When You Tire

Hutch is struggling in the aftermath of Starsky’s shooting in Sweet Revenge. Nightmares are only a part of the problem.

The title is from my favorite poem: First Lesson by Philip Booth.

The first nightmare came hours after Starsky had been shot. He wasn’t sure if you could call it a nightmare when you weren’t really asleep. But it jolted him from the slumped position he’d assumed after hours of sitting in the waiting room. Hutch tried to tell himself that waiting was good–the longer they waited, the longer it meant Starsky was alive. His subconscious had other ideas.

Dobey looked at him and then got up without a word and walked a distance away while Hutch bent over at the waist and held his head in trembling hands.

He came around the Torino and Starsky was on the garage floor, surrounded by red. So much blood, so much. He couldn’t move for a minute, his call for his partner coming out in more of a hoarse whisper than the cry for help he’d wanted. He made his feet move and finally knelt in the blood by Starsky’s side.

“Starsk?” He twisted down, reaching out and then freezing, afraid to touch him, to move him. Can’t move someone in case you cause more injury, he told himself. There were other people around them–he saw shoes. There were voices but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. And then he knew.

“Starsky?” This time he touched him, pulled Starsky’s limp body into his arms, his lap and stared down at the open empty eyes. “Don’t leave me.”

There’s so much I need to say, he thought but it was too late.

Hutch got up from the chair, bit back a groan at muscles gone stiff and began to pace. He took the cup of coffee Dobey handed him and drank it without tasting it. The nightmare hadn’t been real. There was still time. He had time.

* * * *

He was hanging on–that was good. He didn’t want to allow himself to hope because what if…that stupid game Starsky liked to play–what if…what if…what if they’d been off, what if he yelled Starsky’s name just a second sooner, what if they’d had Hutch’s car instead, what if he’d noticed something, anything when they walked to the car. His stomach hurt with the what ifs.

He let Dobey tell him what to do, felt lost and alone in a way he hadn’t in the years he’d known Starsky. He stood in the men’s room, splashed water on his face. He grabbed at the porcelain edge of the sink and let the dizziness wash over him.

He was in Starsky’s room, by Starsky’s bed, unable to touch, to even speak for fear it would hurt his partner, his friend, his other half, his…soul…soulmate. His throat hurt with the need to say the words–to say the three little words he so desperately needed Starsky to hear and suddenly there was an alarm blaring and people running into the room and pushing him aside. The doctor was in the hall–Hutch didn’t remember getting there–and his eyes were sad as he placed a gentle hand on Hutch’s shoulder and said, “I’m sorry.”

Hutch gasped as he splashed more water on his face. He grabbed a paper towel. Not true, not true. He looked in the mirror and saw two legs protruding from a stall.

* * * *

“Get here!” Dobey’s words rang in his head. He broke every limit getting to the hospital—shouldn’t have left, shouldn’t have left. Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. The thoughts pounded in his brain with every beat of his heart, with every footfall as he ran through the halls. He came to a stop as the doctor came from his partner’s room, unable to breathe, not wanting to hear. He heard the words as if from a long distance–too much damage, his heart, did everything we could. My fault, my fault, my fault, the refrain didn’t stop.

His mouth went dry and his vision went gray for a moment as he looked through the window at Starsky and the crowd surrounding the bed.

“I don’t know how,” the doctor said, “but he’s back. I think he’s going to make it.”

Hutch couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but look into the doctor’s eyes and hope that the man could read his mind. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank God.

“You’re not lookin’ so great, my man,” Huggy said and took Hutch’s elbow. “How long since you ate? Drank?”

Hutch shook his head, pulled his arm away and stood at the window and looked in at Starsky. He blinked hard, forced down the tears that threatened. Starsky had the job of getting well, he had the job of making sure someone paid for their crime.

* * * *

They moved Starsky to a long term care facility when he didn’t come out of his coma. For a few days Hutch had allowed himself to believe Starsky would survive at least somewhat intact. It had all been a lie–a fantasy he’d made up to get through the long days and even longer nights. Maybe if he’d found the courage to say the words he wanted to say so badly, maybe then Starsky would have awoken like some fairy tale princess who only needed true love’s kiss. He failed him–just like he failed Vanessa, Gillian, his parents. Why had he ever thought Starsky would be different?

He came awake with a gasp and the stewardess bent at his seat.

“Sir, are you all right?”

Hutch brought a hand to his face, wiped away the sweat and the aftermath of fear.

“Fine. Bad dream. Sorry.” He barely recognized his own voice–hoarse, tight. He looked up at her and forced a smile as his stomach somersaulted and his heart pounded. “Could I have some water please?”

“Certainly.” She smiled as she straightened. “We’ll be landing in a half hour.”

He nodded and stared out the window, remembering Starsky’s dopey smile as he’d read off the computer printout. He hadn’t said goodbye before leaving for San Francisco–superstition or cowardice–he wasn’t sure which. Then again, he hadn’t said much of anything of importance to Starsky since he’d been shot. Every time he tried to say the words that needed to be said, he felt like he was a kid again and standing in front of his parents.

“The words don’t make up for what you did, Kenneth,” Mother said when he accidentally broke the vase Grandmother had given her when she married Father.

“I’m greatly disappointed in you, Kenneth Hutchinson,” Father said when he cried. “Hutchinson’s don’t cry because a friend moves away.”

It was easier to not say the words–or if he said them to make sure the person hearing them couldn’t ever fully have his heart. He’d learned young not to give it away, to guard it. He still wasn’t sure how Starsky had stolen it from him.

* * * *

He woke up with a strangled cry and nearly fell off the Dobeys’ couch.

“Ken?”

He planted his feet on the floor, his hands on the cushions, pressed down hard with both. “I’m okay.”

Edith Dobey lit a lamp in the far corner of the room and approached him with a warm smile. “Nightmare?”

Hutch curled his fingers under, pushed nails into his palms. He nodded, unable to lie to her. “Yeah. Can’t even remember what this…what it was about.”

She sat down on the cushion next to him. “How are you doing?”

He ignored the headache behind his eyes–he hadn’t drunk that much wine in Starsky’s room. Not before the sprinkler had come on. The what ifs started–what if Starsky got sick from it, what if it set him back, what if–

“Ken,” Edith said and he looked down to find her hand wrapped around his. “I asked how you were doing.”

“I’m not the one shot.” God, he sounded bitter.

Edith sighed. “You were hurt too. Just not with bullets.”

He stared at her hand, unable to meet her eyes, unable to bear her understanding. He nodded.

“Go back to sleep,” she said. “I’ll be here.”

He wanted to tell her, wanted to unburden himself from horrible dragging weight of fear but his throat tightened and his tongue felt glued in place.

She sat beside him, not speaking, and in the quiet, he closed his eyes.

* * * *

“My aren’t we all dressed up,” Starsky remarked when Hutch came into his room.

The nurses and doctors had long since given up enforcing regular visiting hours. As long as he didn’t interfere with Starsky’s recovery, they were content to let him come and go as he pleased, especially since his presence seemed to encourage their miracle patient to work harder in therapy, to actually eat his meals, and to rest.

“Trial,” Hutch said as he undid his tie, pulled off his suit jacket. He sat down in the chair by Starsky’s bed. “Gunther’s dead.”

There was only the beep of a monitor.

“Dead,” Starsky said. He looked at Hutch and frowned. “You didn’t kill him did you?”

Hutch leaned back, closed eyes gritty with fatigue. “Committed suicide in his cell.”

“Damn it,” Starsky said.

Hutch opened his eyes, anger flaring. “Damn it? You wanted him to go to trial and probably buy his way out of it?” He couldn’t keep his voice down.

“I wanted him to know what it was like,” Starsky said, seemingly nonplussed by Hutch’s anger. “To be afraid of dying.”

Hutch crossed his arms over his chest. “Guess he wasn’t so scared of it after all.” He clenched his jaw and remembered Bates dead in a chair while Gunther acted as though nothing was wrong, as though he could just continue with his life even as he’d killed and maimed. It had been so close for them this time. Too close. Way too close. Maybe close enough that Hutch didn’t ever want to be put in that position again.

“I’m sorry,” he said then.

Starsky blinked, began to shrug his shoulders before he thought better of it. “Why? What do you got to be sorry for?”

Hutch shook his head. Nothing, everything, he wanted to say. Hurting you, not keeping you safe, every horrible thing I’ve ever said to you, not telling you I–

“Hutch,” Starsky said. “You sorry you shaved off that mustache? Cut your hair? Cause I just wanna say thank you for that.”

Hutch stared at him, looked at the planes of Starsky’s face–traced every contour, saw every way the shooting had left its mark on a face he so dearly loved. He opened his mouth and tried. He tried to say all the words that tumbled inside him. “Starsky…I–”

“I love you too,” Starsky finally said. “I think I always have.”

Hutch pulled the chair closer to the bed, took Starsky’s hand in his, ran a finger over Starsky’s knuckles.

“Hutch. I’m here.”

The absolution he needed was in those words and Hutch felt something break inside him–something he’d carried and wrestled and dragged for the weeks grown into months of the aftermath of the shooting. He bent his head to Starsky’s hand, pressed his mouth against the warm skin. To his horror, he could feel heat as his face reddened, as the tears he had managed to hold at bay for months finally began to fall.

“Get up here,” Starsky said. “Hutch. Please, babe.”

Hutch kicked off his shoes, squeezed onto the narrow bed and buried his face in Starsky’s shoulder not willing to allow him to see the tears. Starsky’s hand was heavy on the top of his head, fingers tangled in his hair.

He felt a shift and heard Starsky whisper an ‘it’s okay’ and a ‘come back later.’

“Let it out. I’m here. I’m here, love.”

He had been so far from shore–floundering in the waves, in the storm, and now he had finally reached his haven, the shore of a new unexplored land.

“I love you,” Starsky said it over and over in an urgent whisper between kisses pressed to his hair, to his forehead, to his mouth. “You’re mine now and forever.”

Hutch wiped his eyes with trembling hands, dared to finally look up into Starsky’s blue eyes. For a moment, for the tiniest moment, he saw himself reflected in them and he wasn’t weak, he wasn’t a failure, he was Hutch, the other half of Starsky’s soul. And he found the courage to say the words that had stuck in his heart for so very very long.

“I love you, Starsky.”