To Love (Verb, Transitive)

After Diana’s attack, Starsky takes Hutch home.

A/N: Hello friends. Guess who rewatched Fatal Charm last night?

Hutch is shaking in Starsky’s arms, trembling fast and minutely, like a guitar with its strings wound so tight that every touch threatens to snap them. Starsky remembers, starkly, Hutch’s beloved guitar smashed into pieces by Diana, and suddenly he cannot bear the sight of this wrecked space a second longer. Behind them, the unis are talking quietly to each other; someone is reading Diana her rights. They all witnessed it clear enough, and Dobey knows the details. Eventually, Hutch will have to stand up and face her in court, but for tonight they’re not needed. “C’mon,” he says, and drags Hutch off the wall. “I’m taking you home.”

Hutch flinches, darting a glance at his own doorway. The fine glass covering that’s been wrapped around Starsky’s heart this entire time as he tried to ignore it, tried to pretend Diana would leave and it would all be fine, finally shatters into razor-sharp shards. He’ll apologise for the denial and dismissal later, if Hutch will let him, but for now- “Not here,” he clarifies, past the pain. “My place.” Then he turns them towards the stairs, and in the process of shifting his grip on Hutch, notices for the first time the towel wrapped around his upper arm. “What’s this?” he asks, running fingers lightly across it.

“Cut,” Hutch says hoarsely, and Starsky’s gashed heart drops to his stomach. He’d thought Hutch must have seen her, kept away from her until they arrived, not that she’d- she’d gotten that close. That if she’d managed to hit three inches to the right- his heart must be a damn yo-yo, because now it’s in his throat, blocking any attempt at swallowing or breathing or speaking. He coughs, attempting to clear it, then says without thinking, “So, hospital first.”

“No!” Hutch nearly shouts at him. Starsky manages to stop from doing more than leaning slightly back, and Hutch repeats, quieter, “No hospital.”

“I don’t…” Starsky says, then looks back at Hutch’s face. “Okay,” he agrees. “No hospitals.” He doesn’t know what he’ll do if the cut turns out to need stitches, or antibiotics, but the way Hutch relaxes just slightly against him at that promise—he’ll figure it out.

Hutch doesn’t talk the entire drive to Starsky’s house. When Starsky lowers him into the passenger seat of the Torino, he goes with the same blank distance he’d had when suggesting sitting down on his own porch. Fighting the urge to leave the Mars light on for how much quicker it’d let him properly see Hutch and hold him again, Starsky gets into the driver’s seat, and Hutch tips towards him. Starsky catches him before he can fall, with one hand under his head and the other his shoulder, and gently lowers him into his lap. He stays like that the entire drive, head on Starsky’s thigh, tucked back tight against his hip, Starsky with one hand on the wheel and the other resting across Hutch’s shoulders holding him in place. It’s not the first time Starsky’s thanked whatever deity happens to be listening for the Torino’s bench seats, and it probably won’t be the last.

The cut on Hutch’s arm, luckily, doesn’t look that bad. Starsky takes Hutch into the bathroom, sits him down on the closed toilet seat, entirely prepared to spend half an hour crouched in front of it holding pressure on the wound and the next half hour cleaning blood off his tiles. But when he unties Hutch’s own makeshift pressure bandage—pretending Hutch’s wince doesn’t make him want to break down crying—and gently slips the velvety orange robe off that shoulder, the bleeding has already slowed to an oozing leak. Starsky finally connects the dots of the robe and the towel, along with the slightly dilute colour of the blood across Hutch’s bicep and hand, and realises Hutch must have already been in the shower when Diana attacked.

Taking a deep breath, he leans far enough to grab an antiseptic wipe from the drawer under the sink without lifting his hand from Hutch’s leg. He holds it up before he opens it, warning Hutch without words, then dabs gently at the gash, cleaning off the half-dried blood. Hutch’s breath hisses at the first touch, and he reaches out with his uninjured arm. Starsky grabs his hand and returns them both to rest on Hutch’s knee, stupidly glad that he’s still being a wimp over the pain of minor injuries. The worst thing to see right now would be closed-off Hutch, the Hutch who’s remembered he’s not supposed to let himself be vulnerable in front of anyone and locked all his hurt down into a tight chamber to fester. This Hutch is at least showing Starsky where it hurts.

Starsky swipes the antiseptic across his own palm before throwing it at the bin, then wraps his hand tight around the cut. He has bandages in the other room, but he doesn’t want to leave Hutch long enough to get them. Also, if Hutch had been in the shower- Hutch loved showers. Starsky wasn’t going to let this settle as his association with them. “Hutch?” he says, and Hutch lifts his eyes from the floor to Starsky’s. Starsky raises his free hand and pulls Hutch’s robe off his other shoulder, slowly, giving him time to react. Not that Starsky’s going to let himself be pushed away right now, but if Hutch pulls away, he’ll figure out some other plan. Hutch doesn’t, just lets Starsky handle him like his body is some faraway foreign object to his mind, so Starsky pulls the belt free and rests his hand against Hutch’s hip, urging him upwards. Starsky stands with him, leaving the robe to fall to the floor, and steers Hutch to the shower. Turning it on with one hand, he pushes Hutch in and lets go, turns around for long enough to shuck his own jeans and shirt.

When he turns back, even though it can’t have been more than thirty seconds, Hutch has slid down to sit on the tiles. His back is against the wall, water running through his already-damp hair and over his bowed head. Sighing, Starsky steps in and shuts the glass door behind him, then sits down facing Hutch. He wraps his arms around one bent leg, the other splayed out to the side, and mentally apologises to the shower, which was probably expecting something much more along the normal lines when it saw them both step inside. If these particular walls could talk, it would sound like the kind of hardcore adult flick they never played at the theatres, not a post-assault breakdown.

Eventually, when there’s no movement from Hutch, Starsky moves his leg enough to poke at Hutch’s hip with his toes. Apparently, that’s the trigger, because Hutch looks up at Starsky through falling water that could be from the shower or his eyes, then leans forward. Starsky drops his bent leg fast enough to open his arms, pull Hutch against his chest. “Why?” Hutch gasps into Starsky’s neck on something that could be a sob or just a caught breath.

“I don’t think anyone but the psychiatrists have got an answer for that one, buddy. Maybe not even them, really.”

“How- why-” Hutch is still gasping, like he’s choking on the questions, on the edge of hyperventilating. Starsky rubs circles over his back, round and round and round, and waits. Eventually, a full sob wrenches out of Hutch, and on its heels he asks, helplessly, “How can you love someone and then do that?”

Starsky sets his jaw, thinks about Diana and Vanessa and Hutch’s parents who he’s never met and hopes he never will. Thinks about hiding in the closet when he was a kid and listening to his father scream at his mother so loud it felt like the whole house would come down and his mother shout back through jagged righteous anger, then about coming out of the closet and stepping in between them so that Nicky wouldn’t have to see it. He doesn’t think Diana really loved Hutch, that was pure obsession, but the others… “I think some people just don’t know how to love. There’s something broken in them. Or-” he can’t think of his own parents like that, not entirely – neither of them ever threw anger or anything else at him or Nicky like they did at each other. As far as Hutch has told him, the elder Hutchinsons had a perfectly happy marriage for all they did their best to wreck their son’s idea of home and love and family. “Or they don’t know how to love in certain ways, for certain types of people. I don’t know, I think that whatever’s going on in their heads, you can’t really say they’re loving those people. Love isn’t just a feeling. It requires action.”

Hutch rubs his face against Starsky’s shoulder, and finally lifts his arms to wrap them around Starsky’s waist. “Love as a verb,” he says, sounding less like he’s actively crying, so Starsky turns his head and presses a kiss against Hutch’s hair, blinking water out of his eyes.

“Yeah.”

“You love me,” Hutch murmurs into Starsky’s skin, and Starsky feels his own tears start to fall.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I love you.”