While the Iron is Hot

It was all the sun’s fault. Or Hutch realizes he is in love with Starsky.

For the 20 minute challenge on the bRomance group to use Strike and Work.

It was all the fault of the sun.

Hutch walked alongside Starsky on the beach, their pace slow, measured. Still, it was faster than the first time, faster than last month, faster than yesterday. He didn’t know if it would ever get fast enough to become a run or even a slow jog.

He’d come to the realization what felt a lifetime ago that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to him if Starsky couldn’t return to work. He wasn’t even sure how much it now mattered to Starsky.

Starsky had seemed to reach an inner peace—a serenity of acceptance that what would happen would happen. Maybe it had been the dying or maybe it had been the time he had stood up on weakened legs, clutching to Hutch’s arms and grinning as he took his first wobbly steps back to life.

Hutch—well if Hutch was honest, it was taking him far longer to reach that inner peace, that sense of calm that emanated from Starsky. Still, Starsky’s presence was a balm to Hutch’s battered soul. He knew when he came in the door after a day of work that Starsky would be there—alive when he thought he’d lost him forever. When they went to bed at night, he sometimes crept out of his own room and stood in the doorway of Starsky’s just to watch him breathe in the moonlight.

But this day it was the sun’s fault. At least that was what he told himself.

He looked over at Starsky who had slowed even more and now stood looking out to the horizon.

“You ever notice how many colors are in a sunset, Hutch?” Starsky asked. He had his hands in his pockets of his jeans. Jeans that Hutch was glad to see were fitting more like they used to as the days went by.

“Can’t say that I have.” Hutch wasn’t watching the sun setting or the waves curling onto the sand. He was watching Starsky because somewhere along the line of loving Starsky as a friend, he realized it wasn’t enough. He’d loved being in love with Vanessa, but he and Vanessa had never started out as friends. Maybe that was why they had been doomed to fail from the beginning.

He watched as all those colors played over Starsky’s face—still thin from the shooting and illness and pain. Rose tinted cheekbones, purple highlighted eyes, and gold—oh the gold suffused Starsky’s whole body. He seemed to almost glow with the gold.

The light played on Starsky’s curls and Hutch felt his fingers twitch.

“Strike while the iron is hot.” His grandfather used to say that when Hutch was just a kid. He’d had all kinds of saying like that, most of which Hutch hadn’t understood. He just loved repeating them because he loved his grandfather.

Starsky was smiling, the gold still there as the sun slipped lower and lower, and Hutch gave in.

He reached up, let his hand rest on those curls, drew his hand lower to rest on Starsky’s cheek.

“Hutch?”

Starsky’s breath was soft, warm against his hand. He looked at Hutch, blue eyes widening, lips parting, beautiful and whole and wonderfully, amazingly alive.

“I love you. I want…God, Starsky, I want you.”

The sun disappeared but Starsky had become the sun. And Hutch pulled him close and their lips met and the world changed into something more wonderful than Hutch had ever dreamed.