Living in a Moment

229

Hutch had heard it said that, when you’re dying, pivotal moments of your life pass before your eyes. After the Gunther hit, he discovers the same is painfully true when waiting for his reason for living to die.

 

Originally published in Venice Place Chronicles VIII in 2008.

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“Starsky!”

Hutch spared a glance over his shoulder when there was no response to his call. No Starsky. Good. In cover behind the car. Hutch could return his frantic attention back to their assailants. Clasping the Magnum between both hands to steady his aim, he triggered round after round at the fleeing cruiser. He was deafened by the roar of the big gun and, therefore, unable to hear the lighter echo of Starsky’s Beretta.

“Starsky!”

Hutch bellowed for his partner again when all hope of hitting the black and white was gone. This time the silence and absence were ominous. The empty weapon now a dead weight that tried to anchor him, Hutch hurried around the Torino’s long nose, knowing, but refusing to know, what he would see on the ground.

“The name’s Starsky. Dave Starsky,” the cadet with the close-cropped curls and the intense blue eyes introduced himself, grabbing Hutch’s hand and pumping it strongly. “You’re Hutchinson, right?”

“Yes,” Hutch answered with cool courtesy, taking his hand back; disconcerted by this cocky stranger who came on like a used car salesman. Where Hutch came from, a man waited for another man to offer his hand. He didn’t grab and yank as if he was pumping for water out of a very deep well.

“Kinda quiet, huh?” Starsky said with a knowing wink. “But that’s okay. I just wanted to let you know, right up front, so there’s no confusion later on.”

“Let me know what?” Hutch asked only because he had been raised to be polite, to give attention when someone else spoke, even if that someone had the manners of a bull moose.

“That someday, Blondie, you and me are gonna be partners.”

Hutch fell to his knees beside his wounded partner. He had no idea how he had come to be there. Cared less. No, no, no.”

His denial of the unimaginable was a keening in his brain, but only a low moaning in his ears as his frantic hands sought life in Starsky’s body. Found it. Shallow breath. Faint pulse. Given new purpose, his hands became steady and sure, pressed into brutal wounds. He was the little Dutch boy with his fingers in the dike, but the precious river of blood continued to flow.

“Somebody call an ambulance!”

~*~*~

The speeding ambulance rocked. Crouched on his heels with his back to the doors, one hand wrapped around Starsky’s ankle above the blood-spattered Adidas, Hutch swayed with it. And watched. Every rise and fall of the torn chest. Every competent action of the paramedic who squatted on the jump seat beside Starsky’s stretcher.

The black man peeked under the pressure bandage. “Step on it, Bob,” he ordered the driver grimly.

There was no answering surge of engine power to the command. Morning rush hour. Hutch knew how it was, trying to make a path through the commuter traffic. Lights flashing, siren screaming, and still some asshole wouldn’t give you the right of way. If Starsky died, he’d find every single one of the bastards and….

“Doin’ the best I can,” the driver called out without turning his head.

“Do better,” the paramedic demanded, reaching up to squeeze the IV bag. “He’s slipping. I’m losing him.” Losing him.

Lost him.

The siren faded, the rocking ceased, but Hutch was still crouched, tense and alert. And miserable.

Hutch had lost him. Despite the fact that Starsky sat beside him making inroads into his share of the six pack, Hutch knew he had lost him. It was inevitable, after all. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much it meant to him, Hutch always managed to fuck up every relationship. Take that one misstep over the line, make that one crucial error that couldn’t be forgiven. It might take years, but eventually, he always blew it.

Maybe they had had enough beer now. Maybe if the two of them were half cut, Hutch could find the words and Starsky could find the patience and forgiveness. Words to stitch together the tattered edges of their friendship, words to patch the wound until it healed.

“I’m sorry,” Hutch told his silent companion. The same lame words, repeated and re-repeated. Incapable of the invisible mending he needed. No wonder Starsky continued to study, with such fixed attention, the beer bottle he held between his hands.

“I’ve never regretted anything more in my life,” Hutch haltingly pieced together new words. Despite the fact they were bled out of his heart, they still sounded trite, inadequate penance for his crimes. “I’m sor—”

“Would you shut the fuck up!” Starsky shouted, leaping to his feet The neutrality had disappeared from his face, the same emotion that had given volume to his command, narrowing eyes and slanting jaw.

Hutch scrambled off the couch as well, a panicked rush putting his body between Starsky and the door. “No! I’m not going to shut up. Not ’til I fix us. What do you need from me, Starsk?” he demanded, in his desperation turning the onus of repair upon the innocent victim. He tipped his chin, thrusting his jaw toward Starsky. “Do you need to hit me again?”

Starsky grimaced, a shake of his head rejecting the offered revenge. He bent to set his beer carefully on the coffee table, sighing as he straightened. “Damn it, Hutch, I said shut up, “he repeated, his hands reaching out, devoid of violence, to encircle Hutch’s arms in a gentle grip.

“Don ‘t you think I mean it?” Hutch asked, swaying with the strength of Starsky’s hands when they tightened and shook him a little to snap his jaws together.

“You’re not the one who should be apologizing. I changed the rules,” Starsky insisted, assuming the cloak of guilt that had weighed so heavily on Hutch’s shoulders. “What’s our deal, huh? And how many women have we shared?” he asked as if Hutch was a backward student unable to retain the same lesson taught over and over again.

Starsky’s grip became gentle again, a bitter twist of disgust distorting his lips before he continued. “There was nothing so fucking special about Kira,” he dismissed the chewed-over bone of contention between them.

Hutch was confused, uncertain how Starsky had become the sinner, less certain what Starsky needed from him. Forgiveness? What he said was true, but guilt still rode Hutch’s back like a junkie ‘s monkey. He was the mustache-twirling villain in this lousy melodrama. Wasn’t he?

“Then why did you change the rules?” Hutch ventured the question cautiously.

“Because,” Starsky murmured, his voice becoming stronger as his hands slid up Hutch’s arms, stroked over both shoulders until they cupped his neck, fingers entwined at the base of his skull, holding him prisoner. “Because I’m an asshole who knows exactly who he wants but hasn’t got the guts to tell the world. I love you so fucking much, babe, and sometimes the games make me do stupid things.”

The hands that held Hutch no longer restrained him, fingertips a supplication as they crept into his hair, thumbs an apology as they stroked his cheeks. No longer held by Starsky’s strength, Hutch was still a captive, bound hand and foot and heart to Starsky nonetheless.

“You see, babe? I’m the one who’s sorry,” Starsky whispered, the eyes that begged Hutch for forgiveness brimming with tears he couldn’t shed.

Gently, Hutch touched the corner of one eye, breaking the dam and letting the salt spill. “Someday, Starsk, there ‘ll be no more games,” he predicted, wishing that mythical someday didn’t exist so far in the future.

Starsky offered a wry grin for the optimism, the single tear pooling in the upturned corner of his mouth. “Like Sweet Alice, Hutch? Someday she’s gonna go straight, and when she does, she’s gonna get you?”

“Too late, sweetheart. I’m already got,” Hutch promised, and kissed the tear from his lover’s mouth.

“Just one more block. ER’s ready and the surgeon’s standing by.”

“I hope to God it’s not too late,” the paramedic muttered and then bent over Starsky’s form.

Pulled abruptly from dream to nightmare, Hutch silently echoed the paramedic’s prayer, feeling disconnected from the horror of Starsky’s bullet-ridden body by the memory of him, warm and strong, in Hutch’s arms. He could still taste the salt of Starsky’s tear on his tongue, the horrible reality reasserting itself as he realized the iron salt he tasted was Starsky’s blood, transferred from hand to mouth as Hutch pressed his grief back into his throat.

“Please, no,” he whispered to the lover slipping away, or to any God who might be inclined to listen. “We’re still waiting for someday.”

~*~*~

Hutch watched through the glass as Starsky was transferred from the gurney to the ICU bed, absorbing every detail as the doctor and nurses bustled around the still body. As if he had any hope of interpreting the poking and prodding, the tubes and the needles, and all the other horrifying mysteries of the medical profession. A good sign the way the nurse checked and double-checked the IV? A bad omen that the doctor didn’t seem to trust the heart monitor, leaning over to press the stethoscope to Starsky’s chest, double-checking the machine’s accuracy?

His legs were numb from standing in one spot for too long, but that didn’t stop Hutch from buttonholing the doctor the second he appeared through the door.

“Will he make it?” Hutch demanded, knowing he sounded street-belligerent, aware that he was invading this stranger’s personal space, but uncaring of either.

“It’s too soon to tell,” the doctor offered the usual non-committal response.

“Too soon?” Hutch echoed, unwilling to allow the uninformative response. “You’ve been working on him all day. How the hell can you not know something? Tell me the truth.”

“I know several somethings,” the doctor replied testily, then paused while he rubbed a hand over his face. The features that reappeared were just as tired, but had lost their irritability, the detached compassion of his profession now a mask out of which looked eyes full of pity.

“I know he survived six hours of surgery, and that he was in good physical health before he was wounded,” the doctor offered the good news first, then laid the reality of the bad out between them. “I also know that your partner sustained massive damage, and that there is only so much the human body can withstand.”

Hutch was sorry he had asked. Wished that he had allowed this modern-day shaman to shroud his voodoo with Hutch’s layman ignorance. Ignorance could be bliss, if knowledge choked the life out of what little hope you had, wrung its neck, and left it breathing its last in the awkward silence that followed enlightenment.

“I’m sorry, Detective Hutchinson, but you did ask for the truth,” the doctor said and then disappeared back into Starsky’s room.

Hutch stared at the blank face of the door, wanting to follow, but at the same time afraid that his intrusion might distract one of Starsky’s saviors at a critical moment. A moment just long enough for massive damage to reap the harvest of Starsky’ s life.

“Detective Hutchinson, come with me.”

Hutch didn’t respond to the order issued in a firm, feminine voice, and ignored the hand that tugged at his arm.

“Detective?”

“I’m not leaving,” Hutch mouthed the statement with as much strength as he could muster. He wasn’t leaving; Starsky was.

“I know,” the same voice agreed. The same, but different. Compassion replacing command.

Hutch glanced at the woman who still held his arm, found understanding in her time-creased face, and allowed himself to be led to a chair placed directly in front of the observation window. He stared at it a moment, anticipated sinking his tired, aching body onto it, then shook his head in rejection of the offer.

“If you keep standing, all the blood will go to your feet and you’ll pass out.” The nurse delivered the ridiculous prediction with a perfectly straight face. “Then what good would you be to him?”

So he should sit so all the blood would go to his ass? Ludicrous. Hutch shook his head to dislodge the image. “What good am I to him now?” he asked. Or what good a few hours ago when the bullets were flying? “He’s dying.”

“But not dead,” the nurse insisted. “Sit.”

Starsky hardly ever sat on a chair. He perched on the back with his feet on the seat. He sprawled, tipped precariously on back legs. He straddled. Hutch was always scolding him for the abuse of innocent furniture. Hutch reversed the chair and straddled it, resting his arms on the back, mimicking Starsky a miniscule comfort. The nurse was forgotten before she patted his shoulder and walked away, all of Hutch’s attention once again focused on the room beyond the glass.

Massive damage. Massive damage. The two-word, deadly diagnosis beat in his brain. Massive damage. Damage.

Before Hutch’s mesmerized gaze, the organized chaos surrounding his partner faded and another scene took its place.

Every officer on the scene rushed the grocery store at the same moment the SWAT sharpshooter’s bullet shattered the front window and lodged in the back of the perp’s head. Hutch had seen some gore since his days in cadet gray, but two years in blue and a couple more in plainclothes hadn’t prepared him for the carnage created by one man with a machine gun. Nevertheless, working side by side with his apparently emotionally detached partner, Hutch did what he could for the victims and tried hard not to lose his lunch.

Somewhere along the line, he and Starsky became separated, but Hutch continued trying to deal with insanity’s aftermath. He consoled a bleeding child until a paramedic took it away. Closed the eyes and covered the face of a dead woman while a man in a white coat sliced open her belly to retrieve her unborn baby. After the man had slapped a protesting squall from the motherless newborn, Hutch discovered there were no more living victims to tend to. Only the dead remained, and they were someone else’s job.

Sick and weary, dreading the reports they still had to write, Hutch went looking for his partner. New partner. As Starsky had predicted, they were partners. Only put together a few weeks ago, they were still taking each other’s professional measure.

“Kessler, have you seen Starsky?” Hutch asked the uniformed officer standing guard at the door.

“I saw him carrying a kid out to the ambulance a while ago,” Kessler replied, nodding toward a trail of blood that dripped its way out into the street. “Didn’t seem to, you know, get to him at all. Cool customer.”

“Yeah, sure,” Hutch agreed and walked away, continuing his search through the bloody scene.

Half an hour later, Hutch was still looking but was uncertain if he really wanted to find Starsky. From what he had gleaned from the officers and medics Starsky had assisted over the past hours, his partner was earning himself a new nickname. The Ice Man. Cold as ice, they all said. Starsky probably wouldn’t be impressed by Hutch’s continuing struggle not to puke.

Still partnerless but needing a break where the air didn’t reek of blood and gunpowder and urine, Hutch slipped out the back door into the alley. He leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath of the fresher air, realizing that the sun was only beginning to set. Surely, he had been trapped in the killing ground for days, years even.

“Damn it, Starsky, where the hell are you?” he muttered to his elusive partner, anxious to leave the living nightmare behind him, hoping it wouldn’t follow him into his sleep tonight.

“Over here.”

The two words, spoken in a monotone, nearly lifted Hutch out of his skin. He squinted against the glare of the lowering sun and found Starsky sitting on a crate a few feet away. “You scared the shit out of me,” he snapped, shock making his tone hasher than he had intended.

“They got a body count yet?” Starsky replied in that same laconic tone.

The question stalled Hutch’s approach, while the casual tone sent a shiver down his spine. He had seen glimpses of this talent in Starsky at the Academy. An ability to remain detached that Hutch had envied. Today, that ability looked different to Hutch. A cold, calculating ruthlessness that scared the hell out of him. Did he really want a man watching his back who could value life so cheaply?

“What am I thinking?” Hutch muttered. They might not have been partners long, but he had known Starsky for years, called the man friend. He knew better. Didn’t he?

“What was that?” Starsky asked.

“Uh, I said no. I don’t think there’s a count yet,” Hutch lied as he took a few more steps and sat down on the next crate.

They didn’t seem to have anything to say to each other. Hutch certainly couldn’t think of anything to fill the silence as the sun sank and dusk began creeping up the alley on silent gray feet.

“Collateral damage.”

Once again, the two words were spoken in a monotone, but whether he imagined it or not, Hutch heard something in Starsky’s voice that invited him to probe.

“What?” Hutch asked, repelled by the lack of emotion and yet wanting to understand it, needing it to fit somehow into the man he had thought Starsky to be.

“Collateral damage,” Starsky repeated, a heavy sigh following as if he regretted having spoken at all now that Hutch had requested elaboration. “That’s what the brass called it in ‘Nam. First time I heard it, I didn’t know what it meant.”

Did he want to know? Hutch wasn’t sure. He squinted, trying to see in the fading light if there was any expression on Starsky’s face, but the white oval faced the ground, apparently enthralled by something between his feet.

“What does it mean?” Hutch finally asked.

Starsky raised his head, his face turning slowly to Hutch. It seemed blank, a canvas untouched by emotion. Even the expressive blue eyes held no more life than twin marbles. Like a cat’s eyes.

“Dead babies,” Starsky replied flatly.

An instinctive fear overwhelmed Hutch as he stared into those predator’s eyes, forcing him to drop his head, concealing his emotions before Starsky read them. His gaze caught on Starsky’s throat, a moment of incomprehension passing before Hutch realized what he was seeing. The muscles worked in the tanned column, the Adam’s apple bobbing convulsively.

The sight, the understanding that Starsky choked on unshed tears for present victims and past, robbed Hutch of both speech and action for a moment. Then he slid his arm around Starsky’s back, hesitant at first, more than half expecting a brusque rejection. His grip tightened when Starsky leaned into him, his other arm coming up to complete the embrace when he felt the shaking and heaving of suppressed sobs Starsky wouldn’t let out.

Hutch heard the base rumble of Dobey’s voice behind him but had no idea when the captain had joined him or who he was talking to. The words ran together, distraction enough to draw him from the past and the moment he had known he wanted no partner but Starsky, but only the last sentence held any meaning.

“He’s lucky to be alive,” Dobey said as if Lady Luck had really had any hand in the tragedy. “He’s going to be okay.”

A second voice. Lighter. Huggy, speaking optimism in a voice that did not believe.

With the past slipping away and his eyes on the terrible present, Hutch gave voice to the inevitable future. “He’s dying.”

~*~*~

Hutch stood just inside the door as the nurse did whatever nurses do to make their patients comfortable. If Starsky was in a coma, could he be comfortable?

Hutch waited until the nurse left before he approached the bed, his eyes traveling Starsky’s prone body, desperately seeking signs of life. There was the shallow rise and fall of the bandaged chest, but no hint of expression on the still features. Again, Hutch wondered if Starsky was comfortable. With a tube up his nose and another down his throat? With needles and stitches and wires? Impossible. Hutch prayed that Starsky was as oblivious as he appeared.

Slowly, Hutch sank to the chair beside the bed, his eyes once again scanning his partner, his focus catching on the respirator tube and following it to the bank of machines that, with their squiggles and beeps and flashing lights, were more alive than the man they monitored. All of the lights were green. Hutch didn’t know much, but he had to assume that was a good thing. Green meant go. Red meant stop. Silently, Hutch commanded all the little telltales to stay green.

Green lights. They reminded him of a Christmas tree. Those single-color, coordinated jobs that were becoming so popular. Hutch had grown to hate Christmas over the years. Not the spirit, but the commercialism that had slowly but surely obliterated the true meaning of the season. But Starsky loved it, and last year he had shown Hutch how much he truly loved him.

“Zebra Three signing off shift for the night, Mildred,” Starsky said into the radio unit.

“Acknowledged, Zebra Three. Have a Merry Christmas. What’s left of it,” Mildred’s familiar voice wished them seasonal joy in the last hour before Christmas would be officially over for another year.

Hutch glanced toward the passenger seat when Starsky hung up without acknowledging the wishes or returning them, trying to see if there was any expression on Starsky’s face. It was too dark in the car to tell, but Hutch decided not to mention his partner’s lack of good cheer. He simply put the car in gear and began driving toward Starsky’s place.

“You hungry?” Starsky asked out of the darkness. “There’s a pizza in my ice box we could warm up if you want. No anchovies.”

Hutch hesitated, again trying to make out Starsky’s expression, having a little more success in the lightning flashes of passing street lights. Innocence personified But Hutch didn’t buy it, just as he wasn’t falling for Starsky’s behavior the past twenty-five days.

Starsky loved holidays, and he was an equal opportunity celebrator—Christmas, Hanukkah, or the Chinese New Year—Starsky was there. As long as Hutch had known him, on December first, the decorations started appearing, carols were hummed or sung in Starsky’s questionable baritone, and he began guessing what Hutch had bought him for Christmas.

Not this year. The Christmas of 1978 had been ignored by Starsky as if it had been outlawed. There was no plastic reindeer hanging from the Torino ‘s rearview mirror, no Star of David sliding back and forth on the dash, and if he had voiced a single bump-a-bum-bum, Hutch hadn’t been around to hear it. It puzzled the hell out of Hutch, but frankly, he had been enjoying it way too much to be in any hurry to ask Starsky what he was up to.

“There’s a six pack in there, too,” Starsky added a second enticement to his invitation.

Curiosity finally got the better of Hutch. He wouldn’t be surprised if his partner was leading him into a Christmas party in full swing, or an overdose of eggnog and canned Christmas carols, but he couldn’t resist finding out.

“Yeah, okay. Sounds better than the stale bread and expired eggs in my fridge,” Hutch agreed.

Ten minutes later, Hutch followed Starsky up the stairs and waited for him to unlock the door. He had already concluded that there was no party—the apartment windows were dark and Hutch couldn’t hear any music blaring. But he was braced for just about anything else, including being blinded by the glitter and gold of Starsky’s decorations.

As a cautionary measure, Hutch squinted his eyes when Starsky pushed open the door and flicked on the lights, but his lids opened wide in surprise when he saw that Starsky’s apartment looked exactly the same as it always looked for eleven out of twelve months a year. There was no Christmas tree or strings of lights. There wasn’t even so much as a single strand of tinsel adorning a lampshade, or a lonely sprig of mistletoe above the door.

“Starsk?” Hutch said, because this was just too far out of character to ignore. Maybe Starsky was sick or something.

“Uh-huh?” Starsky grunted as he tossed his jacket on the couch on his way to the kitchen. “You want a beer while the pizza heats up?” he asked, apparently oblivious to Hutch’s questioning tone.

“Yeah, sure,” Hutch answered doubtfully. He mirrored the jacket toss and sat down on the couch but waited until Starsky joined him and handed him his beer before continuing his efforts to get to the bottom of this.

“Starsk, what’s up?” he asked simply, waving an arm around to indicate the undecorated apartment.

Starsky looked around as if he expected to discover that someone else had followed them in. Understanding eventually lit his face and he shrugged. “Yeah, I know. The place is a mess. The housekeeper took this week off and we’ve been so busy …” He shrugged again, then asked eagerly. “You wanna play some Monopoly while we eat? The game we started …uhm …was it last month? It’s still under the couch. All set up. I think I was winning.”

“You never won a game of Monopoly in your life,” Hutch mumbled, but let a negligent wave of his hand signal it was Starsky’s call, while he tried not to feel hurt that, whatever had sapped Starsky’s Christmas spirit, he wasn’t going to share it with Hutch. Despite the multi-layers of their relationship, and the new depths they had expanded into lately, there was no law that they had to share everything.

But he was still hurt.

The timer on the stove went off at about the same time Starsky finished re-setting the interrupted game out on the floor, and he hustled off to the kitchen.

Hutch slid off the couch to the floor, making himself comfortable as he surveyed the game board. To his surprise, he realized that Starsky had indeed been winning. “How did that happen?” he grumbled, flicking through the small stack of colored bills he possessed. Then he remembered. Starsky had been playing bare-chested, dressed in only a brief and very tight pair of running shorts. Hutch couldn’t keep his mind on the game that night, but he was pretty sure he had conceded defeat before the two of them had adjourned to Starsky’s bedroom to play much different games.

“I thought we finished this game,” he reminded Starsky when he returned and handed Hutch a plate of pizza and a fresh beer.

“We did?” Starsky asked in surprise. His eyes scanned the board as he sank cross-legged across from Hutch, then widened as a blush crept into his face. “Oh, yeah. That was the night you…”

…fucked you for the first time, Hutch finished the dangling sentence silently. That had been quite a night. It wasn’t planned, and it hadn’t been particularly well-executed. Nor had it been repeated or discussed. Hutch suspected that maybe Starsky had liked it a little too much and hadn’t quite figured out how he felt about that. But he’d like to know, and strangely enough, felt a little more confident prying into this subject than into Starsky’s apparent transformation into Ebenezer Scrooge.

“We haven’t talked about that,” he pointed out gently. “And you’re blushing. Does that mean you’d like to forget about it?”

“No,” Starsky said slowly, his attention on his dinner as he picked at a bit of burned cheese. “It means I wouldn’t mind doing it again,” he confessed and met Hutch’s eyes. The blush was still glowing in his cheeks, but not as warmly as the passion in his eyes.

“Is that what you’d like for Christmas from me, babe?” Hutch asked in an intimate whisper. He let the hand he had reached out toward Starsky fall to his lap when Starsky’s face suddenly went blank.

“So, I guess we better start a new game,” Starsky said, already beginning to re-sort properties and bills and busily scooping up hotels and houses from the board.

Such an abrupt rejection should have given Hutch a very nasty kick in the belly, but it didn’t. Starsky wasn’t rejecting him or his suggestion; Hutch was certain it was the Christmas thing again. He glanced at the clock, saw that it was getting close to midnight, and decided that, in twenty minutes when Christmas was officially over, he was going to find out what the hell was going on. Even if he had to pin Starsky to the carpet, or better, the bed, until he had the whole story.

They ate the pizza, drank their beer, and began the game while the minute hand crept relentlessly toward the twelve. As the last ten seconds passed, Hutch realized that he wasn’t the only one watching the clock. The expression on Starsky’s face held the question he had intended to ask on Hutch’s tongue.

“Did you like your Christmas present, Hutch?” Starsky asked, his voice hushed, his eyes so tender that Hutch felt their caress in his soul.

“What …? What Christmas present?” Hutch asked, equally hushed, his brain leaping ahead to the obvious conclusion, swelling his heart in his chest until his throat ached with the pressure.

“No Christmas, Hutch. I know you hate it now, so that’s my Christmas present to you. I won’t do Christmas anymore either.”

Hutch bit his lip and struggled not to blink, afraid the tears of Christmas past would wash down his face. More afraid that, if he started, he might never stop weeping again. Fiercely, he focused on Starsky’s blurry, expressionless face until the image of tenderness disappeared and he saw the crystal-clear picture of approaching death.

With careful fingers, he fumbled through the tubes and wires until he found Starsky’s hand and could engulf it in his. “Oh, babe. I stole your last Christmas,” he whispered as he felt the cold fingers warm within his desperate grip. “I’m sorry, my love. So sorry.”

~*~*~

Every inch of Hutch’s skin was super sensitive, as if the nerve endings had been fed the tiniest electric charge. It didn’t hurt, exactly. It was just annoying the way his shirt brushed his nipples and his jeans rubbed his thighs, and his underwear stroked his cock with every step he took. It was probably exhaustion. He should probably stop pacing. But Hutch continued taking one relentless step after another. There were twenty-five of them from where Dobey sat morosely in his chair to the window that looked into the room where Starsky was dying. Hutch was sure he had racked up thousands of circuits between the ten-minute paroles each hour that he was allowed to be with his partner.

Brush, rub, stroke. Brush, rub, stroke. Every step stimulated his body, until the sensations finally penetrated his numb brain, opening a door on the past.

They had been kissing so long that Hutch’s lips felt sand-papered raw. But it was good. So good that he didn’t care if Starsky’s five o’clock shadow sliced his lips to bloody ribbons. He had given up hope of ever tasting Starsky’s hungry kisses, ever holding his strong body. This first time was so damned good.

What wasn’t good. What was becoming a royal pain in the ass was their location. Starsky’s couch just wasn’t made for two full grown men to hump on.

“Babe,” Hutch murmured, reluctantly pushing Starsky away just far enough to form the single syllable.

“Uh,” Starsky grunted, his tongue circling Hutch’s lips, trying to slip back inside.

Hutch sucked on the tongue for a moment, then released it, and pulled his head back a little farther. “We gotta stop, Starsk,” he insisted.

That got Starsky’s attention. He reared back, eyes open, and a frown beginning to form as he echoed, “Stop? You’re not serious. After all the time it took us to—”

Hutch put a silencing finger over the protesting lips, tightening the arm around Starsky’s back in reassurance. “A brief adjournment to relocate,” he amended his suggestion. “As in off this fucking couch and onto your bed. I think my ribs are about to cave in.”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry,” Starsky apologized, and immediately retreated.

Hutch held on, letting Starsky’s strength lift them both upright on the couch, and then adding his own to help them both to their feet. He lost track of their joint purpose then, swooping in for more kisses, thoroughly enjoying the new position that gave him the freedom to bring their bodies closer together. He slid his hands down Starsky’s back, but froze with his fingertips just below the leather belt, his skin tingling at the contact with the beginning curve of Starsky’s ass.

Starsky laughed. A filthy, knowing little chuckle that had just enough nervousness in it to prevent Hutch from continuing his explorations. He hesitated, then recognized that there was no objection in Starsky’s body language. That his arms still clung and his chest still pressed. Permission to proceed as Hutch saw fit.

Taking it slow, savoring every millimetre, Hutch slid both hands down Starsky’s ass. First fingertips, then flattening fingers, then palms laid claim to the denim-encased cheeks. He moaned with pleasure when he had both hands full of Starsky’s ass, rejoicing in finally having the right to caress his partner so intimately.

“How long have you wanted to do that?” Starsky teased, laughter in his voice and a smile on the lips that nibbled their way around Hutch’s chin.

“Since about twenty minutes before you introduced yourself,” Hutch’s confession was only a slight exaggeration. He had noticed many things about Starsky at the Academy, not the least of which was his grade A ass, and now it was his. In a manner of speaking. Just barely, he resisted the urge to sink his fingers into the firm muscles, to brand them with his fingerprints.

“Yeah?” Starsky asked, sounding very pleased with himself. “And all this time you let me think I was the only pervert. Turnin’ on to alla this corn-fed blond beauty before I even knew your name.” He wiggled his hips a little, then pushed back more firmly into Hutch’s hands. “Fits good, huh?”

“Fits perfect,” Hutch agreed, letting himself knead his double handful, realizing after a few pleasurable minutes that Starsky had mirrored his grip and they were dry humping each other. And he was close to coming. Hutch forced himself to stop moving, which did little to ease his predicament when Starsky kept on dancing his slow but relentless waltz.

“Haven’t come in my pants in a long, long time,” Starsky issued the invitation to continue in a husky purr directly into Hutch’s ear.

Hutch began moving again as he considered, his hips thrusting a counterpoint to the slower pace Starsky set. He had never felt so alive in his life, so excited The brush of his shirt on his nipples, the heated stroke of Starsky’s cock pressed to his, even the rub of his underwear, were all hyper erotic sensations, as if every nerve in his body were sending their pleasure messages to his brain in triplicate.

Starsky’s hips were moving faster now, no longer a tantalizing rub, but driving the thick heat of Starsky’s cock harder and faster into Hutch’s groin.

“Hutch. Hutch. Hutch,” Starsky panted/moaned, the mantra almost set to music by the rustle of their clothing.

Hutch stopped moving abruptly, certain that, despite the screaming of his congested balls, he didn’t want to come like this. Not this first, so long-awaited climax with Starsky. After the emotional barriers had finally tumbled, he couldn’t bear to have even the simple obstruction of their clothes between them.

A few thrusts later, Starsky finally became aware that he danced alone and stopped moving as well, his breathing a hot, harsh acceptance against Hutch’s cheek. They were so attuned, the way they were when they went into action on the streets, that Hutch didn’t even have to explain his desire. Starsky simply stepped back and started stripping, tossing his clothes in a bread-crumb path for Hutch to follow to the bedroom.

Hutch followed both his partner and the example, letting his discarded clothes entwine with Starsky’s on the floor, the way the two of them immediately became an intricate tangle of willing flesh on the bed.

Starsky’s naked ass in his hands was so much better than its jean-clad incarnation, it immediately trickled fantasies into Hutch’s mind that he had never dared to dream. Sinking into this flesh, burying himself core deep in the man he had wanted for so long.

Then Starsky grabbed Hutch’s ass, the same desire spoken by the fingers that pushed and kneaded and sank deep into the crevice. It was more than Hutch could bear. Frantically, he pushed and pushed, aching for the cock that thrust against his, reveling in the powerful thrusts that matched him. Once, twice, followed by an instinctive moment when he longed to stop, to prolong the sweet pleasure endlessly. Too late. One more wriggling thrust from Starsky and Hutch was coming hard, with Starsky, as usual, right there with him.

“Sweet Jesus, how did we ever wait so long for this?” Starsky panted before the last weak pulse had throbbed between them.

With frenzied hugs, and surreptitious pats, and competing for each other in the guise of dueling for some woman or other. The same strategies they would fall back on to keep this amazing perfection on a tight, only occasionally slipped leash.

“You know it’s still the dumbest idea we ever came up with,” Hutch replied. Not because he believed it, not even because it was necessarily true, but because they had agreed. Before their lips met for the first time. Before Starsky’s arms had gathered him close. They had agreed.

Starsky sighed heavily and Hutch knew that the sound of it, the feel of the warm, moist breath washing his skin, was going to be their last caress. For tonight.

“I’m sorry,” Starsky apologized, easing out of Hutch’s arms and rolling onto his back, eyes that had lost the fire of passion but not the warmth of love holding Hutch’s captive. “I wish I had the guts—”

“Don’t apologize,” Hutch overrode the undeserved contrition. Starsky shouldn’t have to bear the burden for their mutual cowardice. “I couldn’t do it, either,” he reminded the man who would now be his secret, sometime-lover, uncertain whether he was lying. Maybe. Maybe not. “We’ve only got thirteen years to retirement.”

Hutch could still feel the warmth of Starsky’s sigh against his skin as he sank down into the chair beside Dobey. What kind of a man was he that his body could respond to those cherished memories while the man who gave them to him was dying? Hutch slapped the arm of the chair, grateful for the pain that drove pleasure from his traitorous body and let the agony of loss reinstate itself in every fiber of his being.

“You know, there’s not much at headquarters I can’t do here,” Dobey said quietly.

Hutch felt the weight of Dobey’s depression, the expectation of response. “Yeah,” he ventured, though he couldn’t remember exactly what the captain had said.

“I think I’ll stay,” Dobey offered his decision. “I mean, I think one of us should be here, in case we lose him.”

His heart torn and bleeding inside his chest as years of useless denial and wasted time slashed at him, Hutch remained mute. How, he wondered, can you lose something you had been too afraid to ever truly have?

~*~*~

Alone. It was wonderfully silent in the men’s room. No voices that required something of him, no quiet shush-shush-shush of the respirator that reminded him Starsky couldn’t breathe on his own, no rhythmic beep that reassured him Starsky’s valiant heart still struggled to keep his failing body alive.

Hutch stared into the haunted eyes in the mirror and let the nothingness surround him, insulate him for just a moment. Long enough to re-gather his defenses for the pain to come. Long enough to find the strength to endure what he must. Long enough to find some small spark of spirit in the dull blue that watched him.

“Hey!” Starsky said, his hand settling on Hutch’s shoulder, high up, close to his neck, as the two of them walked away from Lola Brenner’s bail bond office. “Do you have any idea how beautiful your eyes become when you are angry?”

The eyes Starsky had so often admired, so often complimented, welled until Hutch could make out only a blurred shadow of his own reflection. No! He pressed relentless fingers into his eyes, then covered his mouth with the same hand, vainly attempting to force the grief to remain inside, demanding his mouth hold it, his throat swallow it, his belly retain it as a companion for the endless cups of black coffee he had fed it.

He couldn’t cry yet. Had to save the river of grief and the ocean of sorrow for when the beeping stopped and a flick of a switch silenced the shush-shush-shush forever. He couldn’t contain it. There wasn’t enough room inside his skin to hold this shrieking agony. One steel-barbed sob escaped his throat as Hutch bent and splashed icy water onto his face. Soon, he promised the impatient beast of grief. Soon enough to weep when the waiting was over.

~*~*~

“We go out and look for them,” Hutch insisted, the need to do something, anything except sit around and wait for Starsky to die, separating him from his respect for Dobey and his leadership.

“For what?” Dobey demanded. “A bullet in the head. It’s not just Starsky they want, it’s you, too.”

“It sure beats sitting around here pouring coffee,” Hutch grumbled.

“Hutch, if you go out there now, it’s gonna be like shooting a duck in a barrel,” Dobey growled, anger and frustration giving way to a more conciliatory tone and expression as he continued. “Now come on. Be calm. Calm down and wait ’til I find you a new partner.”

Hutch glared at the captain, seeing not the grief-stricken friend who argued for the preservation of Hutch’s life, but another Dobey. Less gray. Less wrinkles. Just over all less Dobey.

“I know I’m gonna regret this,” Dobey told them, a scowl doing a very poor job of camouflaging the toothy grin that kept escaping the captain’s control and flashing at them. “But, hopefully, so will the criminals of Bay City. As of today, you’re partners.”

“I already have a partner,” Hutch told the captain, no pity in him for the painful contrition on the face of the man who had finally fulfilled Starsky’s prophecy so many years ago. “I don’t need another one.”

~*~*~

Hutch leaned against the back wall of the elevator and stared at the back of Huggy’s head. Huggy knew. Despite the stubborn optimism, Huggy knew Hutch was right. Starsky was dying.

Every time he thought those three simple words, every time he had spoken them, Hutch felt his body start shaking. On the inside. It was a constant battle, a diligent monitoring, that kept it tucked decently behind the enduring facade he wore.

Time for another mental check. Hands? No, they were steady, splayed flat against the cold, painted metal behind him. Legs? No, his locked knees guaranteed the appearance of calm. Lips? Ah, the lips. Always the lips most likely to give him away.

“You missed my turn,” Starsky complained from the passenger seat.

Hutch glanced over at his rescued partner, suppressing a wince at how small Starsky appeared still dressed in the shapeless black robe of his execution. He wished he had thought to bring a change of clothes with him, but how was he to know … Hutch tightened his hands around the steering wheel to stop their shaking, his heart pounding as he remembered how close death had been.

“Hospital.” Hutch offered the excuse for his sudden lack of navigational abilities in a don’t-even-think-about-arguing tone. He’d give in. He knew he would if Starsky so much as mumbled a complaint. Starsky could ask him for a quart or two of blood right now, and Hutch would simply open a vein for him.

Starsky grumbled, but there weren’t any two syllables in it that Hutch could interpret as anything approaching a protest. This was bad. Very, very bad. But Hutch didn’t dare take his eyes off the road. Didn’t dare look at Starsky again. If he did, if Starsky’s Adam’s apple was bobbing, it would be Hutch’s undoing. He would have no way of holding his mask of efficiency in place if he saw how close Starsky was to losing it.

Hutch heard the rustle of that damned death shroud again, then felt the solid, living warmth of Starsky’s hand on his shoulder.

 “Bite your lip, babe.”

Starsky always knew. A hand on his shoulder or a pat on his back and the gentle “bite your lip.” Every time. But never again.

“Starsky’s gonna die, Hug,” Hutch whispered to the mutual friend who, perhaps, understood better than anyone else the enormity of the loss those words represented.

Hutch pulled in his bottom lip and sank his teeth into the trembling flesh until it surrendered to his will. “Starsky’s gonna die, and there ain’t nothin’ anybody can do about it.”

~*~*~

The past had deserted him. Hutch had been living in those moments, played out on the screen of his mind like snippets of film, as if he were the one dying and his life, as legend had it, was flashing before his eyes. Those cherished memories had vanished, superseded by a present that had only one reality.

“You better get down here.”

It took a conscious effort of will to press down harder on the gas pedal. His body was possessed by a creeping exhaustion that had started in his chest and spread outward, sapping his strength and his will.

“No,” Hutch denied his own traitorous body the right to spare him what he could not bear. He had known that Starsky was dying, but that knowledge had been the babblings of self-delusion. An ember of hope had still burned inside him, stubborn and valiant, until the words that had sent him racing through the streets of Bay City one last time.

“Wait for me, Starsk. Please, wait for me,” Hutch begged. He had to be there before Starsky died. Had to hold his hand once more while there was still the warmth of life in it. Had to offer his promise of love one last time and pray it would be the last sound Starsky took into death with him.

The past had vanished, and the future was stolen. Only the present remained, to helplessly watch love die.

~*~*~

Still breathless from his headlong race through the hospital, Hutch almost staggered as he turned his back on the incredulous doctor and pushed into Starsky’s room. Alive. Still miraculously alive. But the ember of faith was a cold ash now that Hutch was unwilling to revive. No heroic measures for that cremated corpse. His heart would never survive its death throes a second time.

“You should wait outside until I’m finished here,” the nurse admonished him. A different nurse, with efficient fingers that smoothed bandages and tucked blankets, but one with no compassion in her dark eyes.

“No,” Hutch told her without emotion. He moved around her, soft-footed in case he disturbed the shadow of death hovering in the room. He found Starsky’s hand among the tubes and laced their fingers, counted off the beeps it took for the cold flesh to greedily absorb his warmth.

“Ten minutes,” the compassionless nurse reminded him, the crash and rattle of her cart-pushing departure prompting Hutch to lean protectively over Starsky to shield him from the noise.

Hours. Minutes. Seconds. Time had become a useless measure. An increment to count the ebb of life and the advance of death. Time that had once seemed so abundant that, together, he and Starsky had so foolishly wasted years and years of it.

The past was trying to encroach on him again, displacing the image of the cruelly wounded man on the bed with the siren call of better times. Having feared its desertion, certain that Starsky would take every cherished memory with him when he died, Hutch welcomed the images now.

There were at least a hundred people at this party. Every room was jammed, and the excess spilled out into the yards, both front and back. A hundred people talking, dancing to the blaring music, making out on quite a few of the horizontal surfaces. A hundred people to choose from, yet in the two hours since they had arrived, Hutch had been content to spend all his time with Starsky. He wasn’t sure what that said about him, or about them since Starsky seemed just as content, but Hutch felt too mellow to care tonight.

“Food’s on!”

Hutch looked toward the patio doors where the bellow had come from, but couldn’t see their host for the general exodus of hungry guests. He looked to his left when Starsky changed positions on the bench they shared, surprised that his bottomless pit of a partner wasn’t leading the mob. “Aren’t you hungry?” he asked.

Starsky shrugged, leaning back into the corner of the bench and stretching his arm out along the back toward Hutch. Three fingers tapped a restless tattoo on the painted wood, the only indication that his lazy sprawl might represent only a part of his present mood.

“Nah. Don’t think they’ve got anything in there I want tonight,” Starsky drawled, his eyelids at half-mast, long lashes concealing the expression behind them. “What about you?” he asked, the lashes lifting. Hutch still couldn’t interpret the expression in his friend’s eyes, but the blue held him in their velvet snare as Starsky continued. “You hungry tonight, babe?”

The restless fingers had deserted the bench back and were tapping their message out on Hutch’s shoulder now. Tap, brush, tap. Tap, brush, tap. As far as they could reach toward his neck, then reversing course until they hesitated at the edge of Hutch’s t-shirt sleeve.

Hutch laughed, the sound the closest he had ever heard himself make to a nervous titter as he belatedly recognized what Starsky was doing. What he had been doing all night with his bedroom eyes and his unnecessary, lingering touches.

“Are you flirting with me, partner?” Hutch challenged, no question in his tone because there was no doubt in his mind. This wasn’t the first time since they had become friends. Starsky practiced on him sometimes, trying out a new line or a come-hither look on Hutch before adding it to his repertoire. But there was a difference to the rehearsal tonight, a seriousness that gave the old game a forbidden excitement.

The impression was reinforced when Starsky didn’t laugh, maintaining the touch and the locked gazes and the sprawl that suddenly seemed less lazy and more pre-meditated pose. “Yeah, Hutch, I am,” he admitted without hesitation.

The confession gave Hutch an unexpected thrill, though he wasn’t sure whether the excited shivers chasing up and down his spine might just as easily be fear. Whatever it was, however, it was bringing his cock up to interested attention in his jeans.

And Starsky, of course, noticed. The blue eyes swept a lingering caress down to Hutch’s lap and then retraced their course to re-capture Hutch’s eyes. There was an invitation in them, and a challenge. In the eyes, and in the soft pout of his lips, and in the fingers that had found their way to the naked skin of Hutch’s arm.

“Do you want me to stop?” Starsky asked. The question was yet another dare, but it was also a genuine invitation to call time out if Hutch chose.

Hutch knew he should end the game now. A dismissive laugh and a “mush brain” would send Starsky looking for a more receptive companion. Maybe. Probably. “No,” he whispered.

Starsky’s eyebrows went up, and the encroaching fingers became still, then he smiled, a toothy predator’s smile that slipped into Hutch’s eyes and went straight to his balls. “Want me to do more than flirt?” he purred.

Hutch suddenly realized that they were alone in the yard. No witnesses. No excuse to backtrack to safer ground. No reason to take his eyes off Starsky and avoid letting the wild and dangerous thing in his eyes invade Hutch’s own body.

“Yes.” Hutch granted both himself and Starsky permission to proceed with this insanity, unable to believe that that was really his voice, so breathless and husky and hungry.

With that feral smile still on his lips, Starsky oozed to his feet and Hutch hypnotically followed. Mesmerized, even when Starsky turned his back, Hutch allowed himself to be led around the outside of the house, avoiding polite goodbyes, skirting the possibility that the minutes it might take to push through the partying throng would allow common sense to end this madness.

Silence got in the Torino with them, growing heavier and more awkward with every block that flashed by the windows. By the time they pulled up into the driveway beside the cottage, the soundlessness weighed a crushing ton.

Starsky put the gear shift into park, but he left the engine running as he turned on the seat toward Hutch. The pose was the same as it had been on the bench, but the fingers that stretched out along the back of the leather seat were held a careful few inches from contact with Hutch. The blue eyes that had hypnotized Hutch weren’t avoiding him now, but neither were they holding him captive.

“I guess this would be pretty stupid, huh?” Starsky asked, his rapt attention now on his fingers.

Hutch’s eyes were on those fingers, too, watching them drum the leather from pinky to index. Once, twice, and then they were still. He wished he could just lay his hand over those fingers, keep it simple, and forget the talk that was forcing him to do his thinking with his brain. Wishing harder that Starsky would take the onus of the decision from Hutch and just grab him. But wishes weren’t horsepower, so….

“Yeah. Not one of the brightest ideas we ever came up with,” Hutch agreed. He popped the passenger door and climbed out of the car, turning to close the door firmly on the temptation that remained inside the car. “See you tomorrow.”

Case closed. Insanity avoided. As he watched the Torino’s taillights disappear down Ocean Boulevard, Hutch knew he was fooling himself. The subject hadn’t been dismissed, only adjourned.

“So much wasted time,” Hutch whispered to the unresponsive man on the bed. “Fucking years worth of it while we played stupid games.”

Hutch heard the door open behind him, but didn’t acknowledge the intruder, hording the few extra seconds it took her to cross the room and tap him on the shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Detective Hutchinson. Your ten minutes are up.”

Obediently, Hutch released Starsky’s hand, tucking his own into his pocket, curling his fingers around the tactile memory of Starsky’s skin. So much wasted time, he thought again as he shuffled to the door. And now their time was almost gone.

~*~*~

What felt like a very long time ago, in this same hospital, Hutch had told Starsky that he intended to live 148 years. Today it felt as if he had reached that goal. His body ached from too little food, not enough sleep, and the relentless strain of waiting for Starsky to die. And his brain was mush. A useless, stress-logged sponge that could replay the past for him in torturous detail, but couldn’t seem to absorb the information he tried to feed it.

“I don’t know what to do, Starsk,” he admitted to his comatose partner, acutely aware of the cold-eyed nurse who sat on her chair a few feet away, her nose stuck in a book.

“I’m pushing the odds. I don’t know what to do,” he confessed again, longing for the give and take that had so often engaged his ability to see through the bullshit. Without Starsky, he was only half of a whole. A useless half.

“I mean,” he continued, unable to resist the habit to look to Starsky to help him dig out the answers he needed. “What if… ?” he murmured as the shush of the respirator became the whisper of the incoming tide on a stretch of desolate beach.

It was colder on the beach today than it had been just a few weeks ago. It was May already, and yet the sun held little warmth and the relentless wind whipped at him, tangling his hair and sneaking its chilly fingers under the collar of his jacket.

At least the cold meant he had the beach to himself as he struggled with yet another life-altering decision. No distracting humanity cavorting in the surf in carefree abandon to distract him. Hutch had the long expanse of shoreline to himself except for one lone figure approaching as fast as the sand would allow.

Starsky. Of course. And very fitting. After all, Starsky had been there when Hutch chose to abandon his career; he would have to be here while Hutch decided whether to re-claim it.

“Hi,” Starsky greeted him as if the meeting had been planned or pre-ordained.

“Hi, yourself,” Hutch welcomed him, and because his decision was almost made, and because this might be his last chance for a very long time, and because his love for this man was as deep and wide and strong as the ocean before them, he held out his arms.

Starsky came into them, offered a tender kiss, then turned within the circle of Hutch’s embrace, leaning back a little, his attention apparently captured by the restless waves. “You make up your so-called mind yet?” he drawled lazily.

Hutch dropped one arm to Starsky’s waist, drawing the sturdy body closer, while the other hand crossed the leather-clad chest and found a grip on Starsky’s shoulder.

“Don’t know what to do, Starsk,” he confessed. “I didn’t much like being targets without a badge, but it wasn’t all bad.” He tightened his grip to remind Starsky of what had been good. “The freedom was nice.”

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed, crossing his arms over the one that circled his waist and pressing it harder into his belly. “Almost felt like the someday bus had finally arrived.”

“Had arrived,” Hutch corrected him gently, remembering the nights in Starsky’s bed, the days in his own. Even looking for work together had had its moments. It hadn’t escaped his notice that, never once, did either of them consider looking for separate jobs. Still joined at the hip. “Don’t know if I want to get back on it for another thirteen years.”

“Twelve and a half,” Starsky reminded him of the inexorable march of time. “So, what do you think? Are we goin’ fishin’?” he asked, the tip of his chin toward the ocean brushing his wind-blown hair against Hutch’s cheek.

Hutch buried his face in the soft curls, feeling the steady beat of Starsky’s heart beneath his arm. Steady, certain and sure. “I love you, Detective Starsky,” he whispered his decision close to Starsky’s ear.

“Love you, too, Sergeant Hutchinson.”

What if echoed in Hutch’s mind as he looked away from Starsky’s face, unable to bear the death mask. What if he had never accepted his badge back? What if they had never climbed back aboard the bus?

“What if… ?” he whispered hopelessly.

~*~*~

There was a connection here somewhere. Hutch knew it. Somewhere in the mountains of files and reams of printouts lay the connection between the attempted assassination of a couple of street cops and one of the most powerful men in the world. If his eyes weren’t so reading-blind, and more than three-quarters of his brain wasn’t back at the hospital, Hutch might even have a hope of ferreting it out.

“Take a break,” Dobey advised, sinking down onto Starsky’s chair across the overloaded table from Hutch.

“I can’t,” Hutch insisted, though some less stubborn part of him apparently agreed with the captain because, as if directed by a mind other than his own, his hand turned the printout he had been reading face down. He stared at the back of it, the white expanse no more informative than its printed front, as he told Dobey what the older man already knew. “It’s too important. We have to find the connection between us and Gunther or…”

“Or you and Starsky will spend the rest of your lives running and hiding,” Dobey voiced for him the grim reality that had kept Hutch glued to his chair hour after hour.

“We’ve never been much for hiding,” Hutch reminded his superior. “And, in any case, Starsky’s not up to much running. Won’t be for a long time,” he added, trying hard not to add a silent ‘if ever’ to the end of that statement. He was still too full of the miracle of Starsky’s survival to start begging fickle fortune for any other undeserved favors.

Dobey waved a hand over the desk, the gesture including both mountains and reams. “You could let me assign this to someone else,” he suggested, but his tone and expression were both resigned with the experience of years’ worth of dealing with their stubborn determination to stick to a case until the bitter end.

Dobey, however, had no way of knowing how very tempting his offer was. No way of knowing because all he had seen was the tip of the iceberg of friendship and loyalty and trust.

Perhaps because he was tired and frustrated, or more likely because Hutch had already made yet another life-altering decision, he chose to part the waves a little and allow Dobey a glimpse of the nine-tenths of love that was concealed beneath them.

“I want to be there,” Hutch whispered, the frustration of hearing each night of the day’s milestones chewing up his joy and spitting it out at Dobey because he was a convenient, available target. “I want to give the heart monitor a pat as it goes out the door. I want my arm to be the one around him when he takes his first steps. I want…”

Hutch caught his runaway tongue behind clenched teeth. He had revealed too much. If not with his words, then certainly with his tone. When he found the courage, however, to face Dobey, to look in the dark eyes and accept their judgment, he found only compassion.

“I know that, son,” Dobey admitted. “So why don’t you let me assign Babcock and Simmons and you shift your tail down to that hospital where you need to be?”

“Because,” Hutch began, trying to remember why it was he was resisting the siren call to abandon his duty. An old memory, the first to visit since Starsky had opened his eyes, came to remind him.

“Starsky. Hutchinson. Front and center.”

Hutch hustled up to the front of the classroom and stood at ramrod attention, noting out of the corner of his eye that Cadet Starsky snapped to just as quickly. But not fast enough for their instructor, it seemed.

“Get the lead out, Starsky!” Sergeant Whitty snapped. “You move like that on the street; you, your partner, or a few innocent bystanders are going to end up dead,” he predicted.

“Sir, yes, sir,” Starsky acknowledged the undeserved reprimand while Hutch worked to keep a wince off his face.

After Starsky’s brazen introduction, Hutch hadn’t had all that much to do with him. He wasn’t avoiding the former New Yorker; it just seemed that class schedules and rotations hadn’t brought them together until they had both come under the jurisdiction of Sergeant Whitty.

For some reason, Whitty had taken an instant dislike to Starsky. Nothing he did was good enough, and he never, ever said the right thing.

“You’re not in the army anymore, Starsky. A simple ‘yes, sir’ is sufficient,” Whitty chided him.

“S- Yes, sir,” Starsky again acknowledged the correction without any sign of resentment.

But Hutch was getting a little hot under the collar. He had to bite his lip to keep a little honest insubordination off his tongue and out of his record but resolved to find some way to let Starsky know of his sympathies.

“Section D,” Whitty growled, glaring at Starsky in apparent disappointment that he was offered no further excuse to torment him. “Get your issue and get in position. Hustle.”

Hutch broke into a jog to keep up with Starsky. “Hustle? This is supposed to be a stakeout exercise. Why does he want us to hustle?” he muttered to Starsky as they collected radio transmitters from the equipment officer.

“Hurry up and wait,” Starsky offered his opinion in a mumble as they moved on to the assistant with the map.

“Section D,” the assistant said, pointing toward a screen of bushes. “In the hole,” he added with a nasty smile. “You’re waiting for a man with a black hat. When he shows up, you radio the lead unit.”

“Ours is not to question why, huh?” Hutch asked while they trudged toward the bushes. He had assumed that being paired up with Starsky for this exercise meant he would probably be sharing the worst possible position, but “in the hole” sounded even more ominous than he had expected.

“Ours is but to catch fucking pneumonia,” Starsky’s disgusted growl warned Hutch, even before he saw the mud hole, that ominous didn’t begin to cover it. “Sorry, Hutchinson,” he apologized, and then waded into the mud.

“Why apologize to me?” Hutch asked when he stood beside Starsky up to his waist in the cold, wet ooze. He shuddered as he felt the slime penetrating through coveralls and shorts.

Starsky just shrugged and thumbed the send button on his radio. “Section D in position,” he reported, to all appearances content to stand here all day while his toes numbed and his balls shriveled.

A half hour of silent watching/suffering crept by while Hutch kept his complaints to himself. There probably was a very good reason to put them through this. Somewhere down the road, this experience might save their lives. Bullshit. This was little better than plebe hazing. Worse, in fact, because it was inflicted by teachers who ought to know better. And the only reason Hutch was standing here with his shorts full of slime was because he had been unlucky enough to be paired up with the class scapegoat.

“How can you just take shit like this?” Hutch finally had to ask Starsky before he started laying the blame on the helpless victim who shared his predicament.

Starsky laughed softly, the deep chuckle filled with irony rather than amusement. “This is nothing,” he dismissed their present discomfort. “At least there’s no leeches in this mud hole.”

“Leeches?” Hutch echoed, suddenly absolutely, positively certain that he felt something creeping up his leg.

“Had to have one burned off my ass once. Still got the scar,” Starsky revealed in a conversational tone. When he turned his head to offer a grim smile, however, Hutch saw the fury in his eyes.

“I want to be a cop real bad, Hutchinson. Bad enough to put up with whatever an asshole like Whitty can throw at me,” Starsky admitted, the grin becoming a crooked smile that cooled the fury and invited Hutch to join the game of endurance. “Besides, I figure the most important talent a cop’s gotta have is his stick-to-it-ness. How the hell else are we gonna outsmart the bad guys?”

“I guess, when you put it like that—”

“Section D.”

The summons from the radio cut across the agreement Hutch wanted to offer. “Section D,” Starsky said into the unit.

 “Hutchinson, you can move over to Section E if you want. Starsky should be able to handle D on his own,” Whitty offered Hutch a reprieve from the misery of the hole.

Hutch plucked the radio from Starsky’s hand, his frozen ass and numb feet singing a hallelujah chorus. ‘Thanks, Sarge,” he acknowledged the favoritism, “but I think my partner and I will see this one through.”

“Because,” Hutch repeated, aware that probably only a second or two had gone by while the past had given him his answer. “A cop has to stick to it until it’s done,” he told Dobey, then gave the captain a grin. “Besides, if I tried to quit, he’d climb out of that bed and kick my ass.”

Dobey grunted his agreement, then pushed to his feet and disappeared back into his office while Hutch turned the printout face up, unfolded the pages, and let his eyes scan from line to line. Gunther Industries. Gunther Petroleum. Texas Shorthorn Cattle Company. It had been staring him in the face for hours, just waiting for him to see it. Grabbing up the printout, Hutch charged for Dobey’s office.

~*~*~

For once, the department was sparing no expense. Even though San Francisco was little more than a hop, skip, and a jump by air away from Bay City, Hutch was traveling in style. A first-class ticket and a car waiting at the airport to whisk him off to the Gunther estate.

“Champagne?” the pretty stewardess asked, bending low in front of Hutch, giving him a first-class view down the front of her uniform.

“No thanks,” Hutch rejected both the liquor and the flirtatious offer. He wasn’t even tempted. Knew he would never be tempted again by the interest in any but one particular pair of deep blue eyes. Someday had finally arrived.

Hutch was very careful as he pressed his lips to Starsky’s, needing the kiss, but not wanting to waken his sleeping lover. He had shooed the nurse and Dobey out of the room, determined to have a few private moments with the man he loved. Even if Starsky was out like a disconnected light.

To Hutch’s surprise, however, Starsky’s lips responded to the gentle pressure of his kiss, parting a little, inviting Hutch to deepen the kiss. He resisted the temptation, easing away and meeting Starsky’s sparkling eyes.

“I was hoping you’d get rid of them,” Starsky confessed in a voice still hoarse and raspy from the respirator tube that had been in his throat for days. “But you’re takin’ a chance. Anybody could come chargin’ in, or peek through that window.”

“Let ’em. I’m not pretending anymore,” Hutch declared. He should, he supposed, do Starsky the courtesy of asking his opinion on the matter of their outing, but the sparkling eyes reassured him he needn’t waste their few precious moments together with stupid questions.

“Gonna get right in here beside me right in front of Dobey, huh? ” Starsky challenged.

“Could be,” Hutch threatened.

Starsky wasn’t strong enough to prevent a smile from ruining the scandalized expression he tried to assume. “When?” he demanded, a hungry yearning for the day managing to make itself heard through the rasp of his voice.

“As soon as I get back from slapping the cuffs on Gunther,” Hutch predicted.

Starsky’s expression sobered. “You be careful,” he demanded, and though his growl sounded more like a Pom than a Dobe, he got his message across.

“Damn right I’ll be careful,” Hutch promised. “Nothing and nobody is going to keep me from coming back to you.”

Although the effort was etched on his drawn face, Starsky lifted his left hand and drew Hutch down to him for a kiss to seal the pact.

Hutch could still feel the warmth of Starsky’s kiss as the plane touched down, and he tucked the memory of the recent past safely away. Hutch didn’t have to live on remembered moments from the past anymore. A future of happy moments stretched before him with the love of his life, and Hutch wasn’t about to risk missing out on it. As he had promised Starsky, he would take no chances with their life together today. Hutch wasn’t going to die performing his last official act as an officer of the Bay City Police.