Starsky and Hutch both try to deal with unexpected feelings while investigating two cases that strike too close to home to be coincidence.
Art by Lorraine Brevig.
Originally published in Venice Place Chronicles Volume VIII in 2008.
“We have to take you to the hospital now, Ken.”
“No,” Hutch refused the paramedic’s suggestion, shrugging the man’s hand from his shoulder without taking his eyes off the flames. He couldn’t look away, watching in morbid, fascinated horror as wide fingers of red and orange crept up the outside of the building, blistering the paint. In a moment, Venice Place was obliterated as if it had never existed.
Hutch had the training to know he was in shock; the absolute despair of watching his home and everything in it go up in smoke wouldn’t let him care. He could barely feel the discomfort of the metal step of the ambulance under his butt, or the ache of the cold oxygen on his smoke-raw throat.
The scream of yet another siren assaulted Hutch’s ears, but the screech of abused tires that followed chiseled a crack in his fascination. Before his gaze even found the Torino, sloughing to a slip-sliding halt, its driver tumbling onto the asphalt before the machine had come to a full stop, Hutch knew why he had refused to leave the scene.
Hutch fumbled at the mask that covered his mouth, needing Starsky far more than he needed the oxygen attempting to purge inhaled smoke from his lungs. “Over here,” he tried to shout above the roar of the fire and the rumbling chaos of men and machines, but his voice emerged as a whisper, the summons broken into a choking, coughing wheeze.
“Hey, put that back on,” the paramedic insisted, pressing the mask back down over Hutch’s nose and mouth.
“My partner,” Hutch coughed the two-word plea, gesturing toward where Starsky bounced impatiently on his toes, head whipping back and forth, curls flying, as he tried to locate Hutch in the confusion of pumper trucks and efficiently bustling firefighters.
“Over here,” the paramedic echoed Hutch’s summons, a wave of his arm and considerably more volume attracting Starsky’s attention.
A heartbeat later, Starsky’s trembling hands were two warm patches of life on Hutch’s icy shoulders, his familiar face blocking Hutch’s view of the fire that still raged.
“Are you all right?” Starsky demanded fiercely, his fingers dancing restlessly from Hutch’s shoulders to elbows and back as if the flesh could telegraph the answer more quickly than Hutch could speak it.
Far from all right, but better now that Starsky was here. Hutch could feel the warmth of Starsky’s hands through the material of his shirt, and it warmed him more surely than the blanket the efficient paramedic had provided. “How did you know?”
Starsky shook his head, dismissing the relevance of his apparent psychic abilities, but he did answer the question. “Babcock heard it on his scanner, recognized the address, and called me.”
It was too much information. Too many words for Hutch to process. Starsky’s presence, when he needed him most, still felt like some kind of miraculous gift, manna from a compassionate Heaven that Hutch wasn’t about to question.
“Excuse me, Detective Hutchinson.”
Reluctantly, Hutch tore his gaze away from Starsky’s face and focused on the burly, soot-stained fireman who had joined them.
“I’m Captain Kincaid,” the man introduced himself, then nodded toward where his men still battled to bring the fire under control. “You were lucky,” he said.
Hutch didn’t feel lucky. His eyes returned to Venice Place as an ominous rumbling reached his ears. A moment later, the second floor collapsed, and the flames leapt upward, leaving their imprint on his retina. Hutch felt tears fill his eyes and struggled to swallow past the lump that had grown in his raw throat.
“Any idea how it started?” Starsky asked, the cool tone of his voice a contrary stimulus to the urgent grip of the arm that encircled Hutch’s back.
“Don’t know yet,” Kincaid admitted. “Looks like it started in the restaurant, and the sprinklers didn’t go off. The Fire Marshall will have to investigate.”
“Hutch?”
Hutch blinked gritty eyes, forced his head to tum as the fireman hurried away, and watched as the flames’ reflection danced over Starsky’s worried features.
“You okay, babe?” Starsky asked softly.
“Gone,” Hutch whispered in despair. “Everything’s gone.”
“Not everything,” Starsky reassured him in a voice as fierce as his embrace. ”Not the most important thing. You’re still here.”
Hutch stopped trying to hold it together then, allowing muscle and bone to collapse into a quivering mass as he sagged into Starsky’s arms.
~*~*~
Starsky paced the hospital waiting room impatiently. The paramedic had been so certain the doctor would be letting Hutch out tonight, Starsky had reluctantly followed in his own car rather than riding in the ambulance with his partner. Minor injuries, the paramedic had insisted, but if they were so minor, why was Starsky still out here wearing a track in the tile?
Starsky glanced at the clock on the wall and then at the watch on his arm, double-checking the unbelievable fact that he had arrived here only twenty-seven minutes ago. He would give the doctors two more minutes, then protocol be damned, he was going to find Hutch if he had to invade every cubicle and closet. For the first time since he had arrived at the hospital, Starsky stood completely still, legs braced, head tipped back so he could watch those two minutes tick around the face of the clock.
Five…four…three….
“Sergeant Starsky.”
Starsky spun, almost dropping into a defensive crouch before his body caught up with his brain and he relaxed. He tried to find a smile for the pretty woman who watched him inquiringly, but he didn’t seem to have one to spare. “My partner, can I see him?” he demanded instead, charming manners forgotten in his need to ensure Hutch’s well-being.
“This way.”
Following the nurse through a maze of curtain-draped corridors, Starsky made an effort to shift mental gears, trying to find the supportive calm he knew Hutch needed from him. It remained out of reach, leaving him scrabbling for the facade if not the fact.
“Well, you look better,” Starsky declared with false heartiness when he ducked behind the curtain the nurse indicated to find Hutch, stripped to the waist and stretched out on a gurney. He was a liar, and they both knew it. Hutch looked like hell.
Felt like it, too, Starsky judged when Hutch grabbed for his hand as soon as Starsky was close enough. Starsky suppressed a wince at the strength of the grip and returned it, found the smile that had eluded him for the nurse and gave it to Hutch.
“How you doin’, buddy?” he asked, brushing at a smudge of soot that stood out starkly on Hutch’s too-pale cheek. He was used to feeling protective of Hutch—that was his job and his right, after all–but what he felt now as he looked into the wide blue eyes was so much stronger than anything he had ever felt in his life, almost an obsession.
“It’s not fair,” Hutch said in a tone that Starsky knew would have been a whine if his partner had been capable of that much emotion. “I only just got everything fixed up after Diana.”
It was so obvious, it was almost one of those slap-your-forehead moments. Of course that was why Starsky was so obsessed. It was too soon after Diana had blown so destructively through their lives. Hutch was barely healed, only back to full duty a few weeks. The memory of “He ‘II be dead before you get here” was still too fresh in Starsky’s mind.
Understanding the strength of his feelings neither lessened their power, nor offered Starsky much comfort. The helplessness that had gripped him when Diana Harmon had snarled those words had him again tightening his fingers around Hutch’s with the same impotent terror. “I’m so sorry, babe. So sorry,” he murmured.
“I don’t even have a change of clothes,” Hutch complained, shivering a little, though the cubicle seemed warm enough to Starsky.
That helpless feeling retreated a little as Starsky pulled the sheet up higher. “Sure you do,” he said, taking his own comfort from the steady thump of the heart that beat beneath the hand he rested on the naked chest. “You’ve got lots of stuff at my place,” he reminded Hutch, and received a tremulous smile as his reward.
They both jumped when the curtain rattled back. Automatically, Starsky lifted his hand from Hutch’s chest, but tightened his grip on Hutch’s fingers. He glared a defiant I dare you at the doctor who eyed the clasped hands and then shrugged.
“Dr. Cairns,” Hutch acknowledged the intruder.
“How are you feeling?” Cairns asked, giving more of his attention to the notes on the clipboard he held than to his patient.
“Aren’t you supposed to tell me that?” Hutch asked testily. The quarrelsome tone earned him a raised eyebrow from the doctor, but it was music to Starsky’s ears. It reassured him and almost brought a smile to his lips. Hutch’s spirit might have taken a right cross, but obviously it wasn’t down for the count. Not yet. Not ever.
“A little smoke inhalation. A couple of minor burns,” Cairns read from the chart as if he hadn’t been the one who examined Hutch or hadn’t written the notes in the first place. He flipped the chart closed and finally gave his attention to Hutch. “Otherwise, you’re fine. I see no reason to admit you. You can go home,” he pronounced as if he was offering Hutch an unexpected parole.
Starsky stepped in smoothly before the speechless horror on Hutch’s face could erupt into either rage or tears. “Thanks, Doc,” he said as amiably as he could manage through clenched teeth. “I’ll take care of him now,” he dismissed the idiot arrogantly.
“I can go home, he said,” Hutch echoed incredulously before the curtain had closed behind the doctor. The little animation fury had given his face deserted him as he continued. “But I don’t have a home anymore.”
“Of course you do, partner,” Starsky reminded him, pushing smoke-stained blond strands back from the tall forehead, aching to sweep the despair from Hutch’s eyes, to make everything right again, no matter the cost. “As long as I’ve got a roof, so do you,” he promised.
The look of gratitude Hutch gave him in response nearly broke Starsky’s heart.
~*~*~
“Almost there, Hutch.”
The soft announcement was the first words that had been spoken since they left the hospital. Hutch had been grateful for the silence. It had been a cushion for him to rest his battered psyche on, the tangible feeling of caring from Starsky a blanket to chase away the chills that still quivered beneath Hutch’s skin.
Hutch opened his eyes and turned his head, offering a small smile to let Starsky know he was getting his feet back under him. His precarious foothold on calm slipped, however, when a fire engine, lights and siren both demanding the right-of-way, screamed past them. Hutch cringed, wanting to cover his ears with his hands but resisting the childish impulse.
“They’re in a helluva hurry,” Starsky observed, more sympathy in his voice than might have been there only an hour ago.
Hutch’s gaze, however, had remained on the speeding engine, a crushing feeling of premonition pushing down on his chest as he saw it turn onto the street ahead. Starsky’s street, where an unnatural glow lit the sky. “No. It can’t be,” he murmured, straightening on the seat.
It couldn’t be, but when they turned the same corner, with a sick feeling of deja vu, Hutch saw that Starsky’s apartment building was engulfed in flames and surrounded by fire trucks. Automatically, his hands reached for the dashboard as Starsky braked hard, throwing Hutch toward the windshield.
“Oh, my God.”
Hutch barely heard Starsky’s horrified whisper, but the click as Starsky opened the door was clear to him above the roar of the fire. His hand flashed out, grabbing at Starsky’s arm to prevent him from leaving the car, perhaps charging into the flames. “No!” he shouted a verbal restraint when Starsky tried to pull free.
A fireman, backlit by the flames, ran toward the car, gesturing them away from the area. “Get this car out of here right now,” he demanded, pushing hard on Starsky’s half-opened door.
“But I live here,” Starsky protested.
“Not anymore you don’t,” the fireman insisted.
Incandescent fury at the man’s callousness brought a scathing retort to Hutch’s lips. But it died there, turning to ashes on his tongue as the arm within his grip was suddenly yanked away and Starsky threw the car into reverse.
They backed off the way they had come, clearing the immediate zone, but stopping where they still had an unobstructed view of the building.
Hutch didn’t let the eerie instant replay distract him, keeping his eyes firmly on his partner, watching with growing disquiet as Starsky watched the destruction of his home. The familiar features remained calm, only the occasional wince, or flat-toned curse breaking up the illusion that Starsky was more than an automaton incapable of emotion.
What felt like hours later but might only have been minutes for all Hutch noticed the passage of time, another fireman approached the car.
“I’m Captain Roberts. One of my men tells me you live here?” he said, bending down to talk through the open driver’s window.
“That’s right,” Hutch confirmed when he realized Starsky wasn’t going to answer, that his friend hadn’t even turned his head. “Do you know what happened?”
”Not yet. The Fire Marshall will have to investigate,” Roberts told them.
Another eerie instant replay, but again, Starsky seemed uninterested in the information, leaving Hutch to thank the captain, who then hurried away. Hutch wasn’t even sure if Starsky had been aware of the man’s presence.
“Starsk?” Hutch said, shifting a little closer on the seat, reaching out toward the figure that sat too still, the face that remained too calm. He let his hand fall on Starsky’s shoulder and felt the coiled tension beneath the leather jacket.
Slowly, Starsky turned his head, the eyes that met Hutch’s as calm as his voice was dispassionate. “I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“I…” Hutch began, his agreement cut off by a squawk from the radio. He pulled the unit from the hook and brought it to his mouth. “Zebra Three,” he acknowledged automatically.
“Hutchinson. Where’s Starsky?” Dobey’s voice growled from the receiver.
“Right here, Captain,” Hutch said, though he wondered if he was lying. Starsky’s body might be here, but Hutch wasn’t entirely certain it was still inhabited by the friend he knew so well.
“Thank God. I want you both in here right now,” Dobey demanded.
“Damn it, Captain. We both just lost our homes tonight,” Hutch protested into the receiver and saw Starsky wince, felt the flinch under his hand as if Starsky had just been struck a body blow.
“I know,” Dobey agreed, his voice as grim as Hutch had ever heard it. “Get in here.”
Hutch hung up the radio unit without signing off, jumping a little when the Torino’s engine roared to life. His eyes met Starsky’s and he saw that the animation was beginning to return. The fire-lit features were still too pale, but Hutch was relieved to see that they no longer resembled an exhibit at the wax museum.
“Looks like the captain doesn’t believe in coincidence either,” Starsky muttered and dropped the gearshift into drive.
~*~*~
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Dobey greeted them when the partners arrived at his office.
Another time, Starsky might have smiled, but he didn’t feel much like smiling tonight. He didn’t feel much of anything at the moment. The entire bizarre situation seemed more like a jalapeno-inspired nightmare than anything remotely resembling reality. He kept expecting to wake up in his own bed, vowing to give up before-bed spicy food forever.
“How did you know?” Hutch asked, the question broken up by a raspy little cough.
Now that was still real to Starsky. Finding Hutch, living and breathing, if singed and smoky, sitting on the step of that ambulance instead of the burned-up mass of overcooked meat Starsky had feared he would find. The relief was still an electric charge in his nerves that even watching the death throes of his own home had been unable to completely subdue.
“Captain?” Hutch prompted, the demanding tone of his voice pulling Starsky’s eyes to Dobey to find their superior wearing the same uncomfortable expression he wore when they caught him at the candy machine.
“Did you get a call?” Starsky asked, remembering Prudhomme. Instinctively, he shifted his chair a little closer to Hutch, glancing around the office as if he expected to find that old tormentor hiding in the non-existent shadows.
“I have a scanner,” Dobey finally admitted reluctantly. “I listen to it when I can’t sleep. Police, ambulance, fire department. Sometimes it gives me a leg up on the next day,” he explained with a resigned shrug. “I recognized your address, Starsky, and when I couldn’t reach Hutchinson, I called in here and found out about the fire out in Venice.”
“Then there’s no real reason not to think this isn’t just some weird coincidence,” Hutch ventured doubtfully, the eyes that met Starsky’s as disinclined to accept the possibility as Starsky was.
“As many times as the past has come back to haunt you two, I’m not inclined to take this lightly,” Dobey growled.
“As a couple of guys with not a whole lot left but the clothes on their backs, we’re not arguing, Captain,” Starsky reassured him before Dobey could launch into another lecture on their risk-taking style.
Dobey looked back and forth between them, then shrugged and nodded, apparently satisfied they were taking the situation seriously. “I’ll assign Babcock and—”
“Whoa, Captain,” Hutch objected about half a second before Starsky could. Again, their eyes met, silent accord reached, and a united front turned on Dobey. “This is our case,” he insisted for them both. “Nobody knows our—”
Dobey raised both hands to ward off the Hutchinson tirade. “All right. I know better by now than to argue common procedural sense with either of you. God forbid the rules that apply to the rest of us should apply to you two,” he complained, then dropped his hands to the desk. “Go get cleaned up and I’ll call down to records and start them getting your old cases up here.”
Starsky left his chair, automatically falling in behind his partner as Hutch headed for the door. for the first time, Starsky noticed the blackened holes in the blue shirt Hutch wore and remembered the doctor had mentioned a couple of minor bums. Wondering just how minor, he made a mental note to demand a look as well as to monitor the lingering cough. Hopefully, Dr. Cairns wouldn’t turn out to be incompetent as well as insensitive.
“Starsky. Hutchinson.”
They turned back to face Dobey and were pinned by the dark eyes. Starsky recognized the look. Dobey let them get away with plenty, often giving them freer rein than he should, and then backing them to the hilt when the shit hit the fan. Whatever the captain was about to say now, however, the sober expression meant they better take it as carved-in-stone gospel.
“Neither one of you is worth a damn when it comes to looking out for himself, so I won’t even waste my breath telling you to be careful,” Dobey said, the glare softening a little as he looked back and forth between them. “So just watch each other’s backs.”
Starsky felt a real smile growing on his face at the same time he felt Hutch’s hand land on his shoulder. “We always do, Captain,” they said in unison.
~*~*~
There wasn’t much activity in or around the locker room in the middle of graveyard shift. In fact, at four in the morning, they had the place to themselves. Their footsteps echoed in the empty room as they approached their lockers a little hesitantly.
“Do you remember what you have in there?” Hutch asked just to ease the growing tension, to prompt Starsky to speak as well to help hold back the ghosts.
“Hell, no. I don’t even remember if what’s in there is clean,” Starsky joked obligingly, even if the nervous pitch of his voice took most of the humor out of the attempt.
Hutch’s tentative reach for the handle of his locker was aborted by Starsky’s hand on his arm.
“I just thought of something,” Starsky said. “What about your wallet and badge and gun?”
Hutch patted the back pocket of his jeans. “Wallet and badge I have. Fell asleep on the couch with them still in my pocket.” He had been relieved to find both items when he arrived at the hospital. At least he didn’t face the prospect of replacing all his identification, and he was certainly going to need the cash and credit cards in the immediate future. “The Magnum is… gone. I think I heard it blow just before you drove up,” he continued, far less pleased with this memory. “What about you?”
Starsky mirrored the pocket patting, then lifted the right side of his leather jacket back to reveal his gun. “Grabbed ’em all on the way out the door when Babcock called.” He shrugged and offered a weak smile. “Creature of habit, I guess.”
“Better than biting your nails.” Hutch tried a little humor on for size and found it didn’t fit him so well just now. He took a deep breath, reached for the door of the locker and pulled it open, sighing in relief when he saw the cords and a shirt on hangers inside. With one finger, he pushed on the shoulder of the white shirt, turning it until he could see the guitar on the back.
“If I could only pick one thing,” he began, feeling rather pleased that this favorite had survived. He heard a funny sound from Starsky and turned, expecting to find Starsky holding back laughter, but saw instead that Starsky’s face was scrunching up, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a yo-yo on a string.
“Starsk?” Hutch murmured, lifting a hand toward Starsky’s shoulder. Before he could complete the gesture of comfort, he found himself with his arms full of partner instead. Starsky buried his face in Hutch’s shoulder, a babble of unintelligible mumbles filling up the silence, while unacknowledged tears soon soaked the material of Hutch’s shirt.
Hutch held on tight to the heaving back, an inane patter of comfort spilling from his lips, his grip tightening every time Starsky choked out an apology. He held on tight and wondered just who was receiving more comfort from the fierce embrace as the despair that had haunted him retreated into the shadows. Both of them alive and whole. As Captain Kincaid had observed, they had indeed been lucky.
“S-sorry,” Starsky finally mumbled more clearly, pulling out of Hutch’s arms and half-turning away to wipe his face on the sleeve of his jacket.
”Nothing to be sorry about,” Hutch reassured him gently.
Starsky acknowledged the truth of that with a wan smile, and then reached into Hutch’s locker to carefully stroke one finger down the arm of the white shirt. “It’s dumb, I guess. But it just seems so…ironic that this tacky shirt survived.”
“Tacky?” Hutch echoed, taking his cue, allowing pretended outrage to mask his vulnerable emotions and offering Starsky a humorous blind for his own.
“Tacky,” Starsky repeated firmly, but the reverent caress of his fingers to the material branded him a liar. He stroked the cotton for another moment, then his fingers curled into a fist, his hand dropping abruptly to his side. His slightly swollen features took on edges as he visibly packed his emotions away and readied himself to face the world again. “Yeah, tacky,” he repeated one last time, then yanked open his own locker door. “Come on, partner, let’s get cleaned up. I don’t wanna insult you but damn you stink.”
~*~*~
Hutch closed the cover of the file he had just finished reviewing, sighed tiredly, and rubbed at his gritty eyes.
“Nothing?” Starsky asked. A few hours ago, that question had been spoken with hopeful expectancy; now it sounded as weary as a five-dollar hooker at the end of a three-day weekend.
“Nothing,” Hutch confirmed without opening his eyes. If he could just rest them for a minute, give natural moisture a few seconds to soothe the membranes irritated by smoke and strain, maybe the dull headache pounding at his temples would ease, and the print on the page would quit dancing around in nauseating circles.
“I think I might have one here. Do you remember Gerry Konig?” Starsky asked. “Liked to torch places to cover up his robberies.”
“I remember he’s dead. Lola Brenner and Bull Rile killed him,” Hutch reminded his forgetful partner. He opened his eyes in time to see Starsky’s disappointed expression and the disgusted toss of the file onto the stack of rejects and forgave his partner for the momentary memory lapse. Starsky looked as bone-weary exhausted as Hutch felt. “Eight, nine months ago, I think.” He frowned as he tried to calculate exactly how long it had been, but his brain was too sluggish for even such simple mathematics. “Could be longer,” he admitted with a shrug.
“Data entry must be behind again,” Starsky said. He gave a half-baked attempt at a stretch, lifting his hands to shoulder height, then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth the effort and let them fall back to his lap. “You feeling deja vu like I am?” he asked.
Too exhausted to be quick on the uptake, Hutch couldn’t bring the exact memory to mind until Starsky offered his hand across the table and gave a wan smile. The memory chilled Hutch, chasing his exhaustion away on a flood of instinctive adrenaline.
“At least we’re in it together this time,” Starsky observed, beginning to pull scattered files into a haphazard pile.
“We were then, too,” Hutch growled, stung by the implied exclusion.
Starsky’s eyes widened in surprise before immediate contrition was offered. “Sony. Didn’t mean—”
“No,” Hutch interrupted. “I’m just tired.”
“You both are,” Dobey said as he came out of his office. He gestured toward the stacks of files and Hutch answered the silent inquiry with a shake of his head. “You’ve been at this all day long. You both look like something the cat dragged in.”
“Funny. I feel more like something it left in the box,” Starsky quipped.
Dobey gave him a disgusted shake of his head for the lousy humor. “We still don’t know if there’s even a case to work. It’s 4:00 o’clock now, so why not call it a day? Start fresh in the morning. Go ho—” Dobey cut himself off abruptly. “I’m sorry,” he apologized immediately, and then invited, “You’re welcome to my guest room.”
Hutch was touched by the offer but knew they couldn’t accept it. The tiny shake of Starsky’s head confirmed that they agreed. “That’s nice of you, Captain, but we can’t do that. Not until we know if there is a case. Too risky.”
“Think of Edith and the kids,” Starsky added before the offended bluster on Dobey’s face could become a verbal protest.
With obvious reluctance, Dobey accepted the wisdom. “What are you going to do?” Again, Hutch met Starsky’s eyes before shrugging. “Get a hotel room, I guess.”
“That might not be any safer,” Dobey objected. “Maybe we should do this officially.”
“Please, Captain,” Starsky protested in his turn. “I don’t think I could stand to see you in coveralls right now.”
With a grumble of mock offense, mumbling to himself all the way, Dobey retreated to his office.
“We didn’t even call our insurance companies,” Starsky said as he stood and pulled his jacket off the back of the chair. “Do it tomorrow, I guess,” he added around a yawn, stretching again and doing a much better job of it this time, setting up a symphony of popping joints and cracking tendons as he reached for the ceiling. “All I want now is to find a horizontal surface. I don’t even care if it has lumps.” He pushed in his chair before adding, “Hell, right now I don’t even care if it has bugs.”
Hutch laughed obligingly as he also stood and stretched. The unforgiving stiffness of the new holster reminded him of the odd feeling of handling the lighter .38 he had requisitioned as a temporary replacement, but he dismissed the minor irritation. Dismissed as well was the cough that continued to plague him, and the stinging little patches on his back that made sure he remembered their presence every time he moved. The holster would soften, he would find another Magnum, the burns would heal, and the cough would disappear in time. All of which was true, and none of which was of any particular comfort at the moment.
“Don’t go to sleep yet, Rumpelstiltskin,” Hutch cautioned Starsky as he pushed his arms through the sleeves of the jacket he had borrowed from Babcock. “We still have some shopping to do.”
Starsky groaned dramatically, and then, like Dobey, grumbled unintelligibly as he followed Hutch to the door of the squadroom, where his diction improved a little when he asked, “Do you think we should call Huggy? See if he’s heard anything yet.”
Hand on the knob, temporary escape only a turn and a pull away, Hutch shook his head. “We only called him a few hours ago,” he said as he opened the door and waved Starsky through it. “He knows how to reach us if he finds anything.”
~*~*~
“You don’t got no luggage. Rules say you gotta have bags. This is a respectable place.”
Starsky was in no mood for this shit. He glared at the desk clerk, then reached into his jacket for his badge. “This cover it?” he asked as he flashed the shield in the man’s face.
“Uh, yeah. Sorry, Officer,” the clerk mumbled, his belligerence disappearing immediately. “All we got is a double bed,” he added hesitantly, as if he feared Starsky might pull his gun and take his displeasure out on the bearer of bad news.
Starsky was tempted. Not because he had any objection to sharing a bed with Hutch—this would hardly be the first time—but simply because he was tired and cranky, inclined to argue just for argument’s sake. But when he looked at Hutch for an opinion and saw that his friend was nearly out on his feet, compassion made his decision for him. The blue eyes were still open—mostly—but the tall body was definitely beginning to sway.
“We’ll take it,” Starsky told the clerk. He signed the register, accepted the key, and hustled Hutch back out of the office door.
“Second floor. Doesn’t it figure,” Starsky complained as he and Hutch walked through the twilight to the Torino to collect their purchases. Shopping had never been Starsky’s idea of a fun time, and the thought of having to break in multiple pairs of new jeans was also contributing to the misery of a lost night’s sleep and better than twelve hours reading case files.
“Horizontal surface,” Hutch mumbled the reminder, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other as they climbed the stairs.
Remembering that Hutch was worse off than he was, Starsky quit bitching and put a supportive hand in the small of Hutch’s back. “Yeah, babe. Any old port in a storm.”
It might have felt like climbing Mount Everest, but they made it to the top of the stairs and along the balcony to room 27 where Starsky let them in. Gratefully, he dropped the bags and looked around. The room seemed eerily familiar, but then one hotel room could look a lot like another. Still, Starsky could swear he had been in this particular not-so-great room before. If it wasn’t for the double bed….
“Have we been here before?” he asked Hutch and saw the blond head make a slow turn. Hutch really was out of it if he was only now scanning their temporary home.
“Just like the room… ” Hutch agreed vaguely, then the blue eyes sharpened a little. “You think—?”
“First thing I checked,” Starsky reported. “Old Alex is still weaving baskets in the CIA boobyhatch.”
“That’s good,” Hutch mumbled, the brief awareness leaving his eyes. He stood in the middle of the room with his shopping bags at his feet and appeared once again as if a spring breeze might knock him over.
“Hutch,” Starsky said, waiting until Hutch performed an approximation of focusing his attention before continuing. “Go shower,” he ordered gently.
Obviously, Starsky was going to have to take care of Hutch tonight. As tired and cranky as he felt, he ought to resent that, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t go so far as to call unpacking his partner’s shopping a privilege, but it was close. Close enough to drown out the siren call of the bed, close enough to make ignoring the growling of his stomach possible. Hutch deserved a little TLC after everything he had been through, and the fear of losing him was still very fresh in Starsky’s mind.
By the time he had hung some of their purchases in the closet and tucked others away in the drawers, set out the salve and cough medicine he had bought at the drug store, and called both the station and Huggy to give them the hotel’s number, Starsky was beginning to worry. Running on nervous energy might make it feel like more time had passed than a check of his watch revealed, but it still seemed that Hutch had been in the shower too long.
After retrieving a pair of new boxers from the drawer, Starsky tapped on the bathroom door, then pushed it open. “Hey, buddy. You planning on draining the reservoir?”
No answer.
Beyond concerned now, but trying not to hit the panic button, Starsky gave the curtain a rattle. When that earned him no bad-tempered growl, or soft-voiced reassurance, Starsky went for invasion of privacy and pulled back the plastic barrier. His near panic receded and he smiled fondly at the soggy tableau he found.
Propped against the back wall with his arms hanging loose at his sides, Hutch was obviously asleep on his feet. The spray was hitting him square in the chest, and even when Starsky turned off the cooling water, Hutch remained oblivious. It took Starsky wrapping a hand around his arm and giving a gentle shake before the wet, spiky lashes finally lifted.
“I thought only horses sleep standing up,” Starsky teased.
Hutch curled his lip and whinnied at him.
Laughing now, Starsky gave him a tug, holding on until Hutch had negotiated the high side of the tub safely. “Come on, Blond Beauty, dried and dressed,” he instructed, handing over a towel and pointing to the boxers he had left on the back of the toilet. “You manage?” he asked.
The “mmmm” Hutch offered might have been a yes or a no, but he was making the effort to put the towel to use, leaving a haphazard trail of dry skin on his torso, before tossing the towel to Starsky and reaching for his shorts.
With Hutch between him and the door, Starsky had no choice but to wait while Hutch fumbled his way into the boxers, but he would have waited in any case. Hutch was only occasionally klutzy, but exhausted and reeling, even the most grateful man could fall and crack his head on the sink. While he was waiting, Starsky took a swipe at the bowed back with the towel, then gave the blond head a rub as Hutch straightened up.
‘”Nuf,” Hutch grumbled, fending off the towel with a swat.
Starsky dropped the towel on the floor and propped his hands on his hips, making an attempt at a glare, but feeling his amusement defeating the effort. “Just enough nap to make you cranky, huh?”
“Sorry,” Hutch apologized, a chagrined smile trying to work its way onto his lips, but barely lifting the corners, and even that disappearing when he began to cough.
“Come on,” Starsky said, grabbing Hutch’s arm again and leading him back into the bedroom. “Medicine and bed. You can make it up to me tomorrow.”
“Promise,” Hutch muttered. He accepted the bottle of cough medicine and allowed himself to be manipulated until Starsky had access to his back. “No spoon?”
“Just take a swig,” Starsky advised. He picked up the salve and surveyed Hutch’s back while he screwed the cap off the tube. “These don’t look too bad,” he said as he gently smoothed salve onto the three small, raw areas on Hutch’s back. “Hurt?” he asked, his hand freezing when he saw the long muscles flinch.
“Cold,” Hutch complained, but mildly.
“All done,” Starsky announced, tossing the tube onto the dresser and looking into the mirror in front of them, smiling again at what he saw. For a man with very little to smile about, he seemed to be doing a lot of it tonight. But who could resist the sleepy, five-year-old softness of Hutch’s reflected face, or the trusting way he relaxed into the hands Starsky wrapped around his arms.
“Mmmmm,” Hutch hummed, shifting his shoulders a little, drawing Starsky’s eye down until it caught on the purple scar high on the left arm.
Starsky’s hands tightened, his gaze fixed on this indelible memento of Diana’s insanity while remembered terror squeezed the breath from his lungs. A grunt of pain from Hutch pulled Starsky out of the flashback and he let his hands fall away. “Sorry,” he mumbled, his heart still thudding in his chest. He didn’t want to let go. Wanted to hold on tight, protect Hutch from lunatics who stabbed him, and maniacs who burned him, and meter maids who gave him parking tickets.
Shaken by the depth of his feelings, Starsky turned his back on his oblivious partner. Obsession was a scary thing, he was discovering, and one he had little experience dealing with.
“Go on to bed,” Starsky said gruffly, pretending to check the top on the bottle of cough medicine and the cap on the tube of salve. Busy work. Something to do with his hands. Something to look at besides the long length of Hutch in nothing but white boxers. A sight he had seen hundreds of times; a sight that, tonight, every instinct warned him to avoid.
Starsky didn’t look up again until he heard the squeak of the mattress and the rustle of covers. He turned out the light, stripped and threw his clothes on the chair near the bathroom door, then climbed into bed. He couldn’t settle. Even though Hutch had left him his preferred side of the bed, he shifted restlessly, finding a position of comfort for his shoulders only to discover there was a lump under his hip. Then his stomach started to growl.
He was never going to be able to sleep in this strange bed, in this strange place, while the memory of leaping flames….
“I’m sorry, buddy. I forgot to feed you.” Hutch’s voice, soft and apologetic, came out of the darkness. “You took good care of me tonight, and I forgot.”
The lump under his hip disappeared and the pillow smoothed out, even his protesting belly shut up as Hutch’s warmth reached him across the few inches of mattress that separated them. Sleep didn’t seem quite so elusive now as Starsky listened to his partner’s even breathing. Safe. Close.
“S’okay, Hutch. Your turn tomorrow,” he mumbled, and followed his partner into sleep.
~*~*~
He was suffocating. Surrounded by smothering heat. Every breath he drew into his lungs seared membrane, choking him. Hot. Hot. Trapped.
“Wake up, Hutch. Wake up.”
Hutch struggled against the hands that restrained him in the dark, his body burning, his chest heaving.
“It’s all right. I’m here, babe. You’re safe.”
It wasn’t the words, but the voice. Not so much the voice, but the strength of the hands that gripped his arms. No, not the strength, but the familiar scent. Starsky. Hutch stopped struggling, allowed the voice to soothe his frantic terror, let the strength shield him, and drew the aroma deep into his starving lungs. Safe.
“That’s it, baby. Just relax. It was just a dream.”
Hutch allowed himself to be drawn into Starsky’s arms, settled in awkward comfort within the muscular circle. Chest to chest, feeling Starsky’s heart beating the same frantic rhythm as his own. Rocked a little to a whispered lullaby.
“Shh, baby. Shh. I’m here. You’re safe. Not gonna let anything hurt you. Shh, baby.”
He ought to object. He wasn’t a baby. Big, bad, and dangerous to cross. But not tonight. If he wasn’t a baby, maybe the hands wouldn’t stroke his back, pet his hair. Maybe the strength would think it wasn’t needed, the voice stop murmuring its litany of comfort. He could be a baby tonight. Just tonight….
~*~*~
Hutch woke up entwined with Starsky. Legs meshed, arms draped over torsos that brushed and rubbed with every breath. It felt so good. The way Hutch had always known it would. The reality was sweeter than any dream that had visited him since he had fallen in love with his dear friend.
A small step or a giant leap. Hutch had never been able to puzzle out which it was, or if it was, in fact, a delicate combination of both. Baby steps of day-to-day existence, and the giant leaps of Marcus and Prudhomme and Bellamy. He knew only the moment it had bloomed crystal clear—holding his grieving friend close, wanting to kiss away his tears, aching to love away the pain of his loss.
With a soft sigh, Hutch opened his eyes, drank in the details of cherished dreams come to life. Sleep-wild curls and the too-long lashes. Beard stubble and lips that seemed to beg for his kisses. Kisses he had tasted only in brief, infrequent fantasy. Knowing the lover was beyond his reach, Hutch had contented himself with the friend and partner. No mean exchange. One worth protecting. And so, Hutch had seldom indulged in flights of fancy, saving the lover he wished Starsky could be for the worst times of loss and pain and fear. Like today. Homeless, perhaps targets of further mayhem, Hutch had never been more tempted to test the limits.
“Get your feet back on the ground, Hutchinson,” Hutch whispered as he saw Starsky’s eyelashes flicker, watched the not-familiar-enough ticks and twitches that forewarned Starsky’s approaching awareness.
He was an instant too late. Starsky’s eyes opened all at once, the deep blue holding Hutch more securely captive than the arm that had tightened around his back. Hutch felt the hot flood rushing into his cheeks, painting guilty conscience on his fair skin, but couldn’t force himself to leave Starsky’s arms. Starsky would have to be the one to part them, give Hutch a push and a shove, and crack a joke about morning breath.
But Starsky wasn’t demanding his freedom, the sleepy eyes casting a lazy spell instead, and a dopey smile inviting it to stay.
“Morning,” Starsky murmured, as if every dawn found them nose to nose. “How you feeling?”
All things considered, Hutch felt damned good. How could he not when he was living in a moment he had always known he would only dream? “I feel pretty good,” he couldn’t resist saying, knowing he was courting disaster to come visit him with the contentment in his voice.
“Mmmm,” Starsky hummed in the rumbling purr of some well-fed, big cat. His lids came down, veiling the expression in his blue eyes, while his arm tightened around Hutch’s waist. Then the veil lifted to reveal a kindling heat. “Yeah, you do,” he whispered, and then pressed his mouth to Hutch’s.
Reality slipped, merged with cherished dreams as Hutch felt the pucker of Starsky’s lips soften against his mouth, become a smooth, dry promise of delightful secrets yet to be shared.
Before Hutch could collect the wit to respond, to open his mouth, to gather opportunity into his arms and give it good reason to stay, Starsky was pulling away. The arm that had held Hutch was pushing at him now, the body a quick, frantic scramble that nearly obscured the babble of apologies pouring from Starsky’s mouth.
Starsky had almost escaped the bed by the time Hutch scraped together the presence of mind to try to halt the retreat. He grabbed at Starsky’s arm, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on warm skin until they locked around the slim wrist.
“Lemme go,” Starsky demanded in a panicked growl.
“Wait,” Hutch begged, but the single word was obscured by the shrill ringing of the telephone. Hutch tightened his grip. “Don’t you move,” he demanded, beginning to roll toward the bedside table, trying to drag Starsky with him when he saw the rebellion on his face.
Starsky broke free and leapt from the bed, standing, trembling like a deer in the headlights for a second, before he spun, grabbed his clothes from the chair, and bolted for the bathroom. The slam of the door almost succeeded in drowning out the phone’s third summons.
“Goddamnit to hell,” Hutch cursed, completing the roll and snatching at the phone. “Hutchinson,” he snarled into the receiver.
“My, my, my. Someone got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Huggy said with more sarcasm than sympathy.
“I’m not even out of it yet,” Hutch replied, struggling to pull up on his galloping emotions, to bundle them all indiscriminately into one tight package and shove them back into mind or heart or balls, or wherever the hell they would stay and quit complicating his life. “What are you doing up this early in the morning?” he asked as a diversion.
“You can’t be up if you haven’t been down yet,” Huggy corrected the assumption. “And since I didn’t want you dudes disturbing my beauty rest, I thought I better call before I do. Go down, I mean.”
Hutch rubbed a hand over his face, pressed fingers into his eyes, and forced his brain to switch gears. “What have you got?” he asked, determined to pay more attention to Huggy’s reply than the muffled sounds coming through the bathroom door. Had Starsky locked the door? Hutch couldn’t remember if he had heard the tell-tale click.
“Zip so far, but I put out feelers every place I can think of. If anybody’s out to snuff you and Curly, I’m gonna hear about it,” Huggy reported.
“Hopefully before it happens,” Hutch grumbled.
“Hopefully,” Huggy agreed, the sarcasm once again dripping through the connection.
“Sorry, Hug,” Hutch apologized with honest regret. It certainly wasn’t Buggy’s fault that Hutch was a fool.
“Da nada, amigo,” Hutch dismissed the apology. “I’ll call as soon as I hear something.”
Hutch hung up the phone as the bathroom door opened and Starsky bustled out.
“Are you still in bed? Come on, get moving. I’m starved, and I’m not eating in the cafeteria at the station. I want a real breakfast. Get moving,” Starsky demanded, delivering each sentence in a rapid-fire mumble while he studiously avoided looking at Hutch.
Message received, Hutch thought, and rolled out of bed. He collected his clothes and climbed into them grateful in a way that Starsky was so obviously determined not to so much as glance his way. It would have been uncomfortable, if not damned near impossible, to get dressed under that blue gaze. But the avoidance cut him, sliced into softer places in Hutch’s heart than even watching his home burn had stabbed.
“You ready?” Starsky asked as Hutch pulled on his jacket. He stood sentry at the door, his hand already on the knob, his gaze focused somewhere just to the left of Hutch’s ear. Without waiting for Hutch’s reply, he turned the handle and half-opened the door.
“No,” Hutch said quietly, wondering if Starsky would ignore him and almost wishing he would. The door, however, closed with an emphatic click, echoed by Starsky’s resigned sigh. “We can paint this elephant candy apple red and put a white stripe on him, but he’s still going to be sitting in the back seat. We can’t work like this,” he appealed on the only level he felt he dared to reach out to Starsky at the moment.
Starsky raised a face that didn’t seem to know whether to be defiant or guilty and spread his hands. “I said I was sorry. I don’t know what else to say. And we gotta… ” He left the sentence unfinished, but a hesitant gesture toward the door illustrated his meaning clearly enough.
Hutch had to know. He didn’t want to know, would rather carry around the ember of hope that brief kiss had ignited inside him, but he couldn’t afford the luxury. Not with this man. “Just answer me one question, Starsky. Just one.”
“What question?” Starsky asked grudgingly, looking as if he was about to witness an execution-his own.
“Are you sorry you kissed me?” Hutch asked softly, feeling all his future hopes hanging on the hesitation, swaying in the breeze as Starsky met his eyes once and quickly looked away.
“Yes,” Starsky said, so simply that there shouldn’t have been any possible shadow of doubt that he was speaking the absolute truth as he knew it.
But Hutch knew he was lying. Knew it and couldn’t do a damned thing about it. He had to accept the lie as Starsky’s truth as willingly as he had accepted Starsky’s kiss.
“Then that’s settled,” Hutch agreed brusquely. “Let’s go find out if somebody’s trying to kill us.” But he heard the elephant follow them out the door.
~*~*~
Damn Hutch. Why did he have to mention the elephant? Starsky could feel the big, gray, son of a bitch standing.in the comer of the squadroom, its presence stretching every second of the thirty-eight minutes since they had arrived at the station into endless hours.
Damn Hutch. Why did he have to wake up rumpled and vulnerable and so obviously content to be lying in Starsky’s arms? If Hutch had been bad tempered and grouchy, there would have been no temptation so irresistible that Starsky had been kissing him before even one implication of the act had entered his brain, never mind the squadron that had shown up when Hutch’s lips had accepted that kiss.
But most of all, damn Hutch for knowing Starsky was lying. He wasn’t sorry he had kissed Hutch, didn’t dare look at his partner now for fear the mouth he had tasted so briefly would tempt him to do it again. Commit the absolute insanity of dragging Hutch across the table and going for his tonsils. Right in the squadroom.
Starsky closed the cover on yet another file, not altogether certain he could remember the name of the perp, let alone the pertinent facts of the case. Obsession had been scary enough. This feeling was worse. Stronger, wider, taller. So damned riveting that even work couldn’t rein it in.
Damn Hutch, because Starsky had already consigned himself to Hell and didn’t think he could stand to be anywhere without his partner.
When Dobey came out of his office, Starsky was so desperately needy for distraction, he almost pounced on the captain. “Something, Captain?” he asked eagerly, eyeing the paper Dobey held in his hand and praying it was a lead. A solid gold one that would give Starsky something to think about besides Hutch’s full upper lip and the bottom one that had given up its morning pout beneath the pressure of Starsky’s kiss.
“Maybe,” Dobey reported and handed the paper to Starsky. “A patrol officer pulled over a kid for erratic driving the night of the fire about six blocks from your apartment. The kid blew zero and there was no obvious signs of drug use, so the officer let him go with a warning. He filed a report… ” Dobey paused to indicate the paper Starsky held. “… and when he heard about the fires, he remembered smelling gasoline on the kid.”
“Who was it?” Hutch asked Starsky. “Somebody we know?”
Starsky didn’t reply right away. He had started reading the report immediately but got no further than the kid’s name. William Field. Billy Field. It was familiar, although Starsky couldn’t place it. He only knew that it raised his hackles, made him instinctively want to put himself between Hutch and whoever this ghost was, draw his gun and make damn sure it was fully loaded.
“William Field,” Dobey answered Hutch’s first question, and Starsky felt both sets of eyes on him for the answer to the second.
Starsky lifted his head as he handed the report over to Hutch, relieved to find that the frowning crease in the tall forehead seemed to be holding his attention well enough, keeping his eyes from seeking out Hutch’s mouth.
“Billy Field,” Starsky amended. “It’s familiar, but I’m not sure why. Where I’ve heard it. Why it’s making me feel like somebody just walked over my grave,” he explained. Or yours, he added silently.
Hutch leaned back in his chair, eyes on the report, left hand covering his mouth, and that crease growing deeper. Obviously, he was as disturbed by the name as Starsky. “Billy Field. Billy Field,” he murmured, then suddenly dropped his hand and met Starsky’s eyes. “Artie Solkin,” he said, anger in his eyes and disgust in his voice for the vermin that had turned a crazed psychotic killer on his former girlfriend, Abby.
“One of his boys?” Starsky asked, shoving obsession back a step, forcing it into waiting by focusing on the solid lead.
“But I thought you rounded up all of those kids when you arrested Solkin,” Dobey reminded them. “Convinced most of them to go back home where they belonged.”
“Not all of them,” Hutch said, already on his feet and pulling on his jacket, fingers folding the report and stuffing it into his pocket.
“A few slipped the net,” Starsky agreed, mirroring Hutch’s preparations to hit the street, paralleling the rush for the door and getting there a beat after Hutch.
“Let’s go find this Artful Dodger and see if he’s come up in the world,” Hutch suggested, pulling open the door and waving an invitation for Starsky to precede him.
The “business as usual” sang in Starsky’s brain as he accepted, mind already busy with the questions he would ask when they ran the kid to ground. Even the excitement of the chase, however, couldn’t prevent him from noticing that Hutch didn’t give him an encouraging slap on the ass as he went out the door.
~*~*~
“Good cop, bad cop?” Hutch asked as he and Starsky approached the interrogation room where Billy Field waited. Once they had traced the defiant teenager through three defunct addresses, arresting him had been an anti-climax. He hadn’t run, nor put up much of a fight, though he had spewed verbal abuse and attitude at them all the way to the station.
“Bad,” Starsky opted, his stride quickening until Hutch had to stretch out his long legs to keep up with him.
Starsky was like a mustang with the bit between his teeth and had been since they had made the connection between their suspect and Solkin. Focused, driven. Not that Hutch blamed him. He was just as anxious to solve this far too personal double arson as Starsky was. That hadn’t made him oblivious to the way Starsky had avoided touching him, that even looking at him was a risk his partner took only when he had to.
“Feeling mean, huh?” Hutch said just for something to say, needing the verbal connection if he couldn’t have the physical and visual.
“Just in no mood to handle this little bastard with kid gloves,” Starsky confessed as he pulled open the door to the interrogation room.
Hutch didn’t argue, but he did intend to keep an extra sharp eye on Starsky. To all appearances, Field’s connection was to the fire at Starsky’s, and Hutch didn’t want to take the chance he might miss any signs that Starsky wasn’t just playing bad cop, that the role wouldn’t explode into violence if Field wasn’t smart enough to give Starsky what he wanted. Hutch knew from experience, however, that with Starsky in this mood, the interrogation was likely to be a brief, if brutal, one.
With his role in mind, Hutch stayed on his feet, ready to restrain Starsky if it became necessary. He leaned against the door, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited for Starsky to start the show.
Starsky sauntered up to where the kid sprawled in the wooden chair, leaned over and plucked the cigarette out of his mouth, and dropped it to the floor. A negligent flick of his fingers sent the pack skittering down the table as he stepped on the glowing butt. “Bad for your health,” he advised as he leaned his ass against the table, bracing both hands on the edge of it. Hutch noticed the knuckles of those hands were white, as if Starsky was already having to restrain himself from grabbing Field and shaking a confession out of him.
Field, it seemed, wasn’t picking up on Starsky’s mood just yet, a sneer distorting his handsome face, and a defiant shake of his head sending his long, dark blond hair flying.
“You know what burned up in that fire you set, Field?” Starsky asked in a surprisingly reasonable voice, the kind of tone you used to ask a stranger the time of day. “There was a guitar, and a baseball glove, and a plant named Phillip,” he continued without giving the teenager a chance to deny his guilt.
Hutch blinked, his eyes going to Starsky but finding no hint whether Starsky realized that all of the items on his list of lost personal possessions had been gifts from Hutch. Were those really the things Starsky mourned the most, Hutch wondered, so distracted by the implication that he had to scramble to keep the surprise off his face as Starsky continued.
“And a pretty little girl named Susie,” Starsky snarled the blatant lie with absolute conviction, reminding Hutch that Starsky, when he chose, could be a superb liar. That thought led immediately to whether his poor performance this morning had been deliberate. It was an intoxicating possibility, but Hutch didn’t have time to explore it because Starsky was moving, one hand reaching for Field.
Hutch tensed and pushed away from the wall, ready to intervene, but hesitated when all Starsky did was grab a handful of shirt and pull the boy upright. He sat the boy back down in his chair, a little roughly, but not excessively so.
“Sit up straight,” Starsky commanded as he released the crumpled fabric and settled back against the table. “Show some respect.”
“I’d listen to him if I were you, Billy,” Hutch advised as he too eased back from battle ready to stand by alert, and received glaring, if silent, thanks for his advice.
Starsky twisted toward the table and flicked open the file that lay on it. His eyes scanned down the first page as he spoke. “Yeah, you’re a real hard case, Field. Probably been in more interrogation rooms than I have.”
“That’s right, pig,” Field replied unwisely. “You can’t scare me. I know you can’t touch me. I know my rights.”
Starsky didn’t react to the taunting, just ran his finger down the page. ”Shoplifting. Assault. Purse snatching. Petty theft,” he quoted from the rap sheet, turning his head and giving their suspect a dangerous smile. “All juvenile shit. A tap on the wrist and back out on the street in a few months. Good food while you’re in and lording it over all the other little bastards ’cause you’re so tough.”
Starsky flipped closed the file and then moved abruptly. Hutch tensed, again prepared to put himself between Starsky and discipline action. But Starsky didn’t lay hands on Field again, just loomed over him, one hand on the arm of the chair, and close enough that Field had to tip his head back. Still Hutch remained alert, afraid that Field might take complete leave of his senses and strike out, the position Starsky had assumed leaving his belly and groin unprotected.
“Murder one, tough guy. And if you don’t tell us who put you up to it, you’re gonna fall behind that rap all by your lonesome. Adult court, not juvey,” Starsky presented the cold hard facts in a surprisingly conversational tone. A tiny smile quirked his lips as he picked up a lock of dark blond hair from Field’s shoulder, looked at it as he rubbed it between his fingers.
“Hard time. Maybe twenty-five to life.” The smile widened, getting a better hold on Starsky’s mouth but failing to find its way into his cold eyes. “The cons are gonna love you, sweet cheeks,” he revealed, releasing the hair, beginning to trace the boy’s cheek with his baby finger. “They’ll pass you around like a pack of cigarettes.”
Hutch had forgotten the role he was supposed to be playing. He was mesmerized by Starsky’s voice, the predatory expression on his face, and the caress that Hutch could almost feel on his own skin. He could feel his cock throbbing in the crotch of his jeans, and was horrified to realize he was aroused. It was so kinky to be turned on by this dangerous persona Starsky was playing, but perhaps no more perverted than responding to Starsky’s childish delight in a toy train. The sad truth was that Starsky turned him on, whatever mood, and however forbidden Hutch knew his desire to be.
The spell was broken when Hutch saw Starsky’s hand cup the boy’s chin and the slim body start to lean toward him. For a moment, Hutch honestly expected Starsky to kiss their suspect and it yanked Hutch upright again, jealousy more than any other emotion bringing him within arm’s reach of the tableau.
“Think about it, Field,” Starsky advised, so close his breath had to be brushing the boy’s skin, voice so sensually husky it belonged in a porno house. “You ready to spend the rest of your life with your head down and your ass up?”
Hutch had to keep his eyes on Field. He didn’t dare look at Starsky for fear his partner would see in Hutch’s face the vivid image the threat had evoked. He had to squeeze his eyes tight to shatter that image, open them quick before it could re-form, and saw that Starsky’s act had had the desired effect.
Billy Field wasn’t bristling defiance anymore, the sneering disappeared, leaving behind wide-eyed fear and a mouth that trembled in a face bleached white. The street-hardened tough guy was gone. The persona that had hardened Hutch’s cock had reduced Field to a shaken child bordering on tears.
Hutch felt Starsky’s eyes on him and had to meet them as Starsky backed off, resuming his negligent pose against the table. Mission accomplished telegraphed between them, and now it was Hutch’s turn.
“Come on, son. Save yourself a whole lot of grief,” Hutch advised, making his voice and expression as Pat O’Brien friendly as he could, while he patted a thin shoulder.
“I-I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. You gotta believe me,” Field pleaded, his beseeching eyes flicking between Starsky and Hutch, before finally settling on Hutch’s more sympathetic face. “Guy paid me to torch the place. An easy hundred, he said. Swore nobody’d be there.”
It was a blatant lie, and Hutch looked to Starsky for judgment. Did they buy it, he asked silently and received a shrug and the smallest dip of Starsky’s head.
“What man, Billy?” Hutch asked. “Tell us and we’ll make sure the DA goes easy on you.”
“Larry Knight,” Field blurted out the name, the sob that followed his confession almost drowning out the grunt of surprise from Starsky.
Hutch looked at his partner in time to see the bad cop act drop along with his jaw before Starsky abruptly left the room.
Hutch was stunned for a beat, then followed Starsky, signaling the uniformed officer stationed outside the door to take over the prisoner before he broke into a jog.
“Starsky, wait,” he called, hurrying to catch up, reaching out to catch Starsky’s arm and pull him up just short of the elevator. “What was that all about?”
Starsky shook his head, still looking as stunned as he had before he had bolted. “Larry Knight is my landlord.”
~*~*~
Dobey was waiting for them when they came out of the interrogation room after taking Larry Knight’s confession.
“Well?” the captain demanded impatiently.
“Did it for the insurance money,” Starsky summarized briefly, handing over the notes he had taken. “Guess I should have noticed he wasn’t keeping the place up.”
It had taken them all of the afternoon to chase down Knight, and most of the evening to get his confession and tie up all the loose ends. They had missed lunch, and then dinner, and too many cups of black coffee were doing a poor job of substituting for solid food in Starsky’s belly. But at least while the case had been hot, Hutch had once again been his partner. Hutch wasn’t touching him much, but he would look at him, and Starsky could look back without guilt or fear or desire. Mostly. Maybe Hutch could forgive and forget Starsky’s momentary stupidity, if only Starsky could figure out some way to make it momentary. Some way to get the damned monumental elephant of his obsession to quit following them around.
Dobey looked over the notes briefly, and then handed them back with a pleased expression. “Absolutely nothing to do with you personally, Starsky. Good work,” he complimented them.
“That doesn’t mean I’ve started believing in coincidence,” Starsky objected to the case-closed tone of Dobey’s voice. He caught Hutch’s surprised expression and shrugged. “As far as I know, my landlord’s got no reason to burn down your place,” he reminded Hutch and then asked Dobey. “Anything from the Venice Fire Marshall yet?”
“They said this morning it probably wouldn’t be available until tomorrow,” Hutch reminded them in his turn.
“Then there’s nothing more you two can do here tonight. You might as well call it a day,” Dobey concluded.
Call it a day. Starsky didn’t want to do that. An end to the workday meant no leads to follow, no one to interrogate, nothing to distract him from Hutch and the elephant except a queasy stomach and a hunger induced headache. If they left the squadroom, then Starsky was going to be alone with Hutch in that hotel room, and in that double bed. Starsky didn’t trust himself in either of those scenarios.
“You’re probably right, Captain,” Hutch agreed, sounding as reluctant as Starsky felt. “We’ve been through just about every case we’ve worked on in the last seven years, and we’re coming up empty. We’ll have to wait and see if the Fire Marshall’s report gives us a lead.” He looked at Starsky questioningly, and Starsky had no option but to agree.
“Yeah, I guess,” Starsky agreed and started to follow Hutch.
“We forgot to call our insurance companies again,” Hutch observed as they walked with Dobey to the elevator.
“Do you two have enough money?” Dobey asked.
“Yeah, Cap’n. We’re okay,” Starsky declined the implied offer. Both of them had been lucky enough not to lose their wallets, and they both had a tendency to carry around a fair amount of cash. There weren’t a lot of snitches, with the exception of Huggy, who would let them run a tab. “And we have credit cards if we need them.”
They left Dobey at the elevator and continued on to the stairs, Starsky feeling the muscles tighten in the back of his neck with every step they took, while his mind sought an escape route. Or at least a temporary reprieve. Dobey had basically kicked them out. They had already bought enough new clothes to last a few days, and in any case, the department stores had closed hours ago.
“You hungry?” Hutch asked as he held the door to the stairs open and they started down.
Starsky could have kissed him. Bad analogy, he thought, hurriedly back-peddling away from that image, but nodding his agreement, trying to dredge up a grin for his partner for this timely question. “No lunch. No dinner. Of course I’m hungry. I’m not the one who thinks fasting is good for the soul,” he quipped, trying for the comfort of their usual banter, but a little too tense to carry it off with anything approaching nonchalance.
If Hutch noticed, however, it appeared he decided to ignore it. “Might as well make it Huggy’s. We can see if he’s got anything for us. Kill two birds with one stone.”
Or maybe Hutch wasn’t anxious to be alone with Starsky either. Maybe he was scared Starsky would jump him again. Starsky wanted to make promises, swear on a stack of bibles that Hutch had nothing to fear, but he had already lied to Hutch once today, and he wasn’t going to do it again. He was afraid that neither one of them was safe from this newborn obsession that wouldn’t leave him alone.
“Yeah. Huggy’s sounds good. _A couple of his specials ought to hit the spot,” he agreed, warning his jittery stomach what was com mg whether it liked it or not. He held the door open for Hutch and quickly followed him. hoping to trap the elephant on the other side.
~*~*~
The elephant had come through the door with them. Hutch had hoped it might decide to camp out in the Torino, but it had been a vain hope. It had sat at the table with them at dinner, a presence that even Huggy had seemed to be aware of, and now it squatted in the corner. Hutch could feel its knowing eyes as he checked out the closet for the third time, trying to find something to sleep in that wouldn’t be as completely inappropriate as a chastity belt.
A little over twenty-four hours ago while they were shopping, Hutch hadn’t even considered buying pajamas. He hated them, only kept a couple of pairs in the drawer for hospital stays. Who knew he would be wishing for a heavy-duty flannel set tonight. Hutch wished he had been gifted with a little more foresight and a little less of the hind variety.
The third inspection wasn’t revealing any more options than the first two had, and the thump as the shower went off announced his time had run out in any case. Hutch wanted to get the salve on his burns and be under the covers-in whatever he decided to wear-before Starsky emerged from the bathroom. He knew he would probably spend most of the night staring at the neon-lit walls, afraid to sleep for fear of what encroaching his subconscious mind might lead him into, but at least he wouldn’t have to look at Starsky not looking at him. And he wouldn’t have to look at Starsky and remember the thoughtful gentleness of the night before.
Hutch was standing in front of the mirror when the bathroom door opened, twisting his spine into a protesting pretzel as he tried to tend his own bums. He could see them in the mirror, but even with his long arms, he couldn’t reach them.
“What are you trying to do, put yourself in traction?” Starsky demanded.
Hutch jumped guiltily, watching Starsky approach in the mirror, and allowed the tube of salve to be taken out of his hand without protest. Starsky disappeared from the mirror, blocked by Hutch’s own reflection, and Hutch braced himself for the first touch of Starsky’s hands. He ordered his heart to quit pounding in his chest, and his muscles not to quiver in anticipation. The sternest command he reserved for his cock, demanding it remain unaroused and uninterested in his jeans.
None of his anatomy seemed to be listening to him as Hutch felt the gentle touch of Starsky’s hands. The fingers were as caring as they had been the night before as each raw area was treated to careful ministrations. He jumped when the tube of salve hit the dresser, jumped again when Starsky’s hands encircled his arms in a tender grip. There wasn’t enough strength in those hands to restrain him, but Hutch was anchored to the spot nonetheless as he met Starsky’s gaze in the mirror.
Hutch couldn’t read the expression on the long face, but the tenderness of Starsky’s touch was too tempting to resist. He couldn’t pull away. Couldn’t call a halt to the sweet torture. All he could do was hide the longing in his eyes with a veil of lashes and stand passive beneath Starsky’s hands.
Those hands remained still for a short eternity, their warmth seeping into Hutch’s blood, heating it and sending it rushing to his groin. He heard a stifled sound from Starsky, his name perhaps, or only a bitten off curse, then the grip because a caress, sliding up his arms, palms firm on the bulge of his biceps, fingertips brushing the hypersensitive skin on the side of his chest.
It was too much. Too sweet. And far more temptation than any man should have to resist. The words felt like ground glass in his mouth, but Hutch forced them out. “I thought you were sorry,” he reminded the uncertain eyes in the mirror.
“I am,” Starsky agreed, and this time it wasn’t a lie. There was regret in his eyes, but his hands cast the reason for it into question as they reversed their course, re-tracing the path, in the same smooth slide, back down to Hutch’s elbows.
“Sorry I didn’t give you a choice. Sorry I ran like a coward,” Starsky whispered his sins.
One hand deserted Hutch, leaving the flesh cold and vulnerable, while the other coaxed him to turn, leave behind the possible ambiguity of the mirror and confront the expression on his friend’s face. There was caring there, love of some kind, but confusion as well.
“Sorry I don’t know what I’m offering, or if l could live with it if you took me up on it,” Starsky continued. “Never wanted to kiss a guy before you,” he confessed, then abruptly released Hutch. “And I wish I had the balls to do it again.”
Hutch wanted to shout “do it,” craving that kiss with such deep hunger he could already taste it on his tongue. It was so close and yet held a mile out of his reach by the confusion on Starsky’s face. It was one of the hardest steps Hutch ever took in his life, but he did it, literally and figuratively, opening a space between their taut bodies and another between their struggling emotions with a single pace backward.
“Wrong place, and a worse time to try to figure this out,” he excused Starsky’s uncertainty, finding a smile and stitching it on his lips.
There was disappointment in Starsky’s face, maybe even rebellion, but there was relief there as well, and in the sigh that slipped from him as he also took a step back. He broke the lock of their eyes, glanced around the room, wincing when his eyes fell on the bed.
“Do you want me to see if there’s another room available tonight?” Hutch asked, continuing to force himself to say things he didn’t want to say. Just the thought of being separated from Starsky right now, even with the unresolved tension between them, made his chest ache.
Starsky looked at the bed again, his heavy brows drawn together in a frown. ”No,” he said simply, then, as if he felt he had to justify his decision, continued, “We still don’t know if somebody’s trying to kill you.”
Hutch accepted the decision and forced himself to be the one to break the spell, to cross the room and pretend a comfort he didn’t feel as he stripped off his jeans and slid under the covers. He closed his eyes when the light went out and tried to close his ears to the sounds Starsky made as he shucked his clothes and climbed into the bed beside him. The man he loved with all his heart and soul was laying only a few inches away just as he had the night before. Last night, that presence had been a comfort; tonight, it was a torment.
He wasn’t going to sleep. Hutch knew he would lie here stiff as a statue all night long, and he could feel Starsky’s tension as well. He knew from all the other times they had shared a room, or a bed, that Starsky never settled down immediately. He always tossed and turned and grumbled until he found a position of comfort and then he went out like a light. Tonight he was as still as a corpse in a coffin.
“Hutch?” Starsky’s voice came out of the darkness. “Are you sorry?”
It was the question Hutch had been dreading all day. A question that demanded he gamble everything he held dearest on the chance that it might gain him the unattainable. All or nothing. To lie or not to lie. No choice as far as Hutch could see. He couldn’t lie to Starsky.
“No. I’m not sorry you kissed me,” Hutch confessed, almost wishing he had lied when he heard Starsky’s gasp of surprise. He could imagine the startled expression on the familiar face, the disbelieving surprise in wide blue eyes. But he couldn’t take the words back, all he could do was wait through endless seconds until he heard the out rush of held breath, felt the mattress shift, and the tentative press of Starsky’s back against his.
“Good. ‘Night, Hutch.”
It took Hutch a minute to realize that Starsky hadn’t simply said goodnight. That there had been a period in there, a bit of punctuation that turned dismissal into acceptance, of some sort. But when the light went on in his brain, his body relaxed.
“‘Night, Starsk,” Hutch whispered. He didn’t know what the hell to expect of tomorrow, but for tonight, at least, he didn’t need to fear his dreams.
~*~*~
Starsky wondered if he ought to offer the elephant a chair. He could still see it, hovering just on the edge of his peripheral vision, but he was looking at it a whole lot more kindly today.
Hutch wasn’t sorry. Starsky kept hearing the soft certainty of Hutch’s statement, and it was like it had given his mind permission to draw all kinds of conclusions, consider all sorts of possibilities. Possibilities Starsky had never before entertained—at least not consciously—that now felt like inevitabilities. He was getting way ahead of himself, assuming a hell of a lot about himself based on one brief kiss, but Starsky couldn’t seem to find his imagination’s leash and pull up on it.
For about the fiftieth time in an hour, Starsky let himself look at Hutch. His partner sat across the table, reviewing a case that he had to give testimony on tomorrow morning. They had both forgotten about the impending trial, but a call from the district attorney’s office had reminded them. The report wasn’t in yet from the Venice Fire Marshall, so Hutch was reviewing, and Starsky was sorting through their in box. Or he would be if he wasn’t stopping every sixty-four seconds to contemplate the serious press of Hutch’s lips, the dent between his brows, and the sweep of platinum that fell over his tall forehead.
As if sensing the scrutiny, Hutch looked up at that moment and gave Starsky a tentative, inquiring smile and the lift of a blond eyebrow. Fortunately for Starsky, Dobey chose that moment to appear from his office, saving him from having to give an answer to that silent question that Starsky just didn’t have.
“Fire Marshall’s report,” Dobey announced, pulling back the paper he held when both Starsky and Hutch reached for it. “It says the fire started in a deep fryer that was left on in the kitchen,” he quoted with less relief in his voice than might have been expected.
“But why didn’t the sprinkler system come on?” Hutch asked. “I know they had one.”
Dobey didn’t even consult the report. “It was burned up pretty badly, but apparently there were no signs of tampering.”
Starsky met Hutch’s eyes across the table and saw that Hutch was as relieved by the news as he was, but that his partner had also picked up on their superior’s dour delivery.
“So, maybe there is such a thing as coincidence after all?” Starsky suggested, more to give Dobey an opening than because he really believed it.
“Except for one thing,” Dobey said right on cue, the features that had been dour now as grim as Starsky had ever seen them.
“Come on, Captain. Don’t keep us in suspense,” Hutch invited, his tone casual, but the dent digging itself deeper between his eyebrows and his hands clenching around the file he still held.
“The owner reports that he hasn’t been able to contact one of his employees. An assistant cook named… ” Dobey paused to squint at a previously unnoticed second paper. “… Matthew Brinks, who just happened to be the last person out of the restaurant the night of the fire.”
“Jean-Marc wouldn’t happen to have an address?” Hutch asked. He had already abandoned the manila folder and was on his feet, tugging his jacket off the back of his chair.
“586 South Main,” Dobey replied, handing the paper over to Hutch.
“Nice neighborhood,” Starsky observed sarcastically as he stuffed the still-unsorted contents of their in box back into the tray. The knots that had been unwound in his belly by Hutch’s statement the night before were pulling tight again, an instinctive alert crawling up his spine that prompted him to draw his gun as he rose from his chair and visually check its load. He looked up at Hutch as he re-holstered the weapon, relieved to see no amusement in his partner’s face for the over abundance of caution.
“Shall we go have a talk with Mr. Brinks?” Hutch suggested, bravado on his face, but his eyes acknowledging the protective instinct they shared.
Starsky telegraphed a familiar warning to the unknown assistant cook and possible arsonist: “Never mess with a man’s partner.” Starsky might be contemplating a little “messing” of his own, but his first and foremost concern was Hutch’s safety. Following Hutch out the door, Starsky had to resist the urge to check his Beretta one more time.
~*~*~
Hutch was distracted from watching the floor indicator blink from number to number by the sound of a clip being pulled from its housing. He glanced at Starsky and saw that his partner was once again checking his readiness for action. Once, Hutch agreed with. Twice, he could even understand in this neighborhood. But three times was a little over the top.
“Has your Beretta started eating bullets for breakfast?” Hutch asked as the elevator door opened onto a grungy corridor. He was teasing, but trying to be gentle about it. He knew the caution was for his sake, and it warmed him.
Starsky acknowledged the overkill with a shrug and met Hutch’s eyes, his right-hand giving Hutch a little nudge toward the open door.
Met his eyes, touched him, and fell in shoulder to shoulder with Hutch. Exactly the way they had always worked right up to the moment Starsky’s lips had met his. Hutch’s stride slowed, setting him back a step or two while he absorbed the sudden realization that yesterday’s painful awkwardness was gone. They were a well-oiled machine again, and had been since they had awakened this morning, still back-to-back, in the hotel room.
“Hutch? Something?” Starsky asked, looking over his shoulder and slowing as well. Alert eyes scanned back along the corridor the way they had come, and then ahead for some sign of a threat, seeking the reason for Hutch’s hesitation.
Hutch didn’t have time to puzzle it out. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Somewhere in the night, Starsky had shifted gears, and Hutch had responded to that as instinctively as he would “get down” or “cover me.” After the awful awkwardness of yesterday, Hutch wasn’t in any hurry to check out this gift horse’s dental health.
“Fools rush in,” Hutch said to cover the fact that for all of fifteen seconds, his mind hadn’t been on the job. Long enough to get a man killed, or short enough to realize that your universe had once again settled back into its proper rotation. He nodded at the weapon Starsky still held, though now it was tucked behind his left thigh. Out of sight but ready. “Do you really think you’re going to need that?”
Starsky shrugged again and tapped the back of his neck. “Better safe than sorry.”
Hutch had to agree. He felt jittery himself, an up-on-his-toes alert that could be explained by the possibilities, the run-down dump of a building, or the unresolved situation between himself and Starsky. They were both over-wound, as capable of putting a bullet in each other as in Brinks if the “talk” turned sour. Despite alert and instinct, Hutch left his gun hanging in the holster under his arm as they started walking again.
Apartment 5J was at the end of the corridor, the lights on either side of it burnt out or broken, leaving the area in ominous gloom. Starsky took up position on one side of the door, his back to the wall, legs spread, and his gun now held above his head in both hands.
Still not ready for that level of aggression, Hutch didn’t pull his weapon, but he did stand clear of the door, reaching across it to rap his knuckles against the peeling, filthy paint. “Police,” he called out in his official voice. “Open up.”
“I think we’re being ignored,” Starsky observed when utter silence met the demand, his lips barely moving, the muscles of his face taut, throwing nose and chin into sharp relief.
Hutch nodded in agreement. It could be as simple as nobody home, but now Hutch was ready to join Starsky in erring on the side of caution. He pushed aside his jacket and drew his gun, flexing his fingers around the unfamiliar butt until his grip felt secure. “Handle’s on your side.”
Slowly, Starsky reached for the knob, taking a fingertip hold on the tarnished metal and turning it gently. “Open,” he announced and then gave the door a cautious push.
The stench of decomposition hit them immediately, and they both pivoted until they stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, weapons still at the ready, but the pressure of trigger fingers eased. If there was anything left alive in apartment 5J, he, she, or it had stronger stomachs than they did.
They made a cautious search anyway, separating to present a more difficult target and to cover the meager ground more quickly. Within a few minutes, they stood together again in the doorway of the bedroom, studying the source of the overpowering stench sprawled on the bed.
“Christ, death is a mess,” Starsky complained. He entered the room, bypassing the bed as he pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped it around his hand. His voice sounded a little shaky to Hutch, but there was no apparent weakness as he bent to push up the window in one effortless shove.
Feeling as shaky as his partner sounded, Hutch approached the bed with its grisly occupant. Brinks, if it was Brinks, had apparently been murdered in his sleep. There was no expression on the puffy features, and only one neat hole in the chest above the bloated belly. “You know what the scene guys say,” he responded to his partner’s complaint. “What’s in usually comes out when the heart stops ticking.”
The trembling worked itself into his hands while Hutch crossed the room to the bedside table and used the muzzle of his gun to push open the wallet that sat on it.
“Brinks?” Starsky asked.
“Unless he’s a pickpocket on the side,” Hutch quipped, the black humor absolutely essential because his knees were shaking now, too. No coincidence. No fickle finger of fate. Somebody wanted him dead and had apparently dealt out death for failure.
“Hutch. You know what—”
“I better call this in,” Hutch interrupted before Starsky could make the situation unignorable for even the few minutes Hutch needed to accept it, internalize it, and turn it into just any other case.
By the time Hutch reached the phone in the other room, his hands had stopped shaking. By the time he had requested a team and a wagon, his voice was rock steady once again. And by the time Starsky asked “Are you okay?” in that intimate tone of concern they both used, Hutch was ninety percent cop again.
That Starsky recognized the floundering ten percent victim, put a firm hand on Hutch’s shoulder and led him to the open door, surprised Hutch not at all.
“Come on, partner. We can wait for the lab boys downstairs,” Starsky insisted, tone and hand brooking no argument.
As Hutch allowed himself to be led away from the scene of violent death closed into a hot California apartment for too many days, he remembered why he had kept his secret from Starsky for so long. Why he had learned to look away from the tight-packed jeans, ignore the flaunted masculine chest, and resist the temptation of lips softly parted in contemplation. Hutch wanted Starsky as his lover more than he had never wanted anyone before in his life, but not as much as he needed his partner and friend.
~*~*~
Starsky was still wired. It felt as if he had enough static electricity running under his skin to power the night lights at Yankee stadium. Brinks’ dead body had only confirmed what Starsky had already known—somebody wanted Hutch dead.
“Give me Huggy Bear,” Starsky commanded the feminine voice that answered the phone. He compulsively tapped the end of a pencil against the blotter as he waited impatiently for Huggy to come to the phone.
“Huggy Bear,” came their friend’s too-cheerful voice over the phone.
“You got anything yet?” Starsky demanded brusquely, earning himself a questioning tilt of his head from Hutch.
Starsky shook his head at his partner and pointed at the new stack of files Hutch was reviewing. Files that contained each and every case Hutch had ever been involved in on his own, before they had become partners, or any stray case Hutch might have worked while Starsky was recovering from one injury or another, or while he was back east on vacation.
“Keep reading,” Starsky mouthed.
“Almost done,” Hutch mouthed back.
“There’s a rumble,” Huggy confirmed, capturing Starsky’s full attention back to the conversation. “Somebody’s out to snuff a cop.”
“No shit,” Starsky growled. “Who? What cop?”
“If I knew that, I’d’ve already called you, Starsky. You gotta know that,” Huggy said in an aggrieved tone.
Starsky closed his eyes, covered them with his hand for a second, and took a deep, slow breath. “Sorry,” he said, not quite as apologetically as he meant to, but letting his next sentence explain his urgency. “It’s looking like that cop is Hutch.”
“I’m still digging, calling in every favor anybody owes me. When I know, you’ll know,” Huggy promised.
Starsky set the phone down as a clerk entered the squadroom and made a beeline for Dobey’s office. Starsky jumped up and followed, heard Hutch’s chair scrape back and knew his partner was only two seconds behind him.
“Well?” Starsky demanded before the clerk had even passed the folder she held to Dobey.
“Give me a chance to read it,” Dobey demanded in his turn, cranky and impatient as he swept everything else off the blotter in front of him. “Sit down, both of you. I’m not going to read any faster because you’re hanging over me like a couple of turkey buzzards.”
“We love you, too, Captain,” Hutch quipped as he sat down, and Starsky smiled, letting the sarcastic humor crack his grim expression for a moment.
“All right, let’s see,” Dobey muttered as he opened the cover on the file. His lips continued to move soundlessly as his eyes scanned down the page.
“Nothing probative,” Hutch interpreted while Starsky resolved to work on his lip-reading skills.
“No fingerprints, no shell casings, no nothing,” Dobey confirmed and flipped to the next page. “Coroner’s report,” he announced, read a moment with his lips set in a grim line, then shook his head. “Cause of death-single gunshot wound to the heart.”
“Brilliant,” Starsky observed. “I wonder what the ME’s first clue was?” he asked sarcastically, inviting a reprimand from Dobey.
“Time of death?” Hutch asked before Dobey could deliver it.
Again, Dobey scanned the report. “Approximately five o’clock the morning after the fire at Venice Place.”
“I’d call that probative,” Starsky pointed out, a little less inclined to sarcasm with the knot pulling at his intestines again. “Brinks fails to kill Hutch, then whoever hired him puts out his lights,” he summarized. “Might mean Mr. X was close enough to see that Hutch got out,” he added, glancing at Hutch in time to catch the shudder that racked him.
“Did you find anything in the files you’ve been reading all afternoon?” Dobey asked Hutch.
Hutch held up two files that Starsky hadn’t previously noticed he was carrying. “Two possibilities. I was involved in one arson case about three months into my rookie year,” he explained, leaning forward to hand over the file to Dobey. “I don’t even remember the details and Rand I reports that the arsonist, Gary Wilson, died in one of his own fires two years ago.”
“The other one?” Dobey asked, holding out his hand, signaling a “gimmie” with his fingers.
If Hutch saw the gesture, he ignored it, sitting back on the chair and opening the file in his lap. “Ernie Bagley. About seven years ago, I was involved in a drug bust that went bad. Bagley was holed up in a warehouse with his brother. Place caught fire and Ernie never made it out.”
“But if he never made it out…?” Starsky began to object.
“Ernie died, but his brother’s still alive. Johnny Bagley’s a psychotic who swore to ‘get me.'” Hutch said with an ironic twist of his lips and a dismissive shrug. “How many times have we heard that?”
“Yeah,” Starsky agreed. “And sometimes they really mean it,” he reminded his partner, half-rising from the chair, then sinking back down when Hutch gave him their signal to stay put.
Hutch lifted a sheet from the file and held it up like a kindergarten teacher displaying a favored student’s art. “Sentenced to ten years. He’s still got three to serve.”
“Damn,” Starsky muttered, and heard Dobey echo it.
“We’re still groping around in the dark and I don’t like it,” Dobey declared, the solid smack of his palm meeting the top of the desk nearly lifting Starsky out of his chair. But if Dobey noticed Starsky’s nervous reaction he ignored it, fixing his glare instead on Hutch. “I think it’s about time we made this official. We should move you into a safe house.”
Starsky couldn’t have agreed more, but the mutinous expression on Hutch’s face left him with little hope that Hutch would go along with cowering in a hidey hole while someone else did his job for him.
“For how long, Captain? The rest of my life?” Hutch argued reasonably. “Whoever it is, he probably already knows where I’ve been staying. Why not just leave me there and let our mystery man come to me?”
Starsky didn’t like it, not by a long shot, he didn’t, but he could see he might as well save his breath for a debate he had a chance of winning. The captain was nodding his head in slow agreement in any case, leaving Starsky without back up for any plausible argument he might be able to come up with.
“But I do think it would be better for Starsky to move to another hotel,” Hutch suggested very quietly.
“No fucking way!” Starsky protested immediately, drilling for oil in Hutch’s carefully neutral expression. It nearly knocked the wind out of him when Hutch wouldn’t meet his eyes for the first time that day. He hadn’t even realized that they were back to normal until suddenly they weren’t. His imagination raced ahead of even his usual ability to leap logical skyscrapers at a single bound. Hutch had lied. He was sorry. And he was willing to risk being murdered in his bed rather than spend another night alone with Starsky.
The accusations swirled in Starsky’s brain, shouting down the reasonable voice of Hutch’s partner who damned well knew better.
Then Hutch let their eyes meet, and guilt and remorse and a few other equally shaming emotions took their turn at rocking Starsky’s world. It was there in the blue eyes, a declaration of intent as crystal clear as all the other emotions between them were muddied—Hutch wanted him safe.
Starsky couldn’t hold that gaze. He dropped his eyes to the carpet and shook his head. ”No,” he repeated, both to reiterate his right to watch Hutch’s back, and to somehow apologize for his terrible breach of faith.
“All right, we play it your way,” Dobey growled, ending the frozen tableau. “As usual,” he added as he reached for the phone. “But I am setting up surveillance. And no, Starsky, I won’t be wearing any coveralls.”
Starsky managed to produce a laugh for the joke, but he hardly registered it. They had to sort this out, this dangerous, distracting whatever the hell it was he had started with an impulsive early morning kiss. Hutch had to tell him, clearly, in whatever simple words it might take to get through Starsky’s thick head, exactly what he wanted. Had to tell him because, for the first time that Starsky could remember, he couldn’t read his partner’s mind.
~*~*~
The brand new, dark blue jeans had their advantages. They hugged the curves and accented the bulges quite nicely. But Hutch missed Starsky’s crummy old jeans. Faded in all the right places. Threadbare in a few that offered interesting possibilities to every bend and stretch. And if Hutch didn’t get his mind off this particular train of thought, he was going to end up in a wreck. If he didn’t find a way to keep his eyes off Starsky’s ass, Starsky was going to notice.
Perhaps he already had noticed. Maybe that was the reason Starsky stood at the window, back to the room, one hand parting the drapes just enough to peek through. Or just enough to watch Hutch’s reflection?
Hutch forced his eyes back to the pages of the book he held and re-read the first paragraph of the first chapter for the fifth time. It might as well have been written in Chinese. All he could think about was the emotional poker game he and Starsky had been playing. Starsky had started the game with one brief kiss, and Hutch had anted up one emphatic “I’m not sorry.” According to Hoyle, it ought to be Starsky’s raise, but Hutch was trying to find some way to call off the game completely. He was no longer willing to throw friendship and partnership into the pot and hope Starsky might be prepared to call him with desire.
Whatever the stakes they were or weren’t playing for, the silence wasn’t Hutch’s friend tonight. It was only encouraging him to keep climbing aboard a train he couldn’t afford to ride anymore.
“We forgot to call our insurance companies again today,” Hutch said just to break up the silence, a little shocked at how loud his voice sounded in the small room.
“Mmmmm,” Starsky hummed distractedly.
“Can you see our guys out there?” Hutch asked for the same reasons he had first spoken, lowering his voice a little, and then wishing he hadn’t. In his own ears, his voice sounded husky and hushed, giving the simple question shades of suggestive meaning he had never intended.
“Uh-uh.”
A correct response, and yet Hutch was almost certain Starsky had barely heard him. “We’re going to have to shop again tomorrow. Or do laundry,” he tried again, careful of his tone, and relieved by the absolute neutrality of it.
“Mmmmm.”
Hutch was getting a little irritated. Admittedly, he wasn’t making scintillating conversation, but what hope did he have when the best he could get out of Starsky was a grunt or a hum. It wasn’t fair. Starsky had started this whole damned thing; he ought to be the one dangling from the awkwardness hook. The mental tirade wasn’t doing any good. Hutch couldn’t work up a head of self-righteous steam when what he really wanted was to….
“I’m tired of this guy following us around,” Starsky pronounced abruptly without turning away from the window.
“What guy?” Hutch asked, grateful for the distraction. He was out of his chair and only a few feet from Starsky when his partner’s reply stopped him in his tracks.
“The one with the trunk and the cool paint job,” Starsky elaborated, voice flat the way it sometimes became when he really was describing a tail they had picked up.
“Oh,” Hutch grunted, held in place by immediate understanding and apprehension, realizing belatedly that he could dismiss his love for Starsky in his own head, tell himself high-minded lies, but he would never be able to speak them aloud. They would stick in his throat. Choke him. If he could even bring the words that would deny the depth of his feelings that far.
“Yeah, oh,” Starsky echoed, a tiny trace of humor in his voice.
But he didn’t tum away from the window, didn’t give Hutch his eyes or lips or expression to read. No clues to gather and interpret to suggest the next sentence Hutch could utter. The magic one that would create a rip in time and let the two of them step back a couple of days. Hutch wasn’t the science fiction fan. It had to be a measure of his desperation that he was thinking this way.
With nothing to say, Hutch remained mute, watching and waiting anxiously in the silence broken only by the tiny click, click of the metal hangers as Starsky played with the drapes.
“You didn’t kiss me back,” Starsky finally said in that same strange, dispassionate tone, as if he had just observed that Hutch hadn’t eaten his fries.
There were funny little spots dancing around Starsky’s body. It took Hutch a moment to realize the spots existed only in his own vision, caused by oxygen deprivation. He let out the spent breath from aching lungs, drew in a replacement quick, then let that out as well on a silent rush past parted lips.
Hutch remembered this feeling. It had always seized his belly and tangled his tongue when he had played truth or dare with his teenage friends. He had lied then, often and quite well, for all his nervousness. But this was no game. Though the potential for humiliation was as great, or greater, lying wasn’t an option. However well he did it, to himself or Starsky, it was going to hang between them for the rest of their lives.
“You never gave me time to,” Hutch finally admitted, grateful now that Starsky remained turned away the confession somehow easier to make to the straight line of his back, the breadth of his shoulders.’
“Would you have?” Starsky countered immediately, the dispassion gone from his voice, a tight urgency to it that belied the still casual stance.
Raise. Call. Raise. Starsky was waiting for a one-word call. An end to lying by omission to denial to ambiguity. A minute ago, Hutch had been trying to find some way to fold but still hang on to the stakes that had already been won throughout the years he and Starsky had known each other. Now he knew he had no choice but to go for broke.
“Yes,” Hutch whispered very softly, saw the word stiffen Starsky’s spine, and waited for the next raise.
The sliver of neon disappeared as the drapes slipped between Starsky’s fingers and he slowly turned, his eyes probing at Hutch’s, searching the way they did when Starsky most needed Hutch to have the answers for him. “Why?” he asked in that same confession-soft whisper.
Hesitation gone, Hutch smiled, the watch-spring wound tension within him easing a little. He might regret this five minutes from now, but it was a sweet joy to finally say with reverence, “Because I love you. Because I want you.”
“But,” Starsky immediately protested, then left the sentence hanging as if he couldn’t think of any objection to being loved and desired. He took a half-step toward Hutch, then paused.
This was a conversation Hutch had never expected to have with Starsky. Just speaking the words made him feel almost as if he held Starsky in his arms, and yet the hesitation, the uncertainty on Starsky’s face made it feel as if Starsky was moving away, soon to be so far out of reach that Hutch would never find him again.
“But?” Hutch echoed, remembering the doubts and fears that had tormented him when he had first recognized his love. “I’m straight? You’re straight?” he asked, the questions presented gently, rather than flung as accusations. “The department would chew us up.”
“…and spit out our badges,” Starsky agreed with a rueful twist of his lips that seemed to acknowledge the futility. But his eyes were devouring Hutch’s face. Hutch could feel the heat of the gaze on his mouth, his lips parting helplessly in response to the visual caress.
Starsky closed his eyes and turned his head while a deep breath lifted his chest and held it there until his eyes opened again. But he didn’t look at Hutch, his attention apparently captured by the cheap print on the wall.
Hutch had laid all his cards on the table, and now it was Starsky’s tum. “Why did you…? What were you thinking?” Hutch asked hesitantly.
The rueful smile was back on Starsky’s lips, but this time, when he turned his head to face Hutch, the smile crinkled his eyes. “Thinking?” he echoed, a touch of pink appearing on his cheekbones. “I wasn’t thinking, I was…”
“Following your cock?” Hutch cut in, trying to take the edge off the blade of Starsky’s honesty by wielding it himself, only to discover that disemboweling hurt. Whoever’s hand might be on the blade, your guts still spilled out onto the dirt.
The pain had to be in his face because Starsky took two quick steps toward him, both hands starting to reach out automatically to steady or support. The gesture alone took the pain out of Hutch, while Starsky’s next confession flowed over the self-inflicted wound like warm salve.
“Today, right now, yeah, my cock’s getting in on the act,” Starsky confessed, earnest and urgent. “But not when I kissed you. I wasn’t thinking about anything then, I was just feeling. How good it felt to hold you,” he continued, his hands lifting but not reaching for Hutch, folding in around themselves instead, as if he could capture the emotion he struggled to describe and offer it within his cupped palms. “I’ve known for a long time how good it felt to hug you, but I never realized until we woke up all wrapped around each other, how much I wanted to hold you.”
The invitation was in the blue eyes that held Hutch’s, in the hands that reached out toward him, and in the eager words. But when Hutch took a single step forward to accept all that was offered, Starsky stepped back, his hands dropping to his sides. There was a moment of alarm on his face, perhaps even fear, that immediately gave way to that rueful smile again.
“Sorry,” Starsky murmured, standing awkward and hesitant, middle fingers rubbing at the side seam of the stiff new denim of his jeans.
”No. I’m sorry,” Hutch tried to offer reassurance even though Starsky’s conflicting signals left him with no clear direction. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”
”No,” Starsky echoed. “You’re not assuming. It’s just…”
Hutch didn’t try to put words into Starsky’s mouth this time, but waited, afraid to move for fear of startling the skittish creature Starsky had suddenly become.
Starsky gave him another smile that seemed to acknowledge the hard-won patience. “A couple of days ago, I knew I loved you. Knew how I loved you,” he explained, his eyes searching Hutch’s face. Whatever it was, whatever understanding he seemed to need to see in Hutch must have eluded him, however, because he continued, offering more words despite the blush that crept back into his face. “It didn’t have anything to do with your shiny hair, or your perfect mouth, or your sexy ass. But when I kissed you, all of a sudden, loving you was all about that stuff. Then today, after Dobey told us about Brinks, loving you was about keeping you alive. Tonight, I don’t know what it’s about anymore.” Starsky hesitated, his hands reaching out again, his voice becoming urgent. “Everybody you’ve ever loved has hurt you, and I’d rather walk away right now, never see you again, never even think about you again, than add my name to that list.”
It was painted on the beloved face, all the kinds of love Hutch wanted and needed from Starsky. They could stop now, Hutch knew he could do it if he had to. But if they did, if they allowed fear to stop them from even exploring the possibilities, that damned elephant would sit between them forever.
“If we tried,” Hutch asked, gesturing between them with one hand, finding at the last moment that he didn’t quite have the courage to be the one to connect them first, needing Starsky to be the one to form that physical bridge this first time, but offering his words to encourage that reaching out. “If we became lovers and it didn’t work out, are you going to stop being my friend?”
“Damn it, Hutch, how can you… ?” Starsky began to object, his voice loud with bristling offense. He cut himself off, however, as understanding of what Hutch was asking for came into his face, softening sharp edges and gentling taut angles. ”Never,” he said, surely, certainly, taking one deliberate and careful step forward while his eyes invited Hutch to ask for the next promise.
“Will you stop being my partner?” Hutch asked, certain of the answer, but needing to hear Starsky say it.
”Never,” Starsky repeated the promise that he could have been making in court—hand on the bible, so help me God—and shaved another few inches off the distance between them with one more step.
“Then that’s all the promises I need for now,” Hutch offered his own promise. No strings. No hard feelings. The most honest part of him wasn’t sure he had the strength to honor that contract. but he could no more resist the hand Starsky held out to him than he could resist the need for his next breath, or the one after that.
“I swear,” Starsky murmured, tugging a little at Hutch’s hand, head tipping, mouth reaching.
A tentative brush, then the firm press of Starsky’s mouth against his parted Hutch’s lips a little. This time that mouth lingered, moved gently, inquiringly, a leisurely joining that allowed Hutch to gather into memory the sensations that shock had stolen the first time Starsky kissed him. Long, delightful moments to savor the unique taste of Starsky, to revel in the strength of the masculine lips, and the pure joy of knowing it was Starsky who kissed him.
The wet probe of Starsky’s tongue into his mouth encouraged Hutch to be as bold, and their tongues dueled and stroked while hesitance ebbed, and arousal flowed in on a tide of passion. Hungry for more, Hutch let his hand delve inside the open front of Starsky’s shirt, his palm tingling with the soft-coarse brush of body hair, his fingertips seeking the old-penny copper of a nipple. Starsky’s kiss faltered when Hutch’s fingers found their goal, lips becoming still, body a taut possibility of rejection that froze Hutch’s fingers and his heart. A second, two, three eternal moments passed before Starsky’s back arched, pushing his chest more firmly against Hutch’s hand while his tongue delved deeper into Hutch’s mouth.
They both became a little frantic then, lips grinding, eager hands tugging and grasping and pushing at the material that separated them, until the sound of ripping fabric cut through the wordless moans that vibrated in their throats. They pulled apart, both of them eyeing the torn material down the front of Starsky’s shirt.
“S-s-sorry,” Hutch stammered, fingers that had obeyed his passionate directives now suddenly awkwardly useless as he tried to match the tom edges, to undo the unintended damage.
“S’okay,” Starsky reassured him, pulling away a little more, but not quite far enough to remove the material from Hutch’s hands. “But since neither one of us has much in the way of a wardrobe right now, maybe we better take a break and, uh, undress ourselves,” he suggested with breathless practicality.
Without his direction, Hutch’s hands tightened, fisting the torn material and pulling Starsky back to him. “You won’t… ?” he began to ask, biting his lip over the needy request.
“Change my mind?” Starsky asked gently, leaning back, staying within the circle of Hutch’s arm, but firmly tugging his shirt from Hutch’s clinging fingers. “I’m not going anywhere, Hutch,” he promised. “Except into that bed. With you.”
Hutch took a deep breath, tried on a smile for size and found it fit pretty well, and then released Starsky. He attacked his own clothes with a little more efficient fingers, but he kept getting sidetracked, forgetting completely that he was unbuttoning his own shirt when Starsky’s slid off his shoulders and he was free to admire the hairy chest. He felt himself blushing when Starsky caught him staring and grinned. For a few moments, Hutch was able to concentrate, rid himself of shoes and socks, but lost track again when he straightened just as Starsky wriggled his jeans down and bent to push them over his feet.
This time there was no cocky grin to challenge him, but a sudden awkwardness that was so unlike his self-confident friend, it actually made Hutch’s chest ache to see it. As he watched, Starsky’s fingers fumbled hesitantly around the waistband of his briefs, and the blue gaze flickered toward the lamp beside the bed.
“Do you want the lights off?” Hutch asked. He wanted the light, needed to snap mental pictures to match to the feel and the smell and the taste of this first, perhaps only, time he would make love to the man he loved. But if Starsky needed darkness, if the warm anonymity would replace the painful awkwardness with Starsky’s usual confident grace, then Hutch would gladly extinguish every light in Bay City.
Starsky’s eyes flicked to the lamp again and then back to Hutch, while he apparently weighed the pros and cons. He shook his head. One short, sharp snap to the right while his fingers decisively shoved the scrap of briefs off his hips. “No,” he said unnecessarily as he crossed to the bed, climbed onto it and held out his hand yet again. “No. I don’t have to hide in the dark. Not from you.”
Drawn by the invitation in Starsky’s eyes, Hutch moved to the side of the bed, fumbling with belt and zipper as he went, a little disconcerted by the abrupt swings of Starsky’s emotions from certain to hesitant and then back again, while Hutch scrambled, mentally and emotionally, to keep up. He tried to push down his jeans when he reached the bed, but they refused to budge.
“Come’re, Blintz,” Starsky instructed, the hand that had been inviting suddenly taking command instead, his thumb popping the forgotten snap, and his fingers tugging until the denim obligingly slid down Hutch’s legs.
Hutch kicked clear of the jeans and his boxers, hesitating one last time as he watched Starsky’s eyes scan his naked body from crown to knees, unable to read any reaction on the familiar features. “You sure?” he asked and received a disgusted expression in reply.
“It’s not a stupid question,” Hutch defended himself as Starsky retreated across the bed and he followed. “You’re not… ” He glanced at the cock, lying tempting but unaroused, cushioned on Starsky’s thigh.
“Neither are you,” Starsky pointed out, his cheeky grin a challenge, but the hand that slid up Hutch’s thigh tentative, stopping well shy of Hutch’s own flaccid penis.
Hutch acknowledged the truth of that with a small smile but arched his hips away. He recognized pure Starsky bullshit when he saw it, and he didn’t want Starsky doing anything he didn’t want to do. He took the caressing hand in his, easing forward, taking it slow to allow Starsky to protest if he wanted to. His soon-to-be lover didn’t object, and in a few moments, Hutch was leaning over him, while Starsky watched him with wary/curious eyes.
“You know what you’re doing?” Starsky asked in a tone that suggested he wasn’t sure which answer he wanted to hear.
“Not from experience,” Hutch confessed, bending his head to nuzzle into Starsky’s neck, smiling against the warm flesh at the startled jerk Starsky gave in reaction.
“Reading up on the subject?” Starsky asked, his voice a little breathless. “Last month’s edition of Cosmo?” he teased. “One hundred and one ways—”
“Shut up,” Hutch demanded, closing his teeth in a gentle threat on Starsky’s earlobe, increasing the pressure until he felt Starsky’s jaws snap closed. “I only know what I’ve dreamt,” he confessed, giving up his exploration to look into Starsky’s face. “Dreams I tried not to have. Dreams that wouldn’t stay out of my sleep. Impossible, stupid dreams that—”
“Shut up,” Starsky demanded fiercely in his turn, both hands lifting, fingers entwining in Hutch’s hair. “Not impossible. Not stupid,” he insisted, tugging at Hutch, bringing them almost lip to lip. “Come on, baby blue. Show me what you dreamt.”
Obediently, Hutch kissed him, the flavor that, until a few minutes ago could only be imagined, now a familiar intoxicant as it filled Hutch’s mouth. Dinner and beer and a hint of garlic and a trace of mint. Starsky’s day in his mouth for Hutch to savor.
“You taste good,” Hutch murmured, parting their lips only enough to speak the words, pressing them into the slick warmth of Starsky’s mouth.
Starsky responded with a moan and a tip of his chin, firming the kiss. His tongue flirted with Hutch’s lips and Hutch caught it, sucking a little just to hear that soft moaning again. Familiar. So well known. The sound that wouldn’t stay out of his dreams no matter how many stern lectures he gave his conscious mind.
Thank God he couldn’t control his subconscious, Hutch thought as he reluctantly abandoned Starsky’s lips. He traced an inquiring path over cheek and jaw, a day’s worth of stubble rough against his lips as he nibbled his way through it to the welcome softness in the hollow of Starsky’s throat. He could feel that moan now, vibrating against his lips, teetering on the edge of a groan as he tongued that tender, vulnerable spot.
Encouraged, Hutch eased down a little, mouth still eagerly exploring the swirl of hair, tongue probing beyond for the smooth, warm skin beneath. Eyes closed, letting the rest of his senses gather indelible memories, Hutch sucked and licked and nibbled until the naked circle of Starsky’s nipple suddenly brushed his lips. Latching eagerly onto the small treat, he sucked, feeling the tip harden against his tongue, hearing the deep-chested groan of Starsky’s pleasure in his ears, and feeling it against his lips.
“Good?” Hutch asked, replacing lips with the tip of one finger, letting his thumb join in the game in a gentle pinch, watching Starsky’s pleasure-slack face as the dazed blue eyes slowly opened.
“Good?” Starsky echoed, eyes clearing as his trigger finger traced Hutch’s lips. “How’d ya know, Hutch? Fuckin’ mind reader?”
“Uh-uh,” Hutch denied the accusation of clairvoyance, bending his head to brush his lips back and forth over the hard tip. Back and forth, back and forth, until Starsky was arching his back, panting and groaning. The truth was, Hutch didn’t know how he knew what would turn Starsky on, he just knew. Maybe the indiscreet revelations of women in common, or too may double dates, or maybe just the knowledge that Starsky was a hedonist who immersed himself in sensory pleasures.
“God, Hutch, yeah. Do it. Do it,” Starsky moaned.
He was doing it. Just as Hutch had dreamt, he was pleasing Starsky. Giving him pleasure. Playing his body and drawing forth more beautiful music than he could ever pluck from his guitar. Moans and groans that filled Hutch’s cock, pressed his hips into the bed as he slowly worked his way down Starsky’s restless body. His tongue skied a pectoral slope, slalomed its way over lean ribs and taut belly to burrow into the navel depression.
“Hutch!” Starsky shouted, hips lifting, pumping strongly before settling back onto the bed. “Jesus, Jesus,” he mumbled, his hands a restless, undemanding question in Hutch’s hair, and over his shoulders and arms.
Following his dream, Hutch eased further down, gasping as the naked heat of Starsky’s cock brushed his cheek, and hearing the startled sound echoed from above. He turned his head, pressed a dry kiss to the shaft, then shifted a little to engulf the swollen tip in his mouth.
“No, babe, don’t,” Starsky commanded, the hands that had caressed becoming a definitive command. A command that Hutch cease and desist, however much he wanted to proceed.
“What?” Hutch asked, swallowing the saliva that had filled his mouth in anticipation. “Don’t you want me to?” he whispered, trying to force restraint upon his body, afraid that he might not be able to stop. That loving Starsky had loosed the demon Hutch had kept chained for too long, and that there was no way he could throw the beast back inside the cage in his heart.
“I’m a guy, Hutch. What guy doesn’t want his cock sucked,” Starsky asked breathlessly while his hands gently but insistently pulled Hutch up until they were face to face. “But is this all you want?” he demanded, smiling an invitation, eyes still hot but now full of a purpose other than his own selfish pleasure. “Just a chance to get at me?” he added, pushing Hutch onto his back and looming above him. “Don’t you want me to make love to you, too?”
Yanked from his living fantasy, Hutch lay mute, realizing only now that in any scenario he could remember, he had never sought his own pleasure, never dreamt beyond the pleasure he could give the man he loved so much. Perhaps his subconscious had a scruple or two after all. He was allowed to give, but never, never, never should he expect to receive.
“You don’t want my hands on your cock?” Starsky asked, his hand sliding down Hutch’s body until his fingers wrapped in a tentative grip around Hutch’s cock. “Don’t want my mouth on your tits?” he continued, then bent his head and licked at Hutch’s nipple. Once, twice, then one last lingering swirl of his tongue before he lifted his head, his expression demanding the secrets of Hutch’s heart.
“Y-yes, I-I want,” Hutch confessed, gasping in a dizzying blend of relief and disappointment as Starsky’s fingers released his cock, zeroed in on his nipple, and pinched electric fire into it. “But I-I didn’t th-think you’d ever want….”
Starsky’s fingers deserted the stinging nipple, settled butterfly-light on Hutch’s jaw, the thumb rubbing gently at the crease beside his lips. “Who kissed who first?” he reminded Hutch, his eyes sparkling with mischief as he added, “Or is it whom?”
“I-I th-think it’s who-whom,” Hutch stammered.
“Ah, baby blue, you still got way too much blood goin’ north,” Starsky chided, dipped his head and nip/sucked the same heat into Hutch’s other nipple.
The pleasure streaked through him, zigging from teeth-nibbled nipple to finger-pinched nipple, zagging from brain to cock. Hutch opened his mouth. He had to let some of the pleasure out in a moan before he imploded but never expected the sound that emerged from his own throat, didn’t know he was capable of the high, needy whimper that begged for mercy at the same time it pleaded for more.
“Oh, yeah. I knew you’d like that,” Starsky murmured in a satisfied purr that, impossible though it seemed, managed to claim a small portion of Hutch’s attention.
“You did?” Hutch asked, startled at the implication of foreknowledge, mesmerized by the suggestion of forethought.
That same caught-unaware surprise was on Starsky’s face as well. “Yeah, I did,” he agreed slowly, one very careful fingertip offering a gentle caress to the nipples he had brought to hard, aching attention. “They’re hard a lot,” he ventured, a little uncertainly, as if he wasn’t quite sure if what he remembered was true or only wishful thinking.
But it was nothing but the undeniable truth. The damned hard little points poking through t-shirts, visible through silk shirts, had embarrassed Hutch often enough. But, “You noticed?” he asked in disbelief.
“Mmmm,” Starsky hummed softly, concentrating the circling caress on just one nipple now, his eyes watching the digit with utter fascination. Then he grasped the tender tip between thumb and finger. “Yeah, I always did,” he admitted, then bent his head and replaced his fingers with the eager suction of his mouth.
Hutch had never imagined this. Never awakened hard and aching from dreams of Starsky bringing that powerful sensuality to bear on him. Never allowed sneaky waking fantasy to conjure the feel of the hungry suckling of Starsky’s mouth on his chest, or the bold exploration of the length of his cock. Even if he had, Hutch knew he could never have done the reality justice. Could never have choreographed the perfect waltz of pleasure Starsky danced upon him from lips to thighs, hands and mouth curious and eager, until Hutch felt his legs pushed apart and the hot, moist wash of Starsky’s breath on his groin.
“No!” Hutch shouted although until the moment it left his lips, he had been certain he no longer knew what that word meant.
For a moment, Starsky stubbornly stayed where he was, then, as if remembering Hutch’s obedience to the same command, he relented, rolling to lie on his side, one hand under his head, but the other a proprietary deed upon Hutch’s thigh.
“Turnabout?” Starsky asked, his tone balancing somewhere between disgruntled and amused.
“Uh-uh,” Hutch promised, tugging at Starsky until his friend got the message and scrambled into place between his spread thighs. Hutch settled both hands on Starsky’s ass, the pleasure of that possession jolting through him before he tightened his grip and drew Starsky down to him. “Together, my love,” he whispered, all trace of caution blown away by the fierce pleasure of Starsky’s cock settling beside his.
Undreamed. Unimagined. A sweet, sweet surprise to accept Starsky’s dense weight pressing down upon him. An unanticipated privilege to revel in the strength that pounded him into the bed. The never-known pleasure of dishing out desire as hard and strong as he received.
Close. So close with only a few powerful strokes. Hutch dug his heels into the bed, back arching. Push, push, push.
“Together.”
The single word panted in his ear. A warning. A promise. A plea.
“Yes,” his own one-word promise, growled, then howled as he felt the damn burst in his balls, liquid fire streak up his cock and spill between them. Greedily, he drank in the same sharp cry of relief as it left Starsky’s lips, and reveled in the final reward of the hot, silken pulse of Starsky’s semen joining his.
It was over, and yet the sheer joy still sang through Hutch’s body, plucking at sated nerves, twanging aftershocks into brain and heart and soul. Starsky’s dead weight crushed him, made a struggle of every breath he drew into starving lungs, but Hutch would have gladly given up the very necessity of breathing if they could only stay as they were. Impossible, of course. This moment of immortality was never meant to linger.
Starsky groaned as he slid sideways, the little bounce of the mattress feeling to Hutch like the slamming of a prison gate. Over. Done. Hutch’s heart might have broken if it wasn’t for the hairy arm flung over his chest, the press and rub of the warm, sweaty length of Starsky’s body along his side. It might mean everything or nothing at all, but for the first time since he realized he was in love with Starsky, Hutch chose to be the optimist and believe love’s cup full to overflowing.
The silence stretched out between them, but now, as aftermath crept its way into afterglow, the quiet was their friend. They could bask, if only for a few precious moments, in loving each other in every way there was to love.
“Aw, Hutch,” Starsky finally broke the silence, a querulous reproach in his voice that couldn’t quite completely negate the utter contentment. “Why’d you hafta make it so fucking good?”
The complaint should bite, should land a stinging slice over the back of Hutch’s contentment. But the memory of the love in blue eyes, and the gentle benediction of the kiss Starsky pressed onto his shoulder wouldn’t let his faith falter. The pain might be coming. The morning might bring blushes and excuses and stammering recanting, but tonight there was no room inside him for anything but joy.
As if he had sensed Hutch’s decision, Starsky’s grip eased and his body settled, sleep-heavy and sex-warm, more securely within Hutch’s arms.
The light pushed against Hutch’s eyelids. He peeked through his lashes, saw the lamp was way too far to reach without dislodging his sleeping lover.
Lover. Starsky was his lover. If only for tonight, Starsky was his.
“Think what ya like,” Hutch challenged the surveillance team who would surely be wondering why the rough, tough Starsky and Hutch needed a nightlight. Like the rest of the pain that flirted with tomorrow, Hutch would deal with it when tomorrow dawned.
~*~*~
Starsky went from asleep to awake and aware slowly, his body content, his spirit happier than he could remember being in a long, long time. His body knew it had been loved a few moments before Starsky’s brain remembered who had done the loving. Hutch.
No. Starsky rejected the one-sided scenario as he opened his eyes and saw Hutch’s face smooth with the contentment of deep sleep. They had made love to each other, equally, joyfully. It might be the morning after, but Starsky wasn’t about to try to deny the night before. They had made love because, last night at least, they were in love.
In fact, Starsky had seldom made love with anyone he loved as much as Hutch. Terry, certainly. Helen, perhaps. But most definitely not with anyone he loved more than Hutch, because that mythical person just didn’t exist.
Still, Starsky felt like someone had stuck his emotions, not to mention his assumptions and a few personal preconceptions, into that blender of Hutch’s and set the damned thing on puree. But watching Hutch sleep, remembering the caution and the pleasure and the sheer joy that had taken turns living on those familiar features, Starsky felt the shake might be settling a little. A few things were rising to the top—like loving Hutch. And maybe the frothing honesty that if that love hadn’t been there since he had first laid eyes on Hutch back at the Academy, it had certainly been true for a long time. Pinning down the exact moment didn’t seem as important as understanding that, at least since Terry had died, Starsky had been sticking other labels on that love for Hutch.
The six-million-dollar question was not, unfortunately, whether Starsky loved Hutch. No, the top-prize stumper was whether he wanted what had started last night to go on. Could he live with being gay, of what the rest of the world might think of him, if it meant he could have Hutch forever? It was a question Starsky wasn’t sure he had the answer to. Forever and ever was a very, very long time when you knew you would spend it with the odds stacked against you.
Immersed in his own thoughts, Starsky watched Hutch wake up. A slow, suddenly fascinating process that involved ticks and twitches and the flickers of eyelashes before the fine-skinned lids finally lifted. Blue gaze still focused, it appeared, on the dreams he left behind, Hutch seemed happier and more content than Starsky could ever remember seeing him. It lasted right up to the moment Hutch turned his head and saw Starsky watching him. A shutter came down then, a wary caution that did its best to disguise the resigned expectation of pain.
He might not have all his answers yet, but Starsky already knew there was very little he wouldn’t be willing to suffer, or to sacrifice, to wipe that expression from Hutch’s face. It cut him in vulnerable places that Starsky had never known he possessed. Without counting the future cost, Starsky leaned forward, and with his eyes locked with Hutch’s, repeated that single kiss of reassurance to Hutch’s shoulder he had offered the night before.
“Morning, partner,” Starsky murmured, hoping to remind Hutch of the promises that had already been made between them.
There was a flicker of disappointment on Hutch’s face, and then the contentment was back. “Morning, partner,” he echoed with only a trace of caution.
The silence from last night was revisiting, though it wasn’t quite such a comfortable guest as it had been a few hours ago. It stretched out, while Starsky tried to think of something to say. “We forgot to tum the light off,” he pointed out, nodding toward the lamp that still burned on the table beside Hutch’s side of the bed.
Hutch looked toward the lamp, giving Starsky the uninformative back of his matted blond hair to study. “I thought about that last night,” he confessed. “The surveillance guys’ll be thinking we need a nightlight.” He turned his head back, the wary expectation back on his face. “Does that bother you?”
Starsky knew it should bother him. A few days ago, it probably would have. A few days from now, maybe it would again. But not today. “They can think what they like,” he said.
“You sure?” Hutch asked, a question that fell short of being a demand only because the blue eyes weren’t pinning Starsky to the sheet.
The spoken question wasn’t the important one in any case, Starsky realized. It was the one that remained hidden in the taut lips and the drawn-together brows that demanded he bite his lip over quick, cocky bravado and think it through from consequence to repercussion until he could say, “Sure I’m sure,” with utter conviction. He gave Hutch his cheeky grin but held the probing eyes and let his more important answer remain silent as well.
Hutch took a deep, deep breath in acceptance.
“Careful you don’t sprain an alveoli or something,” Starsky cautioned. The abrupt reversal could give them both emotional whiplash, but humor had to serve them now as it had so often in the past. They had to get up, go to work, somehow shift gears from this almost-lovers into the partnership that would keep them both alive on the streets.
There was a moment of shocked pain on Hutch’s face and then understanding. “Hey, that reminds me. You were supposed to start running with me,” he reminded Starsky, apparently accepting the necessary distraction.
“Uh-huh. That’s right,” Starsky agreed, feeling a little of that tentativeness slip away and their usual, easy camaraderie slide into place. “Pretty drastic measures, Hutchinson. Burnin’ down your place to get out of it.
“Me?” Hutch echoed in righteous offense, then gave Starsky a shove. “We can start this morning.”
Starsky groaned dramatically, then, as he intended all along, he gave in. He got his hands under him and pushed, sinking back to the bed with a startled yelp when his stuck-to-the-sheets anatomy came most painfully unstuck. He rolled clear as Hutch rolled toward him and they both stared at the semen stains on the sheet.
“The maid’s gonna see that,” Hutch pointed out the obvious in a monotone usually reserved for announcing an empty coffee pot.
“Uh-huh,” Starsky agreed, looking away from the evidence of what they had done and willing Hutch to meet his eyes.
Slowly, Hutch raised his head, that wariness back on his face yet again, looking like it might take up permanent squatters rights. “Does that bother you?”
The implications were clear. They lived in the question Hutch did ask and in the many unspoken ones that tried to hide behind that cautious mask. Starsky let them parade through his mind, but they couldn’t outpace the memory of how that evidence had come to be there. The pleasure and the love. Somebody had turned on that damned blender again, and Starsky didn’t know what to say.
Hutch left the bed abruptly, rolling to his feet and spinning back to grab up the top edge of the sheet. “Come on. If we make it ourselves, she won’t bother,” he offered a short-term solution since they didn’t seem to have a long-term plan.
Moving more slowly, Starsky mirrored the roll and the grab, bending as Hutch did to pull the top sheet over the damning evidence. “I’m sorry, Hutch,” he apologized for everything he hadn’t said. “I—”
“Don’t,” Hutch cut in harshly, then softened the rejection with a small smile. “You gave me all the promises you could last night,” he insisted, his hands busy smoothing his side of the sheet.
Again, Starsky mirrored his partner’s actions, smoothing the sheet, accepting the blanket and helping to pull it up neat and tidy into place as well. “But not all the promises you need,” he accused softly.
The incongruity of the two of them standing stark naked and semen-stained on either side of the bed, carefully fluffing the pillows before setting them in place struck Starsky, but he wasn’t tempted to laugh. It was too sad, in a way, and the sight of Hutch’s body had Starsky wanting to yank the covers back. He wanted to crawl back onto those stained sheets with Hutch and start all over again. Double the stains. Or maybe triple them. Give the busybody maid, who had likely seen it all anyway and didn’t give a fuck, something to talk about. Just the thought of having Hutch under him again, riding that strong, bucking bronco into climax again, was bringing Starsky up hard and aching and eager.
Starsky heard a soft laugh from across the bed, the sound drawing his eyes from Hutch’s body to his face. Where Starsky had expected amusement, perhaps even a little touch of self-defensive ridicule, instead Hutch was watching him with tenderness, caring, and understanding.
“All the promises I need for now,” Hutch reminded Starsky, then tipped his chin toward the bathroom door. “Go on and shower. We’ve got a job to do, partner.”
It was the “partner” that did it. Planted Starsky’s feet back down on the rock-solid foundation of what they need never question. With a grin and a wink, Starsky dropped the last pillow into place and sauntered to the bathroom, aware every step of the way of Hutch’s eyes on his ass, and liking it.
~*~*~
“I’ll meet him there at ten,” Hutch said into the receiver and then cradled it. “The Samuelson trial is on. I have to meet Breakerman at the courthouse at ten,” he reported to Starsky, and then began sorting through the piles of folders on his desk, looking for the file he had reviewed yesterday. Only yesterday? The events that had occurred made it feel as if much more time had to have passed than a single day since Dobey had given them the Venice Fire Marshall’s findings.
“I’m going with you,” Starsky insisted, on his feet before Hutch had finished speaking.
“Starsk, I don’t think… ” Hutch let the rest of his objection remain unspoken as he looked up from his search and saw the stubborn expression on Starsky’s face. Stubborn chin, pigheaded jaw, and pleading eyes. ” … that’s a bad idea,” he substituted for the perfectly logical rejection he had intended.
Starsky reached into the chaos of files, plucked a single folder, and handed it to Hutch. “Let’s go,” he invited. Although he seemed satisfied with Hutch’s decision, there was also an up-on-his-toes readiness about him, as if he still feared Hutch might make a break for it on his own.
Obediently, Hutch stood and slipped on the sport coat he had borrowed from Mike Tedesco, then accepted the file Starsky offered. “We definitely have to call our insurance companies today,” he reminded Starsky.
“Speaking of insurance companies, did I ever thank you for talking me into getting that renters’ coverage? I’d be up shit creek right now if you hadn’t,” Starsky said as they moved down opposite sides of the table toward the door.
“Don’t mention it, partner,” Hutch dismissed the gratitude instead of taking advantage of an opportunity for a pointed “I told you so.” It had taken him weeks to talk Starsky into getting the insurance, and hardly a month went by that there hadn’t been a complaint about the uselessness of the monthly premium. He was willing to bet that he would never be hearing those particular complaints again. “But the insurance isn’t going to do either one of us any good if we don’t make a claim.”
“As soon as we get back from—” Starsky broke off, glancing back toward their table where the telephone had just started ringing. He hesitated, then waved a dismissive hand at the instrument. “We’ll get a message.”
They had only been in the Torino for five minutes, with about the same amount of travel time to go before they reached the courthouse, when the dispatcher hailed them.
”Zebra Three. You have a call from a…Huggy Bear. He says it’s important.”
“Patch it through, Mildred,” Hutch requested into the mike. “Maybe he’s finally heard something,” he added to Starsky.
“Hutch, this is Huggy. I think I’ve got somethin’ for you.”
“Let’s have it, Huggy,” Hutch prompted.
“No can do, my man. My source is here. Wants to meet with you and wants his money up front.”
“Huggy, we have to be in court in ten minutes. Can’t you pay him and—”
“I’m willing to hand over the cash, but the man wants to meet with at least one of you. Says he might need himself some protection, and he wants to know where it ‘ll be comin’ from.”
“All right. I shouldn’t be more than an hour in court. We’ll come by after—”
“By then my bird will have flown the coop.”
Hutch let the hand holding the radio unit fall to his lap as they pulled up in front of the courthouse. He met Starsky’s eyes and saw that those windows to the soul weren’t happy at all. “What do you think?”
“You know what I think,” Starsky grumbled.
“You can stay until I get inside,” Hutch began building a viable compromise. “There are cops and security all over the courthouse all the time. What could happen?” he asked, but with less conviction than he might have asked a few months ago. Although the subject of Starsky’s kidnapping by Simon Marcus’s followers had eventually become a subject for their black humor, the ache in his own gut was a good indication that he still hadn’t come to terms with the near-miss. “I promise I’ll stay out of the bathroom,” he tried for a little humor, nonetheless.
“Hutch,” Starsky growled before Hutch could consider retracting the poor joke, then sighed and shrugged away his objection. “What are you gonna do if you gotta go?”
“Hold it,” Hutch promised. He lifted the mike. “What do you want me to tell Huggy?”
“Tell him to sit on his snitch if he has to until I get there, ’cause I’m stayin’ right here until I see you get inside those doors,” Starsky insisted.
Hutch relayed the message to Huggy and then cut the connection. “I’ll be careful,” he promised without waiting for Starsky to insist on it.
Starsky grumbled something unintelligible, but based on his mutinous expression, Hutch decided not to ask for a repeat. He climbed out of the car and closed the door. “I’ll see you later.”
“You stay put until I get back,” Starsky commanded before Hutch could move away from the car.
“You’ll be back long before I’m done,” Hutch predicted. He gave the door a slap and started away but had moved only a few feet down the sidewalk before he saw the meter maid. He hesitated, then backtracked to the Torino and leaned down to talk through the open window.
“Meter maid’s comin’ this way. Maybe you better get the Tomato out of here,” he said to Starsky. “Dobey swore if either one of us gets one more parking ticket, he’s going to make us take the highway traffic refresher course.”
Starsky silently and stubbornly shook his head.
“Come on, Stark,” Hutch argued reasonably. He unbuttoned his jacket and flashed the gun under his arm. “It’s twenty steps and a few feet to the door, and I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it.” He glanced down the sidewalk and saw that the meter maid was tucking the ticket under the windshield wiper of the car behind them.
“You’ll be careful?” Starsky asked, unhappy eyes tracking between Hutch and the courthouse doors, the mutinous expression becoming resigned.
“I’m not just cute, I’m careful,” Hutch teased, then sobered, meeting Starsky’s eyes. “I’ve got every good reason in the world to want to stay alive,” he reminded the man who represented about eighty-eight percent of Hutch’s good reasons.
“Okay,” Starsky agreed with obvious reluctance. “But if you get yourself killed, Hutchinson, I’ll…”
Hutch leaned further into the window of the car. “What, Starsk?” he asked, deliberately lowering his voice.
Starsky’s eyes traced his face, their touch like kisses to Hutch’s features, brushing his eyes and nose, lingering on his mouth. “Just don’t, okay,” he finally begged.
“Promise,” Hutch vowed and backed out of the window. He started down the sidewalk as the Torino pulled away, angling up the steps and taking them two at a time, feeling as if he had a bullseye pinned to his back.
There was a small pedestrian traffic jam at the doors, and Hutch waited for the people ahead of him to funnel through, alert for any familiar face, or for anyone who seemed overly interested in him. When the approach came, however, 1t took him by surprise. Just a quiet voice m his ear from behind, and the jab of a muzzle in his back to reinforce it.
“If you like your kidney where it is, Officer Hutchinson, you won’t make a sound,” came the growled warning in a voice that Hutch didn’t recognize. “That’s good,” he continued when Hutch remained silent. “Now just tum around and walk away, down the steps and then to the right.” The gun was pushed harder into Hutch’s back. “I’ve got nothing to lose, Hutchinson.”
Even though he didn’t recognize who his kidnapper was, Hutch believed him. He had been threatened enough times to know the difference between bravado and determination. The man who held a gun on him now, who took an uncompromising grip on Hutch’s arm and turned him back toward the street, wasn’t bluffing. If Hutch didn’t do exactly as he was told, the kidnapper would kill him without hesitation.
With his promise to Starsky in mind, Hutch allowed himself to be directed, offered no resistance whatsoever as he was marched across the concrete in front of the courthouse. He remained alert, looking for a chance to turn the tables that wouldn’t endanger any of the innocent bystanders around them. He knew it was going to be harder for his captor to stay close and keep him covered without attracting attention while they descended the stairs, and he hoped to capitalize on even the smallest opportunity to escape.
“Don’t even think about it, Hutchinson,” the voice warned as they descended, the press of the muzzle sliding up Hutch’s back until it dug into the ribs that protected his lung. “A lung shot will kill you faster than I want, but you’ll still be dead, and that’s all that really matters to me.”
They were on the sidewalk now and still no one seemed at all interested in them. The gun was once again firmly pressed into Hutch’s back over his kidney, leaving Hutch with no option but to continue to cooperate, offering no resistance as he was led around the corner beside the courthouse. The muzzle dug deeper into his back as they approached a black and white van sitting in the police loading zone. It wasn’t a police vehicle, but it looked enough like a prisoner transport van to pass a cursory inspection.
“Arms up, Hutchinson,” was the next growled instruction when they had reached the van, and when Hutch obeyed, a hand appeared from behind him, reached inside his jacket and lifted his gun from its holster.
“Now, open the doors,” the kidnapper demanded once Hutch was disarmed.
Hutch did as he was told, fumbling a little and then pulling hard as the back doors gave, stumbling backwards into his captor in the hopes of catching him off guard, or at least attracting someone’s attention to the gun. The man stepped clear as Hutch swung around, however, and Hutch saw why no one had questioned them or attempted to intervene, and why the gun had caused no alarm. The man was wearing a blue Bay City police uniform. The face beneath the cap was unfamiliar.
“Do you remember me, Hutchinson?” the ersatz cop demanded.
Hutch shook his head, giving more of his attention to their surroundings than to his captor. His eyes scanned the immediate area, but he saw no one who might help him. “Should I?”
The man gave Hutch’s shoulder a shove to turn him back toward the van, then a harder push in the back. “Get in, Hutchinson. You and me will have lots of time to get re-acquainted when I get you alone,” he said and pushed again, harder.
It was climb in or be shoved. Hutch chose to climb to avoid the risk of injury. He would have a better chance of getting out of this if he wasn’t handicapped, and he had to get out of this. He had a promise to keep. One of the most important he had ever made in his life.
~*~*~
Huggy’s was cool, quiet, and dim when Starsky entered through the street door. He pulled off his sunglasses, fingers automatically folding and tucking them away in his shirt pocket as he looked around for his friend. He saw Huggy in a booth and hurried back to it, conscious of every minute that passed.
“All right, Huggy, I’m here. Now where’s this snitch with all the conditions?” Starsky asked, sliding into the booth across from Huggy.
“In the john,” Huggy said. “I’ve been plyin’ him with liquid libations to keep him from splitting until you got here,” he explained, waving a hand over the assortment of beer steins, shot glasses, and coffee mugs.
“Put it on our tab, Hug,” Starsky offered. “And add an iced coffee for me.”
Huggy signaled the waitress and passed along the order. “Hutch in court?”
“Yeah,” Starsky agreed. He pulled his sunglasses from his pocket and fiddled with the arms while he talked holding a tight rein on his impatience, trying to ignore the voice that insisted he return to Hutch, watch his back, protect him from the real and present danger Starsky damned well knew was out there. “Do I know this helpful citizen, Hug?”
“Not that I know of,” Huggy confirmed. “Here he comes now.”
Starsky twisted around on the bench and saw a weasel of a man approaching. Of average height, with dark hair and eyes, and a scruffy beard; this snitch of Huggy’s wasn’t one of the human race’s more attractive specimens. Nor its calmest. Starsky saw him look over his shoulder twice between the bathroom door and the booth, and he almost scurried the last few feet to the dim comer.
“This the cop?” the man asked in a near whisper, his head swiveling as he tried to watch both the front entrance and back.
“Starsky, this is Trayman,” Huggy introduced the informant, sliding out of the booth and giving the new arrival an encouraging shove toward the abandoned bench. “I’ll see where Diane is with that coffee.”
Starsky looked Trayman up and down, doing a quick assessment before concentrating on willing the restless gaze to meet his. “Huggy says you know someone who wants a cop dead.”
“Don’t know him,” Trayman denied immediately and predictably. “Not personally, I mean. I’m not… I don’t…”
“Duly noted,” Starsky cut in. “Just get to the point.”
“I just heard, you know,” Trayman insisted, his face becoming even less attractive as greed crept into his expression. “It’s gotta be worth a few bucks, good bucks, huh?”
Starsky dropped the sunglasses to the table, grabbed a fistful of the front of Trayman’s shirt, and pulled him up hard against the edge of the table. “Cop killing’s a capital offense, asshole. You want a slice of that?” he growled into the startled face.
“I didn’t do nothin’. I just heard,” the weasel protested, squirming ineffectually. “Man’s gotta make a living any way he can. Times are tough,” he added in a whine that was, Starsky assumed, supposed to appeal to his better nature. At the moment, however, Starsky didn’t have a better nature. All he had was his fear for Hutch, and an instinctive loathing for this gutter scrapping that thought he could bargain for Hutch’s life.
Starsky released the creep with a shove that landed him on his tailbone, then reached into his pocket and fished out a small wad of bills. He pulled off a fifty and held it up between two fingers before Trayman’s fascinated eyes, remembering how he had done the same thing with Mickey when Hutch had been kidnapped by Forest.
“You got a name, address, something concrete, or are you just fucking me around?” Starsky demanded, his tiny horde of patience all but exhausted.
“I got a name,” Trayman assured him quickly, reaching for the bill that Starsky quickly moved just out of reach.
“Give,” Starsky demanded.
“I’m gonna need protection, too,” Trayman bargained.
“If my partner dies while you’re playin’ let’s make a deal, you’re gonna need a coffin,” Starsky promised in a growl he intended to haunt this weasel’s dreams for years to come.
“Okay. Okay,” Trayman squeaked, pushing back further in his seat in a vain attempt to escape the aura of menace Starsky projected. “Couple of weeks ago, there’s a new face on the street. New/old face, if you know what I mean. Hasn’t been seen in a while. He’s flashin’ cash and talkin’ easy money. Sounds too good to be true, you know, and as soon as I hear cop and dead, I know it is. No way do I want a piece of that action.”
“The name,” Starsky demanded, leaning forward again, fully intending to give Trayman a little more physical encouragement if the bastard didn’t get to the point immediately, if not sooner.
“Okay. It’s Bagley. Johnny Bagley. Talking crazy as a loon, and with a big, hard hate on for some cop that fried his brother,” Trayman gushed the information in a frightened rush.
Starsky snapped the bill in the palm of his hand and curled his fist around it. “Bagley’s still in the jug,” he said, remembering sitting in Dobey’s office while Hutch read the details from the file. On the heels of that memory came another one—reviewing Gerry Konig’s file and discovering it hadn’t been updated. Starsky’s last cup of squadroom coffee turned to acid in his stomach as he slid out of the booth and stood looming over the informant.
“Spill it. Everything you know. Anything you’ve guessed,” he demanded, tossing the fifty onto the table as if it had no more value to him than a discarded gum wrapper.
“Don’t know if he ever recruited anybody. Nobody I knew. But I heard where he hung out. Couple of bars. That’s all I know,” Trayman admitted. He hesitated as if he was considering trying to squeeze a few more bills out of Starsky, then shrugged. “The Cool Pool, and Mackie’s Bar and Grill.”
“If you’re tellin’ me the truth, you’ll earn yourself a little bonus. If you’re not, you better use that,” Starsky pointed at the bill clutched in Trayman’s hand, “to buy yourself a bus ticket for the south pole.”
Starsky met Huggy on the way out and slipped him a couple of twenties. “Hang on to these,” he instructed. “I’ll let you know whether to pass them on.”
“Sure thing, Starsk. He have anything you can use?” Huggy asked anxiously.
“Maybe,” Starsky agreed. “A name out of Hutch’s past, anyway. Keep your ears open, Hug.”
Starsky had barely slid behind the Torino’s steering wheel before he was reaching for the mike. “Zebra Three,” he said into the unit as he fired the car’s engine. “Give me RandI,” he requested. Driving one handed, he guided the Torino onto the road, headed back toward the courthouse as he waited for RandI to acknowledge.
”Records and Information. Collins speaking.”
“Collins, this is Starsky. Hutch pulled a file yesterday on Johnny Bagley. It said he was serving ten years for drug dealing. I’ve got reason to believe he’s on the street. Check that out and get back to me, will you.”
“Couple of hours, okay?” Collins asked.
“Couple of days ago would have been better,” Starsky countered impatiently, then forced himself to take a breath. “Could mean the difference between a dead cop and a live one, Charlie,” he appealed in the most reasonable tone he could manage.
“Okay. I’ll get right on it.”
Starsky closed the connection and cut around the car in front of him, speeding more than a little, and sliding through the last light before the courthouse when, honesty would force him to admit, it was more red than yellow.
For once, luck was with him and a spot opened up in front of the courthouse just as Starsky reached it. He slid the Torino into it and was up the stairs and through the doors before the engine had stopped growling. The elevator was taking way too long, and Starsky hit the inside stairs, the hairs on the back of his neck lifting for no real reason he could think of. That instinctive alert had saved his life or Hutch’s before, however, so Starsky let it drive a two-at-a-time charge up the four flights to the corridor outside the courtrooms. He skidded to a stop outside courtroom three, cracked the door and peeked inside. The room was empty.
“Starsky? Where’s Hutchinson?”
Starsky released the door and spun around to find ADA Breakerman glaring at him. “What do you mean where’s Hutch?” he demanded. “He’s with you. He’s testifying at the Samuelson trial.”
“Like hell he is. He didn’t show up,” Breakerman complained. “I just had to do some very fancy talking to get Judge Whitaker to grant me a continuance until this afternoon.”
Sick certainty replacing instinctive suspicion, Starsky grabbed the lawyer’s arm and gave him a none-too-gentle shake to shut him up. “Hutch never showed up?” he demanded urgently.
“No. That’s what I just said,” Breakerman confirmed, pulling his arm away. “And if he isn’t here this after—”
“Fuck,” Starsky muttered, closing his ears to Breakerman’s inane threats as he turned and hurried back the way he had come. He reached for the mike as he slid behind the Torino’s wheel. “This is Zebra Three. Get me Captain Dobey. Now,” he demanded, pulling closed the door, firing the engine, and pulling out into traffic as he waited for Dobey to answer.
“Starsky? Where’s Hutchinson? Breakerman ‘s been calling here since—”
“Hutch is missing, Captain,” Starsky reported, letting the terror inside into his voice to keep it from leaking into his brain. “And I’ve got reason to believe he’s been kidnapped by the same man who paid Brinks to torch Venice Place and then murdered him, Johnny Bagley”
“What do you want?” Dobey asked practically with hardly a missed beat to absorb the information.
Starsky braked for a red light and tried to stay calm. “Put out APBs on Bagley and Hutch,” he requested. “And send a plainclothes unit to,” he paused to calculate which of the two bars Trayman had mentioned was closer, “to the Cool Pool. Bagley might be hanging out there or at Mackie’s. I’m on my way there now.”
“Doesn’t RandI have a current address?”
“Yeah, San Quentin,” Starsky growled into the mike. “As far as they’re concerned, he’s still inside. I’ve got ’em following up now.”
“I’ll send a team to the Cool Pool and let you know what they find,” Dobey agreed.
Starsky re-hooked the mike and concentrated on his driving, weaving in and out of traffic, and trying desperately not to listen to the taunting little voice in his head that kept telling him he would be too late. He was never too late. Always arrived in time. Sometimes the nick of time, like Humphries’ and Crazy Diana, but….
“Why the fuck have I been jerking around?” Starsky mourned aloud as the ghosts of too many close calls crowded in on him. “Christ, if he dies now,” he muttered, biting his lip over the possibilities, swallowing them down and letting them sit like a ball of molten lead in his churning stomach. “Why didn’t I just tell him I loved him?” he cursed his own stupidity.
There wasn’t a single patron in Mackie’s when Starsky charged through the door, nor did the bartender remember Bagley by name, or anyone fitting his description. Dobey reported that the other team’s visit to the Cool Pool produced the same lack of results.
“What did RandI come up with?” Starsky demanded of Dobey. He sat in the Torino, impatience driving him to do something, anything, while training and the unaccustomed need to be both sides of the investigative team insisted that he had to stay calm.
“Nothing. Bagley never checked in with his parole officer, and the address they had was an all-night go-go joint. All we can hope is that the APB will—”
“He kidnapped a cop in broad daylight from the courthouse, Captain,” Starsky interrupted impatiently. “Bagley isn’t gonna to be running around waiting for some uniform to spot him and call it in.”
“What else can we do?”
“I don’t know,” Starsky shouted, then forced himself to take a deep breath. “I have to think like Hutch,” he muttered, almost chanting it like an incantation that would allow him to bring that analytical ability to bear that so often served Hutch. He couldn’t afford to let his emotions get between him and his intelligence now. “Captain,” he said into the mike. “Have you got the Bagley file there?”
“Yes,” Dobey confirmed.
“What was the address of the warehouse where Bagley’s brother died?” Starsky asked, his mind already several steps ahead. If it was Bagley, and if he was looking for revenge, and if the warehouse where his brother died had been re-built. So damned many “ifs” to hang Hutch’s life on.
“But it burned down in the fire that killed Bagley’s brother,” Dobey protested.
“What else have we got?” Starsky demanded. “Just give me the damned address.”
Dobey provided the address on the docks, then added. “I’ll send up two units to back up—”
“No. Not yet,” Starsky interrupted yet again. “If Bagley smells a cop he might kill Hutch. Tell them to hold back… ” He paused to try to calculate a reasonable delay, but with no foreknowledge of the situation, all he could offer was his best guess.”…fifteen minutes. Let me go in alone and snoop around first.”
“All right,” Dobey agreed with obvious reluctance. “But you be careful. No unnecessary risks.”
“I’m no good to Hutch dead,” Starsky agreed and cut the connection. He threw the Torino into gear and hit the gas hard, fishtailing around toward the docks and the maze of warehouses, praying he was right, praying Bagley wasn’t in a hurry, praying Hutch was keeping the promise he had made.
“Hang on, Hutch, I’m coming,” Starsky ground out between clenched teeth. “Just remember your fucking promise.”
~*~*~
It was pain that lifted the black curtain of unconsciousness. Pain in his head and pain in his shoulders that insisted Hutch wake up and feel them. His head throbbed, a persistent percussion at the back of his skull that kept beat with the sudden thunder of his heart when he identified the pain in his shoulders. He was tied up. Bound and helpless and in the possession of a madman bent on revenge.
Hutch felt hands on his wrists, then a tugging at his ankles and around his chest. He opened his eyes just as the hands left him, in time to see a man close to his own age and general description step down off the raised platform.
“All done, Mr. Bagley. You want me to do anything else?” the blond asked.
”No, Delano. The rest of the ceremonies are my personal pleasure,” Bagley said, appearing from behind a stack of crates. “Take the van and abandon it where we agreed. I’ll meet you at the farm on Badger Creek Road when… when it’s over.”
“Yes, Mr. Bagley,” Delano agreed and disappeared.
Bagley didn’t seem particularly interested in him at the moment, so Hutch took the opportunity to take stock. He was obviously in a warehouse. The ceiling disappeared into the gloom, and stacks of crates of various sizes and shapes surrounded the open area where he was being held. His chair was on some sort of narrow platform, maybe a foot off the floor. Hutch rocked experimentally, but the chair didn’t move. It must be bolted to the platform. Ominously, the air was heavy with the smell of gasoline.
Turning his attention to the ropes that restrained him, Hutch tried to test them without drawing Bagley’s attention. Flexing the muscles in his arms and legs, Hutch discovered no give in the ropes that bound his ankles and wrists.
“I wouldn’t bother,” Bagley advised as he left what looked to be a pile of wood and moved to stand in front of Hutch. “Delano was a boy scout. He knows all about knots.” He studied Hutch’s face for a moment, then tipped his chin. “Sorry about the knock on the head,” he said without any trace of remorse in his voice. “I didn’t want you doing anything stupid like trying to escape.”
“What do you want with me, Bagley?” Hutch demanded.
“So, you do remember me after all, Officer Hutchinson,” Bagley exclaimed, a delighted smile on his lips.
“Yes, I remember you,” Hutch agreed. “I remember you’re supposed to be in jail,” he added, silently vowing that heads were going to roll in Records and Information when he got out of this. If he got out of this.
“Time off for good behavior, Hutchinson,” Bagley taunted. He looked Hutch up and down, his smile turning menacing. “As for what I want from you, I want you to die,” he confessed with relish. He turned a little, a wave of his hand drawing Hutch’s attention to the pile of wood a few feet away. “Just like my brother died.”
Fear and a flashback-induced adrenaline rush tightened Hutch’s muscles, straining them against the ropes that bound him. For a sickening moment, he was back in his apartment, waking up choking on smoke and smothered by the heat of the fire that engulfed Venice Place. He came back to the present, his body jerking in reaction when Bagley dumped an armload of wood at his feet.
Watching Bagley methodically arranging what had to be broken up crating around the platform, Hutch had never been more terrified in his life. But he had to keep his wits. Starsky would save him. Hutch didn’t doubt that for a solitary second. Starsky had saved him from the death trap Vic Humphries’ hired assassin had made of Hutch’s Galaxy, and Starsky had saved him from Diana Harmon’s obsessive insanity. That was Starsky’s job it seemed—to arrive in the nick of time. Hutch’s job was to keep himself alive until his personal curly-haired cavalry rode to the rescue.
Bound hand and foot, the only weapons Hutch had left were his wits and his mouth. He had to get Bagley talking and keep him talking, somehow delay the moment when he would strike a match, long enough for Starsky to find them.
“You don’t really think you can get away with this, Bagley,” Hutch said to the madman that knelt at his feet. “Kidnapping a cop? Killing a cop?”
“Of course not,” Bagley agreed in a frighteningly conversational tone of voice, as if he and Hutch were discussing the possibility of rain. “I fully expect to pay,” he added, standing up and retreating to his stack for more kindling. “But it will be worth it,” he admitted when he returned with another arm load and began arranging the wood as well. “More than worth ending up in the gas chamber to see you suffer the way my brother suffered.”
By now, Hutch had realized that the kindling Bagley was arranging at his feet was gasoline soaked, the reek of it stronger with every armload Bagley brought to what he intended to be Hutch’s funeral pyre. “Bagley, your brother’s death was an accident, you know that.”
Bagley ignored Hutch as if he hadn’t spoken while he continued to work. “This is better. Much better,” he muttered, placing broken crating slats with the care of an artist. “I can watch here. See your pain. Hear your screams.”
“You’re insane,” Hutch breathed in horror.
“You’re probably right, Hutchinson,” Bagley agreed, looking up into Hutch’s face from where he knelt on the concrete floor. “All those years with only one thought, one goal. To see you suffer the way Ernie suffered.” He smiled, an evil, compassionless twist of his lips. “Burned at the stake.”
Sickened and terrified, Hutch struggled to keep his fear off his face and out of his voice. When Bagley talked, he didn’t work on his pyre, and so Hutch had to keep him talking. “ls that what this is supposed to be? A witch burning, California style?”
Bagley laughed without humor. “The Salem burnings. I read all about those while I was in prison. Read how the prisoners screamed and shrieked and danced at the stake while the meat was cooked right off their bones,” he reported with obvious relish. “The flames creeping up their legs and bellies. The pain so incredible, so agonizing, that the good Christians who condemned them had to find a way to end the suffering they witnessed. Do you know how they did that, Hutchinson?” he asked, rising to his feet and looming over Hutch.
Come on, partner. Hutch sent the mental SOS to Starsky while tipping his head back and forcing himself to calmly meet Bagley’s eyes. “I can’t say that’s information I ever needed to know before,” he said.
Bagley’s face darkened, anger taking the place of the taunting. He reached out and plucked at the necklace around Hutch’s neck, lifting the ivory tooth and tugging gently. “Tough son of a bitch, huh, Hutchinson. Of course you are. But you won’t be so tough when your bowels start boiling inside your skin,” he warned. “You’ll scream just like Ernie screamed, trapped in the warehouse that used to be right here. And I’ll be here to watch it all.”
Abruptly, Bagley released the necklace and stalked away, gathering up another armload of kindling and returning to Hutch, dumping it with far less care at Hutch’s feet than he had used to arrange his previous loads.
Obviously, Bagley was becoming impatient for his long-awaited revenge. Hutch didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, or if Starsky had already discovered his disappearance, but he did know his time was running out fast. “Are you going to leave me in suspense, Bagley? What did they do at Salem?” Hutch asked, hoping to distract Bagley from his preparations again.
“They hung a bag of gunpowder around the witch’s neck,” Bagley informed him, that detached dispassion back, but this time he refused to be distracted from his grisly preparations. “Fire reached the bag and, poof, blow out your throat. All over. But it took a long, long time for the fire to get all the way up to your throat,” He tipped his head back and smiled coldly at Hutch. “It doesn’t matter, Hutchinson, I have no Christian conscience to salve. I don’t intend to be merciful.”
Hutch was certain Bagley was almost ready. The supply of broken crating was nearly all stacked around him, and now Hutch could see the gas can that had been hidden by the pile. There was already enough gasoline fumes in the air to make him dizzy, and Hutch’s supply of distracting conversation was just about exhausted. If Starsky didn’t hurry, there would be nothing for him to rescue but a barbequed corpse amid the ashes.
Bagley was returning with the last of the wood, and death was breathing its putrid stench down the back of Hutch’s neck, when he saw his salvation. The curly head popped up and then disappeared so quickly that, for a second, Hutch feared he had imagined it. But then he saw the beloved face again, and Hutch had to struggle to keep the joy and relief off his face. As Hutch watched, Starsky pointed at the muzzle of his gun and then shook his head.
Hutch understood. Starsky couldn’t fire. Couldn’t risk a muzzle flash, or a ricochet sparking off the gasoline fumes. Starsky was here, ready to save him, but it was going to have to be a cooperative effort. Hutch had to keep Bagley’s attention on him for just a few seconds more.
“It isn’t going to happen, Bagley,” Hutch taunted with a calm that he hoped would infuriate Bagley, bring him back to loom over Hutch to gloat, perhaps even provoke the psychotic brother to get close enough to hit him. “You’re going back to prison, and there isn’t any behavior good enough that’s going to get you out again.”
Obligingly, Bagley came to stand over Hutch, though his hands remained at his sides. “I already told you, Hutchinson. I don’t care what happens to me. All that matters is your death.”
“That’s all that matters, Bagley?” Hutch echoed, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Bagley, to allow only peripheral vision to pick up Starsky’s stealthy movements as his partner left cover and moved cautiously toward them. “I hate to disappoint you, Bagley, but you’re going to be rotting in a cell, and I’m still going to be walking around. And you know why?” he asked just as Starsky reached Bagley, spun him around, and dropped him with a haymaker to the jaw.
“Because my partner won’t let you kill me,” Hutch told the unconscious Bagley with satisfaction.
“You okay?” Starsky asked, dropping to his knees and flipping Bagley over to handcuff him.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Hutch said, feeling a little weak and just as glad that he was sitting down. “What took you so long?” he asked, trying to sound querulous, but falling way short of the mark. “I was starting to run out of conversation.”
“Lucky thing he didn’t gag you,” Starsky said as he snapped the second cuff on Bagley. He left the unconscious criminal face down on the floor and came to Hutch. He kicked some of the gasoline soaked pyre away, then stood over Hutch, both hands on his hips.
“Aren’t you going to untie me?” Hutch asked, aware now that the crisis was over, of the extent of his discomfort. Of the headache throbbing in his skull, and the strain in his shoulders. Of the pain in rubbed-raw wrists, and the tingling numbness of his feet.
“Not just yet,” Starsky said, stepping up onto the platform, spreading his legs wide to straddle Hutch’s thighs. “I’ve got a couple of promises to make, and I want to be sure I have your complete attention,” he explained as he sank down onto Hutch’s lap.
“Promises?” Hutch echoed, his discomfort forgotten and all of his attention riveted on Starsky, while adrenaline flooded his body again.
“Promises,” Starsky confirmed and laid his hands on Hutch’s shoulders in a firm, possessive grip. “For better or worse,” he swore in a voice as firm as his grip. “Forsaking all others,” he added reverently. “As long as we both shall live.”
Stunned, all Hutch could do was stare into the eyes that held his. He remained mute long enough for a little uncertainty to creep into Starsky’s face. “That was three promises,” he finally said inanely, trying to grasp the enormous commitment Starsky was offering him. No perhaps, or maybe. Not a single night of too few memories that he would wear thin with recall over all the years of his life that remained. Starsky was offering him forever and ever, amen.
Starsky shrugged. “Yeah, well. Coulda been a few more, but I figure better or worse pretty much covers sick, and I don’t think either one of us has to worry about rich.”
“Untie me,” Hutch demanded abruptly, his hands aching to seize the man and the promise before they could slip away.
Obediently, Starsky pulled his pocketknife out of his jacket and leaned over Hutch. Hutch could feel the small blade working on the ropes that bound him but was for more interested in the double-timed thumping of Starsky’s heart that he could feel through the chest pressed against his shoulder.
Hutch felt the ropes loosen, giving him his freedom at the same moment he heard the knife hit the concrete floor. Starsky sat back, his hands coming to rest on Hutch’s shoulders again, the grip a little less certain than it had been when he had spoken his vows.
Ignoring the painful tingle of returning circulation in his hands and the ache in his shoulders, Hutch brought his hands around to rest on either side of Starsky’s waist, holding on with all his strength to the love of his life. “I do,” he said, simply but clearly.
The two words echoed in the cavernous warehouse, almost drowning out the scream of approaching sirens.
And then Starsky kissed him.
Epilogue
The hard, smooth flesh in his mouth throbbed a warning at the same moment Hutch’s fingers gave his hair an urgent tug. Obediently, Starsky backed off, wrapping a hand around Hutch’s cock in compensation for the loss of his mouth, and squeezing firmly.
“Close?” Starsky asked unnecessarily. He already knew Hutch was balancing on the edge of climax. The lovemaking they had shared over the past few weeks had taught him the where and when and how and why of so many of Hutch’s needs and joys, and Starsky had been an avid student, eager to memorize every lesson.
“Mmmmm,” Hutch hummed a wordless acknowledgement, his legs spreading and his arms reaching out for Starsky.
Starsky happily accepted both invitations, soaking up the low moan of pleasure Hutch gave as their bodies came together, bellies and groins a stroking, rubbing prison for their swollen cocks. Braced on both hands, Starsky wriggled to perfect the fit, grinning when Hutch tried to buck him off in response.
“Whoa, baby!” Starsky exclaimed, bending his elbows and settling more of his weight on Hutch to hold them together. He swooped in for a panting kiss, smiling against Hutch’s full lips as he felt those big hands lay claim to the cheeks of his ass, securing his seat.
“Gonna give me a wild ride, are you, Blond Beauty?” Starsky teased, whispering the suggestion into Hutch’s ear and then following it with his tongue.
Hutch arched and moaned, hips pistoning, setting a rhythm that, after only a few thrusts, had Starsky just as eager for release as Hutch was. Starsky pushed down as Hutch arched, and they worked together, this new intimacy quickly becoming the same smooth synchronization of purpose and action as they shared on the streets.
“Yeah, yeah,” Hutch began to chant. “There. Harder. Do it.”
Almost there, Starsky interpreted, letting loose the few pitiful controls he seemed to be capable of with Hutch. He pushed and pushed, loving the hard drive of Hutch’s cock into his belly, a sudden fantasy image of that thick, aching heat pushing inside him exploding in his brain, streaking into his balls and triggering the rush of his semen as he felt the pulse and throb and silken heat of Hutch’s come spread between them.
“Ah, God,” Starsky panted when his laboring lungs had slowed from desperate to merely frantic. He could feel the struggle of Hutch’s chest to rise with every breath and managed to get an elbow under him, lifting a little to allow the crushed chest to expand. The hands that still gripped his ass wouldn’t let him retreat too far, however, the strength of the fingers surprisingly firm considering Hutch had to be just as wiped out as he was.
“You all right?” Hutch asked, his voice husky-hoarse, the struggle for breath still breaking up the simple syllables.
“All right?” Starsky protested, leaning forward to rub the running sweat from his eyes onto the pillow under Hutch’s head. He lip brushed ear and cheek and the corner of Hutch’s mouth as he lifted up and smiled at his sated looking lover. “We’ve learned so much, goin’ at it like rabbits whenever we get the chance,” he teased, “but it still gets better and better every time,” he concluded tenderly.
“So, what happens when you’ve discovered all my mysteries?” Hutch asked with an unexpected uncertainty.
Starsky slid his arms under Hutch and hugged hard, squeezing with all his strength until he forced a protesting grunt out of Hutch’s still deprived lungs. “Then I’ll have to start at the beginning and explore them all over again,” he promised, and sealed the vow with a kiss.
When Starsky finally ended the kiss and raised his head, Hutch’s uncertainty was gone, his baby blue eyes glowing like a couple of supernovas, his mouth so swollen and kiss-red, it was all Starsky could do to resist starting them all over again from the beginning right then and there. Instead, he carefully maneuvered himself off his lover’s sprawled body. As careful as he was, however, he still would have ended up dumped off the air mattress they lay on if not for Hutch’s quick grab.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Hutch protested as he reeled Starsky back onto the improvised bed and into his arms.
“No place,” Starsky reassured him, settling carefully against Hutch’s side and throwing an arm over the smooth chest. “Thanks for the save.”
“Don’t want you bruised falling out of bed,” Hutch dismissed his timely intervention.
“Bed?” Starsky echoed. “An air mattress on the floor?”
“And don’t forget the romantic candlelight,” Hutch reminded him.
Starsky squinted at what remained of the candle they had placed well away from the air mattress, just in case they had become a little rambunctious. “Almost out,” he reported.
“Mmmmm. At least one of us won’t have to climb out of bed to blow it out,” Hutch murmured contentedly.
“And our furniture comes tomorrow,” Starsky reminded him, sighing in satisfaction at the thought of finally living like normal human beings again. “But those delivery guys are gonna be a whole lot happier delivering my stuff than yours. Getting that piano you bought up two flights is going to be a certified bitch.”
Their insurance company had finally come through with full compensation, and they had gone on an orgy of spending, eagerly replacing everything that had been lost. Closets and cupboards were already full of the results of their shopping, and tomorrow the empty rooms of the new apartments they had leased would finally be filled.
“It isn’t exactly gonna be a picnic getting that queen-size bed you bought in here, even if this is the ground floor,” Hutch countered. “The mattress weighs a ton.”
“But it is going to be fun to play on,” Starsky insisted with a leer and a waggle of his eyebrows. “Besides, that’s all the delivery guys’ problem. All we have to do is direct traffic.”
They settled down, perfecting the fit of arms and legs and heads for comfortable sleeping, exchanging lazy kisses and a few even lazier caresses as they found the complimentary positions that were becoming second nature to them. A few more weeks of this, and Starsky was sure he would never be able to sleep alone ever again.
“Do you really think this is going to fool anyone?” Hutch asked long after Starsky had thought they were done talking for the night. Obviously, Hutch’s worry gene was working a little overtime tonight. “We may have separate apartments still, but they’re in the same building. Only a couple of floors apart.”
“Probably not,” Starsky agreed. “People aren’t idiots and they’ll figure it out eventually. Especially the ones who know us very well,” he added and felt the muscles under his arm and against his body tense in reaction. “Don’t, Hutch,” he warned, lifting up a little, cupping Hutch’s cheek with his hand and smoothing his thumb over tight-pressed lips until they softened and puckered against the callused pad. “That’s better,” he murmured, and then replaced thumb with lips for a tender kiss.
“Bottom line, sweetheart,” Starsky said when he ended the kiss, “is I don’t care. If they kick us off the force for loving each other, then we’ll find something else to do.”
“Like what?” Hutch asked way too seriously for a man who had just been told he meant the world to his lover.
“Does it matter, Hutch? As long as we’re together?” Starsky asked.
“We can’t live on love,” Hutch insisted, the worry dent appearing between his fair eyebrows.
“Hey, what gives?” Starsky protested, rubbing at the dent the way he had rubbed at Hutch’s lips. “Here I am being romantic, and you’re getting practical on me. What gives, babe? You having second thoughts about us?” he asked bluntly though he nearly choked on the words, barely resisting a superstitious impulse to cross his fingers and toes, or some other such nonsense to ward off any evil spirits that might be hovering outside the magic circle of their embrace.
“No!” Hutch exclaimed with an immediacy that loosened the knot that was beginning to tighten in Starsky’s stomach. “I guess I just have a hard time believing in happily ever after.”
Starsky understood that, although he didn’t suffer the same affliction. Maybe he could just let go of the past easier than Hutch could, but there was no denying that Hutch had reason for his pessimism. He had been hurt, way too often by Starsky’s reckoning, and Starsky was still determined never to let his own name appear on the list of people who had broken Hutch’s heart.
“It’s okay, buddy,” Starsky consoled him, laying back and pulling Hutch into his arms, petting the bright head that came to rest on his shoulder and hugging the beloved body tight. “You and me together are gonna make our own happy ending,” he promised. “I’ll make you a deal. You believe in today, and I’ll believe in tomorrow, and we’ll be sharing a room at the old folks home before you even realize it,” he predicted.
“Yeah, Starsk, I know you’re right,” Hutch agreed, the uncertainty gone from his voice as he too held onto his lover. “A few weeks ago, everything we owned went up in smoke, and just look at what we’ve already made out of the ashes.”
Satisfied that, for now at least, Hutch could believe in that bright, happy future for the two of them, Starsky relaxed, certain that as long as they were together, they would make it appear.
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1 comment
Great suspense. You really creeped me out listening to Bagley describe how much Hutch would suffer. Well done!