December 5th- I Shall Not Pass This Way Again by Dawnwind

The brown grasses of the canyon hills shimmered golden. The evening sun poised on the tallest peak, spreading rays of molten oranges and yellows before dipping down below Starsky’s line of vision. Blue gray clouds limned with the last of the sun’s glow piled in, turning the olive green native foliage to dark, hulking shadows.

Starsky let ice cream melt on his tongue, savoring every cool, creamy bite. At 7:40 p.m., the August heat had finally cooled enough that sitting out on the deck didn’t feel like his flesh would burn off.

The ice cream was a treat. Even better with the thick layer of rich, decadent chocolate on top, and of course, the slices of banana Hutch had insisted on to give the dessert a semblance of healthiness.

Hutch returned from putting the ice cream carton in the freezer, rubbing his hands together as if he’d been shoveling snow instead of dishing out a frosty delight. He picked up his dish, the one with far more bananas than Starsky’s, looking over with an accusatory stare. “Added something to mine, did you?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Starsky licked his spoon, projecting as innocent an expression as he could. Not that it ever worked on Hutch. He could read him far too well.

“Potassium, Starsk,” Hutch said loftily, eating a large spoonful. “Good for all parts of the body.”

Starsky shrugged, scraping the bottom of his nearly empty bowl, getting just the right proportion of chocolate sauce, banana, and ice cream to bring to his mouth. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Hutch frowned as if the comment was in poor taste and put down his half-eaten dessert. He looked out across the darkening canyon, clearly still unnerved by the subject of Starsky’s recent shooting.

Starsky needed to move on, to get to the next level in his recovery. He no longer required pain killers for the healed wounds, had regained a great deal of the weight he’d lost in the first two months, and graduated from simple strength building exercises in physical therapy just that morning. Hence the ice cream party. Now would come the difficult goal of recertification for the police force. There was no way he was going to let Hutch continue partnerless.

Yet, Hutch seemed stuck, unable to move past the guilt and trauma in his own gut. Starsky didn’t have to ask to know what Hutch was thinking. It was exactly the same things he would have stressed over were the situation reversed.

I screwed up.

I didn’t do enough to save him from getting hurt.

It should have been me.

Starsky had heard Hutch say the last phrase, more than once. Hutch probably didn’t know he’d voiced the painful admission, because he’d always whispered it when he thought Starsky was asleep. Late at night in the hospital, when self-recriminations were always the most wounding. When the brain won’t shut down and give a body peace to rest.

Starsky knew. Which is why he had to tear open the scab over Hutch’s heart, force it to grieve and heal. They would never be able to work the streets together again until Hutch saw that he was whole.

Every time the sun set, Starsky was struck again by the similarity of day and night with life and death. Not at all something he’d have pondered before he was shot. Now it came to him over and over. That for a period of time, he had been dead.

His heart pumping only because dedicated doctors had given him CPR. And then that scary defibrillator machine which always looked like an instrument of torture on TV shows. Like what Dr. Frankenstein had used on his monstrous creation.

“How long was I dead?”

Hutch dropped his spoon on the deck, the vanilla ice cream and bananas in his bowl suddenly more colorful than his skin tone. As if the blood inside his veins had stopped circulating.

Scared, Starsky leaned in to look at him. “Hutch?” He grasped his friend’s arm, picking up the spoon at the same time.

Hutch startled, inhaling raggedly. “I-I don’t know.”

“You don’t know or you won’t tell me?”

“I don’t know,” Hutch said, his voice quiet, remote.

“You weren’t at the hospital?” No one had ever discussed this with him. He’d only learned of his premature demise because the nurses had let it slip one day.

Hutch shook his head violently, his longish hair rising up in the breeze like the halo of a beleaguered saint in some old fashioned painting. “I was in the squadroom. Dobey told me to come…”

He clasped his hands together to stop the shaking, but it wasn’t until Starsky cupped his own around Hutch’s that he calmed. “I don’t know how… I drove. Fast. It seemed to take forever and no time at all to get to the hospital.”

It was a ten minute drive from Metro to Bay City General. Starsky had driven the distance often enough in their career as cops. He keenly remembered traveling that road when Hutch was recovering from a bullet in his shoulder. There was always that terrible anxiety that something might have changed for the patient while the partner was away.

“When I got there, you were alive. Just.”

Hutch must have been terrified. Trepidation, dread, and fear would have been palpable, drowning out all other thought and sensation. No wonder he didn’t know.

Which didn’t help fill in the gaps in Starsky’s memory. “Can you tell me? About the first couple days when I was…” He lifted one shoulder with half a smile to reassure Hutch. “You don’t have to, if it’s—“

“No.” Hutch rubbed his thumb over Starsky’s, turning his wrists so that he was holding Starsky’s hands instead of the other way around. “I mean, yes, I can try. Don’t know if I can remember everything. It’s a jumble.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” His belly clenched, the image of Hutch lying there in a suburban hallway bleeding after that slip of a girl shot him as fresh as when it happened ten months ago.

“The ambulance arrived faster than I expected,” Hutch said all in one breath. He was panting afterward. “Dobey’d run out, and Minnie. Others, too, but I couldn’t look at anyone but you. I put my hands over the—“ His voice broke and he had to stop.

Starsky shifted until they were palm to palm, arms resting on Hutch’s thighs. “You tried to stop the bleeding?” he asked softly. He was sure he could remember that, sure he’d had some faint hold on consciousness then.

“I had to move you, lay you on your back to staunch the bleeding from the bullet wounds,” Hutch continued, disconnecting their hands to mime the movements. “Your eyes were open at first, but— And then the paramedics were there. Pushed me away to start IVs, I don’t know what else.”

“Oxygen mask, vital signs,” Starsky recalled from the time the paramedics had worked on Hutch in that little house.

“Yeah. Dobey drove me to the hospital.” He exhaled noisily, rotating his neck to crack the tense muscles. “The ER docs sent you to the OR really fast. They hardly had time to tell us what was going on before—” He looked down, latching onto Starsky’s hand with a death grip. “I didn’t have enough faith, Starsk. I thought I’d already lost you.”

“Didn’t happen, Hutch. And it won’t.” Starsky had the oddest urge to kiss him, sooth away the pain. Not like a father to his child, no. More like a lover.

“Hours, and hours. It didn’t make any sense how long it took.” Hutch touched Starsky’s chest as if to reassure himself that his heart continued to beat. “Time passed, people came and went. You were out of surgery but so still.”

“A coma?” Starsky asked.

“Drug induced. The doctors didn’t want you to move.” Hutch reached up to Starsky’s curls, stroking the soft skin behind his ear. “There were so many tubes and IVs, but I thought I could hear you calling me. Don’t give up. Don’t.” He tipped his head, peering at Starsky like he’d never seen him before.

“I think I was.” Starsky closed his eyes, trying to tease out one actual memory from those lost hours—days. There was nothing but a sense of desperation and loss. “Trying to find myself and get back to you.”

“Yeah,” Hutch said on a huff of a breath. “Every hour, the nurses allowed a visitor in for ten minutes…” He looked up at the sky but from his glazed expression, it was clear he wasn’t admiring the darkening heavens. “And I’d sit there… lost.” His voice was barely above a whisper.

Starsky nodded, well aware of the feeling. Of doctors coming by, talking their jargon that he’d only understand one in ten. Bullet only a few inches from the heart. Only that had been Hutch’s shooting, not his own. Hutch healed, just as he was. Except for the memories of that fear, that desperate ache that someone he loved the most had almost died.

No wonder Hutch still clutched so tightly. He couldn’t let go of the fear.

“There was a guy dressed like an intern. Tried to get into your room.” He watched Starsky eat a spoonful of ice cream and fruit with something akin to satisfaction and awe. As if he’d been afraid he might never see that happen again.

“You clobbered the guy?” Starsky asked, to get the discussion back on track. Just like a loose tooth, had to wiggle it until the sucker came out.

“Took him down,” Hutch said, swinging his arm hard as if tackling a linebacker. “But he fought me and ran out—security caught him as he was trying to leave via the ambulance bay.”

So much he had been oblivious to.

“Your wrist?” Starsky prompted, to shed some of his own fears. Hutch had recovered from his bullet wound with no lasting damage and gone back on duty with barely a hitch. Only to receive a wound on the left wrist shortly after Starsky was shot. He’d seen the bandage wrapped around Hutch’s wrist when he woke from his coma.

“Two guys in the hospital parking garage, blocking the car,” Hutch related, his eyes distant as if he could still see the assailant. He put his left arm out. The sultry August weather had both of them in short sleeved t-shirts, so Starsky could clearly see the pinkish scar on his wrist. “One was helping a man in a wheelchair, bent over like he’d collapsed or something. I went over to push him out of the way.”

“And he pulled a knife?” Starsky asked, visualizing the scene as if he’d been there.

“I shot one of ‘em.” Hutch cradled the affected arm. “Handcuffed the other to his car but… still felt like I screwed up. Should have been prepared for another attack.”

“Hutch!” Starsky rebuked him, astonished. “You know that ain’t true. You didn’t cause what happened t’me anymore than you caused….” For some reason he couldn’t think of an appropriate analogy. “Than that fucking Hurricane David hitting the east coast today.”

Hutch quirked a half-hearted smile. “With your name all over it.” He picked up his bowl, the bananas floating in melted ice cream.

“Bet there’s never been a Hurricane Kenneth, huh?” Starsky grinned, some of the tension draining out of both of them. He stuck his spoon in Hutch’s bowl to scoop up one of the banana slices. “But the attack put you on the alert, huh? Knew something was brewing.”

“Yeah.” Hutch nodded. “In a way, that attack galvanized me. Knocked my head straight, and I started going after people associated with Gunther—although I didn’t know it was him yet.”

So hard not to compare every instance of his own shooting with Hutch’s. Yes, there was a world of difference between the two occurrences. Nobody’d been trying to assassinate Hutch; just a scared young girl attempting to flee arrest. But the heart’s memory didn’t understand qualitative distinctions like that. The fickle brain forgot sweet evenings like this one, where the sunset was spectacular and the air like soft bunny fur brushing against the cheek. Instead, it replayed traumatic incidents in nightmares, the-worst-day-in-my-life reel to scare the shit out of a person in his sleep.

Starsky knew Hutch had those dreams. Hutch used to sleep in the chair beside his bed in the hospital and wake up in a panic, stark terror on his face.

Nowadays, here in his own house where Hutch was sleeping on the couch, Starsky had heard him cry out in the night. Had heard Hutch yell “Starsky!” in warning.

Just as he kept dreaming of Hutch lying in the hallway of that suburban house, blood staining his blue jacket, right over his heart. In dreams, Starsky often found Hutch dead. Not always, but enough times that he’d woken, panting and sweating in terror.

The week before, they’d both had nightmares at what must have been the same time, just after two a.m. Luckily, Hutch’s day off. He wasn’t patrolling the streets without Starsky, but he’d been helping Dobey with a gang violence task force. The two of them, sleep deprived and practically nude in the late night heat, had met in the kitchen. Taking snacks into the living room, they’d put their feet up on the coffee table, bare foot against bare foot, eaten the bowls of watermelon and fallen asleep, curled against one another.

Ever since then, they’d simply gotten into the same bed. Saved them from the late night heebie-jeebies. Starsky loved lying next to Hutch, feeling the warmth of that big, long body. Even on the last few sweltering nights, Starsky had relished Hutch’s body touching his. This morning, they’d awakened holding hands, palms sweaty.

The lovely beginning to a really good day, what with the PT goal met and a whole day spent with Hutch. If he could just draw the last of that festering dread that held Hutch in a rigor, Starsky would feel like they could move forward.

Exactly what the future held, he wasn’t sure. But he was grateful that they had one.

“You pounded the pavement, arrested some whippo…” Starsky commented, setting aside his bowl and spoon. “So you weren’t at the hospital when Dobey called.”

Hutch seemed to fold in on himself, the nearly empty bowl tipping out of his lax hand. Starsky grabbed the bowl and placed it on the deck before clasping Hutch’s hands in both of his. Unlike this morning, his hand was cold as ice—a shock on such a hot day.

“Hey,” Starsky said sharply, giving their joined hands a shake. “You’re here now and so am I. Talk to me.”

Nodding, Hutch raised his head to look directly into Starsky’s eyes. “Takes—what? Ten minutes between Metro and BC Gen?”

“I’d say so,” Starsky agreed as if he hadn’t thought of that earlier, grateful that Hutch was moving through the sequence. He just had to get to the end. See that they’d both survived. That they had more to do.

“Probably made it in less than five. I don’t know how.” Hutch sucked in a huge breath, filling his chest. “I ran through the halls, burst through the door. You were alive when I got there.”

“So you never saw what they did?” He hadn’t known that part. He was glad Hutch hadn’t been witness to such a scene. It was bad enough simply watching one’s partner, best friend, hover near death. The times Hutch had had the damned plague and botulism had been horrible, without the high drama of a code blue.

“Dobey and Huggy saw.” Hutch shuddered, finally squeezing Starsky’s hands tightly. “Both said they thought we’d lost you until I got there. That I brought… you back.”

From deep inside, Starsky felt a vibration, akin to the chiming of a bell. As if something significant and precious had just occurred. Not on that day back in May, although that certainly had been one for the record books. No, this was a—what was that word he’d read in otherworldly novels? Portent. A sign.

He’d felt—known—Hutch even as his heartbeat waned. That his life depended on Hutch, exactly as Hutch’s life depended on him. They were intertwined to the depths of their souls.

He’d recognized his abiding love for Hutch ages ago. So long that it went without saying—or so he had thought. Maybe he should voice it out loud. Get it out in the open. Didn’t mean…

What did it mean?

They slept in the same bed, holding hands. Snippets of past conversations suddenly materialized—both things he’d said, and Hutch. That they spent seventy-five percent of the time together, “And you’re not even a good kisser.” “How beautiful your eyes become when you are angry.” “You know I love you, Starsk, but…”

“Starsky?” Hutch gave their still linked hands a little shake, as Starsky had done.

“You were my home, Hutch, my place.” Starsky searched that beloved face. Such a fine man, capable of compassion and violence, whichever was necessary. He needn’t have waited. It was there, painted on every cell in Hutch’s body. Love.

“I love you,” Hutch said quietly into the gentle darkness of the evening.

“I was gonna say that!” Starsky said, startled. He laughed, the chuckles rushing out as if released from a pressure valve that he couldn’t shut off.

Which infected Hutch. Suddenly they were both laughing helplessly, collapsing into each other’s arms from mirth. Starsky braced one foot on the wooden step of the deck he’d been sitting on, the rest of him wrapped around Hutch, feeling their hearts hammering against each other as if connected with a tether. At some point he could not have identified if he’d tried, their laughter had slowed and then stopped, but they were still hugging.

He kissed Hutch. It was so easy, so perfectly reasonable, he couldn’t fathom why they’d never done it before. Or why Hutch had considered him—without any proof—to be a less than desirable kisser.

“Keep going,” Hutch murmured when Starsky took a breath. “This is—“ His kiss was forceful and life-giving. “Everything.”

“I’ll say.” Starsky played his fingers through the feathery blond hair at Hutch’s temple. “Just took us a while, huh?”

“Always said you were a slow learner.” Hutch smiled at him, the fear that had gripped him completely gone.

“Me?” Starsky snorted, pressing a quick kiss on those pink lips because he could. Hutch’s lap wasn’t really as comfortable as a couch, so he settled back onto the step, pressed up against his partner. “Who sat by my bed for two months? You could have brought it up any time.”

“Where do we go from here?“ Hutch asked softly, hooking an arm around Starsky’s back to keep him close. “I think we need…” He bit his bottom lip, clearly aware that what he was about to say wasn’t going to be popular. “An exit plan. I can’t do this much longer.”

Starsky didn’t have to be told what ‘this’ was. Working on the street, knowing that any moment could be their last. That he was nearly taken out on Metro property would make it all that much harder to walk across that parking lot again. But he had to.

“Raincheck?” Starsky fingered the frayed seam of his jeans, teasing out a thread. “The PT recommended me for recertification. Hutch, I gotta do that.” He tipped his head, nearly having to crane his neck to look Hutch in the eye since they were so close together. “I need to prove to myself that I can.”

“That’s one bet I’d make,” Hutch said sincerely. “You can do anything you put your mind to.” He paused, listening to the wings of an owl rustling as it flew into the dark sky. “How long do you need? What should we plan for?”

“I certify back on duty by…” Starsky considered his own limitations at this moment and what he could build on. “October, November at the latest? We go into 1980 strong, together.”

“With a kiss at midnight?” Hutch nudged him in the ribs.

Exactly onto one of the scars that sent weird zingy sensations down Starsky’s left side, but he didn’t say anything. That was his reality, and what he had to deal with. If he had to chase after some dumb-assed purse snatcher, or bring down a drug dealer, he had to contend with the odd pangs without dropping out of the game.

“If that’s all you want coming, I got surprises for you, buddy,” Starsky teased. “BJ, frottage, a whole new language coming your way.”

“Should I study up?” Hutch smirked. “Think I remember that BJ thing from the circle jerks we did back in Duluth.”

“You musta gone to a progressive high school.” Starsky nodded in appreciation. On the deck, with the outside light over their shoulders, he could see the mound swelling in Hutch’s groin at their ‘dirty’ talk. “One year. I want to know I got my mojo back before we—“

“Quit?” Hutch took his hand. “November of 1980.”

Starsky felt like they’d just promised each other solemn vows without saying the words. Like they’d gotten married on a summer night with a crescent moon above their heads. “Yeah. We go out together, never looking back.”