that had made him shiver and shake.

“Come on, Hutch. Close those baby blues,” Starsky crooned. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

This time when his eyelids came down, they stayed there, but his brain slid him a puzzle just before sleep wrapped him in flannel blankets.

Baby Blue? Baby blues?

~*~*~

Hearing was the last sense to go. Hutch couldn’t remember where he had learned that, but maybe it was also the first to come back as well. Before he could see or feel or taste, he could hear the strangest music. It drew him from a deep well of dreamless sleep.

Chainsaw roommate. The snoring bombarded his ears. But beneath it, layered into the percussion, ran a gentler thread of night music. Starsky.

Despite the epoxy sealing upper lashes to lower, Hutch opened his eyes. Yes, Starsky. Sitting upright, not slouched, arms crossed over his chest as if the position might somehow keep his head from falling. Hutch’s guardian, watching over his healing sleep.  And nodding off on the job. As he watched, Starsky’s head dropped suddenly, the snap of his neck jolting him, but not enough to wake him. Still, his sense of duty, or perhaps simply discomfort, brought his head back up, lifting chin from chest. Too exhausted to waken, but wary.

Satisfied, Hutch turned his focus inward, seeking and finding pain, but less. No longer the fiery agony of a pincher-wielding demon. A paltry echo compared to the desperate dryness of his throat.

There was a glass of water on the bedside table. Relief only a few feet away. Hutch switched his focus from the glass that seemed impervious to his attempts at telekinesis, to the more reliable instrument of his hand. Usually more reliable. It lay on the bed, half-curled, no more responsive to his mental commands than the glass.

“Move, damn it,” Hutch ordered his uncooperative limb in a raspy whisper.

Slowly, the connection cleared, his fingers straightening, wrist twisting until his hand lay flat on the bed. Victory of a sort, but it brought him little closer to quenching his thirst. Fierce concentration seemed to open the line of communication further, and Hutch watched through narrowed eyes as his hand crept across the sheet. Fingertips pulling his hand into a bridge, wrist pushing it flat.

Inch worm. Inch worm.

Hutch laughed hoarsely at the sparkle of childhood memory. Mistake. Big mistake. His body exploded in agony as he began to cough. His chest and throat were caught in a vice, each breath a whooping, tearing enemy that he didn’t dare reject.

“Hutch!”

Hearing is the last sense to go. Hutch couldn’t see his partner, couldn’t feel the hands that lifted him, but he could hear Starsky’s panicked shout. He wanted to offer reassurance, but every breath was too hard fought, every particle of oxygen needed for life, each convulsion of his lungs and throat too mighty for words to escape with the coughing that tried to turn him inside out.

“Do something. Damn you! Do something!”

Yes, do something. Hutch doesn’t want to die.

“Hutch. Can you hear me?” Starsky’s voice echoed up from the bottom of a dry well.

Hutch’s senses were back. All five of them. They fed him the sight of Starsky’s frightened eyes, the reek of fear sweat, the sweet, cold flavor of oxygen pouring through the mask pressed hard to his face, and the sound of his own blood throbbing in his ears. Maybe he had six or seven senses now. A few extra sensory perceptions loaned to him temporarily to allow him to experience all the varied nuances of the pain in his chest and throat.

“Just nod or blink or something, will ya, Hutch?” Starsky begged.

Hutch blinked, the temptation to just leave his lids down overwhelming. But it was dark and cold in there. He forced his eyes open again, wishing the light that made him squint had just a little warmth to it. A little California sun to dry the cold sweat of terror and warm the quaking, frozen wasteland inside him.

He drifted in and out while hands touched him, barely aware, except for a moment of gratitude, when the cold damp gown was stripped away. He surfaced when he was pulled up into Starsky’s arms, laying his head gratefully on the smooth, worn leather of Starsky’s jacket while someone did something to his back. Tying the gown? he wondered, realizing that panic had been driven back into its dark corner. Stay there, he commanded it, but knew it was only waiting, haunches coiled to spring again, barely restrained by the leash of returning reason. He was shivering again, or was it still?

He must have lost a few minutes, or maybe more, because the next thing Hutch knew, the light was dimmer, the oxygen mask gone, and he was laying back on the bed again. No longer in Starsky’s arms, but his friend was still close, his heat warming little patches of Hutch’s ice where their hips pressed and Starsky’s hand rested on his arm.

“C-c-cold,” Hutch complained, hearing the rasp of his voice, remembering his thirst, but no longer eager to slack it.

“You’re just scared, baby. Relax. It’ll be better in a minute,” Starsky reassured him, but his voice didn’t sound much better than Hutch’s, as if it had become trapped somewhere behind his breast bone and was squeezing past his larynx.

“C-c-cold,” Hutch repeated, fear that he would never be warm, never be well, never be free of the demon of pain, bringing him to the edge of despair.

Starsky took his warmth away, and then gave it back. Tenfold. To the power of infinity, when he lifted the inadequate blanket and climbed into the narrow bed, pulled Hutch into arms and against a body that were both trembling.

Memories flooded Hutch’s mind as Starsky’s heat soaked into his body. Hugs and embraces and the moments when safe haven could be found only where he was now. Days spent in an austere room where Hutch’s entire existence had narrowed to pain and Starsky. Starsky had held him then, while craving and need had ravaged his body and soul. Stood between him and his demons.

Once again, Hutch’s world had spiraled down to pain and Starsky. But this pain was fading fast, receding to the same lurking readiness as the panic. And Starsky held him still. Safe.

Something beeped. Once. Twice. In all, four times, and then was silent. Starsky’s latest fancy watch? Hutch felt his lips quirk. “Four o’clock and all’s well?” he mumbled, hardly able to credit that the wavering croak was his voice.

“Huh?” Starsky grunted, the sound more felt in the chest beneath Hutch’s ear than heard. “Yeah. All’s well, sweetheart. Just sleep.”

Senses were deserting Hutch again, fading gently beneath the stroke of hands on his back, the press of lips to his hair. Maybe hearing wasn’t always the last to go.

Sweetheart?

It was very late when Starsky finally arrived at Bay City Hospital. He hesitated outside Hutch’s room, looking in through the observation window. Hutch was asleep, and Starsky didn’t want to disturb him, although Hutch had slept so deeply since the cure was found that Starsky was certain a twenty-one gun salute wouldn’t have been able to rouse him. If the roomie’s snoring couldn’t do it, Starsky sneaking in on tiptoe certainly wouldn’t. Still, Starsky stood staring through the window, drinking in the signs of improvement that proclaimed Hutch’s return to good health. Saved. Cured. On the road to recovery. It was a miracle.

 “You don’t have to stand out here, you know, Dave. He isn’t quarantined anymore.”

“I know that,” Starsky snapped at Dr. Kaufman, glaring at her reflection that blurred his view of Hutch. Separated him from Hutch, just as her presence in the isolation room when Hutch was dying had put a choke chain on Starsky’s tongue. He hated her for that.

The shocked expression on her face reminded him, however, that Kaufman had helped save Hutch’s life. For that alone, Starsky had to make the attempt to be civil. “Sorry. I’m kind of tired. Short handed at work,” he explained, but couldn’t quite keep the chill out of his voice.

“It’s all right, Dave. I guess we’re all tired,” Kaufman graciously accepted his apology.

Starsky tried to think of something nice to say, but couldn’t. He had been working so many hours that his brain felt mushy, the few parts that were still functioning were fully occupied by his partner. He had been calling in every couple of hours, pestering the nurses for updates on Hutch’s condition, but still felt woefully uninformed, unsettled by the repeated “stable and resting” reports that were all they would give him.

It slowly occurred to Starsky that he had the ultimate source of up-to-the-minute information standing beside him, and despite his resentment of Kaufman, he didn’t hesitate to take advantage. “Are you sure he’s okay?” he asked anxiously. “He’s sleeping so much. He’s hardly been awake for days.”

“Mother Nature’s cure-all,” Kaufman said, her voice pitched to lightness to, Starsky assumed, calm his fears. “Sleep is the best thing for him now, Dave. Let’s his body heal and spares him the pain. There’s no more of the virus in today’s blood tests, and his white count is coming up nicely.”

Starsky latched onto the details she was giving him, let them scatter his animosity and bring a smile to his lips when she patted his arm reassuringly. “Thanks, Doc. I needed that,” he quipped and forced his eyes away from Hutch long enough to wink at her.

Kaufman laughed tiredly, but her eyes quickly returned to the window. “He looks so young. So much like a little boy when he’s sleeping,” she sighed wistfully.

Don’t start that again, Starsky thought irritably, annoyed all over again. What was wrong with her that she kept trying to relegate Hutch to boyhood? Why couldn’t she see the strength and the will and the powerful masculinity? Because she didn’t want to. She needed to tuck Hutch safely away as an unthreatening, neatly labeled child. The very things that Starsky loved most about Hutch, the attributes that stirred fire in his veins, scared Kaufman to death.

Kaufman sighed softly, pressed her hand to the glass for a moment, then tucked it away in the pocket of her lab coat. When she turned to face Starsky, all trace of the woman who feared to take a chance was gone, replaced by the medical professional. “I don’t want to disturb him, so would you please tell him goodbye for me, Dave.”

“You’re leaving? But what about the epidemic? What about…?” Starsky gestured to the man sleeping beyond the glass.

“The epidemic is officially contained and I have a flight to catch,” Kaufman explained.

“Going back to Alabama?” Starsky asked, wondering if Hutch would care, if he would be hurt that the lady hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye personally.

“No,” Kaufman said, brushing her hair back from her face, drawing Starsky’s attention to how tired she looked. “There’s a new hot spot in…” She paused and shrugged, smiling apologetically. “Sorry. Classified information. Dr. Meredith will stay here until all the victims are well and ready to go home.”

Most of Starsky’s animosity disappeared. Kaufman had never been much of a threat, and now she was none at all. “I’ll tell him,” he promised. He offered his hand. “Thank you, Doctor Kaufman, for everything you did,” he said formally. “Can I give you a ride to the airport?” he offered impulsively, hoping he didn’t sound as reluctant as he felt.

Kaufman laughed softly, shaking her head. “Oh, no. Thank you for offering, Dave, but I know you haven’t had much time to be here and,” she smiled wistfully, “this is where you need to be. Goodbye,” she said and left him alone.

Starsky watched her walk away down the corridor, then turned his attention back to the window. Kaufman was right. This was where he needed to be. Every moment he had to spend away from Hutch was a torment. Sitting beside Hutch’s bed, waiting until he woke and Starsky could spend a few minutes with him, were the only peace Starsky knew. The only time when he could beat back the terror.

He had come so close to losing Hutch this time. That miserable little microscopic menace Starsky couldn’t see and couldn’t fight, had nearly succeeded where Ben Forest, Vic Humphries and Diana Harmon had all failed.

“Too damned close this time,” Starsky whispered, feeling blind panic trying to reclaim him.

He saw beyond the glass that Hutch was stirring. The blond head was tossing a little on the pillow, long limbs beginning to uncurl behind the blanket, and Starsky hurried into the room.

Hutch’s eyes were opening as Starsky reached the bed, blinking sleepily. A smile of welcome curved lips fever-cracked and dry. “Hi,” he greeted Starsky in a voice still rusty-hinge raspy with the ravages of deadly illness.

“Hi, yourself,” Starsky whispered, soaking up the smile and the clear eyes and letting them subdue the panic that demanded he grab Hutch, hide him somewhere where he could be forever safe, where Starsky could stand at the door and protect him for the rest of their lives. “You been sleepin’ since the last time I was here?”

“Mmm,” Hutch hummed as he continued his waking stretch, wincing only a little before the contented smile returned. “Think so. Feels good to sleep.”

Hutch, Starsky remembered, had fought sleep, holding onto the scattered threads of consciousness throughout the long hours of approaching death. Where other victims had willing sunk into pain-free oblivion, Hutch had clung tenaciously to every single moment of life, however terrible that life had become.

“Doc says it’s the best thing for you,” Starsky murmured inanely, parroting by rote because the panic had him again, lapping under his chin, the next wave threatening to sweep over his head.

Then a levee closed over his hand, holding back the water, refusing to let him drown. Starsky clung to Hutch’s fingers until his grip pulled a grunt from Hutch. Even then, his partner refused to let him go, hanging on with more strength than Starsky had expected.

“Not leaving again?” Hutch asked.

“Not going anywhere…” Starsky paused to nip the endearment off the tip of his tongue. “…buddy. Dobey can go whistle ’til morning,” he promised, the hope in Hutch’s eyes making him wish he could promise to cement his ass to the uncomfortable chair for the rest of his life if that was what Hutch wanted.

Hutch’s eyes closed and his grip relaxed. “Just don’t piss him off too much. Don’t wanna end up in traffic when….”

Starsky waited for Hutch to finish the thought, then realized that his friend had slipped off to sleep again. Still holding the long fingers in his, Starsky made himself comfortable in the chair beside the bed. Hutch still wasn’t awake for very long, but he had been more alert tonight. Soon, he would be aware enough to start noticing the things Starsky no longer seemed able to control. The endearments that wanted to attach themselves to every sentence, the touches that had become caresses and lingered way too long.

The plague hadn’t made Starsky any braver, but it had brought him face to face with the inescapable fact that he couldn’t hide his love forever. He was going to slip, and Hutch would know, and Starsky couldn’t let it happen that way. The prospect of what finally being honest with Hutch could cost him was terrifying, but Starsky hoped if he was careful to make it clear to Hutch that he expected nothing of him, maybe Hutch could forgive him and continue to be Starsky’s friend.

Starsky had made his decision days ago, and it had given him a peace he hadn’t known for too long. There would be no backing out this time. But he wasn’t going to do it here in this sterile room where death had almost triumphed. Once Hutch was well, and Starsky could take him home, then he would tell him how much he was loved.

~*~*~

Hutch was very tired of lying in bed, even if he had been fully aware of doing so for only a few hours. For five days he had mostly slept, Starsky had told him this morning, then introduced him to his roommate.

Tabbert was a later victim of the plague and hadn’t been as ill as Hutch, so he was already up and around. Hutch envied every step the friendly man took. And he took a lot of them. Bed to chair, bed to bathroom, bed to window. Tabbert, it was safe to assume, was as restless with his continued confinement as Hutch. But at least he could get out of bed.

A privilege Hutch was about to grant himself. “I have to use the john,” he announced to Starsky and threw back the covers.

Starsky was on his feet in a second, pulling open the drawer where the urinal hid from view until it was needed. “Hang on a min–”

“No,” Hutch cut him off. He sat up straight, closing his eyes while the dizziness of even so small a movement swamped him and then passed. Cautiously, he opened his eyes, relieved to find he was still upright. “I’m not pissing in bed,” he insisted and began the laborious process of swinging his legs over the side. His skin, tender from fever and too long in bed, felt as if it might be scraped right off the back of his thighs and his ass as he slowly inched to the side of the bed, but Hutch persevered.

“Uh, Hutch, are you sure you’re up to this?” Starsky asked, hovering uncertainly, as if he couldn’t decide whether to block Hutch’s way or lend him a hand. “Maybe you should ask the doctor. You haven’t even had anything to eat yet.”

“Either get out of my way or get over here and help me up,” Hutch demanded. Emptying his bladder into the proper receptacle had become a symbol to Hutch. For days, he had been helpless, his modesty and pride and personhood stripped away. He almost laughed to realize that the porcelain bowl in the bathroom had become his personal holy grail. He was going to get there if he had to crawl.

Starsky still appeared very doubtful, but he obediently offered his assistance, bending and pulling Hutch’s arm over his shoulder, and then wrapping his own strong left arm around Hutch’s back to haul him to his feet.

For a second time, Hutch closed his eyes against the pitch and sway of his surroundings, feeling for all the world as if he stood in a mighty gale, battered and whipped on every side by vicious winds determined to dump him, ignominiously, back on his ass in that bed. On all sides except the one Starsky stood on, pressed close against him, his strength at Hutch’s disposal should his own fail him.

When the dizziness passed, Hutch opened his eyes and matched Starsky’s worried smile with a weak attempt of his own. “Let’s go,” he insisted.

It was thirteen steps to the bathroom and two from the door to the holy porcelain grail. To Hutch, it felt more like fifteen miles–at a flat out run–by the time Starsky lowered him to the seat. Head hanging, elbows braced on trembling thighs, Hutch panted and tried to remember why this had seemed so important five eternal minutes ago. Starsky reminded him.

“Come on, partner. Tuck in and let go. Need to get you back to bed,” Starsky prompted him anxiously.

Oh, yes. His masculine pride. Didn’t seem so important with his head spinning and his gut churning. Then it reasserted itself. He was not going to squat. “Help me up,” Hutch commanded through lips that were beginning to feel as numb as his feet.

“Damn it. You can piss your initials up the wall tomorrow,” Starsky complained, but once again obeyed, hauling Hutch to his feet and maneuvering in the tight space until they faced the bowl. “Stubborn bastard,” he muttered.

Distracted from the task of finding where his penis had disappeared to under the hospital gown, Hutch turned his head to look at Starsky, expecting to find a very disgusted judgment for his determined self-sufficiency. He was doing it again, he realized vaguely, though he was too woozy to remember exactly what it was.

But the look on Starsky’s face wasn’t disgusted. His partner was gazing at him with affection and pride.

Hutch apologized nonetheless. “‘M sorry,” he mumbled.

“Don’t be sorry, Hutch,” Starsky said, his free hand coming to ruffle Hutch’s filthy, sweat-stiff hair. “It was that stubborn pigheadedness that kept you alive long enough for me to find Callander. But would you, for God’s sake, take a leak already before you fall on your face in the can.”

“Holy grail,” Hutch corrected him gravely, but got on with the fumbling business at hand, much to the relief of his bladder.

The trip back to the bed felt, as return journeys often did, to be at least twice as long. By the time he made it, Hutch had sworn off pissing for the rest of his life, and gratefully tumbled down onto the unforgiving mattress. Machismo was a word he blacked out of his personal dictionary as he let Starsky arrange his lifeless limbs and pull the blanket up to his chest.

“You okay?” Starsky asked, the concern in his voice forcing Hutch to give up his self-indulgence and bring an uncertain smile to his lips. “You’re sweating again and shaking hard enough to rattle your molars.”

“First time’s always the hardest,” Tabbert reassured them as he went by to claim his turn in the facilities. “Be easier next time.”

“Next time I’ll use the bottle,” Hutch whispered.

“Yeah, sure you will,” Starsky agreed, sarcasm on his tongue but that full-to-bursting pride on his face again. “Next time you’ll insist on going alone.”

Starsky knew him so well, Hutch thought, as he relaxed and felt some of the trembling fade. A couple of good meals, and he would be ready to take up jogging again. He was about to clue Starsky in on his agenda when one of the nurses stuck her head around the edge of the door.

“Sergeant Starsky. Telephone for you,” she chirped brightly and disappeared.

“Damn,” Starsky cursed, pushing up out of the chair he had been about to sit in. “You know who that is.”

“Yeah, Dobey,” Hutch said, wishing Starsky didn’t have to leave. “See you tomorrow?” he asked, unsurprised by the wistfulness in his voice.

“I’ll try to get back later if I can,” Starsky promised. “We’re pretty short-handed. “He seemed in no hurry to leave however, standing, without any sign of his usual fidgeting, beside the bed.

“Visiting hours…” Hutch started to remind him, but let it go when Starsky laughed.

“Already put the fix in with the nurses. I can come and go any time I want,” Starsky bragged.

“Charmed them, huh?” Hutch asked, recognizing the funny feeling that had just started up in his middle, and it wasn’t hunger. He was jealous of the recipients of even this small share of Starsky’s attention.

“Hell, no,” Starsky denied with a laugh. “Sheer bribery. These ladies have a weakness for chocolate. Couple of boxes of Black Magic, and I’m suddenly invisible.” He patted Hutch’s hand. “Gotta go.”

Hutch wanted to call him back even before he pulled the door open, but remained silent, offering a reassuring smile when Starsky hesitated and looked back at him. “You be careful out there,” he commanded.

“Damn right,” Starsky promised and then he was gone.

Hutch watched him leave, returning the cocky wave and grin Starsky gave him as he passed by the observation window. His smile faded the moment Starsky was out of sight, a frown taking its place. Hutch wanted out. Now. Wanted to follow Starsky. Climb into that damned striped Tomato and make Starsky take him home. Where there was no roommate, no intrusive nurses, and no huge observation window.

Time had never seemed more precious to Hutch, and he wasn’t going to waste any more of it.

“Ready or not,” he whispered, remembering six, foot-high red letters, and tormented eyes above a white mask, and a grip that had been strong enough to conquer his pain.

Sweetheart.

“Home, sweet home,” Hutch declared dramatically as they came through the door at Venice Place, throwing his arms out as if he wanted to embrace every stick of furniture, every plant and painting.

Suppressing a smile, Starsky ducked around Hutch’s outstretched arms and headed for the bathroom. He needed to escape Hutch’s effervescent presence. Just for a minute or two. The vivacious smile and sunny enthusiasm that had been bubbling from the moment they left the hospital, were trying to play tricks on him. Lure him into pretending Hutch was in love with him rather than just in love with life.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Hutch demanded.

Starsky turned to face his friend, but continued backing toward the bathroom. “I’m just gonna put this stuff away,” he explained, lifting Hutch’s bag from the hospital to illustrate his intentions.

“You don’t have to look after me. I’m fine,” Hutch reminded him, an insistence to the statement that puzzled Starsky until he remembered how often his response to a threat to Hutch had wound him up into a maniac of efficiency. “Meredith is such an old woman. I didn’t think he was ever going to let me out. I really am okay, Starsk.”

“I know,” Starsky agreed, drawn by the smile and the warmth in Hutch’s eyes, feeling his mouth go dry and his palms sweaty. “So, why aren’t you already in the greenhouse making sure I didn’t murder anybody,” he teased and ducked into the bathroom.

Starsky had barely had time to unzip the bag before Hutch called from the living room. “I hope you’re not planning on spending all day in there. Dobey kept you so busy, I’ve hardly seen you, and I miss you.”

“Don’t even think it,” Starsky chastised his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “He’s just high on being out of that fucking room,” he added, but he did recognize that he wasn’t likely to be offered a better opening than that. “Missed you, too, sweetheart,” he whispered, and then went to face the future.

Hutch was sitting on the couch, watching the bathroom door expectantly, that happy-to-be-alive grin blooming on his face when Starsky appeared. Starsky let the power of it pull him across the room and sit him down beside Hutch.

“Is there something wrong?” Hutch asked. He reached out toward Starsky, then, for some reason seemed to think better of it, and laid his hand on the back of the couch instead. “You’ve been pretty quiet since we left the hospital.”

“No. Nothing’s wrong. Just need to talk to you about something. Need to tell you something, really,” Starsky said. He looked at the hand that was so close and resisted the temptation to take it between his, to secure a grip on Hutch, however tenuous, before he confessed. He had been reminding himself for days that Hutch cared about him, and he wasn’t really expecting to be handed his hat and shown the door. No matter how well you knew someone, however, you could never foresee on hundred percent of the time what he might do. That unpredictability had kept Starsky’s secret locked inside him for too long. If he had a hope of continuing to hide it, he might renege even now, let the status quo stand. But there was no hope. He could feel the love on his face, knew it lived in his eyes. It would never tolerate being caged again.

“I just want you to know,” he began, forcing his eyes up to meet Hutch’s, “that I love you,” he blurted. When Hutch’s smile didn’t disappear, Starsky remembered that those words had been spoken between them before, had been true long before Forest or the plague had entered their lives. “I mean the kind of love that, if I could, I’d ask you to marry me,” he explained hesitantly.

“Holy shit,” Hutch murmured, and the surprise Starsky had been anticipating was on his face now. But no shock.

“I’m sor–” Starsky started to say and then bit off the apology. He wasn’t sorry for loving Hutch, and he wasn’t going to beg forgiveness for an emotion he wouldn’t change if he could. “No, Hutch, I’m not sorry. I love you. Your beauty and your strength and your goodness. And everything that–”

“I love you, too.” Hutch’s unexpected response ran right over Starsky’s declaration.

“Oh, my God,” Starsky breathed, his dearest fantasy coming to life as Hutch’s hand covered his and entwined their fingers. Those four little words filled up his heart with elation and trapped it there as he watched that sunny smile getting closer until he could feel Hutch’s breath on his face just before Hutch’s lips would have touched his, felt the moist warmth graze his cheek and then slip away.

“Shit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed…” Hutch muttered as he retreated, his cheeks flushing redder than they had when the plague’s fever had raged within him. “I’m sorry. I thought… I guess I was wrong.”

Stunned, hardly able to believe that Hutch had tried to kiss him, Starsky still retained the presence of mind to tighten his grip on Hutch’s hand when the stuttering withdrawal began to lever his partner off the couch. “No. Wait,” He demanded, adding a soft-voiced, “Please,” when the hand within his tugged harder.

With obvious reluctance, Hutch sank back down onto the cushion, but he was watching Starsky now the same way he would a strung out hype with a loaded automatic. “Please what?” he asked cautiously.

“Are you trying to tell me that, if I did ask you to marry me, you’d say yes?” Starsky ventured with the same caution.

“In a heartbeat,” Hutch said immediately. “I told you. I love you, too. I’ve just been waiting for the right moment to tell you.”

“Shit,” Starsky murmured. He was catching up, a little. Not enough to really take in the fact that Hutch had just offered to love, honor and cherish, but enough to realize that he couldn’t just grab Hutch’s confession, or Hutch, and run with it. Up to this moment, Starsky had only thought of the truth he had to give Hutch, had almost forgotten the lies he had told. With Hutch’s confession echoing in his brain, Starsky realized he was going to have to reveal the house of cards he had built, and bring it crashing down around them.

“Was I wrong, Starsk? You love me, but don’t want me?” Hutch asked, trying to withdraw his hand again.

Reluctantly, Starsky allowed the physical connection to be broken. “You weren’t wrong, Hutch. You didn’t assume anything I wasn’t trying to tell you. I love you. And that includes wanting you to kiss me and…well, whatever else…” He held up a hand to halt the small movement Hutch made toward him. “But there’s something else I have to tell you before you and me…” He trailed off, feeling heat in his own face, wondering if the blush that had begun to recede from Hutch’s face had only transferred itself to him.

“When you tried to kiss me just now, I turned my head because…because I never let a guy kiss me on the mouth,” he finally confessed, the words rushing out of him even as he wished he didn’t have to say them, had never gone looking for a substitute even once.

The shock Starsky had been expecting was on Hutch’s face now. “You never let a guy…?” he echoed, then closed his mouth abruptly, looking as if he had been gut-shot. He didn’t leave the couch, but his withdrawal was just as apparent when his spine straightened and his arms crossed over his chest. The body language screamed rejection as Hutch’s face closed down into that bland neutrality he sometimes wore in the interrogation room when revealing his emotions might cost him a suspect’s confession. “Maybe you better tell me the whole story,” he suggested.

Starsky winced at the cool, reasonable tone, and the familiar question. But it was better than Hutch losing his temper. At least in interrogator mode, he was likely to listen. All Starsky had to do was find the words to confess his betrayal and the courage to force them from his brain to his tongue.

“I’m bisexul,” Starsky began with what was, after what he had already said, simply stating the obvious. “I found out about it when I was in high school, but, I…uhm…mostly ignored it.”

“High school?” Hutch echoed, obviously not expecting a confession that was more than fifteen years old. “How do you ignore something like that?” he asked, his disbelief in his voice, even if the neutral mask kept it from his face.

Starsky laughed bitterly. “Hell, Hutch. You know me. I can ignore an elephant in the refrigerator if there’s pizza on the next shelf.”

“So, you never did anything about it?” Hutch asked. “I mean, uh, tried anything…?” The wheels were turning in Hutch’s head. Starsky could almost see them. Starsky had already tactically admitted to having sexual experience with men, and yet now he seemed to be denying it.

“I didn’t say that,” Starsky corrected him. “I…tried it. Couple of times,” he admitted.

“But you didn’t like it?” Hutch ventured, the censor of just a moment ago was disappearing, his willingness to try to understand softening the features that were so dear to Starsky.

“Hell, no, Hutch. I loved it,” Starsky again corrected Hutch’s assumption. He could barely remember those encounters now, had blocked them out of his mind when he had made his choice back then. “It wasn’t anything heavy. Just kind of fumbling around with a friend,” he elaborated a little, seeing that Hutch also remembered the awkwardness of adolescence. “But it was good.”

“Then why didn’t you…?” Hutch asked, obviously still uncertain whether his probing was welcome.

“In 1960?” Starsky asked incredulously. “Nobody ever said ‘gay’ back then, it was ‘queer,’ even out here.” He laughed bitterly. “If I’d still been back in New York, hell, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed that I thought the captain of the football team was better looking than the cheerleaders.”

Hutch gave him a small smile for the self-depreciating humor, but above the curved lips his eyes were tight with empathy. “That must have been so hard for you.”

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed, remembering the struggle it had been, how important it had seemed to him then to fit in and the terrible fear of being different. “I guess I took the coward’s way out.”

“No,” Hutch insisted, leaning forward, his hand settling on Starsky’s arm in the gesture of support that, even now, seemed to come so naturally to him. “It wasn’t cowardice to be a scared and confused kid.”

If Starsky hadn’t already been in love with Hutch, he knew he would be falling for him now. “I wish I’d had a friend like you back then.”

“And you’ve been living with this all this time,” Hutch said sympathetically, his hand tightening on Starsky’s arm, his empathy on his face.

For a second time, Starsky reluctantly broke the connection between them. It was too tempting, that warmth, the gentle understanding. Far too tempting to give Hutch only part of the truth. “I wish I could say that, but that isn’t the way it is. Like I said, I ignored it then. Even when I was in ‘Nam…” He hesitated, feeling years-old memories of terror and temptation luring him backward in time until he could smell the stench of rotting vegetation, fear sweat, and spilled blood.

“Over there it was like all the rules were different,” he heard himself say. “A lot of the guys got it on. I guess groping around a little in the dark with somebody who had the same equipment didn’t seem so…strange when you spent all day trying to kill other people or stop them from killing you. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even really sex. I guess it was…a place to hide.”

“Starsk.”

Starsky traveled forward thousands of miles and more than a decade, drawn back to a life where he could be clean and dry and not scared out of his wits, by the soft touch of Hutch’s hand on his and the gentle voice speaking his nickname. It was only one small letter short of his full surname, but spoken by Hutch in that deep, intimate tone, it had always had the power to make him feel special.

“S-s-orry,” Starsky stammered, slipping his hand from Hutch’s to wipe at the sweat that had broken out on his face. Fear sweat, not heat.

“It’s okay,” Hutch murmured, understanding in his voice, the neutral mask completely gone now. “You’ve never talked much about the time you spent over there, but I can understand–”

“No,” Starsky interrupted again, realizing that Hutch had drawn the wrong conclusion. “I never did anything in ‘Nam, either. Maybe I was just too scared to get it up, I don’t know.”

“But if you didn’t do it in Vietnam, when…?” Hutch asked, sounding confused and, perhaps, at little impatient. He knew, of course, that Starsky had enrolled in the Academy within a few months of leaving the army.

“It was in San Francisco,” Starsky explained, the past pulling at him again, but this time he didn’t allow the emotional memories to draw him backward in time, allowing himself to recall the circumstances, but attempting to remain removed from the pain and confusion of that time. “I was so grateful to be home. Couldn’t believe I was one of the lucky ones who got out with a whole skin.”

“So, you…uhm… The relief and….”

Starsky had to smile. He didn’t have to make excuses for his younger self. Even without hearing the entire story, Hutch was doing it for him. “Do you remember what it was like here then?” he asked. “Hippies protesting at the airports and people thinking anybody who ended up over there was some kind of war-loving psycho. Like we had a choice. When we got off the plane, Christ, there were people there screaming baby killer at us.” He looked at his hands and shrugged, then forced himself to meet Hutch’s eyes. “I guess I went a little crazy. I was discharged at Fort Mason and, for a few weeks, I just…” He paused again, searching Hutch’s face for comprehension and saw that there was no need to provide specific details. “I staggered out of bed one morning to find that John Blaine had come looking for me. Just seeing him standing there at the door of the cheap hotel room I was living in, reminded me that there was something important I could do with my life. I knew cops couldn’t be queer. I had to make a choice, and I did. I just put it away.”

“I understand, Starsk,” Hutch repeated. The relaxation of his body and the hesitant smile on his face seemed to draw him closer to Starsky. “I guess I can even understand why you never told me,” he allowed, reaching out. “It’s in the past.”

Again, Starsky drew back from the temptation of that hand. He had given Hutch a plausible explanation, perhaps he had even given Hutch all he really needed to hear. The rest of it might break them before they even started, but if they were really in love with each other and about to begin a whole new life together, they couldn’t build that life on a foundation of lies. In any case, his withdrawal had been enough to alert Hutch that they weren’t out of the woods yet.

“You put it away, but it wouldn’t stay away,” Hutch guessed, letting his hand drop to the cushion. “What? Why? When?” he asked hesitantly, looking like a lawyer questioning a witness when he isn’t sure what the answers will be and is afraid they would blow his whole case.

“The first time was after Forest,” Starsky admitted with a sigh. “I didn’t go looking for it. When I left your place that night, I went driving. Scared the shit out of myself acting like a maniac on the highway, and when I started back, there was this bar, and….”

“You picked up some stranger in a bar?” Hutch asked, horrified, the risks obviously as apparent to him as they had been to Starsky all along.

“I picked up some stranger in a bar every time,” Starsky admitted, as disgusted with himself now as he had been then. The stupidity of it, the risks he had taken, to scratch an itch that, at the time, had driven him nearly insane. “After Forest, and Solkin, and Humphries,” he went on, goaded by the horror that he could see etched into familiar features, before Hutch suddenly left the couch, turned his back, and walked away as if he couldn’t stand to be anywhere near Starsky.

“I wanted you, Hutch, though I didn’t let myself admit it at first,” Starsky pleaded, already certain that his whole truth had been more than Hutch could ever forgive. “But I couldn’t have you, so I went looking for what I could have. A big blond with blue eyes and hands that–”

“For Christ’s sake, do you think I want all the gory details,” Hutch shouted, spinning around, fury twisting his face into an ugly caricature of Starsky’s dear friend. “What the hell were you using for brains? Your balls? Risking everything like that. Your career, maybe even your life. Why the hell didn’t you just…?”

“What?” Starsky demanded, his temper flaring at the horror on Hutch’s face, realizing only as the fury poured out of him just how long his anger had been simmering. “You said it yourself. ‘I’m not that kind of boy,'” he quoted furiously. “You don’t screw with a great friendship,” he added, the confusion on Hutch’s face adding fuel to the fire. Obviously, the gospel Starsky had been living his life by wasn’t even remembered by the man who had so casually laid it down.

Starsky was on his feet now, too, though he couldn’t remember leaving the couch. Every muscle of his body ached, demanding retribution for all the wasted time. He wanted to lash out, but couldn’t bring himself to hit Hutch, allowing the pain to spill out of him in bitter words instead. “What was I supposed to do? Beg you for a mercy fuck? Say, listen partner, I’ve got this itch I can’t scratch, and even though I know you’re a little busted up right now, do you think you might be able to accommodate me? And, of course, I was supposed to just forget that you’re straight, that never once did you ever show any signs that jumping my bones would ever occur to you. And believe me, I looked. I looked hard.”

“Not as hard as you looked in the fucking gay bars, apparently,” Hutch snapped with the cold disdain he did so well. The ice that concealed the fire beneath it.

Forcing himself to rein in his temper, to stop this before both of them said things that could never be unsaid, that would destroy any hope of salvaging even a small part of their relationship, Starsky bit back more bitter words clamoring to be spoken. For a brief moment, he had been offered the promise of Hutch’s love, but Starsky had come here today expecting that he would be lucky if he still had Hutch’s friendship when he left. He had been a fool over and over again with his substitute Hutches, but he wasn’t going to let his temper rob him of any hope he had of keeping his friend and partner.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you. You didn’t deserve that,” Starsky apologized. “I don’t blame you for being mad, Hutch. I did take stupid risks, and I’m not making any excuses. I just…” There weren’t any more words left for Starsky to say, and even if there had been some magical combination, he had no hope of squeezing them past the lump in his throat. There was nothing left for him to do but leave. Maybe if Hutch had some time to think about it….

A dignified exit seemed like the only option open to him now. Starsky retrieved his jacket and started for the door.

“What the hell am I doing?”

Starsky had the door open when he heard Hutch’s disbelieving whisper and the footsteps that hurried after him.

“Don’t go.”

Escape was a step away. All Starsky had to do was cross the threshold. He didn’t even have to close the door behind him. He could just walk out, come back tomorrow and pretend, if Hutch would allow it, that he had been smart enough to leave well enough alone.

“I’ll…I’ll see you tomor–” Starsky couldn’t finish the lie. He had already lied to Hutch too many times. When he went out the door this time–not thrown out by Hutch with his willing cooperation, but of his own accord–he knew he wouldn’t be coming through it again. Not the same way. How could he when he and Hutch would never be the same again?

“Please, Starsk. Don’t leave me,” Hutch appealed, his voice forlorn, as if he knew his plea would fall on deaf ears.

Starsky had no defense against either the tone or the words. No defense against whatever Hutch needed, even if it tore his heart into tiny pieces. Slowly, he turned around, letting his eyes ask Hutch for mercy. “Hutch….”

“I’m a certifiable idiot,” Hutch admitted, taking a tentative step closer. “You’re standing here offering me everything I want, and I’m throwing a tantrum like a two-year-old because–”

“Because your new toy is shop worn?” Starsky asked with aching weariness.

Hutch crossed the few feet that separated them in two quick strides and carefully closed the door before hesitantly reaching out to rest his fingers on Starsky’s face. “No, babe. Because I’m so jealous of those substitutes I can barely think. While I was being a fucking fool, some other man was… The thought of some other man touching you, kissing you…” There was anger in Hutch’s face again, an incandescent fury that only slowly gave in to his control. “Christ, Starsky. I love you!”

“Are you sure, Hutch?” Starsky whispered, his shaky balance seesawing at yet another swing of mood from Hutch. “I’m not talking about just a roll in the hay once in a while. I’m talking about always. Just the two of us. ‘Til death do us part. Have you thought about–”

“Idiot,” Hutch admonished gently, his fingers pressing into Starsky’s lips to cut off the flow of cautionary babble. “I know the difference between love and lust when it’s offered,” he chided, the pressure easing on Starsky’s lips, becoming a caress. “When I feel it.”

Hutch was close again and coming closer, the love written on his face and passion beginning to warm the pale blue eyes. Once again, Starsky turned his head, rejecting the kiss, and Hutch withdrew.

“More confessions?” Hutch asked warily. “Or…?”

“Told you I never let a guy kiss me on the mouth,” Starsky began to explain, sliding his hand into the soft hair at the nape of Hutch’s neck to stop him from moving away. “Didn’t know at first why I wouldn’t let them, but it was because, even though I knew it was never gonna happen with you, I wanted to…save something.” For a second time, Starsky felt himself blushing. “Dumb, huh?”

Hutch’s fingers touched his lips again, the callused pads skimming over the surface in a caress so light it was only barely felt. “No,” he whispered, and then he replaced his fingers with his lips.

A kiss is just a kiss. Starsky had tried to tell himself that when he had realized he was holding out for Hutch’s kisses. A meeting of moist flesh. A prelude to the real action. He was grateful that he had never been able to trivialize it in his own mind because now it was happening. Hutch’s kiss. Hutch’s hands holding him close. Hutch’s body shifting gently against his. Not some big, blond, blue-eyed stranger, but Hutch. Starsky could surrender to this kiss, open his mouth and his heart. Allow the hungry lips to claim him and turn him inside out.

It was only as Hutch ended the kiss and eased away that Starsky realized he had never closed his eyes, couldn’t bear to shut out the reality of the identity of the man who kissed him. Finally, Hutch. At last.

“I don’t want to be crude, but could we lie down? I think my knees have disappeared,” Hutch admitted.

Starsky could feel the way Hutch was trembling, the tremors running through the body he held, and was reminded of how sick Hutch had been. “Maybe we better wait,” he said hesitantly, loosening his grip, trying to corral the desire that the kiss had aroused.

“For what?” Hutch asked. “Time to run out? One of us to die?”

Starsky’s hands tightened. “I don’t want to take any chances. You’re shaking.”

Hutch laughed softly. “I’m shaking because I’ve never done this before. Dreamed it, waking and sleeping, but…” He hesitated, his eyes holding Starsky’s. “Because I want you so much. Take me to bed, Starsk. Make love to me.”

Gently, Starsky withdrew from the arms that at first clung to him and then freed him as his intentions became clear. He took Hutch’s hand in his and led him to the alcove. Once they stood beside the bed, Starsky smiled as he released Hutch’s hand.

“Feels like my birthday when I was a kid, and after all the waiting, I’m finally allowed to open my present,” Starsky admitted, gently tugging the hem of Hutch’s t-shirt from his jeans and slowly drawing it over his head. He grinned at the tousled head that emerged, his fingers carefully tidying the soft strands of blond hair, tenderly tucking one behind Hutch’s ear. “Wanted to do that when we played chess,” he confessed, then leaned in to press a soft kiss to Hutch’s lips. “Wanted to do that…forever.”

“Starsk,” Hutch murmured, his fingers reaching for Starsky’s shirt, but Starsky evaded them, dropping to his knees to rid Hutch of socks and shoes, remaining there while he reached up to work belt and snap and zipper. He had done this for Hutch before, always fighting the need that lived inside him, always looking away when what he wanted was to feast his eyes. He could do it now, he realized, as he helped steady Hutch, letting his eyes devour the long, slim body.

“Is something wrong?” Hutch asked, the sudden shyness stealing his grace, making him appear awkward and shamed.

“Oh, Hutch.” Starsky rose to his feet, laying his hand on the smooth skin over Hutch’s heart. “You’re so damned beautiful,” he breathed the compliment he had thought a thousand times. His hand slid down, the smooth flesh flowing like satin beneath his fingers, until it came to rest, palm pressed against Hutch’s ribs. “Are you sure you’re up to…uhm?” he asked worriedly, the feeling of sharp bone beneath his hand arousing his protective instincts again.

“Not sure what ‘uhm’ you have in mind,” Hutch admitted, smiling shyly, a hesitant sweep of his hand drawing Starsky’s eye down to the erection still shrouded in his white briefs. “But I seem to be up.”

For so long, the only way Starsky could show his love for Hutch was to guard him from it. To channel the desire into watching his back. Like an over-worked muscle, that instinct was strong now, urging him to protect Hutch, preventing him from accepting the hand Hutch held out to him and the body and heart behind it.

“Been wanting you so long,” he tried to explain the hesitance he barely understood himself.

“And couldn’t have me?” Hutch guessed, his certainty, as so often happened, rising when Starsky’s faltered. “You had to give all that lo-no, not your love, because you always gave me that,” he continued, moving closer, crossing what, to him, might seem only a foot or two of empty space, but was, to Starsky, the Grand Canyon of self-denial, dug deeper every time his need had flared and he gave it to some stranger. “Had to give all that passion to some other man. Is that what you want for us? You with some blond substitute, and me learning from a curly-haired–”

“No!” Starsky snarled, unable to tolerate the image of some man with a passing resemblance to himself laying claim to Hutch. Sharing, in casual lust, what Starsky wanted so badly and had denied himself so long. It was enough to shatter the reserve that contained him, let him snatch at Hutch’s hand, and hold it hard before it could be withdrawn.

Hutch accepted the crushing grip without protest, his other hand finding the first button on Starsky’s shirt. He worked it, his fingers fumbling, but finally managing to slide it loose before lowering, with more confidence, to its neighbor two inches below, and leaping it as well, until his fingers rested on the buckle at Starsky’s waist. The warmth of those fingers, the backs pressed into his belly, coaxed Starsky to leave the past behind.

“You don’t have to protect me from your love anymore, Starsk. You just have to give it to me,” Hutch coaxed, his voice a husky purr.

“I do love you, Hutch,” Starsky whispered and heard the vow in it despite the breathless, near soundlessness of it. “‘Til death do us part,” echoed in his head and tightened his grip until Hutch winced. No more waiting for death to stop granting reprieves, no more tormenting regrets of what might have been when Starsky feared, this time, there would be no second chance. No thirds, or fourths, or all the other times he had come so close to the edge of never.

Deliberately, Starsky released Hutch’s hand, brushed away the fingers that pressed their own promise into his belly and yanked his shirt free, attacking belt and jeans and every other barrier that stood between him and Hutch. It didn’t matter how many times he had done this before with the wrong man. If Hutch could forgive him, then Starsky had no choice but to try to forgive himself. It was time he used what the fantasies he had lived with strangers had taught him, to give this man he had loved for so long all the pleasure the beautiful body could hold.

His clothes scattered around them, Starsky reached for the last of Hutch’s, his fingers sliding beneath the elastic waist of the white briefs. He hesitated only long enough to gather a nod of permission from Hutch, then pushed, letting his fingertips glide over the satin skin of hip and thigh, a final push and flick sending the scrap of white to puddle at Hutch’s feet.

“No substitutes,” he growled possessively as Hutch stepped clear of the briefs, leaving Starsky free to start backing him toward the bed. “Not for me,” he continued when Hutch sat down abruptly on the mattress. He leaned in, his hand on Hutch’s shoulder pushing, his body following irresistibly as Hutch scrambled back until Starsky could stretch out slowly on top of him, savoring the unbelievable pleasure of finally being naked skin to naked skin with Hutch. “And never for you,” he demanded, fiercely, the fidelity he himself offered.

“Never,” Hutch swore, his body a restless caress. “Only you.” His hands ran down Starsky’s back, cupped his ass and pushed as his body arched up. “Show me. Doesn’t matter where you learned it. Only you and me now.”

Starsky kissed him. Had to stop the husky promises and pleas before they ripped orgasm from his body. Hutch begged him for love, and Starsky was going to give it, even if every twist and arch, moan and caressing brush of Hutch’s fingers, tried to thwart him.

He began with the full lips, learning for himself what he had never before known. The challenge to hold his own against the power and aggression of a mouth as strong as his, a tongue as determined to conquer. The sweet pleasure of giving in to that strength and letting himself be conquered, seduced, and held captive by Hutch’s kisses. Drowning in it, eager to go under for the last time until Hutch pulled his mouth free, his head arching back and reminding Starsky of the many pleasures still to be taken and given in return.

Hungrily, Starsky attacked the vulnerable throat, the thrum of Hutch’s pulse beneath his lips driving near irresistible temptation into him to sink his teeth into the soft flesh, seek out the life essence, and suck it into himself. He nipped instead, a gasp and a choked off cry from Hutch gentling the wildness within him, sending his tongue to lap tender balm for the small hurt. His lips offered apology as they tasted the sweep of collarbone, followed the trail of the smooth, low swell of the pectoral, until the hard peak of Hutch’s nipple brushed his cheek.

Starsky lingered there, tongue and teeth and lips feasting in their turn to the sweet music of Hutch’s breathless moans. He was re-learning this as he taught Hutch because he had never done this to a substitute. Never wanted to give more than he took. Never wanted to grant them the intimacy. Approval of the lesson was given in the fingers that wound into his hair and the back that arched the tender nub hard to his mouth.

“Don’t stop,” Hutch moaned when Starsky drew away, half-lifting off the bed to follow Starsky’s mouth as it left him.

“Easy,” Starsky murmured, his hands stroking patience into arms and shoulders and chest, even while his own restless body rubbed the hard, thick core of Hutch’s need into his belly. His cock throbbed, pressed and thrust against the rough caress of the bedspread before he forced his hips to be still. To corral his aching desire, hold it at bay while he fed it and Hutch’s arousal alike. “Gonna give you what you need, Hutch. Everything you need,” he promised.

Hutch gave him obedience in the sudden stillness of his body, his hand falling away, no longer trying to enforce direction or impose his will.

“Hutch,” Starsky murmured as he moved down, his hands trailing over the arc of ribs and a belly gone concave with tension. He swept both hands out, circled Hutch’s hips, the heels of his hands pressing into the sharp outline of bone beneath the stretched skin, while his fingers found and tested the resilient strength of the taut muscles of Hutch’s ass.

The long legs spread to accommodate him, the submission splashing accelerant on the flame of Starsky’s desire. To fuck Hutch. Finally. At last. To hoist those endlessly long legs over his shoulders and sink his cock deep between the white cheeks of Hutch’s ass. To claim in reality, with his eyes open and Hutch’s pleasure greedily devoured, what he had found, eyes closed, in the bodies of other men.

Some night, Starsky promised himself, settling between the sprawled thighs, his hands boldly claiming the hard, hot length of Hutch’s cock. He rode out the heave of Hutch’s body, drank in the surprised shout of pleasure. Some night, but not tonight. Tonight he needed to give all he had withheld from others. Soon. In good time. When he had used everything he knew to give Hutch all the pleasure he could, was time enough to offer to Hutch the surrender he could never trust to any other man.

“Christ, Starsk, please,” Hutch begged.

Starsky smiled into the befuddled blue eyes, lowered his mouth and placed one soft, dry kiss on the tip of Hutch’s cock, let the slick moisture he found there coat his lips. He held that gaze as he circled his lips with his tongue, deliberately taunting, inciting Hutch to give up his self-appointed passive role, wanting the assertiveness from Hutch that he wouldn’t accept from any other man.

“Please what, Hutch?” Starsky teased, licking his lips again. “What do you want? My mouth?”

“Yes,” Hutch hissed. It was almost a demand, but the long fingers remained gripped on the sheet restraining him.

Starsky bent and kissed the tip of Hutch’s cock again, lips barely brushing the crown, and then lifting back up as his hand cupped Hutch’s balls and fondled them, his thumb finding the hard centers and pressing firmly. “You sure that’s what you want?”

Strong fingers sank into Starsky’s hair, pushed him down until his mouth pressed once again to the smooth, hard heat. “Do it,” Hutch commanded.

Starsky opened his mouth, took the familiar length and bulk of a cock into his mouth, caressed it with his tongue, welcomed it into his throat. Never before Hutch’s cock, but always Hutch. As close as Starsky could find. And finally it was Hutch who stretched his lips, who thrust gently into his mouth, whose fingers petted approval and gratitude into his hair and cheek.

“Yes,” Hutch hissed softly. “There. Like that. Oh. Oh, babe. Yes.”

Hutch. Hutch’s voice in his ears. Hutch. Hutch’s musky, hot aroma flooding his sinuses. Hutch. Hutch’s sharp, iron flavor filling his mouth. All of his senses filled with the reality of Hutch, Starsky finally closed his eyes and gave himself up to it. So good. So tempting just to let it go on, to let Hutch thrust and groan until he delivered a bitter spill of semen into Starsky’s mouth. But when Starsky felt the warning tightening in the balls he cradled in his hand, the temptation to drink deep left him, and he released the hard flesh, taking away hands and mouth and resisting the hands that tried to force him back to accept the result of the pleasure he had given.

Kneeling between the trembling thighs, Starsky laid careful hands on them while Hutch struggled back from the edge. He watched as the imperative eased and the blue eyes opened, first to frustrated slits and then, more slowly, as his body settled onto the plateau, into apology and inquiry.

“Sorry,” Hutch whispered, his restless fingers wrapping around his own cock, a frown creasing his brow when Starsky brushed them away. “Didn’t mean to try to make you–”

“You think I don’t want your come?” Starsky asked, incredulous that Hutch could believe there was any part of him Starsky wouldn’t gladly claim as his own. “I can finish you that way. Love to drink you, but…” He hesitated, the strength of his hunger stealing his voice for a moment. “But, Hutch, please, there’s something I need.”

Hutch half-lifted from the bed, his hands reaching for Starsky. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so selfish. Whatever….”

Starsky pushed him back down, leaning in to kiss the unnecessary apology from the swollen lips, then eased back so he could watch Hutch’s face. “I need you to fuck me, Hutch.”

“Fuck?” Hutch echoed, the desire for it sharp and clear on his face for just a second before uncertainty took its place. “No way. Not… I don’t… I might…” With a visible effort, Hutch stopped his babbling. “No. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m too hot. I might hurt you.”

Touched by the concern, Starsky hesitated, but the desire had been in Hutch’s eyes. “Doesn’t matter what you know. I know,” he insisted as he wrapped his hand around Hutch’s cock and squeezed. “And the hotter the better. Don’t you want me?” he asked, daring Hutch to deny the desire he had seen.

“Goddamnit, Starsky,” Hutch protested, but Starsky didn’t let him finish, leaning over him to push another silencing kiss onto his mouth.

“Do you want to fuck me?” Starsky asked again when Hutch’s mouth had surrendered to his kiss, demanding that Hutch be honest.

“I… Yes,” Hutch admitted, a little reluctance in him still, but the desire beginning to take control of him. “It’s just… We don’t have to do this the first time.”

“Yes, we do,” Starsky insisted, but accepted that Hutch needed to understand this need before, however much Starsky might tease or coax or command, he could do it. “I need it from you, Hutch. Never wanted any guy I’ve ever been with to fuck me, and I never let one. Could never let myself trust anybody else that much. It’s like…it’s like the kissing, Hutch. Even though I knew it could never happen, I still couldn’t let it happen with anyone but you.”

“Damn you,” Hutch whispered. “If I’d known you were such a hopeless romantic, I’d’ve….”

Starsky tilted his head, let his eyes and his smile fill with all his love for Hutch, and then gave them to his lover freely.

“I probably would have fallen in love with you sooner,” Hutch admitted ruefully. “Are you going to have me wrapped around your baby finger for the rest of our lives?”

“Why should that change just ’cause we’re in love?” Starsky teased. Hutch already indulged him. Despised the Torino, but sat in the passenger seat day after day with only token protest. Hated the strange restaurants Starsky coaxed him to, but went and ate in them nonetheless.

“You–”

Starsky cut the protest off with a warning squeeze to the cock he still held.

Hutch lay back, sighed and then fluttered his eyelashes. “All right. You’ve obviously got me where you want me. Just, be gentle with me. Okay?”

“Gentle with you?” Starsky echoed, stroking the thick, long flesh he held. “You’re not the one about to have a monster cock shoved up his ass.”

Hutch’s hips lifted off the bed. “Neither are you,” he warned, a sudden strain in his voice, “if you keep that up.”

Starsky released him, even though he knew the humor had served its purpose, cooling them both, settling them firmly on the foundation of the love they had shared for years while they tested the boundaries of this new expression. “Have you got anything we can use for lube?” he asked practically. He wasn’t so completely besotted that he expected to be able to take on a man of Hutch’s size the first time without a heaping helping of lubricant and as much preparation as he and Hutch could stand.

“There’s some…ah…Vaseline in the medicine cabinet,” Hutch suggested, the flush of arousal in his cheeks brightening with embarrassment. “I can get it.”

“No. Stay here,” Starsky commanded, succumbing to an illogical fear that if Hutch left the bed now, he might disappear, fall into the bathroom mirror like Alice through the looking glass, and Starsky would never see him again. “I’ll get it.”

Starsky could feel Hutch’s gaze following him as he scrambled off the bed and hurried to the bathroom. Hundreds of times, Hutch had seen him naked, but this was the first time Starsky had ever been aware of that gaze, felt it like a physical caress on his back and his ass and his thighs. Suddenly insecure in his own attractiveness, it hurried his step. What did Hutch see, he wondered as he fumbled through the bottles and cans and tubes in Hutch’s medicine cabinet. The question couldn’t, however, make him prolong his search or hang around in the bathroom one second after his fingers closed over the jar of Vaseline.

But the look on Hutch’s face, an unreadable expression that Starsky couldn’t interpret, did slow his return to the bed. An unnatural awkwardness possessed him that rounded his shoulders while his fingers fumbled with the jar. Until Hutch’s hand reached out, catching his free hand and drawing him back down onto cool sheets. The awareness that Hutch hadn’t simply waited for him to return, but had stripped away the bedspread in preparation for their loving, bolstered Starsky’s flagging confidence.

“How could I have seen you like this so many times?” Hutch murmured, his fingers bestowing butterfly caresses that briefly explored chest hair and nipple and the tip of Starsky’s cock. He shook his head as if to chase the rest of the question away.

“I had to stop looking a long time ago,” Starsky reminded him, returning the wondering caress. “Almost forgot how fucking beautiful you are.”

Starsky nearly lost track of his purpose somewhere during the kiss that followed as it seemed to try to coax his soul out between his lips. He reclaimed that purpose only when Hutch released him. Hutch had to fuck him, and he had to do it soon, before devouring kisses and hesitant caresses pulled climax from Starsky’s balls and sprayed it all over the sheets. When Hutch would have continued to court that premature release, Starsky captured the wandering hand and placed the jar of Vaseline firmly in the big palm.

Both nervous and unbearably aroused, Starsky turned over onto his belly, spreading his legs and lifting his hips a little off the bed. He heard a choked-off gasp from Hutch, then felt the warmth of Hutch’s large hand completely encompass one cheek of his ass.

“Think you know what to do with that stuff?” Starsky asked with bravado that was one hundred percent bullshit. What if Hutch balked now? What if the preparation necessary to fuck a man was just too foreign, too distasteful? The “what ifs” escalated when Hutch’s hand released him, then disappeared into the expectant air around them when Starsky heard him unscrewing the top from the jar of lubricant.

“This right?” Hutch asked. The question could have been teasing when Hutch’s fingers, coated with the thick ointment, unerringly found Starsky’s anus and began spreading the fast-heating lube onto him. But the tone was hesitant, the question an actual request for approval.

“Yeah,” Starsky sighed, his longing superseding his body’s immediate rejection of the intimate caress. “You’ll have to…uhm…yeah. Like that.” He voiced panting approval as he felt the first tentative probe of Hutch’s greasy finger breach the defensive muscle. He groaned as the pleasure of having this small bit of Hutch inside him possessed his senses.

“You okay?” Hutch asked anxiously.

“Oh, Christ, yeah. Go…you’ll need to go…deeper,” Starsky mumbled, trying to honor the promise he had made to guide his partner through this unfamiliar act. “I know,” he had stated with such confidence. But he realized now he had known nothing. Nothing of importance. Doing this to some nameless stranger hadn’t prepared him for, hadn’t given him any hint of, the fierce pleasure that possessed him now. It exploded in his brain, trying to rob him of the coherence to guide them. “Open me up,” he gasped at the same moment Hutch’s finger slid all the way into him. “Yes,” he hissed. “Ready. Wanna be ready for all of you. Take it all and–”

“For Christ’s sake, shut up,” Hutch growled, strain in his voice, the hand he had placed on Starsky’s hip closing into a five-fingered vice that would surely bruise to the bone.

Starsky barely heard the command as Hutch’s finger withdrew from him and then, in a moment, was back. More lube and a friend, Starsky realized dimly, feeling the stretch in his ass and guessing that, ignorance be damned, Hutch no longer needed to be shown the way. He felt the bed shift and Hutch’s leg brush against his.

“No,” Starsky protested, lifting up and impaling himself more firmly on the imbedded fingers, then sinking back to the bed. “Not like this.”

The fingers were withdrawn from him hastily, leaving a sudden empty, aching inside him. Hurriedly, Starsky scrambled around onto his back, offering a shaky smile when he saw Hutch leaning over him, frozen in reaction to Starsky’s rejection.

“‘S’Okay,” Starsky reassured him, finding a grip on the hand that had nearly destroyed his plans and using it to pull Hutch into position between his widespread thighs. He plucked the jar of Vaseline from Hutch’s lax fingers, scooped out a generous glob and then let the jar fall beside them on the bed.

“Com’ere,” he purred, reaching down between them to wrap his hand around Hutch’s cock, slicking it to the accompaniment of Hutch’s groan.

“Need it like this,” he coaxed, the words meant to soothe them both but failing. If Hutch got all the way inside him before Starsky came, it was going to be a miracle. “Need to see your face when you fuck me,” he continued to tempt climax closer as he lifted his ass, swung his legs around Hutch’s hips and led the cock in his hand to his anus. “Waited so long, Hutch. Need to see you. You, Hutch. You.”

He lost his voice then as he felt the first sharp bite of penetration. The broad tip of Hutch’s cock demanded entrance, forcing Starsky’s virgin ass to yield to the irresistible force, the stretch and strain of it a sweet burn in his ass and his brain. He locked his legs and arched, screaming the name that had been trapped inside him so long. As his body yielded to Hutch’s possession, Starsky gave himself up to the powerful thrusts that rocked him to his soul and pushed him closer to giving it all up each time Hutch drove that thick demanding cock into him and then withdrew, only to return and reclaim the place he had carved out inside Starsky’s body.

Starsky was arms and legs now, flexing muscles to drag his delicious tormentor closer, and sensation-racked membrane to greedily gobble up the pleasure that was pounded into his ass, flashed into his balls and streaked up his cock, gushing semen helplessly from him.

“Hutch!” Starsky cried out again, fighting the blinding explosion in his brain for one more moment of awareness. For the privilege of feeling Hutch’s body stiffen within the grasping cradle of his arms and legs. To see the unimaginable pleasure bloom on the beloved face. Hutch joined him in that helpless moment of climax, the pulse and throb of the cock inside him the last image imprinted on Starsky’s mind as a thick black curtain swept over him.

Hutch knew he had to move. His pleasure-bombarded body was sending him signals that movement was called for. The muscular cushion that heaved beneath his boneless sprawl might appreciate it if he found the strength to shift off it. Surely, Starsky needed to breathe as badly as Hutch did. If he didn’t free his lover soon, Starsky might suffocate, and they would never be able to do this again.

The deprivation of that image gave Hutch the clumsy coordination to struggle free of arms and legs that, at first, clung stubbornly and then yielded when he overbalanced and landed on one of those tenacious legs. The sudden weight pulled a grunt from Starsky, but gained Hutch the cooperation he needed to separate them, and then bring them back together in a tangle of leaden limbs.

He was too numb to enjoy the pleasure of this sated embrace just yet, but Hutch soaked it up, hoarding away the sensation of the slick slide of their sweat-soaked skin for later recall. The first in a long, long line of memories that, a hundred years in the future, he could look back upon as the first moment of the rest of his life.

Inevitably, however, the civilized man, who had obligingly stepped aside as Hutch had plunged again and again into Starsky’s willing body, revived. “Are you okay?” he asked, remembering the wildness that had seized him just before climax had been wrung from his cock. He felt the head pressed to his shoulder nod once, chin and nose and sweaty curls brushing his skin, before Starsky’s face was once again hidden against his throat.

He should get up. Clean up and bring a warm wet cloth back to the bed. Perform the tender bathing away of sweat and semen from his lover’s sated body that was the considerate ministrations Starsky deserved for the pleasure he had given. And open a window. The smell, the heavy musk of spilled semen and sex sweat was so strong, it made Hutch’s head swim.

Starsky, however, didn’t seem inclined to let him go. Hutch could feel Starsky’s lips moving against his skin, and realized eventually that it wasn’t lazy kisses being caressed into his flesh. Starsky was speaking, almost chanting, the same word over and over. The same word that had been whispered and grunted with every breath forced out of Starsky’s lungs while they fucked. A single, one syllable word, elongated vowel stretching it into a hallelujah chorus at the moment when climax had shuddered through Starsky.

“Starsk?” Hutch whispered, his lover’s name having to find its way around the muscles of his throat that spasmed and ached with tenderness. He couldn’t cry. Not now. Even tears of joy had no place in this moment. “Pretty limited vocabulary you’ve got in bed, lover,” he chided gently, hoping familiar humor would help them find their balance within this powerful new intimacy, and knew their instincts were once again in tune when Starsky retreated from his hiding place.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to say that in bed,” Starsky growled. “Feels like a lifetime.”

“Does that mean you won’t ever call me sweetheart or baby blue again?” Hutch asked, no longer teasing, the surreal memories of the endearments spoken to him with love and longing ghosting through his mind.

And to Hutch’s absolute surprise and unending delight, Starsky blushed.

“You remember that, huh?” Starsky asked, for a moment becoming the well-known friend who tangoed and mamboed so determinedly around a soapy scene.

“Not as well as I’d like to,” Hutch admitted, one finger stroking at that blush, feeling the heat of it, and marveling that the wanton who had spread his legs and demanded to be fucked could, so soon after, be so charmingly, blushingly coy.

“Sweetheart,” Starsky murmured gently, returning the caress. “Baby blue,” he added, his fingertips alighting like a breath on Hutch’s eyebrow and drifting to his eyelashes, forcing Hutch to close his eyes while it brushed over them. When Hutch opened his eyes again, the tender lover was just disappearing from Starsky’s face, making room for the teasing friend. “Honeypie, snookieyookums, lambykins?” he suggested wickedly.

Hutch attacked him, kissing the stream of silly pet names from his lips, and they tussled playfully until Starsky was a laughing, breathless sprawl on the bed and Hutch a panting victor above him. Neither of them had much strength to summon, but still Hutch suspected that Starsky let him win.

“Goof,” Hutch accused, the pleasure of the playful wrestling trying to arouse his body to consider far more serious play. The way Starsky’s hand caressed as it slid slowly down his chest reassured him he wasn’t alone in his rekindling desires. Recovery, however, was still a few minutes in the future.

“Do you have any more secrets you’ve been keeping from me?” he teased, then wished he hadn’t when the contentment left Starsky’s face, the blue eyes skipping away from his.

“Just one,” Starsky admitted, with a visible effort meeting Hutch’s gaze again, his own serious enough to chase the last of the playfulness out of Hutch. “My Uncle Al moved to Florida.”

Puzzled, but relieved, Hutch smiled. “I know that,” he said, remembering a telephone conversation at least a year in the past. “Your mother told me that when you were… Oh.” The distracted memory had given way to another and yet another after that when, on his way out the door, Starsky had claimed a promise to his relative.

“You lied to me!” Hutch exclaimed, the guilt on Starsky’s face suggesting the connection between the act and the why and the when. “That’s when you… You lied to me and then…” he sputtered, pushing away, jealousy a thick, black bile in his throat that tried to choke him. Hutch almost let it consume him again as it had already overwhelmed him once today, stopped short of falling into that useless pit by the shame on Starsky’s face.

“I’m sorry, Hutch, I–”

“No,” Hutch cut in on the stammering apology, forcing himself to turn away from the jealous fool who could let the past rob him of the future. “No,” he repeated, fearing this was a battle he would wage with his own possessive nature often in the future. “The past is the past. Yours and mine. We start today,” he insisted.

“What about…?” Starsky began, waving a hand that encompassed the world that waited outside Venice Place, then returned to Hutch’s shoulder in a grip that tried to deny his objection even as he voiced it. “It’s not like we could move in together and all our friends would throw us a party to celebrate.”

“Screw ’em,” Hutch damned their judgmental peers to the same purgatory as he had condemned his own jealousy. “Not tonight,” he said more gently, gathering love into his heart and joy into his soul when Starsky came, without protest, into his arms. “We’ve got a hundred years to figure it out.”

“We’ll just make it up as we go along?” Starsky suggested, offering parted lips to seal the bargain.

“Seems that’s the way we’ve always worked best,” Hutch murmured, and kissed his agreement into his lover’s mouth.

~*~*~

Epilogue

Riiing.

Damn. He should have taken the phone off the hook. They had already done more than their fair share today. If that was Dobey….

Riiing.

Hutch felt the arms around him tighten, the lips beneath his become a little more insistent. Translation: Ignore it. Hutch was glad to oblige. He would much rather continue necking on the couch with Starsky like a horny teenager than talk to whoever had the bad manners to be calling him now.

Briiiing!

Giving a mental sigh, Hutch leaned back toward the arm of the couch, pulling Starsky along with him, not breaking the hungry seal of their lips until he had fumbled blindly for the phone. He lifted it as it began its fourth insistent summons and cleared his throat before he spoke.

“Hutchinson,” he said into the receiver. Despite the throat clearing, his voice was still husky enough the idiot caller was bound to recognize they had disturbed his sleep. Or something.

“Hutchinson? Isn’t that a little formal?” Laura Stevens said.

“Oh, sorry. Hi, Laura,” Hutch said, recognizing his ex-girlfriend’s voice only because he had heard it again a few hours ago. The hostage-terror tension was gone from it now, but she still sounded a little tense.

“Something wrong?” he asked, and then only half-heard her reply when Starsky suddenly pulled out of his arms. Hutch caught him by the belt loop to halt the escape and asked a silent question with his eyes, releasing him when Starsky pantomimed a trip to the bathroom.

“…I decided not to let them go bad and make a pie. I remembered how much you love lemon meringue pie and wondered if maybe….”

Hutch had heard enough of Laura’s invitation to catch the meaning, though his eyes and most of his attention had remained on Starsky. When a guy’s gotta go, a guy’s gotta go, but still Hutch could feel his “worry dent” growing between his eyebrows.

“It would be a shame to let them go to waste, and I know Hannah would like to see you, to say thank you again for everything,” Laura was continuing to mouth her excuses. “And Starsky, too. Of course,” she added as an obvious after thought.

Even if he didn’t have promises to keep, Hutch wouldn’t have been tempted by her careful, non-committal offer. That had been her problem, and his, all along–neither one of them had been willing to reveal a vulnerable inch to the other. The promises Hutch had made to Starsky had left every mile of him stark naked and taught Hutch the joys of nudism.

“That’s really nice of you, Laura,” Hutch said into the phone, his eyes on the bathroom door, “but I have prior commitments. Please tell Hannah for me that I’ll be around to see her soon.”

Hutch hung up the phone, the woman who had been on the other end of the line forgotten before the receiver hit the cradle. Starsky had been in the bathroom too long to just take a leak, and Hutch could hear that the shower wasn’t running. The dent dug itself a little deeper.

Just as Hutch was about to follow his instincts and invade Starsky’s privacy, the bathroom door opened and Starsky bustled out.

“So, what’d the lovely Laura want?” Starsky asked way, way too brightly.

Bustling. Too jovially unconcerned. Subtly fidgeting just out of reach. The clues came together in Hutch’s detective brain. “You’re jealous!” he blurted, completely delighted and charmed by the discovery. And relieved at this unquestionable reminder that he wasn’t the only nudist.

There was a pause while Starsky seemed to consider the merits of discarding his last fig leaf, then he shrugged. “Yeah. Guess so,” he admitted.

“Get back here, you idiot,” Hutch demanded affectionately and held out his arms, pleased when there was no hesitation between the offer and its acceptance. “No wonder you bit Chickee’s head off today,” he said, remembering Starsky’s impatience with the juvenile hustler when Laura Stevens had first appeared.

“Well, shit. There I was trying to get a straight answer outta that stupid kid and looking at you and Laura. The two of you together looked like…like a couple of beautiful gods or something. A perfect match,” Starsky complained. His head dropped and Hutch could almost feel the caress of the blue eyes on the skin between the open edges of his shirt. “I won’t let it get in the way again,” he promised in a mumble he obviously didn’t believe himself.

Hutch wormed a couple of fingers under the downbent chin and lifted it until their eyes met. “Sure you will,” he reassured the uncertain expression. “And so will I.”

The kiss that followed was good. Soft and gentle, and maybe a bit needy. But Starsky was still a little stiff in Hutch’s arms, his mouth hesitant. Hutch ended the kiss and asked his question with his eyes. Silent communication had always worked for them, a language that no one else could seem to understand, and over the past few months they had been adding a whole new dialect.

“So, what did she want?” Starsky answered the question with two of his own, the first spoken, the second silent one, of far more importance.

“She invited me for lemon meringue pie,” Hutch replied to the first, let Starsky wait a beat, and then answered the second. “I told her thanks, but no thanks.”

Surprise and then a smirk that was almost, but not quite, smug brightened Starsky’s face. “But you love good lemon meringue pie,” he protested from his more secure position.

For a second time, Hutch let his expression speak for him, adding a lifted eyebrow and a near-smirk of his own to the question.

“If you’re waiting for me to start baking ’em, you’ll wait a long time,” Starsky blustered immediately, then paused, due consideration passing over his face before he qualified his domestic intentions. “Good ones, anyway.”

“That’s okay, babe,” Hutch reassured him, sliding his hand down Starsky’s chest and belly until he could cup the prominent bulge in the crotch of his jeans. “I’ve given up sugar in favor of your special protein drink.”

“Hmmm,” Starsky hummed, his hips lifting just a little, his hand rising to cup Hutch’s face and his thumb rubbing at the five o’clock shadow around his mouth. “Maybe we should shave before we eat,” he suggested.

Starsky liked him smooth, Hutch knew that, but there was an imp in him tonight that couldn’t resist just a little tease. “Did I forget to mention that I’m thinking of growing a mustache?”

Starsky fell for it for a second, then issued his own teasing challenge. “Maybe I will, too.”

Uh-uh. No way. Hutch liked Starsky’s face just the way it was. But, even dangling from his own petard, he was still capable of just a little stubbornness. “Nobody will recognize us,” he protested.

“That’s okay,” Starsky agreed as he stood up and tugged Hutch to his feet before he began backing toward the big brass bed that awaited them. “As long as we always know each other.”

Drawn along more by the love in Starsky’s face than the strength of his arms, Hutch thoroughly, happily, and utterly agreed.