Searching the Darkness for Stars

If darkness has form, substance and color, what do we see with our eyes open?

Written for the SHareCon 2008 zine.
Somewhat inspired by one of the unfilmed scripts.

Hutch lay very still, feeling the darkness weigh him down, pressing inward on him as if he’d sunk into the depths of the ocean. His sinuses ached, the pressure in his skull threatening to squash his brain flat. Grief was like a physical obstacle that he had to get past in order to resurface, but it was so easy to wallow in the deep and let the water close over him.

If he stayed like this, quiet and unmoving, how long would it be before anyone noticed he was gone? He cast about for a reason to emerge from his self-imposed solitude but all he could see was blackness–nothing substantial to latch onto to pull himself upward.

The room was quiet, peaceful, and he could feel the velvety bedspread under his fingertips. He should get up, keep moving forward, get something done, dammit.

Be productive and find happiness in the little things in life, as Starsky did. But he had no energy. Just breathing through the next minute and the one after that was difficult enough.

He’d meant to take a rest—to clear his mind of all distractions in order to summon up the energy to keep the faith for a few more hours, but the moment he’d sat down, the true measure of his pain had sucked him under.

Why here, and why now? After all they’d been through in the past?

He’d always suspected that, of the two of them, he’d been the one elected to stay vigilant, ever alert for danger. Obviously Starsky couldn’t do it, now more than ever. So far, he’d been a lousy guard, too focused on the minutia to prevent catastrophe. The real problem was that he couldn’t prevent what he couldn’t see.

Breathe in, breathe out—focus on the breath flowing down through the body. Feel the rise and fall of the diaphragm, just like he’d learned in yoga. Or was that meditation? Probably both.

Inhale, and empty the body and mind on the exhale.

Sense the tiny inner shifts and changes that brought down the blood pressure and cleared the head. Learning to manipulate the fluctuations in the biorhythms that regulated the brain had been his salvation–ironic that he’d once teased Starsky that his astrological biorhythms were in triple zero.

What goes around, comes around—in spades.

He took another breath, bending his neck against the pillow to gaze upward. Nothing but layer upon layer of black interspersed with muddy grays. No color, no light, no noise, just the intense sensation of pressure bearing him down.

If a tree fell in the wilderness, with no one there to hear it, was there any sound? And if he stared into to the darkness, would he see anything at all? He could barely lift his head, and he was pondering philosophical conundrums.

“You’re sick, Hutchinson,” he murmured into the depths of the sea, feeling salt-water rush into his lungs. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, shouldn’t feel this . . .despair.

“Hutch.”

Like a life preserver flung off the bow of a ship onto the waves, Starsky’s voice buoyed him up, gave him something solid to grab hold of. Taking a too-fast breath that went straight to his head, he peered up at the blurry silhouette of a man framed in the doorway. His features were indistinct, the light from the hallway creating dark shadows that hollowed out his forehead and cheekbones and filled in his eye sockets with pools of India ink.

Hutch shuddered, afraid of the specters that only he could see.

“What’re you doing sitting here in the dark, babe?”

“How’d you know?” Hutch asked, narrowing his eyes. It was hard to see him like that.

He couldn’t quite make out his partner’s expression. Starsky gave a snort that clearly said “I know you too well,” and fingered the light switch by the doorframe. “Okay if I turn it on?”

The simple request cut Hutch to the bone. He was faking, sitting here in the dark as if he were suffering. “Go ahead.”

Starsky flipped up the toggle. The 100 watt bulb in the bedside lamp was too harsh, too bright and Hutch brought his hand up to shield his eyes, blinking.

Starsky didn’t squint from the glare, just stood there with his fingers pressed into the wall. “You gonna eat?” he asked. “Just cause I . . .”

“No.” He’d been lying in the dark too long, the light was causing weird after-images that distorted Starsky’s image even further, superimposing yellow, purple and green versions on top of the original. Hutch blinked again, his headache pulsing ruthlessly against his skull.

“Okay.” Starsky shrugged. “But there’s still some of the cold cuts and pasta salad Edith brought over, in the fridge.”

“Not hungry.”

“Stop beating yourself up.”

A direct command. Who was he to deny his lover?

“What if I like to?”

“See, I knew you were a masochist.” Starsky pushed off from the wall and Hutch tensed, always at the ready. Starsky grinned, the shadows gone, his eyes still as blue as sapphires, and Hutch felt such regret.

Sitting up, Hutch tracked his progress across the short distance between the door and the bed, admiring the way the tight muscles of his upper thighs bunched and smoothed with every stride. Starsky knew he was being watched and added in a little of the old strut, thrusting out his hip. He narrowly missed the bedside table, but unerringly came into the circle of Hutch’s arms.

“You head hurts, doesn’t it?” Starsky leaned against him. Hutch pressed his ear to Starsky’s chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart.

What was it the poets said? Love was blind?

Must be, because he should have known. Should have suspected something. There were days when he was sure that he could read Starsky’s mind—so why hadn’t he been able to see the signs?

“Doesn’t yours?”

The doctor had diagnosed stress induced migraines at first. Funny that they should both have the same thing. Almost comical, except their symptoms had never matched. Not once.

When the pain was at its worst, Hutch would seek out the very darkest, quietest room, unable to function as the pain bowled him over and every sound sent steel daggers through his brain. Classic migraines right down to the aura that warned him to head for shelter because there was a tsunami on the way.

Starsky seemed immune to all of that and had never had a day when he couldn’t work. His headaches came and went without rhyme or reason, never as intolerable as Hutch’s. He’d pop a handful of aspirin, and plow cheerfully on, as if nothing were the matter.

Just like now. He appeared unconcerned with what the future held, just wanting the whole thing over with so they could both move on.

“My head’s been hurtin’ for months now, dummy,” Starsky said affectionately, gently massaging in just the right spot on the crown of Hutch’s skull, where the pain usually lurked.

It was so easy to pretend that was why he’d been hiding out all evening. “The Dobeys leave?” he asked to have something to say.

“Yeah, and Huggy, too. They’re all worried.”

“So am I.” Hutch felt his breath shudder in his lungs when Starsky’s hands crept down the back of his neck to massage the rock-hard muscles there. The words trapezius and levator anguli scapulae came to Hutch from some memory file left over from a long ago anatomy lesson as Starsky’s fingers smoothed and soothed. “Starsk . . .”

“Sssh.” Starsky came down on the bed, snugged up close so that he could kiss Hutch on the back of the neck, where his hair had grown long.

Shivers danced down his spine like the tail of a comet from the sweetness of the kiss. Hutch gasped, trying to catch Starsky in his arms again, but he wiggled free, swinging one leg around until he straddled Hutch’s hips from the back.

“You got too many clothes on, Blondie.” Starsky tugged on Hutch’s flannel overshirt, crossing his ankles so that he surrounded Hutch completely.

“Starsky, I can’t see you back there.”

“But I can see you…” Starsky succeeded in removing the offending flannel shirt and pushed his palms flat onto Hutch’s lower back causing the thin layer of t-shirt to ride up until it was shoved up to the arm pits. “You’re all stressed out. Your muscles don’t lie.” He dug a knuckle into a particularly thick knot just above the curve of the pelvis.

Hutch almost purred with pleasure until the pressure was too much and he jerked away just as the muscle released, sending a zingy flush down his right leg. “I don’t need a massage—you’re supposed to be resting tonight.”

“This isn’t hard.” Starsky chuckled at his own pun. “Well, it’s not difficult, anyway, cause this is hard . . .” He nailed another pressure point, obliterating the cramp. “And this is . . .” He changed his tactics, licking a broad swipe with his tongue up the length of Hutch’s spine.

“Oh, G-god . . .” Hutch stuttered, panting.

“And this is hard.” This time, Starsky wrapped his hands around Hutch’s waist, unzipped his fly and caught hold of the thick shaft that jutted out from his groin. “Gotta soften it up, doncha think?”

“You’re crazy,” Hutch said faintly. “This isn’t the right time.” He should have been the one to be comforting, solicitous, but with Starsky’s fingers wrapped around him, he couldn’t think of anything else.

As if the barometer had risen a dizzying fifty points, the heaviness in the air had dissipated, bringing a fresh purity to the room. Hutch breathed in and out, giving in to the luxury of having Starsky on him, around him and, with any luck, inside him. His whole body buzzed, his scrotum tightening up with anticipation of what was to come, and he reached back to grab hold of Starsky—any part that he could touch quickly enough—as the orgasm gathered him up and tossed him out, emptying him of all the dark shadows and filling the void with incredible bliss.

“There, isn’t that better?” Starsky asked softly, kissing him in the sweet space just at the nape of the neck.

“Mmmm.” Hutch was beyond speech. He needed to lie down again, recover, but he should reciprocate, coddle and hold Starsky. It could be the last time for a long while.

Just that thought sent his heartbeat into overdrive and he gasped. Fuck—what the hell was the matter with him?

“Hey?” Starsky reached out, fingers pressing gently into Hutch’s side as if to reassure himself that he wasn’t being deserted. “What’s wrong?”

“All of this!” Hutch could have thrown things, smashed windows, kicked the wall, but that was Starsky’s usual. Which he wasn’t doing, so how could Hutch? “Aren’t you angry? Scared? Something? You’re calm, Starsk, and that’s not normal.”

Now it was Starsky’s turn to retreat. He ducked his head, hiding those incredible eyes, tracing an abstract rune in the nap of the velvet bedspread.

“All the other times, it was people comin’ after us. Gunshots, knives, whatever.” Starsky shrugged with a tired smile, and Hutch could see what months of battling this had written into his face. He always looked stretched taut, as if he couldn’t quite escape the pain. He’d deny it, even laugh and gloss right over it, but the evidence was there. All of this had changed them both and not for the better. “Can’t hide forever,” Starsky said and held out his hand.

Hutch took it, closed his own around Starsky’s slender fingers, providing a haven for even so short a time. “Can’t fight your own body, huh?” Hutch sighed.

“Aw, Hutch . . .” Starsky blinked, and Hutch caught a glimpse of tears before they were gone. “Yeah, I’m scared, so I came to you.”

“You found me, like always.” Hutch arranged the pillows to support his bad back and gathered Starsky into him, feeling the resistance in his partner’s frame. Starsky refused to give in, which was his strength and his curse. Hutch was the one who grieved and Starsky marched onward, pretending he wasn’t headed off a cliff.

Finally Starsky relaxed, his body melting into Hutch’s.

“Penny?” Hutch whispered into the curls that tickled his cheek.

Starsky didn’t say anything, just grasped the back of Hutch’s neck, pressing his palm into the place he’d kissed so reverently. “Your hair’s grown. Guess I wasn’t payin’ attention.” He toyed with the long ends pensively.

“I’ll get a haircut when you do.”

“Tomorrow?” Starsky barked a real laugh. “Don’t go overboard—just get a trim ‘stead of the whole head.”

“They’re not shaving your whole head, just the top.” It hurt just to think about that much.

“Might as well,” Starsky grimaced. “I’ll look like some bald guy with a comb over. Better just get rid of it all and be done with it.”

“I don’t want to watch, then.”

“You don’t have to.” Starsky turned all the way toward him so that they were facing. “You go over to Morrey’s, get the deluxe treatment. A haircut and a shave, some of that a aftershave that smells like a visit to a rum factory, and when you come back, I’ll be finished.”

“I was planning to wait.”

“Why?” Starsky delicately traced his thumbs from Hutch’s temples to his eyes, feeling the shape of his eye sockets, the curve of his brow and the long straight protrusion of his nose. Hutch had long since gotten used to the almost-ticklish sensation, and had grown to love the intimacy. “It’s not like . . .”

“Starsky,” Hutch began and couldn’t keep from smiling when Starsky ran all ten fingers over Hutch’s lips like a concert pianist warming up.

“Made you smile,” Starsky said smugly. He kept his thumbs on each side of Hutch’s mouth, marking his place, and planted a kiss directly on his target.

Hutch smiled again, closing his eyes to heighten the experience, and wondered if it felt that much more to Starsky. Wondered if darkness really did have shape, color and form, and layers upon layers.

Kissing led to petting and small, needy touches at nipples and the fold of the armpit. A nuzzle on the slide of the jaw and a blessing on the collarbone. Hutch kept his eyes open now, intent on capturing this moment in time. The slight scrape of unshaved cheek against his nipple, the feel of Starsky’s lashes on his lips. The way Starsky smelled, strong and masculine, when they curled into each other.

Right then, he would have welcomed the ocean rolling in and carrying them out to sea, taking them away from migraines, and tumors and the threat of permanent vision loss. Off to some remote island where all they had was each other and serenity.

That was not to be, and the only thing left was to face the inevitable and get it over with, as Starsky had said so many times since the tumor was discovered. Starsky’s headaches were not migraines, not even stress responses to a job that had become increasingly hard to take. He’d endured the intermittent pain with a joke and the “I can take it” attitude until one day when a two-bit thief brained him with a chunk of brick.

Hutch would forever both curse and thank God for that thief’s untimely maneuver. If not for that clunk on the head, would they have found out before it was too late to do anything to change the outcome?

Starsky had swum out of unconsciousness in the ambulance. Hutch had seen the fear in his partner’s eyes, seen the absolute terror when Starsky reached out blindly to grab his arm.

Because of the wail of the siren as the ambulance sped across town, Hutch couldn’t hear Starsky’s whispered, “I can’t see,” but he’d read his lips and known. This was what he should have seen all along. This is what had separated them. He’d been strangely comforted with the knowledge that they shared a common ailment, that migraines were not just some girly disease that his mother had suffered from at ‘that time of the month.’ Somehow, if Starsky had migraines, too, it made it all right. Made it tolerable.

That Starsky had a tumor was all together different.

“Optic nerve melanocytoma,” Dr. Iris had said in her elegant Masterpiece Theater accent that first night after x-rays confirmed the presence of a mass and not just a concussion caused by a blunt trauma to the skull. “The lesion is pressing on the optic nerve, right near the center of the brain.”

Sure that the bottom had fallen out of his world, Hutch had looked over at Starsky who was sitting in his hospital bed, starring out the window at the night sky. Nothing at all to see from the fourth floor overlooking a parking lot, but Starsky had never once looked in the doctor’s direction.

“When do you operate?” he’d asked.

“I’m not a neurosurgeon,” she explained.

“Yeah, with your name, you’d have to be a florist or an eye doctor,” Starsky said, giving her a bawdy wink. In an instant, he’d flipped on the mask that would stay glued to his face through all coming weeks of CAT scans and so many x-rays that Starsky declared himself a sperm-free zone.

“I’ve found a someone who is willing to operate,” Dr. Iris finally told them in late August. Any hope that there would be change in Starsky’s condition without radical surgery had come and gone long ago. “As I’ve said before, very few surgeons in Bay City know the procedure.”

Hutch had a migraine coming on that day. He’d sat in her office, willing away the strobbing rainbows that haloed every single object he looked at, turning Starsky into a saint from a Russian icon. Whatever the doctor said went in one ear and seemed to float around his head like so many party balloons. He didn’t catch one word in seven and was supremely glad that his partner was paying attention.

Starsky sat perched on the front edge of the chair, his whole body leaning toward the doctor as if proximity could make up for lack of sight.

“Dr. Drysdale is from Duluth, Minnesota. He’s a specialist in tumors of the optic nerve. Here’s his card.” She’d handed Hutch a business card with the surgeon’s name and address written out in gold script. With the coming storm short-circuiting his vision, it could have been in Sanskrit, the gold print weaving and arching like animated snakes.

“He’s from your home town.” Starsky plucked the card out of Hutch’s hand and ran his fingers over the embossed letters as if he could absorb the words that way. “Think it’s an omen? Maybe you went to school with him or something.”

“I’ve mailed him David’s medical records and he is very interested in this case.” Dr. Iris had looked directly at Hutch, her wrinkled face hopeful. “He could fly out immediately.”

This was exactly what Starsky wanted to hear. He had agreed without hesitation to experimental surgery. He was willing to do whatever needed to get this done so that he could move on. He scared Hutch silly. So far, Starsky was basically unchanged, in all ways but one. He wasn’t working as a cop, but then, due to the increasingly debilitating headaches, Hutch was no longer on the streets either.

What Hutch knew about the optic nerve, much less about the brain, could have fit on the head of a pin. Common sense told him that it was dangerous to go mucking about in there. What about personality, language, memory—all the things that made up a person’s individuality?

Would brain surgery change him—screw up something elemental in Starsky’s original wiring? He was the most unique, goofy, intelligent, moronic and amazing person Hutch knew. What if he lost that essence and was left with a fundamentally changed partner?

Not just partner—lover.

Suddenly Hutch had been the one with all the what-ifs and dire predictions. He’d kept them to himself, sealed up in his heart until he was sure he would burst from suppressing any hint of concern. All he could see was the bleak dark future. Starsky wouldn’t allow any pessimistic predictions—he declared the glass half full and dared anyone to voice an alternate opinion.

“How was the CAT scan this morning?” Hutch asked. If they just stayed here, on the island of burgundy and brown velvet, would time stop until they were ready for the next test of will? Was it possible to stop the clock, maybe send Father Time out on a tree limb like that play he’d read in high school where an old man and a child treed death?

“Like all the others—boring.” Starsky squirmed restlessly until he was stretched out along the length of Hutch’s body, his hipbone digging into Hutch’s thigh. “Like all three hundred and sixty two thousand of ’em. All so they can locate a damned thing that ain’t as big as a walnut. How many pictures do they have to take?”

“You want to be able walk and talk afterward! This is brain surgery we’re talking about!” Hutch shouted and Starsky flinched, his breath hissing out to sear the side of Hutch’s neck. “Sorry, sorry, I’m just wound up still.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Starsky dryly, kissing the patch of skin under his lips. “Dr. Iris says everything is a go and she has the perimeter marked on all coordinates. Sounds like a military operation.”

“That’s because it is—the walnut that invaded your brain. Iris and Drysdale are the medical generals coming in to defeat the enemy.” Hutch was gratified when Starsky chuffed a silent laugh. At least Hutch hoped it was a laugh. He shifted so that the sharp curve of Starsky’s pelvis didn’t cut off the circulation in his right leg. With his hand on Starsky’s back, Hutch could feel tiny shudders each time he exhaled. Starsky was holding himself together by sheer determination and stubbornness. He’d been the strong one for so long, through every examination and test, but even granite could be broken with enough force.

“Y’know it’s the first time I’ve ever gone under the knife when it wasn’t an emergency,” Starsky said. To anyone else he would have sounded completely normal, almost too calm and contained. But Hutch recognized the signs—the way his voice cracked ever so slightly at knife and the way he stared out past Hutch to the window, his profile a jagged mountain range standing out in sharp relief, backlit by the brightness of the lamp.

“I had my tonsils out,” Hutch said, wishing he could sneeze or pinch his nostrils and blow to relieve the pressure in his head. “And a hernia repaired, when I was six.”

“Yeah.” Starsky found the minute scar instantly, pressing his fingers onto the thin white line hidden in the nest of Hutch’s pubic hair.

He’d always been surprised that Starsky could feel the tiny imperfection since not one of the many women he’d bedded had ever noticed. Invariably, during sex, Starsky would rub the slight ridge with the ball of his thumb. For luck, he’d once quipped.

Hutch breathed out and breathed in, the sensation of Starsky stroking his thirty-year old scar like a sacred promise that he would return again soon.

“Dr. Drysdale will be gloved up and sterile—which sounds kinda kinky, if you ask me,” Starsky continued in that eerily detached voice. “And surgery is set for nine thirty tomorrow. All I gotta do is miss dinner and breakfast, get my head shaved, and show up.” This time, the suppressed fear shook his whole body and he turned his face into Hutch’s neck again. “I’m gonna look like a twit with my head shaved.”

“Not unless you tie your hanky on all four corners and wear it on your head like the one of the Pythons,” Hutch said. “Then you’d be a first class twit.”

“First class idiot for getting knocked on the head in the first place,” Starsky gulped, his breath harsh and sharp.

There were wet spots on his cheek and ear but Hutch didn’t wipe them away, just grieved along with his partner. He hugged Starsky close, letting the pain wick out, willing to take whatever Starsky needed to unload. His head already throbbed with every intake of breath, a little more wouldn’t hurt any worse.

The lamp was too bright, too demanding, searing his eyeballs. Hutch stretched his arm over Starsky’s right shoulder and snagged the lamp cord, locating the little roller switch near the brass base by feel. Instant darkness, blacker than black before his pupils had time to adjust.

He closed his eyes, squeezing his eyelids hard so the purple and red afterimages burned into brain. What did Starsky see when he closed his eyes? Did he still retain Hutch’s face in his mind’s eye, the way Hutch did Starsky’s? Did nothingness have colors? How many shades of black were there until it was simply an infinite, featureless void?

He was relieved when Starsky seemed to settle more comfortably, left leg thrown over his right, and more than a little surprised to feel the weight and heft of Starsky’s cock against his thigh. A natural way to alleviate stress, even in the midst of despair. The sweet friction of skin against skin had produced an erection that begged to be held, caressed and relieved. When Hutch closed his fist over the already leaking end, Starsky cried out, a broken sound, wordless and infinitely sad.

The darkness closed in, molding around them until they were the only two left on the Earth. It was cool there, and quiet, the only sounds their own bodies as they moved against the bedspread, shifting and moaning together. Hutch timed his actions to Starsky’s breathing, slow at first, then more rapidly. He ran his other hand down the curve of Starsky’s ass, past the cleft in his butt cheeks to the taut perineum and up the ridge on the back of the tight sac.

Starsky gasped, and pushed back into Hutch’s hand, panting as he came.

“You okay?” Hutch whispered, resting his hand very lightly on Starsky’s belly. He seemed spent, almost boneless.

“Why’d you turn out the light?” Starsky asked. His voice was light, but the truth of his emotion came through in the way he wrapped his fingers around Hutch’s arm, his grip so tight it should have been painful.

“It’s better in the dark.”

“No, it’s not.”

Hutch had nothing to say to that. The dark could be lonely and scary unless there was someone there to hold hands with. But it was peaceful, and still. He loosened Starsky’s fingers and laced them together with his own so they were palm to palm.

“I can see the stars,” he said finally, even though he wasn’t even looking out the window.

“Tell me what you see.”

“Remember that time we went up to Yosemite?”

“When I wanted the lodge and you insisted on those drafty tent cabins where the bear wandered past our door?” There was a hint of a smile in his voice, and Hutch could just make out the way his face relaxed with the change in subject. “Right before I went back on active duty.”

“I knew you secretly loved those tent cabins.”

“Only because you kept me warm all night.”

“Remember the stars?” Hutch scrunched over just enough to see out the window, past the gap in the sheers and over the top of the neighbor’s roof. Orion rode low in the sky, with a sprinkling of fainter stars fanned out across the heavens. Never could see much inside the city limits. “Remember we saw the constellation Aquarius? More stars than I had seen since I was a kid in Duluth.”

“What, now they got more stars in Duluth than in California?” Starsky’s clutch had loosened on Hutch’s arm. He lay long and relaxed, his chest, hip and knee so close to Hutch’s; they could have been Siamese twins.

“No, dummy, the same stars, just from a different angle.” He nudged Starsky with his elbow, earning a half-grunt, half-chuckle for his efforts.

“So, Carl Sagan, if you know so much, where’s the North Star?”

The house faced east, into the rising sun in the morning, so the North Star wasn’t visible through the back bedroom window. Hutch raised his hand to the brass frame of the bed, just above their pillows, aware that Starsky never let go, holding on as he was centered on the guiding star. “Polaris, located in Ursa Minor. Sailors used it to navigate their ships. That way,” Hutch said. “Can’t see it from here.”

“I can,” Starsky said. “I can always see you.”

* * * * *

The operation was a success, at least that was what Drysdale said. “The tumor was excised. It was completely encapsulated, with clean margins, which was just as we’d hoped. There very few collateral blood veins that needed to be cauterized, so minimal blood loss, all things considered.” He’d beamed.

Hutch found it impossible to look away from the splashes of blood visible on his scrub top.

Drysdale shook his hand with a firm, confident grip, pleased with his own advancement in medical science. “The patient should make a full recovery, with no foreseeable brain damage.”

The patient—not a real person named Starsky.

Hutch didn’t really believe a word he said—the words he actually understood, anyway. He wanted tangible proof. What exactly did he mean by foreseeable brain damage? Would Starsky be able to see? That was the real question.

“Permanent vision loss.” That phrase had been bandied about far too often for Hutch’s comfort. He couldn’t shake the memory of lying there in the dark, Starsky’s body tucked against his but barely visible, mostly a collection of blacks and grays shaped like a man, and the mouth, eyes and nose just smudged blurs. Was that Starsky’s future? Not blind, but not truly seeing, either?

Starsky slumbered in a drug-induced coma. Iris told him it was to reduce brain swelling and keep intracranial bleeding to a minimum. Hutch had a hard time sitting next to the bed, staring into the barely recognizable face. Starsky’s face was swollen to the size of a pumpkin from the drugs, a bruised mask across both eyes like a raccoon after a bar fight.

Hutch tried to escape into the dull blankness of paperwork at his desk in the detective’s squadroom, but he had an even harder time sitting there, miles across town from Starsky. Unable to concentrate, he’d roam the halls—sometimes at the hospital, sometimes at Metro, simply waiting, staring at the dark, blank walls.

Six days passed, purgatory on Earth, somehow far, far worse than Starsky’s coma of 1979. That time, he’d nearly bled out on the floor of the garage—there was a very valid reason why he didn’t move or speak. This time, he’d walked into the hospital under his own steam, smiled at Hutch, run his fingers down Hutch’s cheek and grinned. “See you, Hutch, real soon.”

Hutch had believed him. Starsky didn’t lie—at least not about things like that. He’d looked into those dark blue eyes and seen only his own mirror image, blond hair and sunglasses reflected impossibly smaller.

Agony so fierce it ate into his brain had sent him home on the sixth day, to lie blind and mute in the room where Starsky should have been. The darkness was absolute, crowding out any joy, any reason, any optimism.

The glass was empty and it always had been. He’d only agreed with Starsky because there was no other way to survive.

He lay on velvet of the bedspread with the lamp turned off, shaping the darkness to his skin. Strong winds shoved against the house making the window panes jump in their frames. The irregular bang of glass on wood sent harsh sounds that throbbed like living beings through his chest. Colors bled down the wall, the greens and pinks of Picasso’s flowers so loud Hutch had to cover his ears to breathe.

He could only see what wasn’t there—Starsky’s face, white with shock when he’d opened his eyes to nothingness. Starsky, sitting with the sun on his face in their postage stamp garden, eating ice cream with a spoon and laughing when he missed Hutch’s mouth by a mile and shoved the spoon into his ear.

Hutch laughed, and it hurt so much he cried, letting his tears wet the pillow case. Somewhere down in the fibers, did Starsky’s tears still linger, waiting for Hutch’s?

His tears felt like smooth, rounded glass beads, formed from breath and fire at the end of a glassblower’s pipe. Nothing was normal, he could hear and see like other humans but his senses had distorted into looming tastes that weighed down his tongue, piercing noises that danced in contrasting colors and visions that smelled like long dead corpses.

Hutch curled against the headboard, barely able to bear the whisper of velvet on his skin, his head shrinking and growing like Alice after she ate the magic mushroom. He felt as if he’d been in a car that crashed off a bridge into the sea below, water rising, filling up his lungs, his ears and eyes. He floated, rudderless and unaware, a tiny craft adrift in the ocean, unattended and alone.

* * * * *

Feeling like a one of Mengele’s victims with his skin flayed off, Hutch took a tentative breath in and then out.

So far, so good.

He was alive. His head was muzzy, as if he’d drunk six shots of straight whiskey in a row–a long ago memory from the U of Minnesota—and chased it with two beers. Every movement screamed pain as he sat up and stretched, the muscles protesting such a violent change in position.

He took a deeper breath and then allowed himself to believe that life was moving forward—was worth living.

Migraines were a bitch.

The ER doc who’d given him the heavy duty painkillers and anti-nausea meds had said, “Go home and sleep it off. That’s the best way to fight the pain. You’ve had too much stress and too many on-the-job head injuries. Goes with the territory.”

The shower made his skin tingle, smoothing out the rough places and pounding out the rocks in his shoulders where Starsky’s fingers had once massaged. With water in his eyes, he reached out blindly for the towel on the rack, turning off the faucet with his other hand.

The insistent ring of the phone galvanized him and Hutch ran naked through the house, dripping water all down the hall, to snatch up the receiver.

“Ken?” Dr. Iris on the other end. News about Starsky.

Hutch took a deep breath, straining to hear past the sudden loud thunder of a train crossing a trestle bridge roaring in his ears. “How’s he doing?”

“David asked for you, Ken.” She sounded pleased, and the train chugged into the distance, leaving behind a profound silence so deep and so wide Hutch was almost lost in the brilliance. “Ken? Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll . . .” He registered his nudity with a giddy laugh. Clothes. Find the car keys, drive. In that order. Maybe food. His belly grumbled. He hadn’t eaten in probably a whole day. Definitely food, from a drive-thru, as long as there was no wait. “I’m coming. Half an hour, tops. Tell him to wait for me.”

“I don’t think he’s going anywhere.” Dr. Iris laughed.

It wasn’t until Hutch stepped outside, the cold wind tossing his wet hair into his eyes, that he realized the time. Had to be nearly midnight, the night sky shimmering with light from the full moon. The strong winds had scoured the city, sending the dirty smog out to sea, leaving behind a rare sight—stars. His keys dangling from his fingers, Hutch peered upwards, entranced, picking out the familiar sights. This wasn’t the amazing display that decorated the skies of Yosemite, but for Bay City, it was a reminder that civilization would never win out over Mother Nature. She still had the power to dazzle, even battling neon, fluorescence and one hundred watt porch lights.

Polaris gleamed in the inky blackness, low on the horizon. Hutch got into the car, turned left, and let it guide him home.

* * * * *

Starsky had fallen asleep by the time Hutch got there, so he sat, taking small bites from the ham and cheese he’d bought from the machine in the waiting area. Processed cheese, a glossy square of obscenely pink ham and squishy white bread. He’d never even have looked sideways at such a travesty to the word sandwich on any other day, but it was simply something to put in his stomach while he waited. The coffee in a paper cup from the other vending machine was even worse. He took two sips and left the rest on the bedside table, content to sit quietly in the dim room until Starsky wakened.

He listened, the rhythm of the hospital late night an odd sort of lullaby. Nurses chatting as they worked. A patient crying with fear before the nurse came in to give comfort and a sleeping pill. The steady beep of the heart monitor over Starsky’s bed.

His headache was still there, diminished to the point of tolerable, sort of like the small aftershock that follows a major earthquake. Nothing to get too excited about but a reminder that life is never predictable. Can’t see what isn’t there yet.

Hutch closed his eyes, surrendering. He’d been so tense for so long, so wrapped up in all the medicalese that it was hard to believe that it was almost over. Dr. Iris had said that Starsky asked for him. Knew his name, where he was, all the good signs that his brain was working. As for sight—that was still the big question.

“Give it time,” she said. “Can’t rush the healing process.”

So he waited, letting the darkness curl around him like a blanket, and held Starsky’s cold hand in the night. With nothing else to do, he watched the moon’s journey down to earth, feeling the tug of the distant and not yet visible sun from below the curve of the Earth. Sun and moon vied for their place in the sky, sharing the heavens like two prize fighters who circled one another but rarely exchanged blows. A contest as old as time, completely unstoppable, because every single day the sun always emerged victorious.

Maybe he’d been watching the wrong star all these years?

The chair was murder on his back; it felt like his whole musculature had shrunk down into a knot the size and shape of a fist. He hunched his shoulders and then relaxed them, working out the kinks around his shoulder blades, careful never to let go of Starsky’s hand.

Deep breath in and another out—blow out all the stress, lower the blood pressure.

With his eyes closed, he rotated his neck as far as he could on each side, listening to the crackle and pop of his vertebrae settling. That made the pain in his head flare briefly, tiny flashes like stars bursting in his retina. Hutch blinked and inhaled again, feeling the smooth path of his breath flowing down to his belly. Relax.

Breathe.

Believe.

Something, or more specifically, someone, tugged on his hand and he opened his eyes.

Starsky was awake, the whites of his eyes startlingly bright in the dimness.

“Welcome back.” Hutch wanted to jump up and down and sing Hallelujah, but that would have waked up half the surgical floor before morning rounds. Definitely a no-no.

“Never wen’anywhere.” Starsky blinked owlishly, turning his head as if it were heavier than lead and balanced on top of an unstable perch. The swelling had decreased days ago, but the contrast between the white turban bandage and the eggplant and melon colored bruising around his eyes was lurid even in the dim room.

“I guess I did, then.” Hutch said, a relief so profound flooding his chest that he had a hard time drawing in a decent breath. Starsky was alert and aware, with all brain functions apparently working properly. Hutch didn’t even plan to ask whether Starsky saw him or not. What difference did it make, anyway? “To a very lonely, scary place.”

“Hey,” Starsky said sleepily, running his thumb over Hutch’s knuckles. “Turn on the light. Wha’ time izzit?”

“I don’t even know.” Hutch switched on the small light built into the control panel of the bed, pulling out his pocket watch at the same time. He was almost afraid to look up and witness Starsky’s non-reaction to the sudden brightness. “Ten to five,” he said, adding “A.M.,” in case Starsky didn’t know even that much.

“Oh, damn . . .hurts.” Starsky pressed the heel of his hand against his eyelids, grimacing.

That brought his eyes up quick, his heart pounding so forcefully that it was distracting. “Your head?” He went to turn off the light again, but was caught up by the gleam of dark blue in all those purple and yellow bruises

“Hey, lookit you.” Starsky grinned woozily at him, rubbing his forehead. He sounded high, with a delighted raspiness that went straight to Hutch’s libido. He may have resembled a Halloween fright mask, but he was looking straight at Hutch with a rapt expression. “Vertical hold’s shit and the focus is all messed up.” He hiccupped a laugh. “You’re all fuzzy ’round the edges, all that blond hair, kinda like a dandelion gone t’seed.”

“You’re seeing things.” Hutch couldn’t stop smiling.

“No more than usual,” Starsky said. “I could always see you.”

The End