Shell-Shocked

222

Summary: While trapped under his car in Survival, Hutch has a lot of time to think about things.

 

Author’s Note: Originally published in the SHareCon 2022 zine. Thanks to Flamingo for being the greatest editor ever. My story is so much better because of your input.

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If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

 

Day One

“This is Zebra Three to Central. It’s an emergency, please … please come in. Ohh ….”

His head hurts and his leg hurts and everything fucking hurts and he doesn’t know how long he’s been here or how it got dark without him noticing. For some reason that he can’t comprehend, he woke up lying on his back, staring up at a clear black sky filled with distant stars, the twinkling lights of the city far off in the distance, and the only sound around him a cacophony of crickets.

There’s no smog up here, high above the city, but he can’t make out anything around him in the darkness except for some dry, scrubby brush.

He’s holding the police radio receiver in his left hand, but he can’t remember picking it up or how long he’s been talking into it. But the radio isn’t working, and no one is responding to his calls.

He can feel hard, unforgiving ground beneath him and million-year-old pebbles digging uncomfortably into the back of his neck. And his head … oh God, it throbs. It feels like a tender heart that’s been sliced into a million tiny slivers, but somehow they’re all still beating, each individual nerve-ending thrumming ceaselessly, and he can’t move his left leg at all. Why can’t he move it? He realizes there’s a heavy weight pressing down on it, crushing it. Metal.

The car door is next to his head and it’s open, but he’s not sitting in the car. No, he’s lying on his back and his left leg is under the car and he’s on some sort of incline, and of all the rotten luck, his legs are up the incline and his head is down. He supposes it’s too much to ask to have ended up on flat ground.

He wonders how much blood has been rushing to his head in this position. Maybe that’s why it hurts so fucking much.

Or maybe it’s the concussion he suffered when the undercover bust of Humphries went bad. That was today, wasn’t it?

Perhaps he hit his head when he was thrown from the car. Because he must have been thrown from the car, right? Otherwise, what would he be doing here lying on his back like this?

His forehead stings, and with a dirt-covered hand, he reaches up and rubs it. His fingers discover something wet and warm and sticky there, but he doesn’t understand what it could be. He brings his hand to his nose and sniffs, recognizing a vaguely familiar smell. Blood. It’s probably just a superficial head wound, he reasons. Even minor head wounds bleed like a sonofabitch, right?

As his eyes begin to focus, he can see the gaping maw of the open car door, but something’s wrong. The steering wheel is upside-down. The police radio, the seats, the roof…all wrong. Is he upside-down, too? The stars are above him and the ground surrounds him. That seems right, and yet, nothing is right.

He remembers now. One minute he was driving up the curving mountain road on his way to meet Lou Scobie, that duplicitous snitch of his, and the next, there was a truck bearing down on him, ruthlessly pushing him off the side. And now he’s here.

And he hadn’t told Starsky where he was going or to whom he had spoken. He hadn’t told anyone.

“Can anybody hear meeee!!! Please, I need help!!!” he yells into the night, his voice cracking at the end of the last word, but the only response he gets is the echo of his words reverberating back to him from between the canyon walls.

If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, he wonders, does it make a sound?

If Starsky doesn’t find him soon, he’s pretty sure he’s going to die here.

But his partner doesn’t even know he’s missing yet, won’t know until tomorrow. Can’t know. He’s doomed to spend the night here, alone and cold and scared.

In the distance, he hears the sound of a car’s engine roaring past on the road above. “Hello up there!!! Can anybody hear me, I’m trapped!”

But the car continues on its way, paying no mind to the pleas of a dying man.

“Ohh,” he moans. “America on wheels…what a joke!” He’s not sure whether to laugh or cry, so he does both.

******

At some point during the night, he wakes up to the feeling of pressure in his lower belly, and he realizes that his bladder is full. Straining to lift his head as he lies supine on his back, he grabs onto the waistband of his pants and struggles to undo the button and zipper. What was once such a simple act now takes all the strength and concentration he has, but he manages to get them undone, the feeling of needing to pee growing more urgent by the second.

He reaches into the slit in his underwear and eases his limp cock out of it. But he needs to position himself so he can direct the pee toward the ground and away from himself.

He tries to turn his body to the side, but the leg pinned tightly under the car won’t allow it. If he could just sit up, perhaps he could piss on the ground between his spread legs, but it’s an effort just to lift himself up a few inches. Panting, he retreats into the same prostrate position as before.

But his bladder has had as much as it can take and begins to evacuate its contents without his consent. As the warm liquid saturates his underwear and the crotch of his pants, he realizes, helpless, that he’s pissing himself.

And as the urine flows out of his cock, another liquid, clear and odorless, streams down from his eyes, wetting his cheeks, and his entire body shakes as he sobs.

 

Day Two

Dobey sits in his office reading the morning newspaper as he gets a shoe-shine. “No, I can’t relieve an officer’s duty every time this happens,” he tells Starsky.

“I’m not talkin’ about every time, I’m talkin’ about right now. I’m tellin’ ya Cap’n, this ain’t Hutch’s style.”

“You know what, Starsky, you’re acting like a mother hen, just because he stood this girl up,” Dobey huffs. “Maybe he found something more important to do with his time.”

Smitty the shoe-shine man ignores them both as he polishes the shoes with a cloth. When he’s done, Dobey’s shoes are so shiny a person could see their reflection in them.

But Starsky isn’t giving up so easily. “More important than comin’ to work? More important than makin’ a call?” He’s beginning to worry.

Dobey yells at the deaf-mute man to stop. “That’s good, Smitty!” He pats him on the shoulder to get his attention.

As Starsky opens the door, Smitty raises his hand in a quasi-military salute, and Starsky responds in kind. “See ya, Smitty.” He turns to Dobey. “Look, Cap’n, I may not know a lot about a lotta things, but one thing I know about Hutch – he’s a creature of habit, he does things a certain way. He’s not about to cook a meal for a beautiful lady and then go off and forget ‘em both.”

Deep down, he’s got an uneasy feeling that something’s not right. Like a small child needing desperately to pee, Starsky can barely contain himself.

“Somethin’s wrong! I gotta feelin’.” He glances up at the wall clock. That feeling of trepidation has been increasing by the minute as Hutch continues to be missing and unaccounted for.

“Alright, take as much time as you—”

Starsky runs out the door like a soldier dispatched on a time-sensitive mission before Dobey can even finish his sentence.

******

Morning; the warming sun beginning its daily march above the earth. Hutch looks around and sees a land so inhospitable that only the most pathetic foliage barely manages to eke out an existence here. The dirt he lies on is a sickly shade of pale brown that appears to be utterly devoid of nutrients.

His gun rests on the parched ground near him, so close, but yet so far. Using his rear-view mirror as a tool, he struggles to pull the Magnum toward him, but his efforts prove futile and he only manages to push the gun farther out of reach.

Suddenly, he hears someone singing in the distance, and there’s a crunch each time they step on the brittle foliage in the surrounding hills. It’s a song he recognizes, but his head is throbbing and he can’t remember its name.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored

“You up there!!!! I’m trapped in my car!!!”

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword

 

“I need help!!!”

 

His truth is marching on

“You up there! I need help…I’m down in the canyon!!!”

Glory, glory, hallelujah

Glory, glory, hallelujah

The crunching of the dead foliage is louder now and he sees boots on the ground next to him.

“Am I glad to see you; I was beginning to think I wasn’t gonna make it.”

But the man does not answer.

“Maybe for openers, you can take some of the pressure off this leg,” Hutch groans, trying not to think about what that pressure has been doing to the muscles and nerves in his leg these past several hours.

His words continue to be met with silence. Straining to lift his head, he sees the man’s hand as he leans over and polishes his boots with an old cloth. Both the hand and the boots look old and worn, as if they’ve seen many battles in their lifetime.

He remembers now – it’s a Civil War song. Has a soldier come to save him, then? But how could it be so? There’s a car crushing his leg, keeping him prisoner here. But there were no cars during the Civil War.

He looks up and sees a grizzled old man wearing a tattered Army uniform. Either the soldier is an illusion or the car is, for they both can’t exist in the same temporal plane, can they?

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his Judgment-seat

 

Unless, perhaps, time is a circle, and everything exists together here in Purgatory, or Hell, or whatever this godforsaken place is. It’s the phantasm of the Damned, he thinks.

 

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on

Hutch doesn’t even believe in God. At least, he never has before. Perhaps he should reconsider. How does the saying go? There are no atheists in foxholes. But does it really matter? For whether he believes in God or not, the only thing that matters is whether or not God believes in him.

What was it that ‘Lijah had said to him and Starsky once, a long time ago? The end of the world has already happened, and we’re all in Hell. Perhaps ‘Lijah was right, after all.

The ancient soldier takes his time to speak. You with the hundred and fifth?

“What?” Hutch asks, his tone an equal mixture of shock and confusion. “I’m a police officer.”

The soldier eyes him suspiciously and leans in close. M.P., huh? Where’s your uniform, M.P.?

“I don’t wear a uniform…I’m a detective with the police department.”

But I can’t remember my name

The soldier goes back to polishing his boots.

“Who am I talking to?” Hutch asks.

Colonel Sonny McPhearson, 53^rd Infantry, the old soldier answers proudly.

“Where are we, Colonel?”

What’s the matter, boy? Got knocked on the head? This here’s occupied France.

World War 1, Hutch guesses, judging from the old man’s appearance. But how did Hutch come to be here in France, trapped under his car? Perhaps in Hell, time ceases to have meaning. It seems that even meaning ceases to have meaning here.

But Sonny doesn’t believe he’s a police officer. Sonny thinks Hutch is a Jerry. A German soldier in civilian clothing. A spy. Maybe it’s true. After all, Hutch can do a mean German accent. Or he could anyway, in his past life.

Like that time when their old friend Colby from their Police Academy days came back from Vietnam years after he’d been presumed dead, and Hutch greeted him with a mock German accent.

That was a different war, but to quibble over the name was pointless, because in the end, all wars were the same.

He’d put his hand on Starsky’s knee in front of Colby because he wanted Colby to know that Starsky was his partner, his best friend, his territory. His.

Colby hit him over the head and gave him a concussion. His head hurt then, just like it does now, but it felt better after Starsky found him. Starsky had gently run his hands over Hutch’s hair and helped him on his feet.

Starsky

Your partner’s name is David Starsky

His head pounds, why does it pound so goddamn much? It makes it hard to think. And why hasn’t Starsky found him yet? Surely, he’s been looking. Is it because he doesn’t know to search for him in France?

Your name is

He’s no longer sure who or what he is anymore. He just wishes his head would stop hurting so much.

Your name is Ken Hutchinson, he remembers. You had a car accident on your way to meet a snitch, a jockey-sized, sneaky little two-faced back-stabbing bowtie-wearing bastard in a pressed suit named Lou Scobie who apparently set you up. And you never told Starsky where you were going. And if you ever get out of here, you’re going to find that snitch and you’re gonna…

“Please…” he begs Sonny. “If you don’t help me, I’m gonna die here.”

But the soldier is old and sad. I don’t hafta listen to you. I don’t have to do nothin’.

******

“Open! Open!” Starsky sprints toward the closing elevator doors, prying them open at the last moment and squeezing himself inside to confront bad guy Humphries and his crooked lawyer, Balford. The elevator is packed to the gills, but Starsky doesn’t give a flying fig.

As the three men press together in the confined space, Starsky points an accusing finger at Balford. “I just got one question. Where were you the last 24 hours?”

Starsky looks down at his watch. Hutch has been missing since last night, and Starsky increasingly suspects that Humphries has something to do with it.

“I? Working for my client,” Balford replies.

But Starsky won’t let it go. “Does that include making sure the prosecution’s key witness doesn’t show up?”

Humphries lets out a smug grin. “I’ll tell you this, if somebody did hit on him, I’d be the first to congratulate him.”

Starsky slugs Humphries hard in the stomach as the simmering rage he’s been trying to suppress since he forced his way into the elevator bursts forth. He pins him against the elevator wall as Humphries winces in pain, and as Starsky inadvertently knocks off the cheap, unconvincing toupee, he holds the suspected perp in a near-death grip.

“If somethin’ happened to Hutch, and you’re the man, I’m gonna come after you myself, and there ain’t no lawyer in the world that’s gonna be able to help you then!”

As the elevator door opens and the men file out, Starsky’s heart thuds in his chest as he tries to calm himself down. But as he watches Humphries saunter down the hallway and out of his reach, he glares at the back of the bastard’s bald head.

******

“Dumb, that’s what it was,” Dobey admonishes Starsky. “What’d you hope to accomplish?”

“I told you, Cap’n, it was a reaction.”

“Starsky, there’s gotta be a hundred other suspects out there. Why pick on Humphries?”

“Because he’s got the most to gain, how’s that?”

Dobey’s phone rings, and he engages in a brief conversation as Starsky impatiently paces the room and fiddles with his watch.

He punches the wall in frustration. “Maybe he’s the only one I can think of.”

Dobey says Huggy wants Starsky to meet him at The Pits. He says it could be about Hutch.

In the blink of an eye, Starsky is out the door.

******

Darkness. Cold. Black sky above. Stars twinkling in the firmament, millions of light-years away. Sonny sitting uphill from him, contemplating…reminiscing…forgetting.

Must have been 15,000 of us, marchin’ down Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. Fifteen-thousand. We were livin’ in tents, shacks made out of old newspapers…

“Sonny,” Hutch pleads, wincing as he clutches his clenched stomach, “I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.”

Colonel!

“You have to help me.”

You’re a Jerry. I don’t have to help you. You know how many of my people, my friends that you killed?

The pain in his stomach is getting worse. Internal injuries, he suspects, to add to the ignominy of the external ones. Hutch can barely hold on as he struggles against the pain, and he moans weakly, whispering Starsky’s name.

I can send an armored patrol to pick you up.

Sonny takes a sip from his coffee cup, spits it out, and casually tosses the cup on the ground where its precious contents spill out, seeping into the parched earth where they disappear into the sands of time. He stands up and begins to walk away.

“Don’t go,” Hutch begs, his voice breaking. “Colonel…Colonel, don’t go.” Whimpering now.

Sonny sits down and fixes himself some dinner on his camp stove, his back to Hutch.

“You were telling me about meeting MacArthur, about the Bonus March.”

Yeah, Sonny replies, wistful at the memory. There was 15,000 of us. You know, we were livin’ in tents, shacks made out of old newspapers…

I’m a doomed man, Hutch thinks. I am Sisyphus, I am Tantalus, I am…

******

Starsky taps Huggy on the shoulder.

“Hey, you made it in a hurry.”

“Whaddya got?”

“You know the name Roy Slater?” Huggy asks.

Starsky thinks for a second. “Yeah…yeah…uh…hitman from uh…”

“Tucson,” Huggy finishes for him. “One very bad dude. Loves to hurt chicks and handle jobs other people won’t touch.”

“And?” Starsky’s getting nervous now.

“Well, the word is he’s gonna blast a cop. Might have happened already, I don’t know.”

Stunned at the news, Starsky tries to process it as he grapples with the very real possibility that Hutch might already be dead. It feels like his heart is being shredded into a million tiny pieces and it’s hard to think. If only he’d told Hutch—

Huggy squeezes his arm and pulls him back in. “Starsky—“

“Huh? Yeah, okay…uh, where do I find this guy?” His voice is unusually quiet.

“There’s this chick named Carla Iverson, but I’m not sure how you can find her.”

Starsky looks at Huggy, quiet determination on his face. “If she’s in the city, I’ll find her.” His voice barely rises above a whisper as he struggles to keep it together.

If only he’d told Hutch how he felt, his partner wouldn’t have been making dinner for a girl last night when he disappeared. Instead, maybe he’d have been with Starsky, and that could have made all the difference.

******

Hutch is confident Starsky will rescue him soon, because Sonny will go to Metro. In fact, he’s probably on his way there right now. He’ll march up to their squad room and he’ll tell Starsky that he’s found a spy. Starsky was in the Army, so he’ll know what to do. He’ll bring the cavalry with him and they’ll get Hutch out of here.

Despite the overwhelming pain, he can’t help but laugh, because Starsky has never ridden a horse before. He wants desperately to see the image of his savior riding toward him on a magnificent white steed, the kind of horse that must have roamed this very canyon hundreds of years ago.

This same canyon where, hundreds of millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed the land and pterodactyls flew restlessly overhead in search of prey. An injured man here wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Now their buried bones were its secret, concealed beneath layers of dirt hundreds of feet deep.

What if he died here and Starsky never found him, never knew what happened to him? How many millions of years would pass until someone unearthed his remains?

I’m sorry, Starsk

No, he mustn’t think about that. Because of course Starsky will find him, he has no doubt about it. His beautiful partner, riding on a horse to save him. His prince.

And all the reinforcements Starsky will bring will lift the car off his leg, easy peasy, and then they’ll put him on a stretcher and carry him up the hill, back to his old life, back to who he was before he ended up down here in this hellhole.

Please, God, let it be so.

******

Starsky walks down the hallway of the old, decrepit hotel and stops at Room 31. Carla’s room. He starts to knock, reconsiders, and opens the door without waiting for an invitation.

Carla is sitting in a chair by the window as if she’s been waiting for him her entire life.

“What do you want, cop?” she asks with disdain.

“Roy Slater.”

“Look, Roy Slater’s part of my past and I’d just as soon forget about him, okay?”

Starsky considers this for a moment. “Okay,” he says, a finger pointed in her face. “For you.” Then he pulls an empty chair in front of her, squats down over it and leans menacingly close above her, his face just inches from hers. “Not for me.”

He sits on the edge of the chair. “Someone very, very, very close to me might be dead because of your friend, and I got no way of knowin’, unless I can find him and I can ask him.”

“Hotel Garvey,” she replies.

******

Starsky sits in his car outside Slater’s hotel and waits for the hitman to appear. He’ll stay here all night if he has to.

If only he’d told Hutch—no, he needs to stop thinking about that! He’ll get the information from Slater on Hutch’s whereabouts if he has to beat it out of him, and then he’ll find Hutch and he’ll tell him. It’s not too late.

Because Hutch is still alive, right? He has to be. Starsky won’t accept anything less.

 

Day Three

Roy Slater is tall, imposing and dressed all in black. He is Death personified.

Starsky knows that Slater is the type of man who would slit his own mother’s throat if someone paid him to do the job, and seeing the man in person fills him with dread at the thought that Slater might have already killed his partner.

He braces himself outside Slater’s hotel room as the hitman punches through the door with one bullet after another. It’s beginning to sound like a war zone up here, Starsky thinks, but then he realizes that Slater will try to escape out the window, so he swiftly kicks in the door.

But he’s too late.

Slater has lost his footing, and as Starsky leans out the window, his stomach roils as he spies his enemy’s prone body lying flat and lifeless on the ground far below.

The only link he has to Hutch has been severed.

******

Guilt tears at him. If only he’d have told Hutch he was in love with him when he had the chance. He could kick himself for keeping quiet for so long. After all, he’s sure that Hutch’s feelings are the same. He knows they are, because of the way Hutch would rest his hand on Starsky’s knee and squeeze it just ever so slightly, and whenever he’d press a comforting hand against Starsky’s stomach, he’d let it linger there…

He glances at the clock on the dashboard. Damn it, how has it gotten so late already? Time flies when you’re having fun, his mind taunts him. If you had told him, he would never have gone missing.

What if it’s too late? He doesn’t even know if Hutch is still alive—

Stop it! He’s still alive; he has to be. And you can tell him when you find him. You can tell him anything you want. And you WILL find him! And when you do, you’ll tell him and you’ll kiss him and…

******

It’s scorching hot lying here under the midday sun and Hutch is sweating bullets, losing precious bodily fluid with each drop. And every time he turns the rear-view mirror over in his hand, the sunlight reflected off it bombards his eyes like a laser and temporarily blinds him.

He’s trying to reach his gun which is just off to his right, lying prostrate in the dirt like he is.

He strains every muscle in his back and shoulder to extend his arm as far as he can, until finally the mirror touches the cold, hard steel of the Magnum, and he slowly brings it toward him, dragging it through the parched dirt, inch by excruciating inch.

But when he wakes sometime later, the Magnum is back where it was before, frustratingly out of reach.

******

His head bent over their shared desk, Starsky restlessly sifts through a pile of files. He’s supposed to be concentrating on finding leads, but instead, he finds himself distracted as he looks over at Hutch’s chair that sits opposite him, empty and forlorn.

The icepack Hutch had held to his head after the bust lies neglected on the desk. Beside it sits Hutch’s piggy bank with its back to Starsky, mute and reproachful.

******

The normally graceful Starsky runs frantically through the grounds of the Veterans Administration, head flicking left and right, feet stumbling and arms waving as he searches for Sonny.

The shell-shocked old vet is the only one who can tell him where Hutch is, the only link to his partner. He needs to find him.

He thinks he sees him sitting at a picnic table, but no, it’s someone else, someone he doesn’t recognize, some other condemned man, and he quickly continues on his way.

Finally, Starsky spies his target through an opening in the trees, standing over a table spread with important papers. Colonel Sonny McPhearson, veteran of every war there ever was, is going over plans for a top-secret military operation.

Starsky approaches Sonny and asks about the spy he found. He says the spy is an extremely important person, perhaps the key to the entire war, and Starsky wants him.

Something is wrong, though. Starsky and Sonny are upside-down, surrounded all around by black water. The map is upside-down, too. No!!! Starsky will never find him if the map stays like that.

Beneath a persistent twilight sky, they’re looking at a map containing the quadrant Hutch is trapped in – probably the second circle of Hell, Hutch thinks. Wasn’t that the one Dante reserved for those who lusted?

But Sonny knows where he is and he’ll show Starsky. They just have to turn the map right-side up, and the sky along with it, and then Starsky will rescue him. Easy, peasy.

No, Hutch corrects himself, it’s probably the seventh circle, because that’s where sodomites are sent, and certainly sodomy beats ordinary lusting, doesn’t it?

But that isn’t exactly true, because he isn’t a sodomite yet. But he aspires to be, God knows he does, and he’s wanted it for as long as he’s known his sexy, virile partner, and he supposes that counts just the same in God’s eyes.

Starsky is wearing his favorite distressed brown leather jacket, navy ribbed turtleneck that suits him just right, and those tight, low-slung jeans of his that caress every curve of the lithe, muscular thighs and luscious ass.

He’s a sight for sore eyes and aching balls, that one.

Starsky is a Greek statue come to life, if the Greeks were dark-haired, curly-headed Jews. Starsky laughs as he playfully punches Hutch’s shoulder, saying it sounds anti-Semitic and it’s a good thing Starsky’s mom isn’t around right now to hear it.

He admires how Starsky – that unwavering and resolute partner of his – simply exudes strength and determination from every pore. He is movement and energy. He is hope, and he is Hutch’s salvation.

But the seventh circle is also home to murderers and thieves like that vicious toad Vic Humphries, vainglorious wearer of garish clothing and bargain-basement toupee, which means that one day he’ll be joined here by Humphries if Starsky doesn’t rescue him.

Hurts…hurts…so thirsty…help me Starsk

Everything is topsy-turvy, and his head feels like it’s spinning, his mouth dry as dirt. How does the poem go? Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. And like the ancient mariner, he’s been forced to suffer as penance for his crimes against nature.

But unlike the doomed seafaring sailor, here in this canyon, this trench, this godforsaken hellhole, there’s no water at all. Even the plants are deprived of their meager existence, for their leaves are thirsty and parched and their branches as dry and brittle as a witch’s cunt.

He blushes. What would his mother think of him using that vile word? She would wash his mouth out with soap. Even Starsky would smack him in the head at the mere utterance.

Seems like he’s offended everyone’s mother today, Jesus’ included, probably.

Well, so what of it? He’s offended God as well.

But he’s so goddamn thirsty that he’d cut off his arm and drink the blood that gushed out, if only he could. Funny…he’s pretty sure the mariner did that, too.

I bit my arm, I sucked the blood

That gives him an idea. He remembers reading somewhere a long time ago, in another life, how semen is mostly made up of water. Life-giving water. Precious…sustaining. It will buy him time until Starsky can find him.

It won’t stop spinning

He’s growing weaker by the hour, and with shaking hands, he struggles to unbutton his pants and push down the zipper that’s rusted from years of being soaked with urine. It takes an eternity, but when he finally has them undone, he slides his hand inside his underwear and begins to rub himself.

But his nostrils are assaulted by the sour, acrid smell of the dried piss emanating from his crotch, its noxious scent pungent like ammonia, and he wrinkles his nose in distaste.

Urine. He should probably try to urinate before he gets hard. But he shouldn’t drink it. No, he learned that in the Sea Scouts on Lake Superior as a boy. Urine contains salt, and like drinking seawater, it would dehydrate him faster than it would rehydrate.

But if he wanted to hasten his demise, that would be just the thing to do it, especially if he couldn’t reach his gun.

No!!! Wait for Starsky…wait for Starsky

It’s just as well, since he has nothing he can catch the urine with anyway. If only he could bring his cock up to his mouth, wouldn’t that be wonderful? That would be useful for all sorts of things. But the universe decided to play a cruel trick when it created the male sex organ. Or perhaps that was God. The same God who was no doubt laughing at him right now, watching him suffer down here in this hell-pit.

The same God who endowed men with the desire to lust after each other, while turning a blind eye when other men ruled it a sin. But he has sinned, and so God has sent him here.

And while he’s grateful that he can touch his cock with his hand and bring himself to orgasm whenever he likes, it would never come within miles of reaching his mouth. Such a cruel and unfair world! Like a punishment in the Greek myths, it would always remain tantalizingly out of reach.

He pulls his cock from the confines of his underwear and lies back, waiting for the pee to trickle out. But will there even be enough water left inside him to produce semen?

Spinning…so much spinning

He closes his eyes and rubs his hand over his flaccid cock, but he’s in too much pain and can’t get hard until he starts to imagine that it’s Starsky’s hand. That’s something he’s imagined many times before, when he jerked off in his bed, over the toilet, in the shower.

Even sometimes when he was with a woman, imagining it was Starsky whose mouth was taking him in. Starsky’s beautiful mouth…those curved lips, the crooked smile, his partner’s eyes looking up at him so warmly…his partner wanting so much to please him, to love him.

What if Starsky were to find him right now? He’d come running toward him carrying a canteen filled with water, and as he got closer to the overturned German tank that was crushing Hutch’s leg, he’d see Hutch’s body lying stretched out beneath it on the hard, unforgiving battlefield, his cock resting lightly on his naked stomach, firm and erect and begging to be loved.

Hutch

He’d give Hutch the water to drink first, of course, but when that was taken care of, he’d gently push Hutch’s hand away and take the cock in his own, rubbing it, squeezing it, caressing it lovingly, and oh, how exquisite it would be to have that hand wrapped around him like that, stroking him up and down until he came in a writhing fit of glorious ecstasy, and oh God, it feels so good.

I love you Hutch

He’s committed multiple sins now, but fuck it, he’s already been condemned, and for the first time since he landed here in Hell, his body feels good, and for a brief blessed moment, all his pain recedes and there is only bliss as he briefly finds himself in paradise.

Glory, glory hallelujah!

He needs to catch all of it in his hand – every precious drop of ejaculate – and bring it to his lips, but there is barely enough of the thin, clear liquid to coat his palm. But it’s something, and he laps at it with his tongue like a blind, mewling kitten given its first taste of its mother’s milk.

He wrinkles his nose at the pungent odor and grimaces at the disagreeable taste of saline and bitterness. He briefly wonders if, as with urine, drinking semen will make his dehydration worse than it already is.

He considers this for a moment, and then greedily, he laps up every last drop.

******

He can’t fucking believe his eyes. There’s a goddamn scorpion not three feet away from where he’s lying. Because of course he can’t just lie here suffering from overwhelming pain and thirst. No, he’s gotta have the indignity of being stung by, of all things, a lowly arthropod. He didn’t even know they had scorpions in France.

He suddenly recalls a Bible verse he read as a kid – a reminder to the Israelites of how God had protected them.

Who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock.

But despite his terrible thirst, God has not brought forth water for him, because he is cursed.

Try to remember your name

Soon it will be dark, and when the sun goes down and the ground loses its heat, the relentless shivering will commence.

Your name is Ken Hutchinson

And even though he’s heard that scorpion stings rarely kill healthy adults, 1) he’s not so healthy at the moment, and 2) he doesn’t think he can take on any more pain. He’s taken on more than he can handle already, thank you very much and fuck you.

Your partner’s name is David Starsky

And oh God, his dick is lying limply on his stomach, small and wrinkled…vulnerable and exposed. What’s it doing out of his pants? He tries to think but can’t remember.

If only he could reach his gun, he could shoot the sonofabitch. He’s been trying unsuccessfully for hours, or has it been days, clutching his rear-view mirror to try to pull the gun closer, but it’s remained just out of his reach.

You pulled out your cock

And drank your own urine

No!!!

You fell asleep and when you opened your eyes

It should seem strange to him that his car’s rear-view mirror is lying detached in the dirt beside him, but it doesn’t seem strange at all, not in this world, even though by all rights, it has no business being there.

It should be in its rightful place, attached to the roof of his car, where it was that time he looked through it and saw the reassuring image of Starsky in the Torino, protecting him, just before the undercover sting of Humphries went so horribly wrong.

The scorpion is on his leg now. The uninjured one. The one that isn’t being crushed by 5,000 pounds of American-made steel, and yet he’s not sure which leg is worse off.

He hadn’t seen it move, but there it is anyway. On him. Crawling over his pants. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck

Coming closer.

Stay calm stay calm

It’s on his penis now.

It’s…oh God…don’t scream don’t scream please don’t scream

His heart is thudding in his chest and he’s breaking out into a cold sweat, but he needs to stay as still as possible so as not to give it incentive to sting him. If it stings him there…

Oh Jesus get it off me…Starsky get it off me please for God’s sake help me

God has forsaken you, remember?

The thudding is reverberating in his head like an oncoming freight train, and his world has come down to one thing and one thing only: Stay alive until Starsky gets here.

Don’t move a muscle…don’t twitch don’t move don’t move…goddamn it Hutchinson don’t move!

Crawling up his body now. On his torso…

Oh thank God thank God thank God

His neck. It tickles. He tries not to flinch. He tries not to swallow, he tries not to breathe.

Please go away…please just get the fuck off me you’ve got a whole fucking canyon to explore why pick on me

It’s on his face now. His face that’s probably as white as a corpse with all the blood drained out of it, and he can feel it crawling around on his cheek, and if he moves at all, it’ll sting him…it’ll sting him and the pain…

Concentrate, Hutchinson! Get the mirror…get it

Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, he reaches his arm toward the rear-view mirror that’s lying beside him.

Concentrate or you’ll die

He grasps it in his hand and brings it toward him…slowly…slowly…

Careful

When he gets the mirror close enough, he knocks the scorpion onto the ground in one fell swoop and smashes it with the mirror, over and over and over again.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!

He smashes and smashes and smashes….

Panting and sweating, with beads of perspiration dripping down his face and the scorpion obliterated into a million tiny pieces, Hutch holds the mirror in front of him, praying he’ll see Starsky’s reflection, but through the cracked glass, the only blue eyes staring back at him are the eyes of a doomed man.

And then the eyes close as the world around him goes black.

******

As the sun begins to set, Starsky fishtails the Torino around a curve, swerves to avoid hitting a truck, and keeps pressing on ahead.

His world has been reduced to one thing and one thing only: Find Hutch.

The last time Hutch went missing, it was four days before Starsky found him, and he’d been beaten, tortured, and shot up with heroin. What happened to his partner this time?

Hold on Hutch, wherever you are, please hold on

I love you so much

Starsky glances at the dashboard clock, cursing the display.

What if he’s already dead?

No! Can’t think about that. Can’t. Won’t.

“Hang on babe, I’m gonna find you.” He looks over at the empty passenger seat. “But you gotta wait for me. Please. You can’t die on me, you hear? Goddammit, Hutch, don’t you fucking die on me!”

******

He’s lying very still now, eyes open and unblinking as he stares up at an unrelenting blue sky that’s beginning to bleed shades of pink and orange in the west.

Please help me

If only he could reach his gun, he could put an end to all this suffering once and for all. But he needs to hold on just a little bit longer until Starsky gets here.

Spinning the world is spinning

Suddenly, he hears Starsky’s voice calling out to him from the hills above, repeating his name over and over, and Starsky is slamming himself carelessly into his broken and dying body, and he finds himself staring straight up into the eyes of his beautiful partner…those deep indigo eyes that are filled with so much love for him it makes him want to cry.

Starsky’s familiar hands are on him now, clutching his shoulder, pressing reassuringly against his chest, comforting him.

Starsk

He is small, so very small, and Starsky’s presence is so looming…so large…so warm.

Starsky’s hands are cradling his head so tenderly, the thumbs lovingly caressing his cheeks.

We made it, partner, Starsky says, smiling, his voice full of emotion as laughter and tears emanate from him simultaneously.

And then Starsky’s face comes even closer, and it’s as if he’s looking in a mirror and seeing the face of his salvation before him. Only Starsky’s face isn’t being reflected in a mirror. No, his partner is here with him, right here at the bottom of this canyon, and his partner’s moist, luscious lips are softly brushing against his parched, dry ones, breathing sustaining life into him.

I love you Starsk

For so long, he’s wondered what it would feel like to have those lips pressed against his…dreamed about it as he lay in bed unable to sleep, wanting desperately to know the answer to the eternal question of whether or not Starsky was a good kisser.

He’d been wondering about it for years.

His own lips had come tantalizingly close to his partner’s on countless occasions, but they’d never touched, never so much as brushed against each other, but whenever they would come near, he would feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up, accompanied by a curious tingling in his groin, and he knew by the way Starsky’s eyes sparkled, and how his partner’s body seemed to quiver, that Starsky felt it, too.

And yet, in all the years they’d known each other, neither of them had ever figured out what to do about it.

But now his question has been answered and the answer is a resounding yes. Yessss! He wants to shout so all the world can hear, but he can’t muster even a single raspy syllable.

And Starsky isn’t just a good kisser, he’s a great kisser. An outstanding, wonderful, terrific kisser.

In fact, Starsky’s kisses are better than any painkiller they could give him, more life-sustaining than even a tall, cool glass of water.

Starsky is kissing him and kissing him and he can feel Starsky’s lifeblood flowing through him, resurrecting him, giving him life.

******

“So what now?” Dobey asks.

Starsky nervously paces the room, bumping up against the wall and pushing off of it, because Dobey’s office is suddenly too small, too constricting, and Starsky wrings his hands as he goes along.

“I don’t know, Cap’n! But with Slater dead, the only lead we had is gone, and Humphries and Balford ain’t talkin’!”

“If we don’t find Hutch soon –“

“I know! But we’ve come no closer to knowin’ where he is than when we started. And that’s assumin’ he’s even still alive.” Starsky pauses, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears that threaten to materialize at any moment.

But he mustn’t give up hope. He can’t. He won’t.

“Maybe we can offer Humphries a deal. We drop the case against him if he gives up Hutch’s location.”

“Cap’n, we don’t even know if he’s responsible for Hutch’s disappearance. For all we know, we’ve been barkin’ up the wrong tree this whole time. Besides, without Hutch’s testimony, Humphries knows we can’t make the case against him stick. He ain’t gonna talk. And I’m all outta ideas. Unless—”

“Unless what?” Dobey asks.

Starsky looks up at the wall clock. He’s running out of time.

“Somebody told Huggy that Roy Slater was in town to burn a cop. Who? Someone’s gotta know somethin’, right?”

In a flash, Starsky moves toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“The Pits,” Starsky answers, slamming the door behind him.

******

The sun is low in the sky and sinking ever lower. It’s going on the third night now. At least, he thinks it is. He’s lost all track of time, but he’s pretty sure he’s been here three days, two nights and an assorted number of hours, minutes, and seconds.

Or has it been three nights, two days, ten-four, and a partridge in a pear tree? Where has he heard that before?

Suddenly, he senses movement beside him. It’s Starsky, he’s sure of it. Starsky, whose kisses still linger on his lips, has come back for him.

But when Hutch turns his head, he sees Sonny kneeling on the ground, drinking from an old, dusty canteen. He begs for a sip, but Sonny apologizes and says it’s empty. The old soldier’s voice is filled with remorse.

So goddamn thirsty

Hutch tries not to think about the fact that, on average, a person can only survive without water for three days.

Oh God it hurts

His badge is in his left shirt pocket. With his last remaining ounce of strength, he pulls it out and stretches his arm toward his erstwhile companion.

“Take this to…Sergeant David Starsky,” he croaks, his throat dry and raspy. His mouth, devoid of saliva, feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton, and it’s getting harder to swallow.

But the old soldier pays no heed to his desperate entreaty and no helping hand comes forth.

I can’t help you, Sonny replies with regret. I can’t.

Hutch blinks and looks around, but Sonny is gone, and he wonders if the old soldier was ever there at all.

If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to see it, Hutch wonders, does the tree even exist?

The badge falls out of his hand as he breathes out and issues a plaintive sigh, and the sound it makes is hollow, like a death rattle.

I’m sorry Starsk I’m so sorry I tried to hold on please forgive me

He thinks he’s crying now, but he can’t be sure, because his body is no longer able to produce tears.

-End-

---

Chapter End Notes:

This story was inspired by the breathtaking Starsky & Hutch fanvid “Breathe Me Kiss of Life” by Vedette Ciel and Moni K.

Watch “Breathe Me Kiss of Life” on YouTube.