Their Mother’s Eyes

Table of Contents

Starsky and Hutch are called to the reading of a will from a past lover and come away with unexpected surprises.

This is an AU where SWEET REVENGE never happened.

Part One

The Past Echoes

On the morning of April 12, 1982, both men received legal documents inviting them to the reading of a Will. The Will of the woman who had come between them, however briefly.

Each man was dismayed and distressed. Dismayed that the woman had reappeared in such a way into their lives and distressed over what the summons could mean to his partner. They didn’t need this kind of echo from the past. Neither believed there could be anything the woman could have left behind that he or his friend would want.

The lawyer’s office was all beige and off-white, soothing and serious at the same time. Although they had not been summoned to the funeral, each man had chosen to wear a sober gray suit, white shirt, and dark tie. The setting was not quite grim, but melancholy and anxious.

A cousin of the woman was there before them, and they all introduced themselves. The woman clearly recognized their names and was just as clearly startled by their presence. Each man wondered what she knew about their involvement with the deceased. Shortly thereafter, a co-worker and another couple of cousins appeared. The final arrival, an elderly aunt, completed the group.

The lawyer appeared promptly on the heels of the aunt and introduced himself to those who didn’t know him, greeting one of the cousins and the aunt as old friends. He offered the group coffee, tea, and water, but no one took him up on it.

The reading of the Will began with the usual disclaimers about a sound mind and a soul-to-God and final wishes. Then, the three cousins were all left specific family momentos, including furniture and jewelry, and the youngest cousin also got the keys to the dead woman’s car. The co-worker received a small monetary award. When this portion of the reading was over, the lawyer politely saw the group out of the room and then he turned to the two men who had been waiting, quietly, with a faint air of unease.

“This next part’s a little trickier,” the lawyer said. “I hope the surprise is going to be a good one. I urged my client to do this in another way, but this is what she wanted.”

He reached into the small drawer on the top left side of his desk and withdrew two sets of photographs. Double-checking them carefully, he handed one stack to each of the two men.

The top photograph in each stack was the same. It showed two newborns, one a bald baby wrapped in blue and the other, an infant with an amazing shock of black hair, wrapped in pink. The second photographs were also the same and showed the two children at about age two. The boy now had wispy white blond hair. The girl possessed a riot of black curls. They both had their mother’s shocking green eyes and a pair of even more shockingly familiar grins. The rest of the photographs in each stack—four apiece—were of only one child, the blond child in the stack being looked at by the blond man and the darker girl in the dark man’s.

Each man was stunned into silence as he looked at his own stack and then his friend’s. Then, as one, they turned to the lawyer, questions clearly showing in their faces.

The lawyer spoke, “The girl is Kendall Rivkah Starsky. She’s called Dahlia. The boy is Davis Micah Hutchinson. He’s called Avi. They were born about a month premature in late January 1980. As you can clearly see in the pictures, they have their mother’s eyes, but their hair, their coloring, their mouths, and more, come from their fathers. I admit, gentlemen, that I didn’t realize that even fraternal twins could have different fathers, but here’s proof. Of course, you can ask for blood tests, that’s obviously your right, but it was their mother’s wish that you take them.” He paused, looking at the two silent, shocked men.

“They’ve been staying with the co-worker who was with us earlier. She’s gone to get them. If you don’t want …”

That’s as far as he got. During his speech, the two men had been looking at each other. Their long friendship made the conversation between them clear and concise, if silent. As one they turned and interrupted, “We want them.”

On that cue, the door to the office opened, and the two children appeared, each holding onto one of the hands of the young woman they’d met earlier. In the flesh, the question of fatherhood seemed even more obvious. Despite the influence of their mother, the children clearly favored their fathers in almost everything.

Moving slowly, instinctively, each man slid from his chair onto the floor, trying not to be intimidating to the two confused toddlers. How did one go about explaining a mother’s death or absence to a child so young? How did one begin the task of fatherhood in such inauspicious circumstances?

Some tears (and not just from the children) and some giggles (and not just from the children) filled the room for the next hour. Then, reluctantly, the two men let the young woman take the children out, and they began the paperwork that would eventually make it possible for them to take the children home. The fact that the birth certificates listed them as the fathers made this much easier. The situation wouldn’t call for adoptions or too much legal intervention. A schedule of visits for the next week was set-up to allow the children to get used to the two men and for the two to get used to them. The week would also allow them to make sure that they had adequate places set up for the children to come home to.

Thoughtfully, the young woman had taken the time to write up a list of each child’s likes and dislikes as far as food, and the lawyer had the names of the children’s doctor and daycare center. They had clothes and toys and toddler beds. And potty chairs. Taking the lists and the photographs, then shaking the lawyer’s hand, the two men exited the office and headed toward the car they’d driven together in.

“We need help,” Starsky thought. “I wonder if Ma would come out.” He almost laughed aloud. For a grandchild, or, more realistically, grandchildren? His mother would be here tomorrow. He spoke up, “Hutch? We should, you know, get a place together so that they can stay together. And I want to be called ‘Daddy.’ You can be ‘Papa’ or something.”

“We need a lot of help,” Hutch thought. “My mother wouldn’t come, but I bet we can talk Starsky’s Mom into it.” He almost laughed aloud. For Starsky’s children or even for his? She’d be here tomorrow. “I can be ‘Papa,’” Hutch agreed. No child of his would call him ‘Father’ or ‘Sir,’ the only two acceptable terms for his own father when he was a boy.

Each man was lost in his thoughts for the rest of the day. Dismayed? Distressed? Not anymore. Distracted? Absolutely. Disconcerted? Just a bit. The Past was echoing all right, all the way into the Future.

Part Two

The Future’s Memories

It was hard, now, to remember what life had been like before Dahlia and Avi, when the two men had only been partners on the force. The coming of the two children had seen a great many changes in the two men’s lives. Their coming had made it possible for the two men to find family and love and joy.

In the week before they officially took custody, they had pooled their finances and found a quiet four bedroom house on a quiet cul-de-sac. Their neighbors on either side, the Ellerbys and Kahns, had been a pair of young couples with children little older than the toddlers that had so recently joined them. The most helpful change, however, was when Starsky’s mother had quickly and efficiently packed up her life in New York and moved into the house’s master bedroom. The two children shared one bedroom, to give them the closeness of their twin in this strange new house, and the two men took the last two bedrooms, giving them each a bit of privacy in their suddenly crowded lives.

To say that “Ma” Starsky had been startled by her son’s phone call would be something of an understatement. He had been vaguely embarrassed to admit that he was a father without having been a husband, but the additional complication of having shared the mother of his child with his best friend was awkward in the extreme. Ma, once she got over the initial shock, was secretly and not so secretly thrilled. There was never any doubt that she accepted both children as “hers,” as Hutch had known she would. His own parents were never quite able to accept either child, as he had known as well, especially when Avi, like Dahlia, was raised in his mother’s and grandmother’s religion.

Of course, those conversations with Ma had made a good trial run for informing their various colleagues and friends about the situation. Many of them, not understanding anything more than that the two men had been “one-upping” one another with women for some time, and not knowing the harsher realities of the “Kira” situation, thought it was hysterically funny. However, they had many willing hands to help them pack and move. Fate, continuing to twist around them, the child’s original caretaker, Kira’s co-worker, Devon Cooper, met one of those fellow detectives, Andrew Harlan, a Missing Persons Detective who had gone through the Academy with them, and eventually married him. Their daughter was named Kira.

Another happy surprise early on had been the reactions of the Dobeys. Their gruff boss had immediately taken on the role of kindly grandpa, and Edith, his fabulous wife, became not only a second grandmother, but also Ma’s closest friend in Bay City. As she grew older, Rosie Dobey babysat when the two older women needed a break or went to their Quilting Circle or Orchid Society Meetings. Even the Dobeys’ son, Cal, chipped in his time to spoil the twins with swooping visits during which he whisked them off to the zoo or the beach. It was he who taught them to swim.

Despite all of those changes, incredible and earth-shaking as they had been, nothing had really prepared either man for the biggest change that came about when the twins were starting kindergarten. With Dahlia in the new dress made by her grandmothers and Avi in the vest that matched, Starsky and Hutch had accompanied the excited children to the local elementary school. It was within easy walking distance, and, after the first week, it had been planned that the two would walk to and from school with their neighbors, second graders Sara Kahn and Vincent Ellerby and fourth graders David Kahn and Cecily Ellerby.

With Ma spending the day with Edith, recognizing her own need to get out of the suddenly empty house, Starsky and Hutch found themselves alone in the house for one of the few times since they had moved in. Neither could say later exactly what had triggered what followed, but each man knew that it had been building for years, probably since long before the entry of Kira into their lives. It also solved the problem of what to do about giving Avi and Dahlia their own rooms. Thereafter, the two men were prepared to share. Ma, not quite as surprised as they expected her to be, and not really horrified at all, gave up the master bedroom, and helped with the general relocations necessary to move all the various inhabitants between the house’s bedrooms.

On the morning in question, they had ended up in Hutch’s room because his was the bigger bed. Desperate kisses had by this time calmed into tender ones and then moved back to passionate, as they removed their own clothing and their partner’s, and hands traveled over familiar skin, and unfamiliar, with urgency and intent. Then they lay together on their sides, hipping rocking, cocks sliding, hands soothing and smoothing, eyes burning, legs entangling, moans sounding, and lights suddenly bursting. Wiping one another gently with the sheets, they left the bed and moved to Starsky’s room, cuddling on and under his clean sheets, falling into a light sleep, happy and sated.

It hadn’t been easy. They had never come out at work, although the Dobeys (and probably others) had known. Around the same time they became lovers, they had actually ceased to be partners at work. Hutch, with Starsky’s support, had taken the Lieutenant’s Exam and moved over to Burglary. Starsky, with Hutch’s encouragement, had moved to the Academy to teach the rookies about shooting and driving. One final bullet graze (left hip, Hutch) had made them decide that they couldn’t keeping risking themselves and frightening the children. It has been hard to explain that Papa had been shot and that Daddy had been in danger.

Now they were facing another major milestone. Those babies had grown up and were about to graduate from high school. Ma was talking about sharing a place in a retirement village with the recently widowed Edith. At the end of the summer, the two men would be alone in the house for real. Avi was heading for Stanford, planning to take up his father’s old dream of medicine. Dahlia was heading farther, all the way to New York, to study at Cooper Union, hoping to help engineer the next generation of cars, following her father’s love of automobiles of all kinds. But even in the absence of these three vital parts of their lives, they would not be alone. There was, as always and better than ever, still Me and Thee.

END