The Waiting Game

Hutch waits for Starsky to wake up.

A 20 minute fic challenge.

Hutch knew what being shot felt like—he’d experienced it a few times. But what Starsky had felt, he didn’t know. He didn’t know if Starsky felt the bullets slam into him as the fake cops in the real car sped past. He didn’t know if Starsky had heard him yelling to get down. He didn’t know, and it was the not knowing that was hardest to bear.

He knew Starsky had been conscious because he’d watched as others ran to him while he stood unmoving, unable to take the few steps that would bring him to Starsky’s side. His heart had felt pierced by a sword, a thousand swords, a thousand million stakes to his heart. He knew why he hadn’t moved. Because deep down inside, Detective Sergeant Kenneth Hutchinson, BCPD, was a sniveling coward. A coward who couldn’t bring himself to find out if Starsky was alive or dead.

He knew within seconds that Starsky was alive—at least for the moment—because there was frantic activity and yelling and screaming. It was when it hurt to swallow, when his throat felt raw, that he knew the screaming had been his own.

And now Starsky lay silent and still. The doctors had pulled him back from the brink. Hell, the brink? Starsky had gone over goddamn Niagara Falls in nothing more than a hospital gown.

Hutch rubbed his eyes and glanced over at the nurse who sat in her corner chair, reading a magazine. She seemed to take Starsky’s condition in stride—to respond to the beeps and blips with calm efficiency.

He wished he could bring that own calm to his psyche. His heart beat a painful tattoo in his chest as he let his gaze travel from Starsky’s hands, across the bandaged chest and abdomen and to Starsky’s face.

He quashed down the urge to give into the slightly hysterical laughter bubbling up inside him, the urge to bend down and press his lips against Starsky’s. To see if true love’s kiss could awaken his partner.

True love’s kiss? He didn’t think too much about where that thought had come from. But he knew it was true—he wasn’t sure of a lot of things right now, not with his world turned upside down and inside out. But he was sure of one thing—he loved Starsky.

And when Starsky woke up, because, suddenly, there was no doubt in Hutch’s mind that Starsky would wake, he was going to make sure Starsky knew it. But for now, he’d just close his eyes and wait.