When Starsky gets wounded in a shootout, Hutch will do anything to help him recover. But will Hutch’s new-found feelings for Starsky ruin the one perfect relationship Hutch has ever had?
Originally published in Venice Place Chronicles IX in 2012.
Hutch’s eyes burned, strained by many hours of single-minded focus and still gritty with fear. He blinked. The momentary darkness layered tear-moisture over the fire, but he couldn’t stand it for long. He had to remain alert and focused and wary. He was standing watch.
Sitting watch. Hutch shifted a little on the hard, plastic chair. The movement sent a warning smoke signal of pain up his back. How long had it been since Starsky, playing bad cop, had thrown him against the interrogation room wall? Hutch wasn’t sure and couldn’t spare the seconds it would take to dig out his pocket watch and check.
He had to keep all of his attention on the man who lay behind the glass across the narrow corridor. Hooked by wires to monitors, with IV and transfusion lines dripping into either arm, Starsky looked like a low-budget Superman rigged up to fly.
“Just keep flying, buddy,” Hutch whispered to his wounded partner.
An obstruction appeared between him and the object of his fascination. A white blur that was there and gone so quickly, it took Hutch a moment to realize it was a body, longer still to process the understanding that a nurse had just entered Starsky’s ICU room.
Hutch bolted from the chair to the door. Or he tried to. His body stiff and his legs almost numb from the long hours of waiting, his charge was more an ungainly stagger than bolt. He hovered there, watching as the nurse fussed around the bed for interminable minutes, ready to buttonhole her the moment she opened the door.
“Please. Can I see him now? I’ve been waiting all night,” Hutch asked of the kind-eyed woman who finally emerged. He could hear the pleading in his voice, imagined the same desperate emotion shone in his eyes, but wasn’t ashamed to beg.
“Are you family?” The nurse glanced between Hutch and her patient beyond the glass, perhaps looking for some resemblance.
Starsky was his brother, but not in any way Hutch expected this woman to understand. Brother of his spirit if not of his blood. “No. He’s my partner.”
“Partner?” She looked over her shoulder at Starsky again, a small frown gathering neatly-plucked eyebrows together before understanding lifted them toward her hairline. “Oh, yes. He’s a policeman.”
“Please. I won’t disturb him,” Hutch promised recklessly, though he was uncertain if he could honor the pledge. “I just have to…”
He didn’t have the words. He couldn’t explain the desperate urgency he felt to himself let alone this stranger. He didn’t even know what he had to do to convince his skeptical heart that Starsky was alive. Why he couldn’t believe the assurances of doctors and nurses, or the evidence of his own eyes through the glass. He didn’t know what he needed; he only knew he needed it.
The nurse stepped back abruptly, alarm on her face, and Hutch realized he was glaring at her. The same demanding glare he had turned on Tom Lockley and Joey Martin when they had tried to stand between him and his wounded partner.
“I’m sorry.” Hutch ran a hand back through his hair and tried to find some semblance of a smile to give her but suspected he had failed when the woman remained wary. “He’s my best friend. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”
The kindness returned to the nurse’s eyes as they swept his rumpled clothes. “All right, I guess it wouldn’t do any harm to let you in. But just for a few minutes. And mind you don’t wake him.”
Hutch reached for the woman’s hand and squeezed it briefly. “Thank you. Thank you,” he murmured even as he was turning away, his hand on the doorknob before the last syllable left his lips. He turned it, and then hesitated, looking through the glass at Starsky.
What was he waiting for? Hutch didn’t know any more than he knew why he had to get into the room in the first place. Still, he hesitated, possessed by the absolute certainty that once he opened this door, breathed the same air, touched the warm flesh, his life was never going to be the same again. Somewhere in his mind, something was tapping, asking to be let in.
Hutch shook his head and focused on Starsky once again. Chastising himself for wasting precious minutes, he pushed at the barrier that stood between them and stepped into the room.
*~*~
“Starsk.”
That was Hutch. At least Starsky thought the voice calling his name was Hutch’s. A lot of people dropped the last letter of his surname, but nobody said it quite the same way as Hutch.
He didn’t really want to wake up. Sensed some very nasty things were waiting for him to open his eyes. But that was Hutch’s voice, and Starsky had to follow it. A stray thought wondered if it was leading him into life or death, but Starsky dismissed it. Didn’t matter which. He’d follow it anyway.
“Come on, Starsky. I’ve been hanging around this dump all night drinking shitty coffee. Would you give a guy a break and wake up already.”
The words were a little fuzzy, as if Hutch was talking through a poorly tuned radio, but the tone was clear enough. Gentle desperation. Hutch was scared, and Starsky had to fix that. His duty and his right to look out for Hutch.
“Yeah. Yeah. All right, already. I’m awake,” Starsky tried to say. His lips weren’t cooperating worth a damn, feeling both fat and numb, while his tongue kept floating up to the roof of his mouth.
“So prove it, mushbrain. Open your eyes.”
It took a minute to figure out the mechanics of it, but Starsky finally managed to push his eyelids into the upright position. He wasn’t too sure about the locked part until he focused on Hutch’s face hovering over him.
Hutch looked like… Starsky’s brain wasn’t up to anything as complicated as a witty analogy, but it recognized awful when he saw it. Hutch wasn’t supposed to look like this. Hutch was always supposed to be shiny and golden and beautiful.
“Siddown, will ya, Hutch,” Starsky slurred in an effort to take some of the terrible exhaustion out of Hutch’s face. “You’re hurtin’ my neck lookin’ at you way up there.”
Obediently, Hutch collapsed into the chair. It didn’t do much for Hutch’s face, but at least the tall body wouldn’t be falling on top of him. Starsky had the feeling that wouldn’t be a good thing. At least not right now. Then when?
The question slipped away before Starsky could grab it, replaced by a slideshow of fractured memories. Flashes of pain, pictures of panic, torn photographs of fear. Vic Monte. Teresa. Starsky shut down the slideshow, focused on the taut body in the chair and the ravaged face above it. Hutch had saved him, and now Hutch was paying the price.
“Com’ere,” Starsky croaked, putting as much command into his drug-drunken voice as he could muster.
“Huh?” Hutch grunted, leaning forward a little, but not enough.
“Com’ere,” Starsky demanded again and lifted his right arm, somehow holding it up until Hutch’s jacket appeared under his hand. Starsky pushed, summoning strength from somewhere, though not enough to enforce his will if Hutch resisted. Hutch didn’t resist, bending like a branch in a storm while Starsky’s hand slid down his back.
Starsky could feel the hard press of Hutch’s head against his leg and the light shivers that ran like a swift current beneath his hand. Still flying, half-dozing, Starsky rubbed soothing circles into the broad expanse as shiver became tremor became quake became shudder. Hutch wasn’t weeping. Starsky knew that. He was just letting go. Releasing the strands of iron control he had needed to save them, and the tight rein that had held him together through the long night of waiting.
Sleep tried to ambush him, but Starsky fought it, just as Hutch had fought time and terror, until the process reversed itself and even the finest of tremors ceased beneath the abstract patterns he traced on Hutch’s back.
“Thataboy,” he whispered proudly, and then let sleep have its way with him.
*~*~
Hutch wished he could close his eyes and sleep right here, but he knew his minutes were up. Long over probably. He wondered if the nurse had returned during the time Starsky had been drawing him back from his self-imposed hell, and if she had, what she might have made of the tableau.
“Fuck her.” Hutch mouthed the dismissal of whatever conclusions the woman had drawn even as he forced himself to sit up. He hated to give up the warm reality of the sleeping hand as it slid off his back but knew he had to. The crisis was over.
Starsky was sleeping again; drugs and blood loss taking their toll. As he watched the steady rise and fall of Starsky’s chest, absorbed the occasional flicker of the fan of long, dark lashes, Hutch heard the insistent tapping in his mind again. Something that had come to screaming life in that Italian restaurant was demanding to be acknowledged.
Knock, knock, knock.
Hutch couldn’t open the door. He was, if the truth be known, terrified. He sensed what waited so impatiently had the power to change his life, and Hutch didn’t want his life to change. He wanted to go on playing Butch Cassidy to Starsky’s Sundance Kid forever.
“You’re corrupting me, buddy. Dragging me into your movie fantasies.”
Hutch was chiding himself as much as his oblivious pa1tner. It was his job to be levelheaded, analytical; Starsky’s to fly by the seat of his too-tight jeans. Nevertheless, before he left the room, Hutch couldn’t stop himself from patting the hand that had comforted him.
His timing, as it turned out, was excellent, his departure coinciding with the doctor’s arrival perfectly. Hutch pulled the door closed behind him while placing himself strategically between the door and the doctor. “He’s going to be fine, right, Doc?”
“Are you family?” the doctor asked but then answered his own question. “You’re his partner. You’re policemen.”
“That’s right. Sergeant Hutchinson,” Hutch introduced himself impatiently. “He’s fine, right?”
“I’m Dr. Harrison. I operated on Sergeant Starsky.” There was a brief pause, then the doctor gave Hutch the reassurance he had been so desperate to hear. “Certainly he’s going to live.”
The tension in Hutch’s gut, that had lived there so many hours it felt like an old friend, relaxed a little, then drew up tight again as he processed the carefully chosen words. “That. doesn’t sound like the same thing.” He searched Harrison’s face for an explanation while trying to reassure himself he was jumping to conclusions. If Starsky had been hovering at death’s door, the nurse wouldn’t have let him into the room. Starsky wouldn’t have been able to talk.
“Does he have any family?” Harrison asked ominously.
“Not here. They’re in New York.” A klaxon of fear went off in Hutch’s brain. “Why? What’s wrong?”
The doctor hesitated, then shrugged. “His life is in no danger. The blood he lost is being replaced and the head wound is actually relatively minor. He does have a concussion, but a mild one.”
“But?” Hutch prodded the doctor warily, holding onto his composure with both hands, and trying not to leap ahead into a pit of panic.
“The wound in his back is more serious.” Harrison was speaking freely now, as if he finally understood Hutch was the closest thing to next of kin available at the moment. “If the bullet had entered only a little lower, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. As it is, I believe there has been some nerve damage that will affect his arm. I won’t know for sure, or how extensive the disability might be, until he’s fully conscious and I can assess his reactions.”
Hutch’s belly wasn’t just tight anymore. It roiled and clenched, threatening the messy expulsion of lousy coffee when he remembered cradling Starsky in his arms on the floor of the restaurant’s office and drawing the left arm in only to have it flop uselessly to the floor.
“There is one consolation, Sergeant. Even if there is some permanent damage and disability, it’s his left arm.”
“My God,” Hutch whispered, remembering all the times he had teased and tormented his south paw partner. “He’s left-handed.”
“That…” Harrison said, his expression becoming grim. ” …is unfortunate.”
*~*~
A shower and shave and clean clothes hadn’t helped much. Hutch was closing in on thirty-six hours without sleep and his brain felt mushy. A dull headache throbbed in his temples as if he had been the one to bounce a bullet off his skull.
He had fallen into bed after driving home through the early morning traffic but hadn’t stayed there long. His mind wouldn’t allow his body the rest it badly needed, his racing thoughts running the same useless mile on a treadmill of horror.
Since he couldn’t sleep, and Dobey seemed content with the verbal report Hutch had already given to him, there was nothing preventing Hutch from returning to the hospital. It was the only place he wanted to be in any case, so why fight it? Visiting hours didn’t start until two, but by noon, Hutch was striding down the corridor to room 407, a takeout bag from Starsky’s favorite taco stand in his hand and a plastic smile glued to his face.
“Saved by the bell,” Starsky declared dramatically when Hutch pushed opened the door to his room. “Please tell me you brought me some real food.”
He should have known. Hutch plopped the paper bag on top of the lunch tray in front of Starsky. Neither rain nor sleet nor, apparently, a bullet in the back could separate Starsky from his ravenous appetite. In fact, Hutch had known, or at least hoped, or he wouldn’t have bothered to stop at Rosa’s. Nevertheless, the way Starsky immediately fumbled open the bag and stuck his face in it, inhaling deeply and exhaling a satisfied sigh, helped steady the deck under Hutch’s emotional feet a little.
“You told me last night you were hungry. I figured by now, you’d be ready to take a bite out of the lunch tray.”
“The tray maybe, but not what’s on it.” Starsky carefully pulled a burrito out of the bag and peeled back the greasy wrapping. “You remembered the onions!”
“Of course.” Hutch folded his tired body into the uncomfortable chair beside the bed. He couldn’t help but smile at Starsky’s delight, but the smile quickly faded as he watched Starsky try to pick up the burrito and realized his mistake. Burritos were two-handed eating, especially when stuffed to capacity the way Starsky liked them.
Starsky’s first attempted bite resulted in a small geyser of filling shooting out the opposite end of the tortilla. Hutch started to stand, then obediently sank back down in his chair when Starsky raised his hand and shook his head.
“No.” Starsky’s busy fingers unrolled the tortilla and scraped the escaped filling back into it. “I’m gonna hafta learn some time.”
Despite the fact all of Starsky’s attention appeared to be on his lunch, Hutch dropped his head to hide the pained expression he could feel on his face. He was no longer comforted by Starsky’s apparent unconcern and deeply ashamed of his own cowardice in the face of it.
Obviously, Starsky already knew the worst. “Dr. Harrison’s already been in to see you?”
“Harrison? Is that the guy who patched me up? No, haven’t seen him yet.” Starsky fell silent for a moment that seemed to stretch out toward the next decade. “But I don’t need a doctor to tell me my arm’s useless. Guess I’m gonna be finding out how the right-handed half of the world lives, huh, buddy?”
Hutch couldn’t stay in retreat. He had to lift his head then and meet the frightened blue eyes framed by the carefully neutral expression. He saw a flare of temper tighten the thin lips before Starsky gave a resigned, one-sided shrug.
“You knew?” Starsky’s tone was neutral, but his eyes still probed at Hutch’s as if they could reach into his brain and sift through the information they found there without having to wait for Hutch to find the courage to speak.
“Harrison told me last night. I mean this morning.” Hutch made the confession reluctantly. “I saw him after the nurse let me into ICU to see you.”
Starsky loosed a grunt of bitter laughter. “The patient’s always the last one to know,” he said and pushed away the tray, his irrepressible appetite apparently having met its match at last. The bitterness cut into Hutch. He wanted to reach out, connect somehow, but the touch-me-not expression on Starsky’s face held him at bay. The rejection left him with nothing but words to offer in comfort and support. “Harrison said there might be nerve damage.” He winced when he saw the confirmation hit Starsky like more bullets. “Might,” he repeated fiercely, willing the wounded expression out of Starsky’s eyes. “He said he wouldn’t know until you woke up and he could do some tests.”
“Might,” Starsky repeated softly, then let his head fall back against the pillow and closed his eyes, sealing Hutch out of his personal purgatory. “Where’s Gene Autrey when you need him?”
There was a lump in Hutch’s throat that would have gagged the Jolly Green Giant. It trapped his voice, wouldn’t let him prattle the reassurances that circled in his brain. Lies, all of them, but lies Hutch needed desperately to speak. Not because they would be any more true because he spoke them aloud, but because Starsky needed to hear them. Needed Hutch to tell him everything would work out fine, even if it was a lie, and needed Hutch to keep on saying it until they both found the courage to accept whatever the truth turned out to be.
He couldn’t sit here uselessly impotent. Despite Starsky’s keep out signs, Hutch leaned forward in his chair and laid his hand over Starsky’s right hand, jumping a little when it turned under his and gripped him fiercely. The strength of that grip pulled a grunt of surprise from him, but Hutch returned the strong pressure, wondering just which one of them was receiving more comfort.
After a minute or two, Starsky’s hand·relaxed, but he made no effort to pull away. He sighed softly before he opened his eyes and gave Hutch a one-sided smile. “You look like hell, you know.”
It was almost more than Hutch could bear to let the moment end, but he recognized maudlin despair wasn’t what Starsky needed from him now. He forced himself to release Starsky and run a glance of mocking assessment over his friend. “I wouldn’t look in a mirror right now if I were you, partner. You’d probably crack it.”
The gratitude in Starsky’s eyes as he laughed at the poor joke made the effort worthwhile.
Business as usual. This was how they dealt with close calls, broken hearts, and seemingly impossible odds. Crack a joke. Fire off a teasing insult. Whatever it took to get on with the job, even if the job was only to wait and worry. Today, the ritual left Hutch feeling discontent, disappointed, but now wasn’t the time to start changing the rules, especially when he wasn’t even sure he wanted to change them.
“Nice set of patriotic eyes you got there,” Starsky fired back almost immediately. “Red, white, and blue. Should I salute?”
Hutch was rescued from having to come up with a counter quip by the arrival of the doctor.
“Sergeant Starsky, I’m Dr. Harrison.” The doctor introduced himself as he moved to stand beside the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling fine, Doc. As long as I’m feeling with my right hand.” Starsky’s bravado was as phony as a five-dollar hooker’s orgasm. “My partner says you told him I’ve got nerve damage, but I had to wake up for you to check it out. I’m awake.”
“And I am here to ‘check it out.”‘ Harrison turned to Hutch. “If you would step out—”
“He stays,” Starsky cut in, saving Hutch the effort of protesting.
Harrison was probably used to being obeyed, but after one glance between Starsky’s implacable expression and the same unbending stubbornness Hutch knew was on his own face, the doctor seemed to accept that neither of the partners was going to budge.
“As you wish.” Harrison laid his clipboard at Starsky’s feet and moved closer to the head of the bed. “Would you please lean forward?”
The next ten minutes were agony for Hutch as Harrison poked and prodded at Starsky, occasionally drawing a pained grunt out of his patient, but more often a negative response to his repeated inquiries. But if it was hard on Hutch, he could see that it was torture for Starsky. With every failure to move or lift or feel, the blue eyes within the impassive mask of Starsky’s face became bleaker until Hutch could hardly stand to meet them. Only the awareness that Starsky was depending on him as much now as he had the night before allowed Hutch to meet those eyes and hold an encouraging expression on his own face.
“So, what’s the verdict, Doc?” Starsky asked after Harrison had tucked his useless arm back into the sling.
“I would prefer not to give a prognosis until I consult with a colleague who specializes in this type of situation. I will return,” Harrison said and abruptly left the room.
“What the fuck!” Appalled by the doctor’s callousness, Hutch jumped to his feet, intent on following Harrison and wringing some answers out of him. He reached the door and pulled it open, but then hesitated, glancing back at Starsky.
He couldn’t do it. Last night there had been no other option open to him. Time after time, Hutch had had to walk out of that office, leaving his wounded partner behind, not knowing whether Starsky would still be alive when he returned. There had been no choice then, but he had one now.
“No,” Hutch whispered. He let the door handle slip out of his fingers and returned to Starsky. He sat down in the chair, met the question in Starsky’s eyes, and shrugged.
“No, what? Starsky asked.
“No,” Hutch repeated, laying his hand over Starsky’s. “This time I’m not leaving.”
Their eyes met, too fresh memories flowing between them for a moment before Starsky slowly nodded and leaned back against the pillow. “Good.”
Reluctantly removing his hand from Starsky’s, Hutch leaned back in his chair and settled in to wait, determinedly ignoring the persistent rat-a-tat-tat in his brain.
*~*~
Starsky was scared. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. In his job, he would be a fool, or worse, to never be afraid. The trick, he had learned long ago, was to control it, make it work for him if he could, and if he couldn’t, then acknowledge it and bundle it away and get on with the job anyway.
It was easy to do on the streets; a lot tougher when his job was just to sit and wait. He tried not to worry. But lying in a hospital bed with his head pounding, and his back screaming, and his useless arm hung in a sling around his neck, it was hard not to let his imagination run wild.
Thank God for Hutch and his steady stream of jokes. Most of them were awful, real groaners that would have earned a comedian the hook back in Vaudevillian days, but they kept Starsky from thinking while they waited for Harrison to come back.
Hutch was beginning to look a little strained, and Starsky wished he could tell him to quit trying so hard. He couldn’t. If Hutch stopped joking, then silence would fall because Starsky sure as hell couldn’t think of anything to say. If silence fell….
“What did one wall say to the other wall?” Hutch asked, his sheepish expression acknowledging that he was really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
“I don’t know,” Starsky replied, though of course, he did. That joke had been ancient when their grandfathers were telling it.
“Meet me—” Hutch began, but was saved from having to deliver the punch line when the door opened and Harrison finally reappeared.
“Sergeant Starsky. Sergeant Hutchinson.” Harrison nodded to both of them as he moved to stand beside the bed. “I apologize for taking so long, but I wanted to consult with Dr. Sibley, a colleague who specializes in the treatment of nerve trauma. I wanted to be sure I had the most up-to-date inforn1ation to give you.”
“And you have it now?” Starsky asked.
“I do,” Harrison flipped open the cover of the chart in his hands.
“Then let’s hear it.” Starsky kept his fear in check by giving impatience free rem.
“First of all, the graze wound to your scalp is minor.” Harrison looked up from the chart, perhaps expecting some sort of acknowledgement, then returned his attention to his own writing. “Secondly, the wound in your back is already beginning to heal. There’s no sign of infection which is a major concern with gunshot injuries. This is all good news. The bad, obviously, is the loss of use and sensation in your left arm and hand.”
“Because of nerve damage?” Starsky forced himself to ask.
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” Starsky echoed and was re-echoed by Hutch.
“Although she would have to examine you to be certain, Dr. Sibley advises me there’s a possibility the nerves are simply traumatized, stunned if you will, by the wound and the surgery. There’s even a chance the swelling in the area is the culprit.”
“Possibility and chance are pretty vague.” Starsky was struggling not to let hope get too firm a hold on him, but it was so damned hard to ignore the tantalizing carrot Harrison was dangling.
“Yes, they are.” Harrison closed the chart and tucked it under his arm. “And I would like to be able to tell you how much chance or what percentage of possibility, but at this stage I can’t. It is possible, perhaps fifty/fifty odds, healing and time, combined with physiotherapy, will give you back complete use of your arm.”
“It doesn’t sound as if I have a whole lot of options, except to sit around and wait.”
Harrison hesitated, glanced at Hutch briefly and then returned his attention to Starsky. “There is one other option. Dr. Sibley has pioneered a new surgical procedure. It’s experimental, and the results haven’t been consistent, but when successful, the patient has made a full recovery.”
“So if his nerves don’t heal by themselves, you could operate again?” Hutch entered the conversation for the first time.
Harrison shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. The procedure would have to be done immediately, before healing progresses too far and scar tissue has had a chance to form.”
“So I have to make the choice right now?” It wasn’t much of a choice, but far preferable to Starsky than to do nothing at all.
“I’m afraid so.”
Starsky looked at Hutch for the first time since Harrison’s return. “What do you think, partner?”
“It’s your arm, Starsky,” Hutch said softly.
Starsky continued staring at his partner. He wasn’t being fair and he knew it, but he and Hutch never had kept score. He couldn’t make this decision alone, not when Hutch had almost as much to lose as he did.
“We’ve beaten worse odds than fifty/fifty.” Hutch’s reminder invoked memories of tight spots and impossible situations they had faced together; of the many times they had snatched victory from the jaws of certain defeat.
“Guess you better give your friend a call,” Starsky said to the doctor, not at all surprised their choices were identical.
“There is one other problem. Because this is an experimental surgery, your insurance won’t cover it. You’re looking at a very high personal expense.” Harrison had the grace to look apologetic.
“How high?” Starsky asked cautiously.
“Approximately one hundred thousand dollars.”
It might as well be a million, two million. Starsky couldn’t afford that. Even if there was some sort of reasonable repayment plan, he would still be making payments by the time he collected his pension. Maybe it was a small price to pay for the use of his arm, but it wasn’t so small if he didn’t have it.
“I’ll give you some time to think about it,” Harrison said and, as seemed to be his habit, left abruptly.
“Damn.” Starsky felt too numb to even put any heat into the curse.
Hutch didn’t seem to be handicapped by the same lack of emotion. “Damn is right.” He slammed his fist into his open palm. “Why the hell did he even mention it? He knows we’re street cops. Knows we couldn’t possibly come up with that kind of money.”
“Hey, Hutch, settle down,” Starsky said, automatically falling into the pattern that worked for them. When Hutch’s temper flared, Starsky kept a tight rein on his. When Hutch’s optimism slipped, that was Starsky’s signal to see nothing but half-full glasses. “It might be okay. What he said about trauma and swelling, that might be all it is. You know me, I heal good.”
“This isn’t a sprained ankle.” Hutch was howling uselessly at cruel fate and the bleak expression in his eyes revealed he knew it.
“No option, Hutch. We wait and see,” Starsky said finally, willing Hutch to back him up.
There was a war on Hutch’s face, fury and acceptance going for broke between the lines exhaustion had chiseled into his features. After a moment, it looked as if fury lost its campaign, the expression suddenly smoothing out to a tranquil calm. “I have to go,” he said and thrust abruptly to his feet.
“Hey.” Suspicious of the calm that had come before too little storm, Starsky stopped Hutch before he could reach the door. ”Don’t do anything stupid, partner.”
“Stupid?” Hutch’s echo was far too innocent for Starsky to take seriously. “Like belting him one. I might still need him you know.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t do anything stupid,” Hutch promised and then he was gone.
*~*~
Hutch didn’t go far, just down to the hospital lobby where a bank of pay phones sat against one wall. He chose the first empty booth, fed a dime into the slot, dialed zero, and waited impatiently for the operator.
“Operator. How may I connect your call?”
“I want the law firm of Luchak, Thoman, and… and some other names.” It was the first time since his divorce Hutch had called his lawyer’s office, and he was damned if he could remember the rest of the partners.
“Number please.”
Hutch sighed impatiently. “If I knew the number, I’d dial it myself. Look it up.”
There was another brief wait, broken by the series of clicks and hums, and then the measured buzz of a ringing phone.
“Luchak, Thoman, Lofchik, Spencer, Rice, Fontana and Gruber.”
It was small wonder Hutch couldn’t remember all the names. “Mr. Luchak, please. Kenneth Richard Hutchinson calling.”
“One moment, please.”
The wait this time was longer, about a year and a half by Hutch’s impatient reckoning as he shifted restlessly from foot to foot, scanned the lobby, and beat a monotonous tattoo on the receiver with his fingers.
“George Luchak speaking. What can I do for you, Ken?”
Hutch relaxed a little. At least the lawyer remembered him, despite the long lack of contact. That should make this a little easier. “I need to make a withdrawal from my trust.”
“Your trust?”
The echo sounded surprised, maybe even incredulous. Hutch couldn’t blame the man since the last time they had discussed it, Hutch had been adamant it would be a frosty Friday in hell before he ever took a penny of the money left to him by his dead father.
“I need one hundred thousand dollars transferred to my checking account immediately. Are there any authorizations I have to sign?” Hutch looked at his watch, calculating how long it would take for him to get to the lawyer’s office and return to the hospital. He wanted to be here when Starsky went back into surgery.
“I can have a clerk deliver the papers to you, if you wish, Ken, and in the meantime, I’ll arrange the transfer.”
After so many years immersed in the slow grind of the wheels of bureaucracy, Hutch had forgotten how quickly those gears could move when greased with sufficient money.
“That will be fine. I’m at Memorial Hospital. The front desk can page me.”
“The funds will be in your account within the hour.”
Hutch hung up the phone and took a deep breath. Getting his hands on the money was the easy part. The hard part was going to be convincing one stubborn, curly-headed partner to accept it.
*~*~
When Hutch returned to Starsky’s room, he was surprised to find Harrison with Starsky again, but that only saved him the trouble of finding the doctor.
“What are you doing back here already? I thought you were going to get some sleep,” Starsky’s expression was wary, as if he wasn’t quite certain whether he might have to somehow get between Hutch and the doctor.
“I never said I was going to sleep. I said I wasn’t going to do anything stupid,” Hutch reminded Starsky, then turned to the doctor. “Have you called the specialist yet? When is he going to operate?”
“But I thought—”
“You said the surgery has to be done as soon as possible.” Hutch cut Harrison off without a qualm. “What’s the hold up?”
“Hutch, you know I can’t—”
Hutch dismissed Starsky’s objection with a negligent wave of his hand and continued to harass Harrison. “What are you waiting for? Call him and get this show on the road.”
“Ah, Doc. Can you give us a minute, please,” Starsky said to Harrison.
“But—” It was Hutch’s turn to protest now, but Harrison was already leaving.
“All right, Hutch. What’s going on?” Starsky’s demand was out before the door had even closed behind the doctor.
“Nothing’s going on.” Hutch did his best to stare down the probing blue eyes, willing Starsky to accept the obvious lie as readily as he would accept Hutch’s judgment on the street.
This wasn’t the street, however, and Starsky wasn’t backing down. “Cut the crap, partner. You haven’t been gone long enough to have robbed a bank in Bolivia, so where did you come up with that kind of money?”
Hutch sank into the visitor’s chair, wishing he wasn’t so tired. He didn’t want to have this conversation with Starsky at all, and certainly not when his brain felt like oatmeal. He never should have told Starsky how he felt about the trust, but the two of them had so few secrets. “I don’t suppose you’d believe I sold my car.”
“Nobody’d give you ten bucks for that heap, never mind a hundred grand,” There was humor in Starsky’s voice, even a small smile around his mouth, but his eyes weren’t laughing. They drilled into Hutch, looking to tap into the fissure that would force the truth to come gushing out.
“I got the money. That’s all that matters. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s impolite to look a gift horse in the mouth?” Hutch tried one more appeal.
Starsky stared at him, the progression of his thoughts as he considered and discarded possibilities arranging and rearranging his expression until it finally settled into grim certainty.
“Your trust. You’d starve to death before you’d take a buck out of it, but for me… ” The accusation came to an abrupt end as Starsky pressed his lips together and turned his face away. But not before Hutch had seen how those lips trembled slightly, and how the blue eyes shone just a little too brightly.
“Hey, do you think I want to start breaking in a new partner? Hell, I’ve barely got you housebroken as it is.” The banter nearly choked him, but Hutch gave his partner what he knew Starsky needed. An emotional out. Tactic blindness. An escape route from the intensely emotional moment that could strip away the facade Starsky needed to present to the world. Hutch had always recognized that the facade was more fiction than fact, but had never been too sure if Starsky knew it.
When Starsky turned his head back, the eyes that might have been over full a moment before were dry, the lips that might have trembled a firm line. But the Adam’s apple bobbed, swallowed again and again against a lump of emotion that apparently didn’t want to go down. “First my life, and now my arm,” he said softly, laying out the mountain of debt that had grown between them in only a day. A debt that, only on the surface, had anything to do with dollars and cents.
As if either of them kept a tally. And even if they had, even if any stranger had been able to comprehend the daily give and take and give again of partners who depended on each other for their lives, it was Hutch who would feel he was presently in the red. Beholden for the not so long ago forty-eight hours they had spent together in hell. Indebted for the secrets kept and the weakness protected. Starsky had stood between Hutch and his tormentors then, and it was now Hutch’s tum to claim that privilege.
“First my life, and then my sanity,” Hutch reminded his friend in the same hushed tone.
For just a second, it seemed Starsky might continue to protest. Perhaps he saw some inequity in the little he had been able to do for Hutch, but then he relented. He blinked once in understanding, before he offered one last chance for Hutch to recant his generosity. “Are you sure? You told me you never wanted his tainted money.”
“Oh, yeah, Starsk, I’m sure. Sure I can’t let my stubborn principals come between you and a full recovery. I never wanted to touch the trust because I knew how that old bastard squeezed every penny out of everyone he ever dealt with. Yes, I think it’s tainted money, but I figure using it to help you will wash it pretty damned clean.” Hutch hesitated, seeking acceptance in Starsky’s expression and, finding it, knew he could afford to lighten the moment. “Besides, the money’s already withdrawn. What else could I do with it now?”
“You could use it to buy yourself a decent car,” Starsky suggested with apparent seriousness, only the wicked gleam in his eye giving away his teasing intent.
The battle won Hutch let himself sink into the chair beside the bed. He was sure the withdrawal would be reported to his mother who would likely see it as a softening of his attitude toward his former life. She would probably start calling again, but he could ignore the calls, the same way he continued to ignore the tapping of an insistent emotion inside his head. He shuffled them both off to a corner of his mind with a vague promise to visit later. Much later, if he had anything to say about it.
“I think one striped tomato in this partnership is plenty.” Hutch pointed at the call bell. “Now how about calling Harrison back in here and getting this show on the road.”
*~*~
“Sergeant Hutchinson.”
Hutch heard his name being called and groped toward the sound, more than willing to leave behind the fear that haunted his uneasy sleep. If he never saw another Italian restaurant for the rest of his life, it was still going to be too soon.
“Here,” Hutch croaked as he pushed up out of his chair and stumbled a few steps toward the woman in green scrubs who stood in the waiting room doorway. “I mean, I’m Sergeant Hutchinson.”
“Dr. Sibley,” the woman introduced herself. “I just operated on your partner.”
“How is he?” Hutch asked anxiously. He had dozed off and on, dropping in and out of awareness a few times since a groggy Starsky had been ·wheeled away and Hutch had settled in for another interminable sentence of waiting. The hours, however, had still crept along like snails on valium.
“He tolerated the surgery well. Although a prognosis for recovery will have to wait until he is fully awake, preliminary responses are promising,” the doctor reported. “He’s in recovery now and I won’t attempt an assessment until tomorrow morning.”
Hutch interpreted the cautious report to mean more waiting, but couldn’t rouse any genuine emotions. His tired brain seemed unable to decide whether he was supposed to be elated or disappointed. At this point, all he wanted was to see Starsky so he could confirm with his own eyes he was alive and well. “Can I see him?”
“In an hour. Perhaps a little less,” the doctor agreed. “When he’s stable, a nurse will come and get you.”
The doctor left and, as the door closed behind her, Hutch suddenly realized, if asked, he wouldn’t have been able to describe her. True, they had shared only a few minutes of conversation, but he couldn’t recall a single detail of her appearance. Exhaustion, emotional upheaval, and worry had robbed him of the most basic skill of his profession… to observe and remember. At the moment, however, he couldn’t have cared less.
Impatience was the only emotion capable of battering through Hutch’s exhaustion now. He looked around vaguely for a clock and then dug out his pocket watch, shivering a little as he remembered retrieving it after their failed attempt to outsmart the would-be assassins. Blinking to dispel the hopelessness of the memory, Hutch tried to focus on the small face, blinked again and squinted at the blurred numbers. Ten to three or quarter after ten? Day or night?
Hutch slowly closed the cover and tucked the watch back into his pocket. What did it matter what time it was? Hutch wasn’t leaving until he saw Starsky. In any case, he didn’t think his sleep-deprived brain was capable of the simple math to calculate how long he had been awake.
Mostly awake. Hutch eyed the hard plastic chair and dismissed any thought of trying to catch a wink or six while he waited. He wasn’t anxious to sink back into the dreams that had haunted his brief naps before the doctor’s appearance and so opted to stay on his feet and pace.
By focusing all of his attention on putting one foot in front of the other, relentlessly circling the small room without falling on his face, Hutch managed to disconnect his awareness of time until a nurse appeared at the door.
“If you’ll follow me, Sergeant Hutchinson, I’ll take you to your partner,” the woman offered.
“How is he?” Hutch asked as he fell into step behind her, willingly following her lead through the maze of corridors.
“He’s stable,” the nurse reported predictably, then flashed a smile over her shoulder as she continued. “But a little out of sorts. I think his stomach’s upset, and he doesn’t want to admit it. Here we are,” she announced as she pulled aside a curtain. “Dave, you have company.”
Starsky did look a little more the worse for wear than he had the night before. There weren’t as many wires and tubes attached to him, but his complexion had a decidedly unbecoming greenish cast, and he didn’t seem anxious to greet his visitor.
“Hey, buddy. How you doin’?” Hutch asked gently, moving up to the side of the bed, his attention focused on Starsky and only peripherally aware that the nurse remained in the cubbyhole with them. “You gonna open your eyes?”
“No. The room keeps spinning around,” Starsky grumbled, but his lids did lift a little, the dilated pupils focusing on Hutch. “You look like shit.”
The remark gave Hutch a definite feeling of deja vu, but he couldn’t remember what his next line was supposed to be. Something about a beauty contest? Not that it mattered. Even high, sick, and cranky, Starsky was a sight for Hutch’s sore eyes.
“Damn, I’m hungry. Wish I’d eaten those burritos you brought me,” Starsky whined.
High, sick, cranky, and predictably hungry. Hutch could feel the idiotic smile of pure relief on his face.
“What are you grinning about?” Starsky’s glare would have sent a Doberman whimpering down to its belly.
“You, mushbrain,” Hutch said affectionately, patting Starsky’s hand where it lay on the bed, letting his hand rest there as he continued. “Don’t you think you should finish puking before you start demanding tacos?”
“Didn’t puke,” Starsky denied the accusation in a sheepish tone, then his half-mast lids lifted fully and he looked straight into Hutch’s eyes. “Don’t you think you oughta wait for the nurse to leave before you start holdin’ my hand?”
Startled, Hutch looked down at their hands, watching with growing elation as Starsky’s hand turned and the fingers slowly curled around his. “You can feel?”
“Operation’s a success,” Starsky confirmed, his eyes rolling a little and then closing. “Thanks, babe,” he whispered and then fell asleep.
Hutch sank into the chair beside the bed, careful not to break their mutual grip. He was too elated to pick and choose which doors to open and which to guard. His feelings for Starsky swept over him. Some were familiar and comforting while some were newer and frighteningly powerful. Stronger than anything Hutch had ever felt in his life. Stronger than anything he had ever thought he could feel.
Strong enough to make him want to do crazy things. Crawl in bed beside his sleeping friend, hold him safe and kiss him well, and never ever let go. Impossible. Absurd. Probably here today and gone tomorrow. But for this moment, Hutch let those feelings possess him.
*~*~
It was unusually quiet in the squad room, even for midnight. There was just one odd couple in the corner, detective and victim, engaged in the quiet give and take waltz of reporting a crime. And Hutch, of course. He sat at their usual desk, slowly diminishing the small mountain of paperwork that always seemed to accumulate out of thin air. Unfortunately, there was also Dobey. In his office, on the other side of the glass and wood and plaster, but Hutch was acutely aware of his superior’s presence and the approach of the inevitable. It was almost a relief when the captain’s door finally opened.
Hutch glanced up at Dobey, nodded an acknowledgment, and then bent his head back over the file he was working on. The report remained out of focus, all of Hutch’s attention on Dobey as the captain approached. The heavy tread. The slightly labored breathing. The aroma of too long and hard a day in the same suit.
“Are you still here?” Dobey asked, the question predictable, the tone deliberately casual.
It wasn’t the first time they had burned the midnight oil together, although it was usually the three of them, and under far more pressing circumstances.
“Uh-huh. Just catching up,” Hutch replied cautiously with the obvious truth, hoping, in vain he was sure, Dobey would let the less obvious remain undisturbed.
Dobey grunted, the wordless response perhaps a comment or maybe just an expression of exhaustion as he slowly lowered himself into Starsky’s chair.
Hutch could feel the dark eyes on him, but he kept his own eyes on the meaningless file before him. Dobey was trying to figure him out, no doubt. Or maybe, like the good interrogator he had once been, he was simply waiting for the stare and the silence and Hutch’s guilty conscience to work some kind of gypsy magic to open Hutch up. Dobey wasn’t the most patient man in the world, and at midnight, the game would grow old fast. Hutch was counting on both to let him keep his secret safe.
As Hutch had expected, it didn’t take long for Dobey to grow tired of the waiting game. “Why are you still here?” Dobey asked again, the exasperation in his voice a clear warning that another evasion wouldn’t be welcome.
Hutch was used to defying Dobey, however, when the cause was sufficient. “I told you. I’m just catching up.”
There was another Dobey grunt before a meaty hand appeared under Hutch’s nose and picked up the file in front of him. Hutch didn’t try to prevent the theft, just leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest.
“This is weeks old,” Dobey pointed out after a cursory review. “All of a sudden you have to do overtime to catch up on old files?” He closed the file and tossed it back onto Hutch’s blotter.
“You’re always bugging me about my paperwork,” Hutch reminded Dobey of the many bellowing reprimands that had come his way.
Dobey nodded, apparently accepting the explanation, but then qualified it. “No, I’m always bugging you and Starsky about your paperwork.”
Dobey had him. Hutch knew it, and so, apparently, did Dobey. The emphasis on his partner’s name made the real topic of conversation perfectly clear. Hutch could throw up a smoke screen, paste on a poker face, but neither was going to hold up for long. Not when just the mention of his partner’s name sent a warm flush of inappropriate feelings racing through his body. Hutch had let that insistent emotion out from behind its locked door, and now he couldn’t seem to stuff it back in no matter how hard he tried.
“He asked about you last night,” Dobey said, apparently changing tactics. Once again casual and undemanding, he was a simple messenger of secondhand information. “Wondered why you hadn’t been in to see him.”
The poker face was still intact, but Hutch’s gut was clenched. In another minute, he would be sweating. Of course Starsky had asked.
The first day, Starsky would have assumed Hutch was sleeping. On the second day, he was probably puzzled. By the fourth Hutch-less day, Starsky was likely miffed. But by now, the sixth day, the eve of his discharge, Starsky was undoubtedly hurt
“What did you tell him?” Hutch asked cautiously, the truth a choking ball of guilt in his throat. He had been at the hospital every night. Late. So late that the place was as quiet as a morgue, and Starsky was deep in his healing sleep. Sneaking in, sitting silent and watching his sleeping friend, and trying desperately to set the clock of his heart back one small week in time. And failing.
“A couple of bald-faced lies.” Dobey’s reply cut into Hutch’s racing thoughts, throwing on the brakes of relief. “All about the important cases you’re working. Then I followed that up with some bluster about needing my officers on the streets, not babysitting their partners.”
Hutch couldn’t think of anything to say. He was grateful to Dobey for getting him off the hook with Starsky, but who was going to get him off the hook with Dobey?
“You know, Hutch, if you need to talk about the shooting, the department has some pretty good counselors on the payroll.” Dobey’s suggestion was made with surprising diffidence. It was, after all, his right as Hutch’s superior to demand Hutch get his ass onto a shrink’s couch if there was any doubt about his ability to do his job.
The inference was flattering, and the concern genuine. Yet still, Hutch wanted to laugh. Even if he was inclined to spill his guts, what could he say? That watching his partner almost bite the big one had made him fall hopelessly in love with Starsky? What a report that would make.
It was a relief, however, that Dobey was on the wrong track. “I don’t need a shrink poking around in my skull. Me and Starsky have had close calls before.”
“Not quite as close as this time,” Dobey reminded him. “You could have lost him.”
“You think I don’t know that!” The words seemed to leap out of Hutch’s mouth without making a pit stop at his brain, driven by the panic Dobey’s gentle statement aroused. The same panic that had him on his feet and leaning over the desk without any conscious order from his intellect.
“Hutch,” Dobey growled, also rising to his feet.
“No. I’m okay. We’re okay,” Hutch pulled his jacket from the back of the chair, the need to run so strong he could barely speak. “I’m going to see him now,” he added, imposing control on himself with the promise. He pasted on something he hoped would pass for a confident, reassuring smile and continued in a calmer tone. “We‘re fine. As soon as Starsky finishes his physiotherapy, we’ll be back on the streets. Good as new.”
“If you say so, Hutchinson,” Dobey relented. although he obviously didn’t believe.
“I say so, Captain,” Hutch insisted, but he was unable to meet Dobey’s eyes or put the confidence of righteous belief into his voice. Like Dobey, Hutch didn’t believe a word he had said.
*~*~
Hutch used the drive to the hospital to calm down, taking out his fight or flight on the gas pedal and the steering wheel of his Galaxy. Fortunately for the other drivers on the road, the trip from Metro to Memorial wasn’t a long one.
It was harder for Hutch to sneak into Starsky’s room tonight. Visiting hours were over, but unlike his previous post-midnight visits, there were still plenty of nurses around. He dodged them all and made it to Starsky’s room without being challenged, slipping quietly into the darkened room and waiting near the door until his eyes adjusted. Waiting, too, to be challenged by Starsky, hoping Starsky would still be awake, while also praying his partner would already be in sleeping-pill heaven.
There was no challenge, just the measured breathing of two sleeping men. When his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Hutch made his silent way past the roommate’s bed and stopped at the foot of the bed where Starsky slept. His eyes roamed up the hills and valleys of Starsky’s body under the covers while Hutch commanded his heart to keep to its usual steady rhythm.
His heart hadn’t been paying much attention to Hutch’s will lately, and tonight was no exception. By the time he reached the white oval of Starsky’s face, the rebellious organ in his chest was hammering as if he had just run the four-minute mile.
“Oh, damn,” Hutch cursed softly, moving around the end of the bed, his feet in league with his heart as they brought him to Starsky’s bedside, to within easy touching distance. And Hutch wanted to touch. Wanted it so badly he had to curl his hands into fists of tight self-denial. He didn’t even dare reach out in friendship because he knew one touch would lead to another and another and another, right down the road to perdition.
“Starsk. Oh, Starsk,” Hutch whispered, the diminutive sweet on his tongue, full of all the yearning of the love he had been so sure would fade as it always did. This wasn’t the first time a dire situation had aroused feelings for Starsky beyond friend and partner. Those feelings had always disappeared, or at least gone back into a secluded part of Hutch’s brain, once the crisis had passed. Not this time. Starsky was safe and well on the road to recovery, and yet the love and need, stronger and more all-consuming than it had ever been before, still held Hutch in a relentless grip.
“Hmm. Hu… ?” Starsky mumbled, the darker shadows of long lashes lifting from his cheeks.
“Starsky?” Hutch whispered, his knees going a little weak in surprise. He put out a hand to steady himself, but encountering the warm, bare flesh of Starsky’s arm had the exact opposite effect. “Are you awake?” he asked because the half-mast eyelids had drooped again.
“Mmm, maybe,” was the reply that came out of the darkness when Hutch had given up expecting an answer.
“How’re you doing, buddy?” Hutch formed his lips around the inane question while biting twenty more personal ones off the tip of his tongue. “How’s the arm?” He dared to reach out and gently rest his fingertips on Starsky’s left arm.
“Okaaaaay.” A yawn drew Starsky’s one word reply into a lengthy sentence. “See.”
Hutch couldn’t see much, but after a moment, he felt a slight eruption beneath his fingers as the sling-encased arm was raised a bare inch from Starsky’s chest. Proof positive to back up the reports Dr. Sibley had grudgingly given Hutch each day over the phone. Reports full of daily improvements and guarded optimism Hutch had been forced to accept at face value because he didn’t have the guts to come here in the light of day and confirm them himself.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you,” he whispered from the depth of his guilt and shame. The apology was all he could offer because there was no reasonable excuse, no sufficient defense he could give Starsky for his neglect.
He received a damning silence in reply. No censure. No demands for explanations. Just the silence that tried, convicted, and sentenced him as it stretched out in the darkness. Silence that was suddenly interrupted by a soft snore.
Starsky was asleep. The sentencing was postponed until tomorrow when Hutch had to pick Starsky up and take him home. Tomorrow, when he would have to look into those questioning eyes in the light of day with no shadows to hide in.
Hutch eased back a step, a sigh of disappointment leaving him as his fingers slipped away from Starsky’s arm.
“Starsk, Starsk, Starsk.” The sibilant chant evoked the image of a lover’s embrace in Hutch’s mind. Entwined. Enraptured.
Impossible.
“God, even just saying your name makes me… ” Hutch closed his lips over the rest of the confession. If he didn’t speak it aloud, perhaps it would lose a little of its power over him. The power to turn him away when he was needed most, the power to throw their future into question.
“Damn it, Starsky,” Hutch unleashed his helpless fury on the innocent victim. “Why’d you have to get shot?” he demanded as if Starsky had been a willing participant in his own wounding. “Why’d you have to bleed and hurt and nearly… ” Die. The word remained trapped in Hutch’s throat, rumbling inside him like the warning growl of an angry wolf.
“I tried not to feel this way.” Hutch whispered a feeble excuse for the inexcusable. “Tried to shut it out, lock it up, but I can’t. It won’t go away, and I don’t know how to live with it.”
Unable to resist, Hutch reached out again, finding the coarse fabric of the sling with hesitant fingertips. The warmth of Starsky’s flesh beneath tempted him further, curling his fingers into denial once again.
“Damn it, babe. Why’d it have to change?”
There was no answer from the man on the bed, immersed in his drugged sleep. No answer from the silence or the darkness or from fickle fate itself. Hutch was going to have to find those answers alone, but feared he had neither the strength nor the courage to face them.
Filled with hopeless despair, Hutch left as silently as he had come.
*~*~
Starsky was dreaming. The same dream that had visited him for the past five nights. The dream that was remembered with frustration every morning. Hutch came in, sat down, but never spoke, and because of the silence Hutch brought into the room with him, Starsky couldn’t waken, couldn’t speak, either.
But the dream was thinning tonight, reality flashing little frozen images into the dreamscape. Then the dream was gone and Starsky was fully awake, certain that he had dreamed Hutch’s presence once again, that it must be only the prompting of a full bladder that woke him now.
Familiar frustration filled Starsky as he struggled to sit upright on the side of the bed. Frustration that dissipated, suddenly blown away when Starsky’s nose caught a whiff of familiar Hutch-scent. A lot of people would probably think it was nuts that Starsky could recognize, even track, Hutch by his smell. But when you spend that much time with a guy, you know what he smells like. First thing in the morning—all shampoo and soap and cologne—and at the end of a long, grueling day.
Hutch had been here. He had left so recently that his familiar aroma was strong. That had to mean the silent dream, that hadn’t been silent tonight, couldn’t have been a dream. They had talked, inane stuff in whispers, and Hutch had touched him.
It was the memory of what had followed the talk and the touch, however, the continued pain-filled sound of Hutch’s voice that started Starsky’s heart pounding in his chest. Painful words full of apology and suffering. Unwanted apology and needless suffering.
Not for a single second did Starsky doubt his interpretation of Hutch’s softly spoken confessions. Not even for any part of a second. He knew. Absolutely. Positively. Without the shadow of a doubt. Knew because, not so long ago, Starsky had been standing in Hutch’s uncertain shoes.
“Yeah. We still got a ways to go, huh,” Starsky murmured, running his hand up Hutch’s arm and around his back. He had grabbed Hutch’s arms to prevent his bolt from this torture chamber, but once Hutch had laid his head on Starsky’s shoulder, there was no more need for restraint. Starsky simply held his friend now. In comfort. In support. And though he had just discovered he would be content to go on holding Hutch for the rest of his life, when Hutch began to move restlessly, Starsky let him go.
He didn’t think about that moment of revelation. There were too many other emotions clashing inside him as he watched his partner suffer through the agony of withdrawal, for any one of them to demand his complete attention.
Less than an hour later, however, when Hutch crawled back onto the bed and under the covers, shivering and shaking with his internal cold, Starsky discovered holding Hutch wasn’t all he wanted to do.
“C-c-cold,” Hutch stammered through chattering teeth, though he was curled on his side with every blanket Huggy could beg, borrow, or steal piled on top of him.
Without hesitation, Starsky kicked off his shoes and climbed in behind his friend, worming his arm in between Hutch’s arms and chest, and hugging the shaking body close to his warmth.
“Easy, Hutch. It’ll pass. Try to relax and just go with it,” Starsky crooned, while Hutch’s body continued to squirm restlessly, seeking an escape from the craving-induced symptoms that racked him.
“Can’t. Can’t stand it,” Hutch moaned. “Help me, for God’s sake, Starsky. I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can. ” Starsky lightened his grip, pulling Hutch so close that, in a moment, Starsky’s shirt was soaked with Hutch’s sweat. “You ‘re the strongest man I know. The best. The truest. You can do it, babe. I know you can.”
“Help me.”
“Any way I can.” Starsky held his friend with every ounce of strength he possessed. “Hang on to me. ”
Hutch’s fingers found Starsky’s arm then, digging in until Starsky was sure they would meet around the bone. But the low moaning was fading, the painful writhing slowing into a gentle rocking that seemed to comfort them both. Starsky was beginning to lose the feeling in his hand by the time Hutch’s relentless grip eased and the harsh breathing evened out into the broken rhythm of uneasy sleep.
With another crisis passed, Starsky let his body relax, consciously ordering locked muscles to let go. That was when he discovered he was hard. Pushed into the muscular cushion of Hutch’s ass, Starsky‘s cock throbbed an insistent, aching tattoo that demanded relief The man in his arms was a battered, filthy, stinking shadow of Starsky‘s dear friend, and yet Starsky wanted him more than he had ever wanted anyone in his life.
Despite the instinct to scramble away and hide, Starsky moved slowly and carefully as he left the bed so that not so much as a ripple of the mattress disturbed Hutch’s uneasy sleep. He retreated only as far as the end of the bed, still the watchful guardian, but no longer certain who or what he was protecting Hutch from. The insidious craving that ate at Hutch’s will or Starsky himself?
Loving Hutch, once the crisis was over, hadn’t been such a hard adjustment to make, maybe because Starsky had had the safety net of knowing he didn’t have to act on those feelings. As time had passed, however, Starsky had found himself wishing there was some way to do away with that net.
Now maybe there was. If Hutch could accept. If Hutch could stop resisting. And, maybe, if Hutch knew that Starsky was more than ready and willing to fall into his arms….
“Hit the brakes there, buster,” Starsky warned his runaway imagination. “Hutch is gonna hafta get to that freeway exit on his own.”
Under any other circumstances, Starsky might not be above a little subtle intervention. If that is, he could figure out exactly how to be subtle. But not this time. He wasn’t looking for a one-night stand conquest or even a wild and dangerous affair. Starsky was holding out for the biggest prize of all—Hutch’s love.
Starsky eased back down onto the bed and closed his eyes, remembering the yearning in Hutch’s voice and the way Hutch’s fingers had lingered on his arm.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he whispered to his, hopefully, future lover. “If I can figure it out, so can you.”
*~*~
“Nice to see you, buddy.”
That was it. The beginning and end of any comment Starsky seemed to have to make on Hutch’s unusual absence during his hospital incarceration. Which was just as well. Finding Starsky already up, looking completely normal except for the sling, had temporarily robbed Hutch of speech. It seemed like months since he had seen Starsky anything but flat on his back, looking like death warmed over.
Alive. Safe. Already well down the road to recovery.
Maybe there was a God after all. One who liked to tie a few awkward emotional strings to his miracles, but one that was, nevertheless, willing to deliver the miracles.
“Hey, think fast.”
The warning and the solid thump of Starsky’s overnight bag against his chest effectively broke the spell that held Hutch. “You ready to blow this popsicle stand?”
“Ready, willing, and able,” Starsky confirmed with a toothy grin.
Hutch had expected Starsky to be a little wired, exuberant over his release from the hospital, so the quiet ride home from Memorial was a surprise and maybe a little awkward. But only a little, and that was completely dispelled once they reached Starsky’s apartment and the door closed behind them.
Almost as if the click of the latch was the proof positive Starsky needed that he was, indeed, free, the exuberance bubbled and overflowed. Hutch allowed himself to enjoy the show as Starsky re-established himself in his space. Touch this. Rearrange that. Check out the icebox. All of it accompanied by a steady stream of Starsky chatter. It was adorable.
“Adorable? Oh, brother,” Hutch whispered to himself, but he really was rather amused.
“What was that?” Starsky stood in front of the open refrigerator door with four different snacks tucked into his sling.
“Uhm.” Hutch scrambled for an innocuous reply. “Didn’t the doctor tell you to be careful? I don’t think lugging around twenty pounds of concealed junk food in your sling qualifies as careful.”
“Yes, mother.” Starsky’s grin was totally unrepentant.
Had Starsky’s grin always lit up his face like that? And if so, how had Hutch missed it all these years? They were questions Hutch couldn’t voice and couldn’t answer. Looking away from the grin that was beginning to fade to puzzlement, Hutch grabbed the bag from the hospital and fell into retreat. “I’ll put this stuff away.”
From the bedroom, Hutch could still hear Starsky mumbling away to himself, but it seemed more monologue than an attempt at conversation, so Hutch made no effort to reply. He didn’t even really have to listen. He just let the sound wash over him, allowing the normality to give his circling thoughts a brief pit stop.
There wasn’t all that much in the bag to put away. A couple of pairs of pajamas and a shaving kit were on top of the jeans, briefs, and socks Starsky had been wearing the night he was shot. Hutch was relieved to see, as he had requested, the nurse had disposed of the blood-stained and bullet-holed blue jacket and shirt and the dark t-shirt Starsky had been wearing when he was shot.
At the bottom of the bag, however, Hutch found a memento he could have done without. A red and white checked tablecloth, the same type that had covered the tables in the many Italian restaurants he and Starsky had patronized over the years. This one had served as an improvised pressure bandage and was liberally stained with Starsky’s blood. Hutch’s first instinct was to throw it away, but it wasn’t his decision. Starsky kept some very strange souvenirs. He might even have asked the nurse to save the tablecloth, but Hutch didn’t want to ask now. The memories were too fresh.
Hutch put the neatly folded cloth at the very back of the top shelf of the closet. It was going to be a long time before Hutch wanted to see the inside of another Italian restaurant and that really was a shame. They ate Italian a lot. They both liked the food, and Starsky liked the familiar atmosphere, but for Hutch, an Italian restaurant always evoked the memory of a special night. A night he had given up his voluntary isolation and let Starsky in.
The Roman Candle was a Police Academy hang out. It wasn‘t fancy, it wasn’t even particularly clean, but it was close enough to the Academy that everyone from plebe to near-graduate patronized it. Tonight marked the mid-way point for Hutch’s class, and just about every cadet from their intake was there, doing their level best to drink the place dry and forget that the day after tomorrow they would be back with their noses to the grindstone.
Hutch was still nursing his first beer. It just wasn’t his nature to let go. He didn’t like the out of control feeling that possessed you when half of your blood volume came out of a beer keg. Yet he envied his fellow cadets their freedom. He was a little older, and was carrying around a little more baggage like a failed marriage and familial estrangement than the rest of the cadets, and he had allowed those differences to set him apart.
It was hard to let go. To forget that in a few weeks he would no longer be a married man and, to all intents and purposes, alone in this world. It held him apart, separate by his own choice, from the rest of the cadets and was another good reason to go slow with the booze. More than ever, he was afraid of what might slip by booze-addled wits. With moderation firmly in mind, Hutch took another careful sip of his beer.
“You’ve been nursing that beer a long time.”
Hutch glanced up at the man who stood beside his table, not at all surprised by the identity of the speaker. Cadet David Starsky. Who was a very persistent fellow indeed.
“Mind if I join you?” Starsky pulled out the second chair at Hutch’s table, but stood apparently waiting for permission before he sat down.
“Guess not.” Hutch wondered again why Starsky couldn’t take a hint. It was obvious Starsky wanted to be Hutch ‘s friend and Hutch never seemed to be able to get the point across he wasn’t interested. Probably because he was and was sending out conflicting signals. He and Starsky were complete opposites, and yet utterly alike in all the ways that mattered the most. If Hutch hadn’t been so wary of becoming too close to anyone right now and being hurt again, they probably would have been best friends since the first week of classes.
Starsky kept trying, however, and his persistence had piqued Hutch’s curiosity. “Are you monitoring everybody’s intake tonight?” For the first lime, he gave Starsky something besides a polite brush off
Starsky laughed. He had a pleasant laugh that made you want to laugh, too. “Hell, no. I don’t have that many fingers and toes.”
“So why mine?” Hutch hoped his curiosity wasn’t going to get him into trouble. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
“Because I’m nursing mine, too.” Starsky pointed to the glass in front of him, a glass that held only a sip or two less than Hutch’s. “I just wondered if it was for the same reason. ”
There was a back-off alarm going off.in Hutch’s head, but he continued to use his curiosity as an excuse to keep the conversation going. “Why are you going easy on the booze?” he asked, doubting very much their reasons were even remotely similar.
“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine?” Starsky cocked his head to the side as he spoke in a way that reminded Hutch of the cocker spaniel he had had as a child. That dog had been a very good friend, but the similarity wasn’t enough to stop Hutch from hesitating to reveal his private thoughts.
“Okay, me first.” Starsky obviously recognized another imminent polite freeze out. “I’m going easy on the booze because …I don’t always like myself very much when I get drunk. I can be a mean son of a bitch. ”
It was apparent Starsky was ashamed of this trail, ashamed enough to prevent even the possibility. And yet, he met Hutch’s eyes as he made the confession.
Hutch had to acknowledge that that had taken a lot of guts, and he expected Starsky to pressure for a reciprocal confession. If not verbally, then with that penetrating gaze of his. But Starsky wasn’t pushing. He just sat quietly beside Hutch, apparently content to have bared his soul and receive nothing in return.
The room was a chaos of voices and music, but a bubble of silence seemed to have descended around their table. It could have been awkward, but it wasn’t, it was comfortable. The kind of friendly comfort Hutch hadn’t shared in a long time with anyone. So long that he had forgotten how nice it could be. Vanessa had done her very best to isolate him from all of his previous friends. It had been easier to control him that way. All of his friends with the exception, of course, of the ones she had been sleeping with behind his back.
Hutch sensed, or maybe it was just hoped, that this Starsky was made of truer stuff than the men Hutch had previously called friend. He was still damned wary, but Hutch didn’t want to continue rejecting this man’s persistent overtures. He had the feeling that if he succeeded in driving Starsky away, somewhere down the road of his life, he was going to regret it.
“I… I just don’t like being out of control of myself.” The confession sounded pretty dumb to Hutch now that he said it out loud, and he waited anxiously for Starsky‘s reaction.
Starsky didn’t laugh or even smile. After a minute of consideration, he nodded acceptance. “Sounds to me like a good idea for a cop.” He gave Hutch that spaniel look again. “You wanna gel outta here? Maybe go get a pizza or something?”
One last time, Hutch hesitated, the ghost a painful betrayal urging him to reject the interloper. But Hutch was tired of being alone, and he knew he had already crossed the line. Starsky was already his friend.
“Okay.” Hutch pushed his unfinished beer away and climbed to his feet. “When it comes to Italian, I hear you know the best places in town. ”
Hutch returned from his stroll down memory lane to find Starsky standing in the bedroom doorway watching him with an indecipherable expression.
“Is there something wrong, Hutch?”
There was a huge something wrong when the special friendship that had endured all the years and trials that theirs had could be threatened by the actions of a dimwit hit man like Joey Martin.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you this week,” Hutch apologized, offering no excuses because he had none. None he could tell Starsky. Here and now, the fear that had turned him into a secret night visitor seemed like such a petty, unforgivable weakness.
“It’s okay, Hutch,” Starsky’s right shoulder lifted and then fell in a shrug that dismissed the apparent desertion as if it was no more important than a forgotten dinner date. “Is that what you were thinking about?”
Starsky forgave him. From his attitude, he didn’t seem to feel there was anything to forgive. If Starsky could forgive him, then Hutch had to try to forgive himself. It didn’t seem as impossible now as it had while Starsky was lying helpless in the hospital. “No. I was thinking about the night we became friends.”
“Eating pizza and drinking sodas while the rest of the guys were getting shit-faced.” Starsky grinned again.
The flashing teeth seemed to throw a switch, putting out the light of contentment Hutch had been feeling and plunging him back into the darkness of confusion once again. “Yeah.” He averted his gaze to the closet and waited for that strained awkwardness to set up camp between them.
“So, are you planning on hanging out in my closet all day, or are you going to feed me?” Starsky pointed toward the sling cradling his left arm. “Injured party,” he reminded Hutch, laying on the pathos with a backhoe.
“You’re going to milk this, aren’t you?” Hutch tried hard for their usual teasing and almost made it. He even managed to ignore the third, high wattage smile.
“For every home cooked meal I can get,” Starsky agreed shamelessly.
*~*~
Stretched out on the couch with his belly full and listening to the soft sound of Hutch singing to himself as he cleaned up, Starsky was, more or less, a contented man. True, the wound in his back was throbbing in tune with his heartbeat, but his fingers were doing their very best to squeeze the stuffing out of the little rubber ball the physiotherapist had given him. Dr. Sibley, the physiotherapist, and Starsky himself were all confident he was going to make a full recovery.
The only cloud in Starsky’s personal little paradise at the moment was Hutch. Starsky hated seeing his friend so unhappy and the temptation to meddle was almost overwhelming. If Hutch didn’t look so panicked every time Starsky came closer than two feet, Starsky might grab the big, dumb lug and lay one on him. But Hutch did look panicked, and Starsky had to respect that.
Sighing, reminding himself that patience was a virtue, Starsky dropped the ball onto the coffee table. He pushed up until he was sitting propped in the comer of the couch and could watch Hutch in the kitchen. Long before he had fallen in love with Hutch, even before they had officially become friends, Starsky had loved to watch Hutch.
Damn, but the man could move. Hutch could turn the simple task of washing up into a smooth combination ballet and juggling act. The guy was unconsciously graceful and confidently coordinated. As long as he didn’t know he was being watched, of course.
As if he sensed the appreciative appraisal, Hutch glanced over his shoulder, and seeing Starsky watching him, came to the counter. “Did you want something? Pain pills, maybe? You haven’t had any all day.”
Starsky knew he didn’t have all that much tolerance for pain, especially the little stuff like headaches and colds. Ironically, a bullet hole he could deal with. Though he knew he would be looking for some relief for the pain in his back by bedtime, he didn’t want to take any pills now. The pills would make him sleepy, and then Hutch would leave. He had missed Hutch and wasn’t ready for his friend to leave just yet. Even with the unusual physical boundaries Hutch was maintaining, and the silences that lacked the usual comfort that always existed between them, Starsky wanted Hutch to stay. He had been doing his level best all day to put Hutch at ease, and the effort had been worth it. Hutch had noticeably relaxed, although his behavior was still far from normal.
“No pills yet. If I take them now, they won’t get me through the night.” The explanation was true enough, even if it wasn’t Starsky’s reason for holding out a little longer.
“Do you want the TV on?” Hutch joined Starsky on the couch. It didn’t escape Starsky’s notice that he chose the opposite corner, leaving the no man’s land of the middle cushion between them. “The nine o’clock movie will be starting soon.”
“No.” Even imperfect as it was at the moment, Starsky preferred Hutch’s company tonight over any entertainment the idiot box might have to offer.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been so hasty, however, because it didn’t take long for the awkward silence that had been too frequent a visitor today to return. It plunked itself down on that middle cushion, becoming a more unwelcome guest by the moment.
Watching Hutch stiffen up, every movement becoming over controlled and tight, was more painful for Starsky than the throbbing of the healing wound in his back. He could sympathize. He remembered how uncomfortable he had felt with Hutch while Starsky was making his adjustment. It was a discomfort that, even though he had been unaware of the cause, Hutch had often dispelled for Starsky with jokes, banter, or simple conversation. Now it was Starsky’s tum to give his friend a comfortable place to rest.
“Do you have to work tomorrow?” Starsky finally asked when no more interesting topic presented itself. “It sounded like Dobey’s really been running your ass off.”
“No, not tomorrow.” Hutch gave him a puzzled look. “But you know I’m going to have to work the day after. We promised Phillips months ago we’d cover his day shift so he could spend the holidays with his kids.”
“Holiday?” The reminder hit Starsky like a bolt of lightning, eclipsing every other subject. “Christmas!” He grunted with pain as he sat up straight but otherwise ignored the quick stab. “I can’t believe I forgot tomorrow is Christmas Eve.” He became more agitated as all of the implications presented themselves. “I didn’t shop. No decorations. Shit, what a lousy Christmas.”
“Starsky, you’re Jewish.” It was a familiar refrain from all of the Christmases they had known each other. “You’re not even supposed to celebrate Christmas.”
“I like Christmas.” Starsky wanted to jump up and start digging through his closet right now, but knew he wasn’t up to it. “So sue me.”
“Okay, okay. Don’t have a stroke.” Hutch held up his hands between them, palms out, and then patted Starsky on his right arm.
“But…but…Christmas,” Starsky insisted, but his single-destination train of thought had jumped the tracks. Hutch had touched him. The first time all day. If there really was some sort of universal balance system, Starsky was more than willing to give up Christmas in exchange for that one, completely unconscious and natural gesture from Hutch.
“I wheedled Dobey into giving me tomorrow off. I’ll decorate and take you shopping, okay? I wouldn’t let you have a lousy Christmas.”
If Starsky didn’t already understand the reason and hadn’t already forgiven Hutch for all the lonely days in the hospital, the slate would certainly be wiped clean now. Despite the turmoil Hutch was going through at the moment, he was obviously still Starsky’s best friend.
“And Huggy invited us to his Christmas Eve party. If you think you’ll be up to it.”
Barely two days out of the hospital after being shot, of course Starsky wouldn’t be up to it. But he wanted to be with Hutch. He felt so full of his love for Hutch right at this moment that it was all he could do not to grab him and kiss him breathless. Spending all of the next day with Hutch while his partner made Christmas happen just for him wasn’t likely to make Starsky love him any less. The party offered him the chance to be with Hutch with a little safety in numbers to help him curb any impulses that tried to encourage him to rush Hutch along.
“Of course—” Starsky began, but the reassurance was ambushed by a yawn he hadn’t even felt sneaking up on him. “I’ll be up to it.”
Hutch looked doubtful for a moment, then relented. “Maybe if you get a good night’s sleep… ” He left the couch and went into the kitchen.
“Hint, hint. Take your medicine like a good little boy,” Starsky grumbled when he heard the sound of pills rattling in the bottle.
“You said it, Starsk, not me.” Hutch returned with a glass of water and the pills.
“Okay. You’re right.” Starsky accepted the medication, exchanging maybe another hour of Hutch’s company tonight for the many hours the next day. “But you’ll pick me up early in the morning right? Last minute shopping will be crazy.”
“We’ll be first in line at Darcy’s Department Store when the doors open,” Hutch promised.
*~*~
Hutch’s heart started to pound when he pulled up in front of Starsky’s place and saw his partner waiting for him, sitting on the bottom step of the long flight of stairs. He must be getting used to the reaction, because the rapid pitter-patter wasn’t quite as disconcerting as it had been. Maybe it was true a person really could adjust to just about anything. Even a couple of rebellious organs. Even erotic dreams that, a time or two, slipped over the line into downright pornographic.
Shuffling the memories into the back of his mind, Hutch parked the car in front of Starsky and joined him at the foot of the stairs. “I thought I might have to pry you out of bed as usual.”
Starsky levered up to his feel. “Hell, no. Not today.”
“Have you got everything? List?”
Starsky patted his sling, setting up a noisy crackle of paper. “Check.”
“Charge cards?”
This time Starsky patted his jacket pocket. “And if we blow the limit on mine, we can use yours,” he suggested with a grin.
“Let’s not get too carried away.” Hutch opened the passenger door, bowing grandly. “Your chariot awaits.”
“Chariot?” Starsky snorted. “This bucket is about the right vintage.” Before Hutch could protest, Starsky continued. “Have you got your Magnum?”
“Come on, Starsky. We’re going to buy a few presents, not bust a drug ring.”
“Hey, babe. It’s Christmas shopping we’re talking about here,” Starsky insisted seriously. “Christmas Eve shopping. Take it from me—”
“Get in the car.” Hutch knew Starsky had more experience with this last-minute shopping business, but he wasn’t about to believe they would have to defend their purchases or their persons with a gun.
“All right, already.” Starsky slid onto the passenger seat. “But I hope you at least brought your badge.”
“We’re going to need a strategy,” Starsky said once Hutch had taken his place behind the wheel and they were on their way to Darcy’s.
“Strategy? You can’t be serious. We’ve always done our shopping together before without a strategy.”
“Ah, but that was early shopping. December 19th or even the 20th. This is December 24th shopping, Hutch.” Obviously, whether from hearsay or experience, Starsky believed they were in for a trying experience.
“Okay. What’s the plan?” Although Hutch still doubted the dire necessity, he relented. For one thing, his own experience was pretty limited, and more importantly, at the moment he was very inclined to go along with whatever Starsky wanted.
“Okay. The first thing we have to do is hit the toy department. Nothin’ sells out faster than toys at Christmas, and we have Rosie, Lisa, Kiko, and Cal to buy for.” Starsky had pulled his list from his sling and tapped the paper with his finger as he said each name.
Hutch realized he was enjoying this. It was familiar. He and Starsky always did their gift shopping together, and the normality of it was comforting. “Sounds like a plan. Besides, if all we get done is the kids, well, Christmas is supposed to be for kids anyway. Right?”
Starsky mumbled something which, though indecipherable, didn’t sound like agreement and Hutch laughed. Kids and big kids like Starsky. Initially Hutch had been very surprised by Starsky’s devotion to Christmas, but his enthusiasm was undeniable. From the time they had first met, Starsky had simply refused to allow Hutch to play the Grinch.
“That’ll leave us with the captain and Mrs. Dobey, something for John and Maggie, and you have to find something for Luke and Doris. Hmmmm.” Starsky glared at the list. “I hate to say it, buddy, but I think we’ll have to split up if we’re going to get all this done today.”
“No way!” They were almost at Darcy’s, and Hutch slowed the car to a crawl. This issue had to be settled before they arrived. “We aren’t splitting up.”
“But, Hutch.” Starsky waved the list under Hutch’s nose. “We don’t have much time, too much list, and the crowds will be—”
“Exactly. The crowds will be pushing and shoving. The doctor said you have to be careful, and there isn’t going to be one person in that last-minute crowd who is going to notice you’re a one-winged bird. And even if they did, they wouldn’t give a damn.”
Hutch knew he might be going a little over the top with the protectiveness, but it felt so good to express even this much of his feelings for Starsky. He was allowed to feel protective of his partner. It was his duty and his right, even if those feelings now had more layers than an onion.
They had come within sight of the department store now and the huge crowd that already waited for the doors to open at the stroke of nine. Whether it was Hutch’s arguments or the sight of the mob, Starsky didn’t seem inclined to argue any further.
By the time they found a parking spot, the first wave of frantic shoppers were already in the store and, as Starsky had predicted, they all seemed to be headed for the toy department.
“Stay close.” Hutch ordered and then took the point, shouldering his way to the back of the store and its already half-empty shelves. He tried to turn into the first toy aisle they came to, but a sudden surge of the crowd pushed him along two more rows. He reached behind him, grabbed Starsky’s hand and pulled him out of the stream of humanity and into the relative quiet of a side aisle.
“Damn, this is insane,” Hutch said, overwhelmed by the task of trying to keep Starsky safe in this maddened crowd of desperate shoppers. “You better wait in the car.”
“I’d have to swim upstream to get out the doors, and I ain’t no salmon.” Starsky, however, looked just about as wary as Hutch felt. His right arm was crossed over his chest, holding his sling and left arm closer to his body.
“Damn. Damn. Damn.” Although he had initially questioned Starsky’s dire predictions, Hutch was beyond worried now. He had protected Starsky in some pretty hairy situations, the most recent of which being case in point, but felt completely out of his element and closer to panic than he had felt in that Italian restaurant. He couldn’t just shoot any innocent shopper who got too close to Starsky.
“It’s okay. I think the rush is slowing down.” Starsky pointed toward the steady stream of people flowing past the end of their aisle sanctuary. Most of them carried boxes and toys and were intent on finding a cashier.
But Hutch had found his own possible escape route. The opening at the other end of the aisle was almost empty. “Let’s find something and slip out this way.”
Starsky grabbed a package off the shelf beside him and thrust it toward Hutch. “How about this for Rosie?”
“This is a GI Joe, Starsk. Rosie’s a girl. Girls play with dolls.”
“You male, chauvinist pig,” Starsky said with a grin. “Besides, GI Joe is a doll.” Hutch dropped the package back on the shelf and towed Starsky to the end of the aisle.
“You stay close,” he ordered, and waded into the stream.
Several frustrating and nerve-wracking hours later, Hutch found them a quiet comer so they could take stock. He placed Starsky’s back securely against the wall and parked himself in front of him, planting both feet and turning his own broad back against the last-minute madness behind them.
“How’re we doing?” Hutch held the bags they had collected so far so that Starsky could compare the items inside to his list.
“Dolls for Rosie and Lisa. A book for Kiko, though why you wanted to get the poor kid…” The rest of Starsky’s monologue degenerated into mumbles as he dug through the bags.
Hutch took the opportunity to assess how Starsky was holding up. Not so good, he judged by the unusual pallor and hunched shoulders. Hutch had been carrying the bags, but it was obvious this trip hadn’t been the best idea for a man fresh out of the hospital. Hutch should have offered to do the shopping himself, would have, if he had thought he would have had a snowball’s chance in hell of convincing Starsky.
“We’re done with the list,” Starsky finally announced to Hutch’s everlasting relief.
“Then we have something for everybody?” Hutch swiveled his head, looking for the path of least resistance out of this damned madness.
“Everybody but you, Blintz. So now it’s time for you to get lost.”
Starsky expected Hutch to abandon him to this insanity? For some stupid present? “No damned way—” Hutch began at the same moment a sudden swell of the crowd from behind them pushed him into Starsky. Mashed against his partner from shoulders to knees, Hutch suddenly didn’t have either the breath or the brains to continue his protest or to even clearly remember why in the world he was arguing.
“Meet you at the car in half an hour,” Starsky said, seizing the opportunity to slip out from behind Hutch and strike out on his own.
Stunned, the imprint of Starsky’s body against him still tingling in his nerves, it was a good fifteen seconds before Hutch reacted. He swung around, frantically searching for some sign of Starsky, but the mob had swallowed him up. Instinctively, Hutch started to follow, intent on charging his way through the wall of humanity. He forced himself to stop after only a step or two, shut down his instincts, and tried to use his brain instead.
It was no good. Since Starsky said he was looking for a present for Hutch, and Starsky’s past presents had ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, Hutch had no way of guessing what department Starsky might head for. There would be no cutting him off at the pass.
Growling in frustration, Hutch did the only thing he could—tightened his grip on his parcels and waded into the crowd. Twenty-five minutes later, he was no closer to finding Starsky, and his frustration had turned to anger at his stubborn friend. If Starsky kept his promise, he would be showing up at the car in five minutes, and Hutch intended to give him a piece of his mind. If Starsky didn’t show up, well, Hutch just might have to go back in after him, but this time, he would be packing his Magnum.
*~*~
Starsky was getting desperate. More desperate. Infected by the chaos around them, he had been feeling pretty damned frantic since they entered the store. With Hutch hovering protectively close to him, however, he hadn’t felt as vulnerable as he did now. Since he had only ten minutes of the thirty left he had promised Hutch, he was well beyond frantic. Vulnerable and frantic were a lousy way to try to find a special present for a special someone.
He had already bought Hutch some new sheet music months ago, but he wanted something more personal and had decided on a piece of jewelry. Guys didn’t usually give other guys jewelry, even if they were best friends. Starsky wanted his present to give Hutch a hint, or maybe even a clue.
Unfortunately, the few pieces of jewelry left under the glass counter would qualify more as a slap upside the head than as a subtle hint.
“Can I show you something?” The woman behind the counter looked as harried as Starsky felt. “Are you looking for something special for someone?” she asked though her expression seemed to question why he would wait until the day before Christmas to look for that perfect present.
“Uh. Yeah.”
The woman bent and brought out a ring, its clear center stone glittering in the jeweler’s lighting. “This would make a lovely declaration.”
“I was looking for something more along the lines of a hint,” Starsky said, trying to imagine Hutch’s face if he opened his gift from Starsky and found a diamond engagement ring!
“A hint?”
”Never mind,” Starsky said and moved away, ready to admit defeat. This was too important to do in such a rush. Then he spotted it, a simple necklace of shark’s tooth on a leather thong. Something a man could wear without embarrassment. A hint, not a kick in the ass.
Starsky made the purchase quickly, and with the small box hidden away in his sling, he made it to the car a good ten seconds short of the deadline.
That didn’t spare him Hutch’s displeasure. Starsky met the china blue ice of Hutch’s glare with a sheepish smile, hoping to melt the glaciers a little.
No such luck.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” The demand was issued in Hutch’s most reasonable tone, a dead giveaway to Starsky that he was in deep shit. “The doctor said to be careful. Careful is not charging off into a desperate mob. Careful is not pretending you’re fucking Superman. You’re not. Bullets don’t bounce off’—”
The tirade ended abruptly and Hutch turned his face away, glaring out the driver’s window at the poor sap minding his own business in the next car.
Starsky could have been pissed. He was a grown man, after all. He was quite capable of looking out for himself in a crowd of shoppers whose most deadly weapon was an elbow or pointy-toed shoe. Yes, he could have been pissed, if he hadn’t recognized the suppressed fear in Hutch’s eyes and the barely controlled panic in his voice.
“Hey,” Starsky said softly, leaning across the bench seat to wrap his hand around the stiff muscles of Hutch’s arm. Muscles that bulged from the death grip Hutch had on the steering wheel. “I’m okay, buddy.”
“All’s well that ends well. Is that it, Starsky?” The question was growled through clenched jaws and iced liberally with sarcasm.
“Hey,” Starsky repeated and squeezed Hutch’s arm, keeping up the pressure until Hutch finally turned his head and their eyes met. “I’m sorry, babe. You’re right, I didn’t think. I didn’t mean to scare you, Hutch, but it was important to me.”
The glacier melted slowly, the blue eyes warming first in understanding before the chiseled jaw and tightly pressed lips finally softened. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Starsky opened his mouth to promise and then hesitated. That was a pretty sweeping guarantee Hutch was asking for, one Starsky couldn’t possibly live up to for the rest of his life.
As if he had read Starsky’s mind, Hutch’s lips quirked in a resigned smile and he qualified his demand. “At least not until after you get a clean bill of health from the doctor.”
“Deal,” Starsky agreed, released Hutch’s arm, and collapsed back against the passenger seat. “Can we go home now, Hutch? I think I’m ready for a nap.”
*~*~
Hutch parked the car in front of Starsky’s apartment, cut the engine, and turned toward Starsky. A dead-to-the-world Starsky, who had gone out as if someone had flipped his switch about ten seconds after they left Darcy’s.
The morning had obviously been too much for Starsky, and though Hutch hated to wake him, he didn’t look any too comfortable, scrunched against the door with his left shoulder rolled protectively forward.
Hutch had finally let go of the last vestiges of his anger a few miles back and had to admit Starsky’s ‘prank’ had had one positive side effect. Suddenly, loving Starsky didn’t seem quite so foreign and overwhelming. The new intensity of his feelings, though just as strong, was beginning to blend with the love that had been true throughout all the years of their friendship. It seemed to be filling up holes inside Hutch, empty nooks and crannies in his soul Hutch hadn’t even realized were empty until suddenly they weren’t.
Sometime during that endless thirty minutes while he had searched frantically for a Starsky who remained elusive, Hutch had stopped fearing that loving Starsky, wanting him, had to destroy the life Hutch already had with him. He still wasn’t sure what, if anything, he wanted to do about this newfound love, but at least looking at Starsky now, seeing things Hutch had never noticed before like the ridiculously long eyelashes and the soft pucker of his lips as he slept, no longer triggered an immediate urge to run for the hills.
He felt no hesitation as he reached over to gently shake his partner awake, no panic as the blue eyes opened to regard him with tenderness and the soft puckered lips stretched out into a lazy smile.
“Home sweet home.” Hutch returned the smile, familiar affection washing over him as Starsky gazed around in sleepy confusion.
“Guess I fell asleep.” Starsky started to stretch, then winced, and shook his head. “Forgot.”
“Come on. Let’s get you upstairs.” Hutch collected the bags from the back seat before he opened the door for Starsky.
Starsky struggled a bit getting out of the car, then stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up at them as if he faced Mount Everest. “Can you manage?”
“Remind me next time to look for an apartment on the ground floor,” Starsky grumbled, but he started up the stairs nonetheless.
Hutch climbed behind him, staying close, prepared to drop any and all of the parcels they had risked life and limb for if it appeared Starsky needed help.
Starsky made it to the apartment door under his own steam, however, though his immediate collapse onto the couch wasn’t too promising.
“Why don’t you go lay down for a while? Finish your nap.” Hutch deposited their assorted packages, boxes, and bags onto the coffee table.
For a minute, it appeared Starsky might agree, but then he rallied, sitting up straight on the couch, determination finning up some of the tired sag of his features. “Uh-uh. Wrap first, then nap.”
“Starsky,” Hutch began to protest, but then cut himself off. He knew that stubborn mule expression well enough to save his breath and his energy for a fight he had some chance of winning.
It took them longer than usual, but finally all the parcels were wrapped, each tag neatly printed by Hutch, and every bow firmly stuck in place by Starsky. It was a familiar ritual, just like the shopping, that left Hutch feeling contented.
“Now you can nap, right?”
“Not yet.” Starsky gathered up a roll of paper, tape and ribbon and rose awkwardly from the couch. “I still have wrapping to do. And you, my friend, have a promise to keep.”
A promise to keep, indeed, Hutch thought as he went to Starsky’s closet and began hauling out the boxes of decorations. Considering how little effort and interest Hutch ever put into his own decorating, he just hoped he was up to the task.
*~*~
It took Starsky a frustrating thirty minutes to wrap Hutch’s presents and the final results weren’t going to be winning any prizes for neatness or originality. When he was done, he picked up both parcels and started for the door, then hesitated and retraced his steps. He put both parcels on the bed and stood staring at them as he uncharacteristically second guessed his plans.
Maybe it was a little too early in Hutch’s journey for Starsky to be handing him unexpected detours. Hutch certainly seemed more comfortable with him today, but there were times when Hutch camouflaged his feelings so well even Starsky couldn’t be certain what was going on in that blond head. Or in the tender heart that had already been battered a little too often.
Making a decision, Starsky picked up the smaller package and tucked it away under his t-shirts in his dresser drawer. For once in his life, he would be patient. He would see how tonight went before deciding whether it was time to give Hutch the hint.
“Hey, buddy. If you want this place decorated, you better get out here.”
Scooping up the larger parcel, the one containing the sheet music that was a perfectly acceptable present for a guy to give a friend, Starsky left the bedroom. He stopped dead in the doorway, looking around incredulously at the havoc Hutch had already created. “Damn, Hutch. Whadya do, set off a grenade in my closet?”
“Can I help it if you have more Christmas decorations than Macy’s and Darcy’s put together?”
“But you’re supposed to take the boxes out one at a time.” Starsky put down his parcel and started toward the closest scatter of boxes.
“Stop right there, mister.” Hutch appeared between Starsky and his objective. “I’m supposed to be decorating; you’re supposed to be resting. Frankly, buddy, you don’t look so good.” He took Starsky’s arm and led him to the couch and tried to nudge him down onto the cushion.
Starsky had to admit he probably felt worse than he looked. If he wanted to be able to go to Huggy’s party tonight with Hutch, he was going to have to conserve the energy he had left. Still, he resisted, not because he doubted Hutch’s decorating abilities, but because Hutch was touching him.
“Come on, Starsk. Be reasonable.” Hutch broke the contact to spread his hands in supplication. “I promise to do whatever you tell me.”
With the warmth of Hutch’s touch gone, Starsky no longer had any reason to resist. “This I gotta see,” he joked as he sat down and prepared to play supervisor.
*~*~
“No, Hutch. You have to use the electrical tape or the garland won’t hold. Scotch tape won’t keep it up there for even a week.”
With a mile and a half of red and white tinsel garland draped around his body like a glittering boa constrictor, Hutch wasn’t finding Starsky’s kibitzing particularly helpful.
“It’s Christmas Eve already, Starsky.” Hutch glanced over his shoulder to see that Starsky was once again sitting up on the couch instead of resting back as he was supposed to be doing. “And lay back down or I’m not hanging one more fuzzy reindeer,” he threatened, switching back to his original tract when Starsky obediently sank back against the pile of pillows. “It’s only a week until New Year’s Eve, and you always take everything down then, anyway. It only has to last a week this year.”
It was obvious the reminder wasn’t a welcome one by the mutinous expression that appeared on Starsky’s face.
“Unless you’re going to leave it up until the Ukrainian Christmas or maybe the Chinese New Year,” Hutch suggested, knowing Starsky wouldn’t agree. Hutch couldn’t remember the precise reason, but Starsky always insisted all the Christmas glitter and glitz be packed away in the closet on New Year’s Eve. They had been late for more than one party over the years because of that particular quirk.
“No way,” Starsky decided with grumbling reluctance. “You know everything has to be put away before the New Year.”
“Then scotch tape will do the job this year.” Hutch began the task of sticking the endless strand of garland to the walls. He hoped they were going to have enough tape. Starsky had used up almost an entire roll sequestered in the bedroom wrapping his present.
“Make sure you double tape it over the door, Hutch,” Starsky instructed when Hutch had almost made it to the doorframe. “If it falls down there, the whole thing will come down when we open the door.”
“Yes, master,” Hutch grumbled, but he flashed a smile over his shoulder to let Starsky know he didn’t really mind. After all, he was hardly an expert since his own nod toward Christmas decorating was to throw around a candle or two and tape up whatever cards he happened to receive.
Starsky’s superior expertise wasn’t the only reason for Hutch’s willingness to be directed. Hutch had promised Starsky he would take direction, that was true, but Hutch simply felt pretty content at the moment. Content to be doing something for Starsky that meant so much to him, and content with the state of his own feelings. They no longer battered at him, demanding some sort of action, but seemed content to have been acknowledged. He was under no delusion this contented status quo would last, but he was willing to simply enjoy it minute to minute.
Miraculously, Hutch came to the end of the garland at the same time that the roll of scotch tape gave its all for the cause. He tossed the empty dispenser into a nearby cardboard box, before moving to the Papasan chair where a single unopened box remained. He picked it up and carried it to Starsky.
“Just the star for the top of the tree, then I think we’re all done.” Hutch offered the box to his friend. “Are you up to doing it, or do you want me to put it on?”
“Thanks, Hutch, but I’ll do it,” Starsky said, rising from the couch and accepting the box.
“Then I’ll just get all of these boxes back in the closet.” Hutch began fitting the empty boxes into the crate they had come from.
The decorating had taken hours, and Hutch wondered if it was really worth the effort for the short time it would all be up. Wondered right up to the moment he put the last box in the crate and looked up to check how Starsky was faring with his task.
Starsky wasn’t at the tree, but the six-sided Star of David that was Starsky’s somewhat incongruous tree topper, was safely in place. Starsky himself was at the door, his eyes sweeping his transformed abode, the expression on his face so blissfully content Hutch knew the hours would have been well spent even if the decorations had been coming down again ten minutes from now.
“It’s perfect,” Starsky breathed reverently.
Wanting to see what his partner saw, Hutch moved to stand beside Starsky, doing his own scan. It still looked a lot like an explosion in Santa’s workshop to him, but by adjusting his perspective just a little, he thought he could see some of the beauty Starsky obviously found.
“Thanks, Hutch,” Starsky said, the tone of his voice bringing Hutch’s gaze around to him to find the same joyful gratitude in the blue eyes that was in the husky voice. “This means a lot to me.”
It was one of the most perfect moments of communication Hutch could ever remember them sharing, and yet something was missing. It took Hutch a moment, however, to realize what was lacking. Starsky wasn’t touching him. They were standing close enough to touch, but Starsky didn’t reach out. And Hutch wanted that touch. Wanted it so badly he could feel the warmth of Starsky’s hand, even though he could see that hand tucked into the pocket of his jeans.
After the hours that had been blissfully free of confusion, when he had assumed he was finding some comfort with his new feelings for Starsky, Hutch felt ambushed, overwhelmed by the strength of his desire. He couldn’t speak, but neither could he look away. His damned cock was even getting hard, taking its cue from his pounding heart instead of his panicked brain.
The moment held and held, Hutch certain his eyes must be telegraphing his feelings directly into Starsky’s brain, while Starsky… Hutch wasn’t sure how to interpret the expression on Starsky’s face. It looked like expectation, but for one of the few times in their long friendship, Hutch couldn’t be sure what Starsky was feeling. And that scared him more than the strength of his feelings. Unable to hold the blue gaze any longer, Hutch looked away, frantically searching for something to say that wouldn’t sound like the babblings of a deranged idiot.
It was Starsky who broke the spell, glancing at his watch and giving a startled exclamation. “It’s almost seven o’clock. Aren’t we supposed to be at Huggy’s by eight?”
The question performed the miracle of releasing Hutch from his paralysis and gave him a perfectly logical reason to bolt like a terrified rabbit. “Damn, yes. I better get moving.” He sprinted across the room, grabbed up the crate and stuffed it in the closet. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he promised, found his jacket and, through sheer will alone, did not slam the door behind him.
In his panicked rush, Hutch tripped on the third stair, an instinctive grab for the rail the only thing that saved him from a broken neck. The near accident forced him to halt his headlong flight and take one step at a time.
“I’m not running away,” Hutch muttered the lie to himself. Not much, he wasn’t. He was racing, if no longer physically then mentally. Although no longer certain exactly what he was running to or from, he was running, all right.
But he wasn’t running from Starsky. The realization stopped Hutch just two steps short of the bottom of the stairs and temporary escape. He had no reason, no logic, but the one thing he didn’t fear was how Starsky would have reacted if Hutch’s panic had turned into insanity instead of flight and he had confessed his love to his friend. It was crazy, but Hutch was absolutely certain Starsky wouldn’t have freaked out. Might, in fact, have….
“Are you all right, young man?”
All right or totally insane? Hutch wasn’t sure, but the concerned inquiry gave him an excuse to abandon his own stunning thoughts. “I beg your pardon,” he said. finding a polite smile for the woman who stood at the bottom of the stairs. Mrs. Walkow, his mind supplied the name of Starsky’s elderly neighbor.
“You look like you’ve forgotten something important, but can’t remember what,” Mrs. Walkow explained. “Lord knows, I do that myself all the time.”
“No, ma’am. I haven’t forgotten anything. But thank you for asking.” Hutch belatedly remembered his manners. “Merry Christmas,” he added as he moved past her.
Before Hutch reached his car, he knew his internal war was over. Appropriately, in the season of peace and brotherly love, Hutch had found his place of peace with his new love for his brother.
*~*~
Starsky wasn’t one hundred percent certain Hutch was going to return. After all, there had really been no good reason for Hutch to leave. He had plenty of clothes suitable for one of Huggy’s parties in Starsky’s closet. Starsky knew why Hutch had bolted. It had been written all over his face, and in the crotch of his jeans.
Just in case Hutch did return, Starsky changed his clothes, choosing jeans and a white, button up shirt for convenience sake. Also for convenience, he attacked his five o’clock shadow with an electric razor. There was just too much chance, even with a safety razor, he might cut his own throat right-handed.
The simple preparations took longer than they normally would, but Hutch hadn’t returned by the time Starsky was ready to go. He scooped up his sling, that had become untied when he took it off and sat down on the couch to wait. And wonder.
His left hand wasn’t completely useless, but Sibley had warned him not to overuse it. Doctor’s orders would be a good enough excuse for Starsky to leave the sling for Hutch. Helping him with it would mean Hutch would have to touch him, and Starsky wanted Hutch to touch him. A lot. Everywhere. Anywhere.
“To push or not to push, that is the question.” Starsky smoothed the square of material out on his lap. Should he do it himself or…?
At that moment, Starsky heard footsteps outside his door and knew it had to be Hutch. Deciding he would wait to see what state of mind Hutch was in before he chose whether to push or back off, Starsky tossed the sling onto the table.
*~*~
Hutch let himself in without knocking, but stopped short a few steps inside the door when he saw Starsky sitting on the couch. “Hi. Sorry I took so long.” His eyes ran over Starsky, then quickly returned to his face. “You’re ready? I guess we better go. We’re already late.”
Starsky returned the appraisal Hutch had given him, noting with approval the turtleneck, cords, and jacket Hutch had chosen. Elegant, classy, and yet casual enough, the dark, high neck setting off Hutch’s blond good looks. Setting off a bucketful of fireworks in Starsky’s belly as well. Pushing suddenly became a whole lot more attractive option than backing off.
“There’s no such thing as late for one of Huggy’s parties.” Starsky curled his fingers into a fist against the temptation to just get up, walk over to Hutch, and discover for himself if the freshly washed hair was as soft as it looked.
“Yeah. They always start two hours before they’re supposed to, and everybody’s three sheets to the wind before we get there.” Hutch’s lips were forming inanities that they both already knew, but his eyes were scanning Starsky again. And Hutch wasn’t trying to be coy about it anymore. There was a calm certainty in every movement as he came to stand over Starsky. “Do you need help with this?”
Starsky looked at the sling Hutch had picked up from the table and then into Hutch’s face again. He wondered if Hutch realized what he was asking. If the mind behind the inquiring expression had thought the offer through to its possible conclusion. If, suddenly, it was no longer Starsky’s decision whether to push.
“Yeah. Damn thing undid itself when I took it off to change.” Starsky noted Hutch backed off only a single step, giving Starsky the bare minimum of space needed to stand up. The blue eyes were watching him intently, and Starsky realized, yes, most certainly, Hutch was acting deliberately.
Starsky could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he hadn’t willingly followed Hutch’s lead. This was definitely not one of those times. “I was wondering how I was going to get it back on.” He let his voice drop into bedroom-husky invitation. “Thought maybe you wouldn’t mind helping me.”
“You know I’m always ready to help you, Starsk.” Hutch’s voice held the same soft, husky invitation. His fingers had already folded the sling into a triangle and he shuffled even closer, draping the material over Starsky’s chest. “All you have to do is ask.”
“I have to ask?” Starsky murmured, almost moaning aloud when he felt the brush of Hutch’s fingers at the back of his neck. The warm caress of skin on skin and the heady aroma of Hutch were invading his senses. His head spun and he leaned closer, intoxicated by finally, at long last, being where he had wanted to be for so many months. Close to Hutch, within the embrace of Hutch’s arms. Caressed by Hutch’s fingers.
Starsky hadn’t realized he had closed his eyes until he felt Hutch move away from him slightly. His eyes flew open, his mouth ready to protest the retreat, only to find himself caught and held by Hutch’s eyes. He hardly felt the twinge in his back as Hutch gently settled his arm in the sling. But he felt the hand that came to rest on his chest and knew by the momentary surprise that appeared on Hutch’s face, Hutch could feel the way his heart hammered against his breastbone.
“Starsk?”
There were a million questions in the voice that whispered his name, but there was also an answer. The only answer Starsky needed right now. He gave his own answer in the tip of his chin, let his lips part in anticipation as, ever so slowly, Hutch came closer and closer. Starsky closed his eyes, feeling the brush of Hutch’s warm, moist breath on his face just before….
Brrrriiiiinnnnng
Both of their bodies jerked, an instinctive spasm parting them as the strident ring of the telephone shattered the charged silence. They stared at each other, both of them too stunned to move until a second ring freed them.
“Damn it!” The curse was a frustrated growl as Hutch stalked away and snatched the receiver off the wall. “What?”
Even from where he stood in the living room, Starsky could hear the revelry coming from the other end of the line.
“No, Huggy, it’s Hutch.” There was still a healthy dose of frustration in Hutch’s voice as he spoke into the phone, but at least he wasn’t growling anymore. He listened for a moment, then covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “He wants to know if we’re still coming.”
Starsky wanted to come, all right, but not down to any damned party at Huggy’s. He started to shake his head, but Hutch signaled him to wait.
“What? Uhm. No, no. He’s okay. Just a minute.” Hutch covered the mouthpiece again. “He says if you’re not up to going there, he’ll bring the party here.”
There was resignation in Hutch’s eyes now, all the promises and possibilities tucked away for, Starsky hoped, another time. Because they were stuck now and they both knew it. No matter what excuse they might come up with, they knew their persistent, and probably intoxicated, friend would find a way around it.
Accepting the inevitable, reluctantly Starsky gave a one-shouldered shrug and bent to pick up his jacket from the arm of the couch.
“That’s all right, Huggy. We’re on our way.” Hutch slammed the phone down onto the receiver and stalked back to Starsky. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that we have to go, or sorry that we didn’t go sooner?” If he didn’t get the answer he needed, Starsky was ready, Huggy or no Huggy, to dig in his heels. He wasn’t walking out that door until he heard from Hutch whether all his hopes and dreams for their future would be leaving with them forever.
Hutch moved closer, almost as close as he had been when the damned telephone had rung. He plucked Starsky’s jacket from his hand and swung it around his back, both of his hands settling on Starsky’s shoulders along with the leather. “We don’t have to stay for long. Promise.”
As always, Hutch’s word was good enough for Starsky.
*~*~
Huggy’s place was crowded with familiar and not-so-familiar faces when Hutch pushed open the door and let Starsky precede him into the bar. It wasn’t so crowded, however, that Huggy didn’t notice them immediately. With a light touch to Starsky’s arm, Hutch held them near the door while Huggy, decked out in his plush Santa suit, pushed his way through the crush to greet them.
“I usually make cops and such use the back door, but since it’s Christmas, I guess I can make an exception for you two. Merry Christmas.” Huggy had to shout to be heard above Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer blasting from two huge speakers that sat at either end of the bar.
“Merry Christmas to you, too, Hug.” Starsky also had to shout to be heard.
Although Huggy wasn’t Hutch’s favorite person at the moment, he added his Christmas wishes to Starsky’s. It wasn’t Huggy’s fault his timing stunk tonight. Hutch reached out and patted the skinny proprietor’s bulging belly. “Looks like you better lay off the eggnog, my friend, or you’ll be bursting Santa’s britches.”
“Don’t knock it, my man. That honky dude has one good con goin’. Every lovely lady here can’t wait to sit on Santa’s lap. Why shouldn’t a brother get in on the action?”
“That’s what the ERA is all about.” Starsky gave Santa Huggy a lecherous wink. “Every little boy should have the right to grow up to be a dirty old man.” This might not be where he wanted to be at the moment, but Hutch could still enjoy tag-team teasing with Starsky.
“Every chance he gets.” Huggy leaned closer to Starsky. “You wanna play Santa’s helper tonight, Curly?”
Starsky pointed at his sling and shook his head. “Sidelined this year,” he said to Huggy, but his eyes were telling Hutch a different story.
Hutch read that story chapter and verse and wondered just how short they could make their appearance. They had only been here a few minutes, much too soon to make their excuses, but not soon enough for Hutch. He could barely contain his impatience, his body tingling with anticipation at the thought of soon being alone with Starsky again and picking up where they had left off. If he had had any lingering doubts when he returned to Starsky’s, their interrupted moment had sent them packing. Starsky was ready to be kissed, and Hutch was more than ready to do the kissing.
“Hutch? Santa Huggy Bear calling Hutch.”
Hutch landed back in the present with a thump. He forced himself to stop staring into Starsky’s eyes and give Huggy his attention. “Uh, sorry. What did you say?”
“I said there’s somebody here wants to have words with you.” Without waiting for a reaction, Huggy grabbed Hutch by the arm and started towing him deeper into the bar.
Hutch tried to hang back for the dual reasons of protecting Starsky from the careless crush of inebriated partiers and keeping them close to an escape route. But Huggy was relentless, shouldering a path through the throng that obligingly opened for them, then closed behind Starsky, who was bringing up the rear.
“Now, where’d they go?” Huggy had stopped in the middle of the room and was standing on his toes, the white puff on the end of his Santa hat flying as he searched the crowd.
Hutch did his own reconnaissance, his heart dropping when he spotted two familiar falls of long blonde hair. Cathy and Cindy. They were a couple of sisters he and Starsky had been dating casually over the past few months. Hutch instinctively backed up a step and bumped into Starsky. He looked over his shoulder, saw Starsky had seen the women as well, and some of his panic receded. Starsky didn’t look any happier about the ladies’ presence than Hutch felt.
“Uh-uh. No way.” Starsky mouthed his opinion to Hutch.
Retreat was the only plan of action Hutch could think of, but before he could implement it, Huggy gave an exclamation of discovery and began towing Hutch through the crowd again.
Hutch resisted until he realized Huggy was veering away from the women. Whoever Huggy’s mystery someone was, they had to be a better option than becoming entangled with women who, though they didn’t know it yet, were yesterday’s news.
“There they are! Sammy! I told you they were gonna show.” Huggy had finally spotted his elusive quarry and was shouting and waving his free arm to attract the attention of a couple standing near the back exit.
A familiar couple. The better option that wasn’t all that much better. The worn-shoe face that lit up at the sight of them plunged Hutch, for a moment, back into the middle of one of the worst waking nightmares of his life. His heart started to pound in his chest, adrenaline flooding his body, and he instinctively began to back up.
The past retreated abruptly when Hutch rammed into Starsky and he heard a grunt of pained surprise. He turned in time to steady his partner’s uncertain balance.
“Hutch?” Starsky obviously didn’t know what was happening, but there was alarm on his face, an instinctive reaction to Hutch’s aura.
Hutch was able to give Starsky a reassuring smile. “S’Okay.” His panic was fading, but it was leaving behind a heightened feeling of protectiveness. He sidled in behind Starsky, his hand settling at the small of Starsky’s back as he shepherded him forward. “Just a couple of ghosts of Christmas present I wasn’t expecting to see here.”
“Tiny Tim?” Starsky asked, allowing Hutch to lead him through the crowd.
“Not exactly,” Hutch mumbled as they reached Huggy and his two surprise guests. Hutch held out his hand to the man. “Sammy. I didn’t expect to see you here. How are you?”
“Alive and kickin’, thanks to you, Detective Hutchinson,” Sammy Grovner said, pumping Hutch’s hand with enthusiasm.
“Please, call me Hutch.” Hutch rescued his hand from Grovner and offered it to the tall, buxom woman who stood beside him. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I ever knew your name.”
“I guess we were all kind of busy for formal introductions. I’m Robin Morton.” The woman accepted Hutch’s handshake, but her curious gaze had settled on Starsky. “You must be the partner in the office.”
“Uh, yes, this is my partner, Dave Starsky.” Hutch turned slightly toward Starsky. “This is Sammy and Robin. They were, uhm, at the restaurant the other night,” he explained, watching Starsky’s face for reaction, ready to excuse them if the reminder hit Starsky hard.
“If it wasn’t for your partner, we’d all be pushing up daisies,” Grovner said with his usual tact, offering his hand to Starsky. “He’s a real hero.”
“So his publicity agent says,” Starsky joked.
The heat that rushed into Hutch’s face had little to do with Grovner’s comment. It was the look in Starsky’s eyes that made Hutch blush. Full of admiration, those blue eyes told him he was Starsky’s hero and always would be.
Although there was way too much noise in the crowded bar to say silence fell, an awkward nothing-to-say bubble closed around the small group after the introductions.
Hutch groped through the memories he would have preferred to have kept locked away and came up with a snippet of overheard conversation. “I thought you two were heading for Las Vegas. Sammy’s a comic,” he added for Starsky’s benefit.
“We are. Or we will be. Some big spender broke the bank, and the new owners closed to renovate.” Grovner’s chest puffed out with pride. “We’re going to be one of the acts at the grand re-opening.”
“After we get married,” Robin said, and then slipped her arm through Grovner’s.
Hutch’s surprised congratulations were interrupted by a shout from behind them. The angry voice rose above the clamor of conversations and the blare of music, sending a ripple of reaction through the crowd. Instinctively, Hutch spun on his heel, placing himself between his group and the unknown threat.
The crowd was retreating away from the brewing fight, a surging tide of bodies trying to escape the coming storm. In the split second before the tide reached them, Hutch realized that Starsky wasn’t safely behind him. Acting on the same instincts that had goaded Hutch, Starsky had fallen in shoulder to shoulder with him.
“Starsky! Get back!” Hutch shouted, but he knew it was already too late.
The wave of bodies hit them. The force only staggered Hutch, but it knocked Starsky off his feet. Hutch saw him go down, left arm thrown out instinctively to break his fall, and heard his partner’s bellow of pain as he hit the floor. Robin’s shrill scream of terror cut through the tumult and a stunning silence fell.
Hutch hesitated for only a second, then started pushing at the bodies between him and Starsky. He fell to his knees beside the fetal curl of Starsky’s body. He slid his hand up the back of Starsky’s jacket, deja vu cramping his belly as he felt the liquid heat of blood.
“Huggy, call an ambulance!”
“No ambulance.” Starsky’s face was as white as his shirt and he spoke through clenched teeth. “Take ’em a week to get here tonight.”
Hutch opened his mouth to argue, then snapped it closed. Starsky was right. Christmas Eve was no time to call an ambulance. Thank God he had a siren of his own.
*~*~
“All right. You can sit back now.” Dr. Sibley stripped off her bloody gloves and dropped them amid the wrappers of the supplies she had used to patch Starsky’s back. “Is this your idea of being careful?”
Starsky didn’t answer. He was sunk so deeply into depression even the painful application of the butterfly bandages had barely registered.
It was left up to Hutch to fill the doctor in on the details of the circumstances that had her called into the Emergency at Memorial to tend a patient instead of spending Christmas Eve with her family.
Sibley glared at Starsky, but her expression softened after a moment or two. “I hope the party was worth it.”
Nothing was worth the price Starsky was paying now, especially a party he hadn’t even wanted to go to. If only he had stayed home with Hutch. What if they had taken the chance Huggy might have shown up and interrupted them? It wasn’t the first time in his life Starsky had realized how terrible a word if could be, but it was certainly one of the most cruel.
“What do you mean?” Hutch asked anxiously. “It was just a couple of tom stitches, right?”
“My arm’s dead.” Starsky forced himself to deliver the bad news before Sibley could, but it was harder to look at Hutch and see the horrified realization on his face. “Sorry, buddy, but it looks like you wasted your money.”
“But…” Hutch began to object then hesitated, his face becoming grim as, apparently, he also began to realize the cost of if “But you can do something? Operate again?”
Sibley shook her head. “It won’t do any good to further traumatize the nerves with more surgery. There is a possibility the paralysis isn’t permanent, but we won’t know that until the swelling subsides.” She lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ve done all I can do. Now we have to wait and let Mother Nature do her part.”
“I can wait at home as well as I can here, can’t I, Doc?” Starsky asked hopefully. He had to get out of this little room. Had to get away from the ghostly spirits of if that crowded in on him. Mostly, however, he had to get away from Hutch, who would hover and reassure while his eyes tried to tell Starsky it didn’t have to matter. That they could face the spectre of permanent handicap together and tell it to piss off.
“But…”
“I don’t see why not,” Sibley cut across Hutch’s protest. “At least, I don’t see why not as long as you aren’t planning on attending any more parties.”
“No more parties,” Starsky promised, evading Hutch’s helping hands as he struggled awkwardly off the table. He warned his helpful partner off with a glare as he picked up his shirt and jacket. The hurt on Hutch’s face cut into him, but Starsky was too full of his own pain to quit acting like an ass and accept the help Hutch needed to give.
“I’ll see you in my office the day after tomorrow,” Sibley said before she left.
Starsky started to follow, but Hutch’s hand on his arm held him back. Starsky shook free of the gentle grip. “Lemme go, Hutch.”
“There’s no sense catching pneumonia on top of everything else.” Hutch plucked the shirt and jacket out of Starsky’s hands. “Please, babe, be reasonable.”
Starsky didn’t want to be reasonable. He wanted to rant and rave against a miserable fate that would offer him every damned thing he wanted one minute and snatch it away the next. Hold it just out of his reach in the love that still lived in Hutch’s eyes. But arguing meant staring at that unattainable prize that much longer, so Starsky let Hutch dress him, steeling himself against the gentleness of his friend’s touch.
Hutch tried to make conversation on the drive from Memorial to Starsky’s apartment. Starsky replied with grunts and monosyllables, his eyes firmly focused on the passing streets, until Hutch finally took the hint and fell silent.
“I’ll see you later,” Starsky said as soon as Hutch pulled the car up to the curb in front of his place. He fumbled for the door handle.
“Starsky.” Hutch’s voice was both calm and reasonable, demanding once again Starsky be reasonable.
“You’re on shift in the morning. Go home and get some sleep.” Starsky yanked on the handle, but the door didn’t budge. “What’s wrong with this hunk of—?”
“It’s locked,” Hutch said in that same tone that was holding a match to the gasoline of Starsky’s temper. “Wait a minute and I’ll…”
Seeing Hutch reach for the keys in the ignition plucked hard on the thin thread of control Starsky still held on his emotions. “Goddamnit, Hutch, would you just shut the fu—” Somehow, Starsky regained control of his runaway tongue. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly while the echoing twang of anger subsided inside him. “Listen, I’m sorry, okay. But I just want to be alone right now. Just go home, Hutch. Please.”
Starsky didn’t have to look to know how badly Hutch wanted to argue. He could feel it emanating across the few inches of car seat between them. He could sympathize. If their positions were reversed, he wouldn’t be anxious to let Hutch wallow in his own misery. But he couldn’t go up the steps with Hutch now and open the door on the place where all his hopes and dreams had come so close to becoming their reality. Not tonight.
“See you tomorrow?” The diffidence of the question tore at Starsky’s aching heart.
“Yeah, sure. Come by after shift.” By then, Starsky hoped he would have found a way to accept the unacceptable. Or maybe Santa Claus would leave him a miracle under his tree.
”I’ll bring Chinese. And your present. We can watch Miracle, ah, It’s a Wonderful, uhm, something on TV.”
“Sure.” The handle that wouldn’t budge for desperation gave in easily enough to despair. The car door swung open and Starsky climbed out onto the sidewalk.
“See you tomorrow.”
Starsky didn’t answer. He walked to the stairs and forced himself to climb them steadily under Hutch’s watchful eye, knowing the first sign of weakness or the slightest hesitation would have Hutch out of the car and up the stairs behind him.
Inside the apartment, Starsky didn’t reach for the light right away. He sagged back against the door, wishing he could just leave the lights off, fumble his way through the dark, and fall into bed. But he knew Hutch would be watching for that light, waiting for the small reassurance Starsky was safe. He forced himself to reach out and flip the switch.
The glitter of the decorations Hutch had put up for him stabbed at Starsky’s eyes. They looked tawdry now, their festive shine tarnished. The same tarnish that now blackened all the shining promises and possibilities of only a few hours ago.
Just then, a piece of scotch tape let go and the garland above the door sagged, falling on Starsky’s head. Starsky reached up to brush it away, but when his hand closed over it, the thin thread of his emotional control finally snapped and he yanked, ripping the long strand of garland off the walls. Broken glass tinkled as decorations hit the floor and the sound of wanton destruction fed the storm inside him. For the next few minutes, Starsky let it rage while he ripped and tore, yanked and heaved at the Christmas cheer around him.
When the last shiny bobble had been stamped to smithereens under his feet, Starsky stood amid the wreckage, panting. After a minute, he raised his head, caught sight of himself in the mirror.
“Merry Christmas, you stupid bastard,” he told his disheveled reflection. “Now you gotta clean it all up.”
In the morning.
Dangling at the very end of his emotional rope, Starsky grabbed the bottle of pain pills and staggered to his bed.
*~*~
Starsky didn’t wake up from his painkiller-induced sleep to find Santa Claus had delivered the Christmas miracle he needed so badly. His arm was still numb and useless. Starsky was tempted to swallow a few more pills and sink back into oblivion, but he had work to do. His temper tantrum of the night before had drained the frustrated rage out of him; it had also left him with one hell of a mess to clean up before Hutch arrived.
He was just dumping the last of the broken decorations into the trash when the telephone rang. Assuming it must be Hutch, Starsky closed the lid on the evidence of his folly and hurried to answer.
“Merry Christmas, my man. Was Santa good to you?”
Starsky looked at his watch. “Merry Christmas, Huggy. What are you doing out of bed? It isn’t even noon yet.”
“It’s Christmas, Starsky.” Huggy sounded offended by the implication that he might waste the holiday. “I got places to go and peoples to see, and one of those peoples is you. I’m just makin’ sure you’re decent.”
Starsky wasn’t in the mood for company. “I wouldn’t be a very good host today.”
“Never fear, the Bear will come prepared. Be there soon.”
Starsky stared at the dead receiver, then hung it back on the wall with a sigh. Huggy was a good friend, but Starsky could see Hutch’s fine hand in this. He couldn’t be here to make sure Starsky didn’t sink too deep in his misery, so he had recruited Huggy to babysit.
Resigned, Starsky hurried to put away the few boxes of decorations that had survived last night’s destruction and change out of the clothes he had slept in before his uninvited company arrived.
As promised, Huggy arrived prepared, bringing a sack full of aromatic goodies to tempt Starsky’s appetite. He also brought reinforcements.
“Sammy Grovner,” the comic introduced himself, offering his hand. “We met last night.”
“Uh, yeah. I remember.” Starsky took his hand back and smiled at Grovner’s companion. “Robin, isn’t it?”
“Come on, Starsky. Quit yapping and get over here and eat before the food gets cold.” Huggy had already made himself at home, emptying the cartons and boxes out of the bags he had brought onto the coffee table. He disappeared into the kitchen as Starsky closed the door, returning with plates and cutlery.
“Dig in everyone.” Huggy handed out the plates but didn’t give one to Starsky. “Siddown. I know by now what you like.”
In a few minutes, plates were filled and the only sounds in the room were the clicks of forks to plate. Even Starsky, who hadn’t thought he was hungry, discovered his stomach had other ideas when Huggy plunked a plate piled high with fried chicken and potato salad in his lap.
“So, what did the doctor say?” Huggy asked after the edge had been taken off his hunger.
Starsky set his plate aside, his appetite effectively curbed by the question. “What do doctors ever say? Just a bunch of medical mumbo jumbo.”
Huggy cocked his head to the side, his expression questioning the vague report, but when Starsky offered nothing more, he dropped the subject.
Which left a little uncomfortable dead air now that they weren’t all intent on stuffing their faces.
Starsky scrambled around for some polite conversation. Small talk wasn’t really his strong suit, but neither was sitting around watching other people eat. “Uh, I know how you and Hutch met,” he said to Sammy. “But what about you and Huggy?”
It was Huggy who answered. “Me and Sammy? We go way back.”
“Yeah. All the way back to last Tuesday.”
Starsky laughed politely at Sammy’s weak joke. “Seriously, we’ve been friends a long time,” Huggy said.
Grover’s worn face became mournful as he shook his head. “All this time and he still can’t tell a decent joke.”
“Hey, if you think my jokes are bad, you ought to hear this guy,” Huggy said, pointing at Starsky. “He couldn’t get a laugh at a hyena convention.”
“I’m not that bad,” Starsky protested. “Hutch laughs at my jokes.”
“Only because you might let the bad guys shoot him if he didn’t.” Huggy’s face suddenly lit up with an expression that forewarned of a bright idea suggestion. “You should let Sammy give you some lessons. What do you say, Sammy?”
Starsky was getting the picture now. It wasn’t surprising Hutch would shanghai Huggy into keeping an eye on his wounded partner, but Starsky hadn’t been able to figure out why Huggy would have brought two virtual strangers along. Whether it had been Hutch’s idea or Huggy’s, the plan was obvious now. Give the patient a little distraction. Keep his mind off his troubles and maybe the troubles wouldn’t seem quite so monumental.
“I don’t have anything to do until the casino in Vegas re-opens.”
Under other circumstances, Starsky wouldn’t have minded a chance to pick Sammy’s brain. It might have been fun to pilfer a few good jokes to spring on Hutch. But he wasn’t feeling very funny right now.
“Why not, Starsky? At least you wouldn’t be bored out of your gourd waiting for Hutch to get off work. Or is he going to take some time off?”
About to issue a polite “thanks, but no thanks,” Starsky backtracked to think it through. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. Until he knew whether he would get back the use of his arm, a little distraction might come in handy. Sitting around, waiting for Hutch to show up, or worse, spending hours on end with Hutch, was a very bad idea. Starsky wanted to be strong. Wanted to believe he wouldn’t be tempted to tie Hutch to him. But Hutch was one hell of a temptation, and Starsky didn’t trust himself to resist it.
“What do you say, Starsky?”
“I say… Knock, knock.”
*~*~
Hutch was climbing the stairs at Starsky’s by five o’clock on Christmas Day, a Chinese takeout bag under one arm and Starsky’s present under the other. To say he was anxious to see Starsky was one of those understatements that belonged in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not book of records.
It had been one very long day. He was concerned, of course, for the setback in Starsky’s recovery, but he knew his friend’s life wasn’t in any danger. Hutch’s wool-gathering today had ventured onto less well-worn paths, and now that he knew Starsky was willing to travel those paths with him, he was eager to turn fantasy into reality.
When he opened the door and saw Starsky waiting for him, Hutch wished he had the nerve to just walk over and give him a hello kiss. If their lips had actually met the night before, he might have been able to pull it off with a little nonchalance. But their lips hadn’t met, and Hutch knew he couldn’t allow their first kiss to be a casual hello peck.
Instead, he moved to where Starsky sat on the couch and dumped the takeout bag on the coffee table just as he would any other night they happened to decide to chow down at Starsky’s after a long shift. “There you are, your Christmas feast. Moo goo gai pan and all the trimmings.”
Starsky leaned forward and peaked into the bag. “Melly Clistmas to you, too, Mistah Hutch.”
Hutch laughed at the atrocious accent and held up Starsky’s gift. “You have to wait for this. I haven’t eaten all day and I want…” Hutch forgot what he was saying as he turned away from Starsky to put the present under the tree. “Hey! Where’s the Christmas tree?” Now that he had noticed the missing tree, he also realized there were no decorations at all. Not even a stray strand of tinsel on the carpet. The only trace of Christmas that remained in the apartment was the stack of wrapped presents in the corner where, just yesterday, Hutch had put up the tree. “What happened?”
“I told you scotch tape wouldn’t cut it.” Starsky pushed up off the couch. “I’ll get the plates.”
“But… but…” Hutch realized he was sputtering and shut his mouth until his brain caught up. He set his present on top of the small pile of gifts and returned to the couch in time to accept the plate and fork Starsky held out to him. “Couldn’t you have just stuck it back up?”
“I’m out of tape.” The tone of Starsky’s voice hung a “closed until further notice” sign on the subject.
Neither one of them always respected those kind of boundaries. They knew each other too well. But Hutch had bigger fish to fry tonight than why Starsky had suddenly grown an aversion to Christmas glitz. As he watched Starsky digging into the bag one-handed, his left arm motionless in the sling, Hutch suspected these two fish might be on the same hook in any case.
“How’s your arm?” Hutch asked, casually catching the empty bag as Starsky shook the last container free. He dumped the little packets of soy sauce on the table and tossed the bag on the chair.
“The doc said we gotta be patient, Hutch,” Starsky reminded him, then lifted an eyebrow. “For a guy who was bitching how hungry he is, you’re letting a lot of good food go cold.”
It was another “keep off the grass” sign, but this one, posted behind a blind of humor, was harder for Hutch to penetrate. “But are you—”
“Patience, patience,” Starsky counseled as he did when Hutch reached the end of his tether with a stakeout that wasn’t producing results. He picked up a box of chicken balls and shoved them toward Hutch. “Here, eat. Maybe you’ll feel better.”
Starsky had neatly turned the tables on Hutch, and again Hutch wondered if he should just leave it alone for now. Sometimes, Starsky in an emotional crisis needed to be pushed and poked and prodded, but sometimes the best friend Hutch could be to Starsky was one who stood by him but kept his big mouth shut.
Only Hutch had thought they had stepped beyond friends last night. Even beyond the privileged position of best friend that they had held in each other’s lives up to now. No, he knew they had. They might not have sealed the deal with a kiss, but they had made declarations and promises by the boatload, nonetheless.
The way Starsky was acting tonight, those promises were obviously written on the wind and that wind didn’t seem to be blowing fair skies Hutch’s way anymore. For one of the first. times in his life, Hutch’s courage failed him. He didn’t have the nerve to just ask Starsky straight out if what he suspected was true.
The suspicion was enough to kill his appetite, however, and Hutch put his still-loaded plate on the table. Even the deep-fried smell was turning his stomach.
“Is there something wrong with the food?” Starsky asked.
“No. I, uh, just need a drink to wash it down.” Hutch retreated to the kitchen where he took his time getting a beer out of the icebox. “Do you want one, too?”
“Booze and pills don’t mix,” Starsky reminded him.
It was a sign of how rattled Hutch was that he could forget Starsky was still taking pain medication. He got a soda for Starsky and returned to the living room.
Starsky put down his plate and took the soda. After he drank, however, he didn’t pick up the plate again, apparently as uninterested in the meal as Hutch was.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Hutch caught the “either” before it could slip out.
“Huggy came by this afternoon and filled me up with fried chicken,” Starsky explained his lack of appetite. He looked up at Hutch through his lashes and smiled. “As if you didn’t know.”
Hutch barely reacted to being caught out because all of his tentative conclusions had just been thrown in the dumpster by the expression on Starsky’s face. This was the face of the man Hutch had almost kissed last night, invitation in eyes and lips that had Hutch leaning forward to accept it before he had fully realized the change.
Until it changed again. Starsky’s face didn’t close up, but the invitation disappeared, replaced by a silent inquiry that wondered what in the world Hutch was up to.
Hutch was up to about as confused as he ever had been in his life. He had dated women who had played the sultry invitation/coy evasion game. Dated them once. He had no use for women who blew hot one minute and cold the next. But this wasn’t some woman he had just barely met, this was Starsky. Hutch knew Starsky wasn’t as changeable as the weather unless there was a damned good reason.
Like the prospect of spending the rest of his life crippled.
Hutch wanted to slap himself for being so thick. And Starsky for thinking it mattered. “Starsk—”
“So, I guess if neither one of us is going to eat, we might as well open presents.” Starsky was off the couch before Hutch could stop him. He returned and dropped a parcel in Hutch’s lap and sat down with the one Hutch had brought. “This is mine, right? It has to be since it’s the only one without a name tag. How do you tell your presents apart if you don’t use name tags?”
Hutch knew exactly what Starsky was doing with his sudden bustling and chatter, but the familiar question distracted him nonetheless.
“I don’t have any other presents at my place.” Hutch gave the same answer to the same question Starsky asked every year. “You always keep everything for everyone else here because Christmas presents are supposed to be under a Christmas tree and I don’t have one.”
“Oh, yeah.” Starsky tucked one end of his present against his stomach and grabbed a corner of the wrapping paper. “Me first?”
Hutch would have liked to say no, to force Starsky to talk first and open presents later, but he didn’t have the heart. Starsky loved presents. “Okay. You first.”
Starsky might never hold a gun again, but being one handed was never going to stop him from ripping into a present. In his usual enthusiastic manner, he had the paper off and the box open in record time. “Ah, Hutch. You did get it for me,” he crowed as he lifted the midnight blue sweater out of the box.
“Don’t I always get you what you ask for?” Hutch had been wishing earlier he had bought something more personal, something that would have spoken from his heart, but he certainly couldn’t have asked for a better reaction.
“Yeah, you always do.” Starsky was almost whispering, his eyes on his gift, the fingers of his right hand sunk deep into the knit, and his face soft. “Thanks, babe.” He raised his head and, for another brief moment, Hutch saw his almost-lover.
The endless possibilities that were there and gone in the blink of an eye.
“Now it’s your turn. I hope you like it. Nah, I know you’re gonna like it. Come on. Don’t pick at the tape. Didn’t anybody ever teach you how to open a present? Rip it open already.”
This was another familiar Starsky. The one who liked to give a gift as much as he liked to receive one. His taste could be a little eclectic, however, and Hutch braced himself to love whatever was in the package. He didn’t just take it slow to torment Starsky.
Finally, however, the wrapping came free and Hutch opened the box. He breathed a silent sigh of relief. He wouldn’t have to pretend to love this present. He lifted the small stack of sheet music from the box. “I’ve been looking for this for a long time.” He lifted his eyes to Starsky. “Thank you, Starsk. Where did you ever find it?”
“You’re welcome. But you’ll have to thank Huggy, too. He knew a guy, who knew a guy. You know how it is.”
Starsky gave him the opening and Hutch was quick to jump into it. “I guess this means I’ll have to forgive him for interrupting us last night.”
There was a moment of panicked shock on Starsky’s face, and then he shot off the couch as if the cushion had suddenly exploded under his butt. He started chattering again as he cleaned up their half-eaten dinners. “No sense letting twenty bucks worth of Chinese go to waste.”
Hutch followed Starsky as he hustled to the kitchen with an arm load of cartons. “Starsky.” He started with a calm appeal for reason.
“You didn’t bring anything in with you? Jeez, Hutch, give a guy a break, will you.” Starsky delivered the double-sided message, then sidled by Hutch and hurried back to the coffee table for another load.
Hutch held his ground. “Starsk.” This time he pitched his voice to load the diminutive with an emotional appeal.
An appeal that bounced right off Starsky. He hurried back to the living room as if he was racing the clock, while the fate of Bay City rested on how fast he could get the leftovers into the icebox.
“Starsky!” The last was a warning growl that finally cut Starsky’s jets. He stood with his back against the icebox door, his eyes pleading with Hutch.
Hutch wanted to wrap Starsky up in his arms and protect him the way he had in that Italian restaurant. But there was nothing to protect him from now except Hutch himself. “All right. You don’t want to talk, we won’t talk. Just one thing I want you to know. That… ” Hutch pointed at Starsky’s arm.”…doesn’t matter to me.” Then he marched back to the living room, collected the last of the boxes, and delivered them to Starsky. He stood impatiently waiting until Starsky opened the icebox door. He put the boxes inside and when Starsky closed the door, stood waiting again. The next move was Starsky’s.
“Thanks, Hutch,” Starsky said, though he didn’t say exactly what for, the reprieve or the clean up. “It matters to me.”
It was a classic stalemate. A Mexican standoff. And Hutch knew Starsky, in this mood, could keep it up all night. All week. All month. If he never got the use of his arm back, he might even try to keep it up for the rest of their lives. Hutch had learned when to pick his fights with Starsky and when to save his best ammunition for a time when he had a better shot at winning. Until Sibley’s prognosis of possibility became a diagnosis of permanent handicap, this was one of those times for Hutch to retreat to his neutral comer.
“So what do you want to do with the rest of the night?” Hutch sauntered back into the living room, determined to salvage whatever he could from the evening. He gathered up the wrapping paper from their gifts, bunched it into a tight ball and carried it back into the kitchen. “‘Scuse me.”
“Huh?” Starsky was watching Hutch with wary eyes, his body tense as if he expected Hutch to pounce on him.
“The garbage.” Hutch pointed behind Starsky’s defensive position to the garbage can and held up the ball of wrapping.
“Oh.” Starsky moved aside, then went into the living room.
Hutch hesitated as he started to throw the paper in the garbage. He knew where the decorations had gone now and could easily guess what had happened. A Starsky temper tantrum. A tantrum sounded good to Hutch right now, but it really wasn’t his style. He tossed the paper into the garbage and closed the lid on it. He smiled as he recognized the symbolism. Not that he thought his feelings for Starsky were garbage, but if he could tuck them away for his own sake, he could do it for Starsky, too. For a while.
Hutch wiped the smile off his face before he joined Starsky in the living room. “So, what do you think? George Bailey or Ebenezer Scrooge?”
*~*~
Starsky kept his hopes and his fears to himself until Dr. Sibley had finished poking and prodding at him and sat down to chart her findings. “So, Doc, give it to me straight.”
Sibley closed the chart and leaned back in her chair, watching him intently, but Starsky couldn’t interpret her expression. He didn’t know her well enough to guess whether the grim set lips meant his prognosis stunk or she was just still pissed at him for spoiling her Christmas Eve.
“So, it’s straight talk you want, is it, Detective Starsky? Then I’ll give you some. It’s my considered opinion that you have a lot more luck than you deserve.”
“Luck?” Starsky sure didn’t feel lucky. What was so lucky about having his heart’s desire snatched away just as he was about to grab it? “But my arm’s still dead.”
Sibley shook her head. “Plenty of luck, but no patience at all.” She held up her hand to stall Starsky’s protest. “Straight talk. Your arm is not dead. Just two days after you did everything in your power to undo my hard work, you’re showing amazing recovery. The ruptured sutures are healing very well, the swelling is going down nicely, and the nerves are beginning to show signs of reaction.”
Starsky had been so certain she was going to grind all his hopes into the tile floor of her office he couldn’t quite grasp so much good news all at once. “But I can’t feel anything.”
“I’m quite sure you will soon. It won’t be the same as it was right after the surgery. No instant results this time.” Sibley’s voice was stern as she issued the warning, but warmed a little as she continued. “But I do expect that, within the next three or four days, feeling will return. It will probably be a very annoying tingling to start with.”
If Sibley hadn’t been such a formidable person, Starsky would have been tempted to jump off the table and kiss her. Since her professional demeanor didn’t encourage him to be so bold, he settled for easing off the table, grabbing her hand, and pumping it. “Thanks, Doctor. You don’t have any idea how—”
“Hold on there a minute, Detective.” Sibley removed her hand from Starsky’s enthusiasm and flexed her delicate surgeon’s fingers.
“Sorry about that. I’m just so relieved I’m going to be back to normal soon.”
“As I said, Detective, hold on. I didn’t say you were going to be back to normal. I said I expect sensation to return. It might not be all at once, and it may never be one hundred percent. You may also never regain completely normal function. I understand that you’re anxious, but I just can’t give you anything more definitive than that at this stage.”
Starsky wished now he had stayed up on the table. His knees felt wobbly, and Sibley had the only chair in the room.
Sibley rose and put her hand on Starsky’s good arm, her face softening a little. “I’m sorry. I know your career depends on a full recovery, but I can’t promise you that yet. Only time is going to tell, so you’re going to have to be patient.”
It wasn’t the easiest pill Starsky had ever had to swallow. It stuck in his throat, threatening to gag his entire future, but he managed to choke it down. “Okay. I get the message. Don’t break out the champagne yet.”
“Good. Then I’ll see you next week,” Sibley said as she prepared to leave the examination room. “In the meantime, Detective Starsky. please don’t attend any rowdy parties for New Year’s Eve. I have plans for that evening myself and would rather not find my revels interrupted by another one of your accidents.”
Huggy was waiting for Starsky when he left the examination room. “So what’s the prognosis?”
“Same old mumbo jumbo. Gotta wait and see.” Starsky always had been superstitious and he wasn’t taking any chances of jinxing his recovery with too much optimism.
“That’s too bad.”
Yes, it was too bad. Waiting wasn’t one of Starsky’s favorite games, especially when he had so much at stake. It was his nature to direct his own fate, to make his own luck, to seize his own opportunities. But if waiting was all he could do, he was going to have to somehow find the patience to do it. And whether he liked it or not, Hutch was going to have to wait, too.
*~*~
Hutch spent the day after Christmas partnered with Tommy Babcock. The day was the usual insanity of one call after another, and it wasn’t until he was back in the squad room and seated at the desk he and Starsky normally shared, that Hutch had a minute to really feel how much he missed his absent partner. There had been twinges all day, but Hutch had tucked them away.
When his phone rang and he heard Starsky’s voice on the other end of the line, the feelings hit him like a Mac truck. Acutely aware of the many ears around him, however, he hunched over his desk, lowering his voice as he spoke into the phone. “Hey, Starsk. How you doin ‘? I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to call today.”
“Usual day after Christmas, huh? Brotherly love is yesterday’s news, and all the roaches are crawling back out onto the street?” There was the sympathy of too much experience in Starsky’s voice.
“What did the doctor say?” Hutch asked the question that was uppermost in his mind. He had been disappointed when Starsky arranged for Huggy to take him to the appointment, but had accepted the situation without protest.
“That I can’t go to Huggy’s New Year’s Eve party.” Starsky sounded very aggrieved even though he had to have already guessed he would have to pull a gun on Hutch, and maybe even on Huggy, to get through the door.
“I’ll think of a way to make it up to you.” Hutch had been speaking softly to avoid being overheard, but he hadn’t really meant for his voice to drop into that husky, suggestive timbre.
“Uh, yeah. Well…”
While Starsky was stumbling over too many words that didn’t say a whole lot of anything, Hutch pulled his pocket watch out and checked the time. He counted how many minutes it would take him to finish his reports and then added a few more for the trip to Starsky’s. “I’ll be there in about an hour. We can talk about—”
“About that, Hutch. I mean coming over. I forgot to tell you Sammy’s coming over. He’s going to give me some lessons. Huggy said yesterday that I couldn’t tell a joke to save my life, and Sammy offered, and well…”
“Are you saying you don’t want me to come over?” Hutch dropped the blunt question into the awkward silence that followed when Starsky ran out of explanation.
That silence stretched out some more and Hutch could picture Starsky chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Hey, buddy, mi casa, sou casa, you know that. I just thought, you know, day after day, night after night, listening to the same jokes. You’d be bored out of your gourd.”
The rejection stung, but it would have hurt a whole lot more if Hutch hadn’t figured out the reason behind it. If he couldn’t have heard, even over the phone, how hard it was for Starsky to deliver it. This fence they were straddling between best friends and lovers had some damned sharp splinters.
“Okay. I get the message. You want to spring all this new material on me.” Hutch let Starsky off the hook of his own making. It didn’t have to be this way, except Starsky needed it to be. “Hey, you need anything, you know where I am.”
Hutch sat back, contemplating the receiver in his hand after Starsky hung up, wondering if he was doing the right thing by letting Starsky hold him at arm’s length. They said absence made the heart grow fonder, but there was also that little ditty about out of sight, out of mind. The bottom line was Hutch didn’t trust himself. The door on his feelings for Starsky was closed again, but the lock was busted, and Hutch wasn’t sure, if he subjected it to too much pressure, whether it would hold.
“Hutchinson, if you don’t have enough—”
“Plenty to do, thanks, Captain.” Hutch hastily cradled the phone and reached for a blank report sheet. “By the way,” he added before Dobey could return to his office. “I won’t be needing that time off after all.”
*~*~
Starsky pulled open his dresser drawer, looking for a t-shirt. Sammy would be here soon for their final rehearsal before the “show” tomorrow night. He pulled out the last blue t-shirt, trying not to notice the single item that remained in the drawer.
He was going to have to do laundry. All the other drawers and half his closet were just as empty as his t-shirt drawer. His laundry bag overflowed.
“Who cares.” Starsky pushed in the drawer and struggled into the t-shirt. But not looking at the poorly-wrapped special present wasn’t stopping him from thinking about it. Or the man who was supposed to be wearing it. He wondered if he would ever have the chance to give the necklace to Hutch or if it was destined to live under hist-shirts for the rest of his life.
Hutch had called every day. He hadn’t asked to come over, and Starsky hadn’t invited him. Starsky couldn’t remember the last time they had gone five days without seeing each other unless one of them was out of town.
Starsky missed Hutch. Missed him so much his throat ached when he forced it to swallow “why don’t you come over” every time they talked. Missed him so much the invitation almost slipped out despite his stubborn will.
That stubborn will wouldn’t stand a chance against the real Hutch. It could barely resist the dream one that showed up in Starsky’s bed every night. His left hand and arm weren’t dead anymore. He could feel them, even move them. Enough to dress alone, put on his sling without help, and manage the necessities of day-to-day existence. But they weren’t normal. His arm had a nasty habit of jerking and spasming, and his hand often released when it ought to grip or vice versa. Starsky couldn’t trust them yet, and therefore, he couldn’t trust himself. Not with Hutch’s future at stake.
The knock on Starsky’s door couldn’t have come at a better moment. He hadn’t been in the best of moods all week to play the funny man during his lessons with Sammy, but two more minutes of wallowing in self-pity, and he would be crying in his straw hat.
“Come on in, Sammy. The door’s open.” Starsky tucked his arm into his sling and hurried out of the bedroom. He froze in the doorway when he saw his visitor, his body flushing both hot and cold at the same time.
“Sorry. It’s only me.”
Only Hutch. As if there could ever again be an “only Hutch” in Starsky’s vocabulary. Only Hutch, looking better in reality than everyone of Starsky’s hot, sexy dreams rolled into one. Only Hutch, who was gobbling up Starsky with his eyes as if he had never expected to see him again.
“Uh. Hi.” Such brilliant conversation his lips were making while his eyes were as busy as Hutch’s, feasting on the banquet he had denied himself for five eternal days.
“I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by and see if you need anything.” Hutch took three very decisive steps into the living room, flipping the door closed behind him.
Unless Hutch had taken to flying with the crows, there was no direct route from Metro to Venice that put him anywhere near Starsky’s place. Hutch knew it. Starsky knew it. They both ignored it.
Hutch was still taking those very deliberate steps. Three or four more and he would be invading Starsky’s space the way the Allies invaded Normandy. Starsky had no place to retreat to except his bedroom, which was a very, very bad idea.
In any case, Starsky’s legs weren’t getting the message from his panicking brain. They were getting misdirected somewhere, maybe around his heart, maybe around his cock. Starsky didn’t know. What he did know was if it had meant his life, he couldn’t have moved as Hutch reached him and carefully ran his finger down the edge of Starsky’s sling.
“How’s the arm?” There were questions beneath the question. A hundred of them that Starsky had already heard and answered on Christmas Eve. He was answering again, in the same way, his chin tilting, eyelids drooping, and heart pounding its own ecstatic “Yes! Yes! Yes!” as Hutch’s fingers settled on his chest.
And then Starsky’s arm spasmed. His clenched fist knocked Hutch’s arm away and shattered the joy that had started to grow in Hutch’s eyes into a million icy pieces.
The second knock on the door could have been heaven sent. Or maybe it came from the other direction entirely.
“Hey, hey, hey—” Sammy stopped so abruptly Huggy almost rammed into his back.
“Hey, Dave, I hope you don’t mind I brought Huggy along. Every show needs an audience, even a rehearsal.”
“I guess I’ll just—”
“Where you going, Hutch?” Sammy asked. “The more the merrier, I always say. Sit down with Huggy and see how much I’ve taught your partner.”
If Sammy had sensed anything in the air, he was ignoring it as if it was a heckler from beyond the lights. Huggy, however, was looking back and forth between Starsky and Hutch. Maybe his street senses were tingling.
Hutch obviously felt trapped. He hovered near the couch, rubbing at his arm where Starsky’s fist had landed. Starsky wondered if there would be a bruise to match the one in Hutch’s eyes.
“Sit down, Hutch. You, too, Huggy.” Sammy was already rearranging the furniture, clearing a space for an improvised stage. “Dave, what are you waiting for? Remember I told you timing is everything. You’re missing your cue.”
Starsky had never felt less funny in his life. There might have been once or twice he had felt worse, but Starsky wouldn’t bet on it. Huggy and Hutch were sitting down as ordered, however, leaving Starsky with no option but to pull himself together and fake it.
The routine went well enough, considering seven-eighths of Starsky’s brain was in a time warp loop, playing and replaying a few fateful minutes over and over.
“Really. How does he smell?” Sammy dutifully delivered the last straight line of the routine.
“Terrible.” Starsky said with more relief than good comedic timing. Instead of exiting stage right, however, he just collapsed into the closest chair.
“Hey, you guys aren’t half-bad.” Huggy was clapping enthusiastically, and even Hutch’s frozen expression had thawed into amusement. “It’s gonna be a great show tomorrow night.”
“Ah, about that.” Sammy’s basset hound face looked sadder than usual. “My agent called this morning. He found me another gig in Vegas. Another two-bit lounge, but playing anywhere in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve is just too good to pass up. Me and Robin have to leave in the morning.”
“Oh, no, you can’t do this,” Huggy exclaimed before Starsky could begin to enjoy the relief of Sammy’s news.
“Come on, Huggy. We’re not that good. You just saw the whole routine. Believe me, it isn’t any better with the funny clothes and props.” Starsky growing unease suddenly blossomed into suspicion when he saw the sheepish guilt on Huggy’s face. “Don’t tell me you invited your whole New Year’s Eve guest list?”
“No. Would I do that to you?” Huggy spread his hands in supplication. “But every show needs an audience, right? I didn’t think you’d mind a couple of extra familiar faces, and I was really tired of explaining where you—”
“Huggy, just spit it out.” Starsky’s suspicion had flowered into horrified dread. He knew. He just knew what was going to come out of Huggy’s mouth next. And from the frozen expression on Hutch’s face, so did Hutch.
“Cindy and Cathy,” Huggy admitted reluctantly. “They’ve been driving me to drink my own stock. I had to invite them.”
“Un-invite them.” Hutch’s voice was cold and the command as unequivocal as “drop it” ever had been on the streets.
“Does that mean I have to un-invite Theresa and that corn pone boyfriend of hers, too? Bobby Joe or Joey Bob, or whatever his name is?” Huggy asked plaintively.
“Wait a minute.” It was no small wonder Sammy was still playing bowling alleys. He obviously couldn’t read a crowd or he would have been exiting stage right before the tomatoes started flying. “Don’t you know the show must go on? Now, let me think.” He tapped his chin as he gave the situation all of half a second’s consideration. “Hey, why don’t you take my place, Hutch? Starsky’s the comic, I’m just the straight man. I could teach you the whole routine in an hour.”
“What do you say, Hutch? Those girls have really been missing you two. And I really don’t wanna tangle with that cracker dude. He’s big enough to make chopped chitlins outta this brother.” Huggy winked and gave Hutch a nudge with his elbow. “Come on, Starsky. Talk to your partner.”
With all the assistance he had provided during the preceding, Hutchless days, Huggy had managed to work himself off Starsky’s shit list, but he was fast moving back up to the very top of the page. They were backed into a very uncomfortable corner, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. Starsky couldn’t even remember which of the girls was his and which was Hutch’s, but together, they might make a good buffer.
“I have been working on this for days,” Starsky said with all the enthusiasm he could muster, a thin disguise that he knew Hutch could see right through.
“You hear that, Hutch? Starsky’s been working really hard. Come on. What do you say?” Huggy pleaded.
“I say,” Hutch began, shooting blue laser beams at Huggy before meeting Starsky’s eyes. “The show must go on.”
“That’s the spirit. I’ll make a couple of showman out of you yet!” Sammy crowed.
It was an alternative if he could never hold a gun again, but somehow Starsky couldn’t see him and Hutch traveling around the country opening bowling alleys and playing two-bit lounges for the rest of their lives. As he met Hutch’s eyes, however, it didn’t seem like such a ridiculous idea. Was Hutch really willing to give up everything? The way the soft blue eyes held his gave Starsky the answer to his unspoken question, but Starsky couldn’t bring himself to accept it.
*~*~
Hutch bided his time, playing straight man to Starsky’s excruciatingly bad comic through the first act. When they retreated to change, however, Hutch slipped quietly away to put his plan into action. He wasn’t going to wait any longer for what he knew they both wanted.
Finger to lips in a request for silence, he hurried over to their audience of five. “How would you like to play a really good joke on Starsky?”
“Better than the ones he’s telling?” Cathy tossed her long hair and pouted.
“It would have to be.” Cindy mirrored her twin’s hair toss and petulant expression.
Hutch ignored their theatrics. “You know how in Vaudeville they’d give the comic the hook? We’re going to give the audience the hook. I want all of you to get out of here now before he comes out for the second act.”
“You want us to go stand out in the cold?” Cathy whined.
It wasn’t all that cold outside, but Hutch didn’t want them hanging around in any case. “No, no. You all go on to the party at Huggy’s and we’ll join you later.”
“What kind of joke is it if we don’t get to see the punch line?” Cindy was still complaining but to Hutch’s relief, she and her sister were gathering up their coats and bags.
Theresa and Jimmy Lee, who had seemed very uncomfortable right from the moment they had arrived, offered no protest to the plan whatsoever, and were already pulling on coats.
Hutch turned on the lone holdout, meeting Huggy’s suspicious frown with a glare. He, of course, knew Starsky had promised his doctor not to attend any parties tonight. “I’ll take a picture. Now hurry before he comes out.”
Hutch herded all the members of erstwhile audience out the door. “Why can’t we wait in the car?” Cathy wondered.
As far as Hutch was concerned, they could sit in the car all night if they wanted, as long as they didn’t come back up those stairs. “This will be better. Believe me. We’ll all have a big laugh at Starsky’s expense at the party.”
“You are coming to the party?” Cindy asked suspiciously.
“Sure we are,” Hutch reassured Cindy, while giving Cathy his most charming smile. “On my honor as a cop.”
That seemed to satisfy the women and they hurried to follow Theresa and Jimmy Lee down the stairs. Huggy hung back for another second or two, his eyes boring into Hutch. He gave him his most innocent expression and pointed an uncompromising finger toward the stairs. After a moment, Huggy’s expression became just as sweetly innocent before he followed the women.
Hutch forgot them and his promise before they even drove away. He positioned himself just outside the open landing door and waited for Starsky to appear. Seconds later he heard Starsky make his entrance, the comic threat that was the beginning of the second half of the routine, and then a moment of silence while Starsky absorbed the fact his audience had disappeared into thin air.
“Do you ever get the feeling you’re all alone in the world? That nobody loves you?”
Hutch winced at the wry observation, then stepped into the doorway. He rapped twice on the frame. “Knock, knock.”
Starsky spun around and stared at Hutch. “Didn’t you leave with the rest of them?”
Hutch shrugged, dismissing the departed audience and the rest of the world. He rapped on the doorframe again. “Knock, knock.”
After a moment, though the miffed expression remained on Starsky’s face, he provided the straight man’s line. “Who’s there?”
“Arncha.”
“Arncha who?”
“Arncha gonna invite me in?”
Miffed became disgusted. “I’m the comic, you’re the straight man. Remember?” Starsky turned and stalked away, sailing his straw hat onto the couch before slumping down into the chair. He glanced back at Hutch and seeing him still standing in the doorway relented a little. “Since when do you need an invitation?”
Relieved, Hutch smiled, stepped across the threshold, and closed the door firmly behind him.
“I was that bad, huh?” Starsky was pulling at the white bowtie around his neck, looking like a kid who had found a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking instead of the goodies he deserved.
Hutch moved to stand over his friend, waiting until the curly head tipped back and he had a clear view of Starsky’s face. “Actually, I asked them to leave.”
“What did you do that for?”
“Because, my not-so-funny friend,” Hutch said, sinking to his knees in front of Starsky and very deliberately gathering the free right hand up between both of his. “I wanted to be alone with you.”
“I thought you got the message last night,” Starsky grumbled, his gaze skittering around the room, landing anywhere except on Hutch.
“I got the message, all right,” Hutch said. “The way you were looking at me, I got your message loud and clear.” He held up one hand to prevent Starsky’s protest, then wrapped it around Starsky’s again. “You forget how well I know you. How long we’ve been together. If you didn’t want me to kiss you, you wouldn’t hit me, you would have told me to fuck off. It took me a little while to remember that, but when I did, I started watching you. Your arm is better than it was, but not back to normal.”
Starsky was silent for a moment, his eyes on his own left hand. He flexed the fingers, then curled them into a fist before he raised his eyes to Hutch’s. “It does dumb stuff like belting my best friend. I can’t trust it, Hutch. Don’t know if I’ll ever be able to again.”
“But you trust me, don’t you, Starsk?” Hutch tilted his head a little and smiled gently. “I told you it doesn’t matter to me.”
“You can’t mean that, Hutch.” Starsky’s lips were speaking self-denial, but there was hope in his eyes. “What if it never gets better? What if I can’t work the streets anymore? What if—?”
This time, Hutch pressed his fingers over the smooth lips to dam up Starsky’s flood of worst case scenarios and offered one of his own. The one that had haunted his troubled sleep for too many nights now. The only one that mattered to Hutch. “What if I can’t live without you?”
Cautiously, Hutch lifted his fingers from Starsky’s lips, and when he saw he had finally succeeded in robbing Starsky of further protest, he took one of the biggest gambles of his life and replaced his fingers with his lips.
It was a pretty sorry excuse for a kiss. Stiff and chaste, it didn’t live up to the promise of a week-old almost-kiss. Hutch could have cut his losses right there. He might even have been tempted to if he didn’t have a far better barometer pounding away beneath the fingers he rested on Starsky’s chest. Starsky might be able to force his lips to remain stubbornly unresponsive, but he couldn’t prevent his racing heart from giving him away.
Hutch eased back and met Starsky’s eyes, easily reading the struggle to resist. “I can’t, you know, babe. And what I’ve seen in your eyes tells me you don’t want to live without me, either. I don’t know when you figured it out, but I knew it the second I saw you go down in that restaurant.”
“Forest,” Starsky whispered. “It was when you were in withdrawal.”
The confession was a surprise to Hutch, but it offered some unexpected leverage, and he didn’t hesitate to use it. “What if I hadn’t been able to kick it? What if somebody found out, and I could never work the streets again? Would any of that have mattered to you?”
Starsky’s hand tightened around Hutch’s as if someone might try to snatch Hutch away. “No. Damn, Hutch, I lo…”
“Say it, Starsk,” Hutch pleaded shamelessly, begging for his life, for both of their lives together. “Quit being so damned pigheaded and… noble, and just say it, so I can say it, too.”
Starsky’s left arm slipped from the sling, a small twinge of pain appearing on his face as he reached out to rest that unreliable hand on Hutch’s cheek. “I do love you, Hutch.”
“I love you, too.” Hutch mirrored the hesitant touch on Starsky’s face, then slid his hand back into the soft curls, drawing Starsky to him as he whispered. “Now, how about we try it again? This time, with feeling.”
The lips that met Hutch’s were still a little hesitant, but they opened under the pressure from Hutch’s, a sweet yielding that melted the bones inside Hutch’s skin. He moaned softly as Starsky’s mouth opened further to the tentative probe of his tongue, and the sound was echoed back to him, deeper, as Starsky leaned closer. All doubts and hesitations were gone now, forgotten in the sheer wonder of the pleasure of the kiss.
“We’re only about a week late, but I think we’re finally picking up where we left off,” Hutch said when their first real kiss ended.
“Are you sure, Hutch? I mean really sure.” Starsky asked one last time, his eyes searching Hutch’s face anxiously.
“Oh, yeah. I’m sure.” Hutch leaned in for another kiss, but Starsky held him off.
“Then I can think of better places for this, can’t you?” Starsky’s gaze dropped pointedly toward the floor. “Don’t your knees hurt?”
Hutch was too drunk on sheer joy to resist the opening. He gave his soon to be lover a wicked smile. “But I thought you’d like me on my knees,” he purred, packing every ounce of innuendo he could into his voice.
Starsky’s cheeks flamed red, but there was desire in his eyes. “Christ, don’t say stuff like that! At least not ’til I get you to bed. Now get up, you big lug. I can’t get at you like this.”
The last sentence had Hutch on his feet in a second, eagerly pulling Starsky up into his arms. If Starsky wanted at him, Hutch was more than ready to give him all the access he could ask for. He kissed Starsky again and the merits of the new position became immediately obvious in the excited wiggle and stroke of Starsky’s body against his.
“Better?” Hutch asked when their lips finally parted.
“A little. But it seems to me we’re both getting a little shaky in the knees.” Starsky held on a little tighter as if to illustrate his point.
“Hmm.” Hutch nuzzled into the curls behind Starsky’s ear. “Then maybe we better lie down.”
Without releasing each other, they began shuffling toward the bedroom, busy fingers working at buttons and zippers. Starsky’s sling was the first casualty, freeing his arm to slip around Hutch. The discarded sling was quickly followed by Starsky’s white bow tie, a couple of ugly stripped jackets, and two completely unnecessary shirts.
Every item that hit the floor was cause for a lingering kiss of celebration, slowing their progress toward the bedroom considerably, but shifting their mutual arousal into overdrive. By the time they reached the bedroom door, Hutch’s cock was erect and aching, and the press of Starsky’s eager hardness against him came close to short circuiting his brain.
There were still a few cells firing, however. Enough to recall he had one more task to perform before they tumbled onto the waiting bed and began exploring what pleasure they could share together. Reluctantly, Hutch separated their lips and tried to pull away from the fingers that fumbled with the zipper on his jeans. “Hang on a minute.”
Starsky gave a grunt of protest, his left arm tightening as well as it could around Hutch’s back, while his fingers continued to work on the uncooperative zipper.
Ignoring the protest, Hutch pulled free. “Right back,” he promised and hurried across the living room to the door. He smiled at Starsky as he twisted the lock.
“Chain, too,” Starsky said with a grin of understanding.
Hutch set the chain then hustled to the kitchen where he lifted the telephone receiver and left it dangling by its cord. ”Now, where were we?” he said when he returned to Starsky.
“Right about here.” Starsky reached out for Hutch.
“Better idea,” Hutch said, holding himself just clear of Starsky’s reach. He pointed over Starsky’s shoulder to the bed.
“I always said you were the brains of this partnership.” Starsky obligingly began backing toward the bed.
“Careful, Pinocchio,” Hutch warned his lying friend, pretending to stalk Starsky’s retreat until the back of Starsky’s knees hit the bed and he started to tumble. Hutch leaped the few steps that separated them and caught his new lover by the shoulders. “I said careful.”
Starsky grinned and wrapped his arms around Hutch’s waist. “Gotcha! Maybe you aren’t the brains after all.”
“Okay, so we’re both pretty smart.” Hutch completed the embrace and dropped a brief kiss on Starsky’s smiling lips. “Or pretty dumb. Standing here when there’s a perfectly good bed right there waiting for us.”
By mutual accord, they separated long enough to shuck the rest of their clothes, creating a scatter of negligent haste on the carpet. There was a brief moment, when they were down to the final barrier of briefs, that awkwardness might have invaded, but they knew each other too well.
Starsky grinned a challenge, his fingers caught in the waistband of red briefs, his eyes dancing with mischief.
Without a word, Hutch accepted the challenge, dropping his boxers and kicking clear of them while Starsky mirrored him.
Finally, they were free to tumble onto the bed together. Starsky’s ouching as he landed on his right side reminded Hutch the square of white bandage on Starsky’s back wasn’t just there for show. But Starsky didn’t let him dwell on it for long, wriggling into Hutch’s arms and kissing him breathless.
Hutch let his hands roam freely, stroking velvet skin and soft fur indiscriminately. It didn’t matter what part of Starsky he caressed, it fired him and gave him the sweet reward of Starsky’s moans and groans.
Hutch fed the wordless approval back to Starsky as his own body was caressed just as randomly. A fleeting grip in his hair. A long sweeping caress down his back. A delicate pinch to his nipple. Hutch greedily drank in the pleasure of every touch and returned them.
Hutch’s wandering path of exploration finally brought his hand to Starsky’s groin. Delicately, his fingers explored the hard cock they found there, testing differences, discovering a thrilling similarity in the touches that brought the most response from Starsky.
“Gotta stop, Hutch,” Starsky suddenly exclaimed, pulling away.
“Stop?” Hutch echoed the word as if he had never heard it before.
“Com’ere.” Starsky moved Hutch’s hand from between them, then wriggled back in close, bringing their cocks together in the heated haven of their tightly pressed groins. “Like this, okay, babe? Wanna touch you. Can’t. Can’t trust my hand. Don’t wanna hurt you.”
Starsky’s murmured apologies fell into the rhythm of his body, becoming a loving caress to Hutch’s heart while his body thrust.
Hutch was climbing, every rhythmic thrust of Starsky’s body against him pushing him irresistibly up the next rung. There could be no slowing down, no gradual flight, not with this exciting man in his arms. Not when Starsky’s steady rhythm suddenly broke, became a rapid-fire flurry of driving thrusts that suddenly stilled. He felt the steady thump of Starsky’s cock against him and the shocking heat of semen slicking his cock. Hutch needed just one more hard thrust and then he was coming, too, clinging to the anchor of Starsky’s body as climax washed over him.
Hutch was still holding onto Starsky when his head started to clear, his fingers digging into the muscular cushion of his ass. Slowly, finger by finger, he eased the pressure, then stroked a gentle apology into the smooth skin. “Sorry. Think I might have bruised you.”
Starsky smiled and leaned in for a gentle kiss. “Feel free to bruise me any time.”
“How romantic,” Hutch said, trying for irony, but there was too much satisfied purr in his voice to pull it off. Too much contentment inside him to do anything except hold his new lover close as the echoes of the pleasure they had shared slowly faded.
Eventually, of course, they had to come back down to earth; the trip sped along by the uncomfortable cooling of the puddle of semen between them. What had been a hot, slick thrill only a few moments ago was fast becoming a cold, sticky mess.
“I guess we better think ahead a little more next time.” Hutch reluctantly eased away from Starsky. Even more reluctantly, he left the bed and found a washcloth in the bathroom to clean up with. By the time he returned to the bed, uncomfortably cold from the December night, Starsky had climbed under the covers and had a warm nest waiting for him to crawl back into.
Starsky accepted the wet washcloth Hutch offered him, making fast work of cleaning up under Hutch’s appreciative eye.
“Quit lookin’ at me like that, Blondie, or we’ll be headin’ into round two,” Starsky threatened and tossed the cloth at Hutch’s face.
Hutch caught the cloth and dropped it over the side of the bed. “Do you hear me objecting?” He started to lay his head on the pillow but reared back up when he felt an obstruction under his ear. “What’s this?” he asked, plucking the small, poorly wrapped package off the pillow.
“It’s your Christmas present.”
“But you already gave me my present.”
Starsky’s expression became sheepish as he confessed. “Yeah, well, I bought that one a long time ago. You had to have figured that out.” He reached out and lifted the gift from Hutch’s hand as if he might be reconsidering the wisdom of giving it. “This is the one I bought when we were out shopping on Christmas Eve. I knew things had changed for you like they did for me after Forest, and I guess I was kind of hoping to, uhm, give you a hint. I was trying to be subtle.”
“A subtle hint, huh?” Hutch had realized on Christmas day the sheet music Starsky had given him couldn’t have been purchased at Darcy’s when Starsky had pulled his disappearing act, but he had had other, far more important things on his mind at the time.
“Yeah, I know. I’m about as subtle as a grenade, but… ” Starsky hesitated another second or two, then offered the gift to Hutch again. “Oh, what the hell.”
Hutch ripped off the wrapping and then opened the small box, smiling when he saw the necklace inside. For once, Starsky really had succeeded in being subtle.
“Kinda dumb, huh?” Starsky shrugged, dismissing the gift’s significance. “I don’t expect you to wear it or anything.”
“Your nose is growing again,” Hutch said because he could see by the intent way Starsky was watching his face just how much it did mean to his friend. Smiling gently, he lifted the necklace and offered it to Starsky. “Put it on for me?”
There was a grin of shy pleasure on Starsky’s face as he took the necklace from Hutch’s hand, the expression fading abruptly when his fingers immediately released it and it fell onto the sheet between them.
“Fuck!”
“Hey. Never mind. I’ll wear it in the morning,” Hutch said quickly, scooping up the necklace and turning to drop it onto the bedside table. It took only a second or two, but by the time he turned back to Starsky, he could see the mood was broken. The dark cloud of an imperfect future was once again crowding out the contentment on Starsky’s face.
Hutch waited until he had lain down and pulled Starsky back into his arms before inviting that cloud to rain on their love parade. “I can hear it circling around in your brain, Starsk, so you might as well say it.”
“What if, Hutch? What fucking if?” Starsky brought the inevitable shadow of the future into the bed with them. “We can say all we want it doesn’t matter, but damn it to hell, it could matter a whole fucking lot.”
“Only if we let it,” Hutch said, determined to convince Starsky, if only by the sheer weight of repetition, that Hutch’s commitment to him was for better or worse.
“Let it? For Christ’s sake, Hutch—”
“Shhh,” Hutch commanded, closing his fingers around the hand that rested on his chest and feeling how it trembled. “Maybe we’ll never be able to work the streets together again. Maybe you will have to learn how the right handed majority of the world lives. Neither one of us has a crystal ball, and the ‘what ifs’ are undeniable. But there is one absolute I can give you, Starsk. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it together.”
Starsky was silent, the tension in his muscles a mute protest to so simple a solution. Hutch could feel the struggle to accept in the body he held, and knew the battle was won when Starsky suddenly relaxed against him.
Hutch felt that unreliable left-hand slip from beneath his, then slide upward to secure a gentle grip in the back of his hair.
“Ya wanna be my straight man, Hutch?” Starsky asked softly.
“Straight, bent, or tied in a pretzel, I don’t care,” Hutch promised. “Just as long as I’m your man.”
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