December 22nd- Quake, Rattle, and Noel by Dawnwind

As earthquakes go, it wasn’t all that impressive. Hutch had lived in Southern California long enough to know the vagaries of plate tectonics, not to mention the subtle differences between a three on the Richter scale and a four. This one had to be slightly over four—possibly a four point two—lasting close to twenty seconds with a series of sharp jolts and a bit of rolling in the middle. The windows rattled noisily and the pile of Christmas cards slithered off Hutch’s desk onto the floor. Plus, there was that awful rumbling sound, like a far away freight train advancing rapidly.

Tossed bodily onto Starsky by a particularly rough jolt, Hutch grabbed the back of the couch with both hands. Starsky jerked to his feet as if about to run for the supposed protection of a framed doorway.

The shaking abated. The lights flickered. The TV screen went to snow and then blinked out as the power cut off abruptly just as Ebenezer Scrooge proclaimed his fear of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.

Now, stillness settled over the apartment, a weird sense of peace as if the Earth was apologizing for its tantrum. Hutch knew without any kind of geological insight that this was a random quake. There would be no aftershocks.

“Fuck,” Starsky said succinctly, sitting down. “Now we won’t get to see the end of the movie.”

“You’ve seen A Christmas Carol,” Hutch said absently, straining to hear beyond the walls of the building. For what, he wasn’t sure. People injured or in distress? Catastrophe? Despite the power outage, he knew that most Bay City earthquakes caused little to no damage. Didn’t stop his galloping heart rate.

The dark seemed weirdly darker than usual, especially since it was only five pm. Starsky’s illuminated watch glowed overly bright in the blackness.

“You’ve seen that movie every year since you were ten. You said so yourself,” he finished his own statement to give some sort of semblance of normalcy to the evening. Should he be doing something useful rather than sitting here next to Starsky on the couch?

There were no screams coming from the street. No annoying car alarms set off by the vibrations from the shifting ground. So why did Hutch feel so off-kilter? As if he were meant to do something different. Something new.

“I’ll get some candles so we don’t have to open presents by feel,” Starsky said.

“The power won’t be out that long!” Hutch said, unaccountably irritated.

“Candles in the kitchen?” Starsky prompted as if he’d expected Hutch to be up and telling him where to go immediately.

“Drawer by the sink.” Hutch pointed in that direction, then realized Starsky couldn’t see his hand and let it drop onto his lap. He was hard. When had that happened?

Starsky stood up, moving confidently through the house to the kitchen. Without the light from street lamps, it was so murky Hutch couldn’t actually see Starsky. But there were no bumps or muttered curses from him colliding with furniture.

Hutch let out a breath he hadn’t consciously been holding, squinting as if he could see Starsky. With his eyes growing more accustomed to the dark, he made out a vaguely blacker man-sized shape in the kitchen as Starsky opened the fridge.

“Want anything?” Starsky called. “May as well eat anything that could spoil since you think the electricity’ll be out for a while.”

“Beer,” Hutch answered, hands cupped over his bulge. What was it about an earthquake that had him aroused? Like the punch line to the old joke about making the earth move…. What had he been thinking about right before the quake?

He and Starsky had been spread across the couch, half intertwined as they often were when watching a movie, Starsky snug against Hutch’s left side, eating from the bowl of popcorn tucked between his legs.

Instinctively, Hutch put out a hand and found the popcorn, setting the nearly empty bowl onto the coffee table. In those last seconds before the irrefutable proof of California’s unstable nature, Hutch had reached over to take a handful of popcorn and grabbed hold of Starsky’s groin instead.

Oh. That.

No wonder Starsky hadn’t said anything in the immediate aftermath. He’d been in shock.

Hutch thought back to the sensations that had flooded him in that far too brief contact: the fingers of his left hand brushing against Starsky’s curls along the back of the couch, his right practically clamped over Starsky’s denim-covered cock.

“Hey.” Starsky was suddenly standing directly in front of him without Hutch having any awareness that he’d returned from the kitchen. “You want this?”

Starsky unerringly placed the chilled bottle against Hutch’s hot hand.

“Y-you find the candles?” Hutch asked, startled out of his reverie.

“Decided we didn’t need them.” Starsky sat down, the cushions sinking under his weight, almost dumping Hutch over onto his lap.

Hutch had to clutch the arm of the couch to orient himself. “I thought—“ he started, feeling confused. What was Starsky talking about?

“Do you ever close your eyes in the dark?” Starsky asked.

His voice was low and husky, with a mysterious quality that made Hutch want to grab something other than the nubby fabric under his fingers.

“Why would I do that?” he forced himself to say, throat dry as dust. He took a swallow of beer, so shockingly cold that his tongue went numb. “It’s already dark.”

“To be able to see.” Starsky put both hands on Hutch’s cheeks, turning Hutch toward him. “When the lights are out,” he said very softly. He stroked up the sides of Hutch’s face, running both thumbs across the silky hair of Hutch’s brows. Gently pressing the pads of his fingers over Hutch’s eyes to close them, he whispered. “What do you see?”

“You.” With his eyes shut, the world seemed brighter; flashes and pops of brilliant color surrounded the afterimage of Starsky’s curls.

Emboldened by some divine providence brought on by a Christmas Eve earthquake, Hutch breached the mere inches between them and kissed Starsky’s mouth. There was no fumbling, no awkward attempt to find the right angle like his first kiss with Mary Jane Larson in the ninth grade. This was exactly right.

“Yeah,” Starsky said, sounding smug. “That’s what I thought.”

“How’d you know?” Hutch murmured, burying his fingers in Starsky’s luxuriant hair, inhaling the unique scent of his partner. Starsky smelled of beer, the potted evergreen he’d hauled in earlier to use as a Christmas tree, and a hint of leather jacket.

“I just did, ‘specially after you pawed my dick.” Starsky chuckled, his lips grazing Hutch’s with tantalizing sweetness. “Was planning on it being my Christmas present—at least I hoped so. Earthquake kind of forced my hand.” Resting his head in the curve between Hutch’s shoulder and neck, Starsky nuzzled against Hutch’s cheek, pressing kisses wherever he could reach.

Hutch kissed him deeply, emotions flooding his soul. Love for Starsky, the best man in his life. Arousal for Starsky, the sexiest person he knew. And gratitude…for the capricious nature of the San Andreas fault, which had thrown them together—literally.

Starsky chuckled, hugging Hutch closer, his hard cock shoved against Hutch’s. When had their groins aligned so perfectly? Hutch would only have to slide a hand between their bodies and pull down Starsky’s zipper. Maybe Starsky would unzip Hutch’s—and they could…

Hutch wasn’t sure there was a specific word for that delicious image of their merging, naked flesh rubbing together, causing friction, causing moving…starting a quake that he’d never recover from. Who needed electricity when he had Starsky? He rose, pulling his partner with him.

The lights came on, brilliant after the darkness. To his dazzled eyes, Starsky seemed to glow with inner radiance. Kissing was more powerful in the brightness—no longer a secret. This was real, verified.

Hutch felt renewed, reborn.

On the TV, Scrooge was waking to a suddenly wonderful Christmas morning, a new man.

Deftly unzipping his own fly, Starsky muttered, “Turn the TV off,” and inserted his hand exactly where Hutch had been hoping he would. Starsky pulled down Hutch’s zipper to free the captive. After the brief command, he locked lips with Hutch as if the connection was necessary for life.

Hutch was certain that it was, but he could still bluff. “Thought you wanted to watch the end,” he countered, beginning to steer them toward the bedroom one step at a time. Directing four legs—plus two cocks anxious to catch up on lost time—was a bit like the time he and Starsky placed last in the annual police inter-departmental three-legged race. Frustrating with a side of stimulation.

Starsky tightened his grip around both cocks, which did all manner of amazing things to Hutch’s already heightened arousal. He wanted to shove Starsky against a wall and have him there.

“I’ve—“ Starsky inhaled, almost swallowing Hutch’s thrusting tongue in the process, “I’ve seen Christmas Carol before. You—naked—is all new.” He reared back so suddenly, still holding securely to his prize, that Hutch almost stumbled against him. “I want to see you naked.”

Not one to take opportunity for granted, Hutch noticed that Starsky was indeed up against the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom. “You go first.”

Starsky gazed intensely at Hutch, then slowly swept his eyes from the crown of Hutch’s head to the crown of his penis, leaving behind scorching heat. Sure he was sizzling, Hutch wanted to rip off every stitch of clothing immediately. Since he’d told Starsky to do so, he waited, albeit breathlessly.

“What about—?” Starsky waggled their snugged cocks.

The motion sent skyrockets through his brain, his core thrumming like he was sitting astride Starsky’s Yamaha cycle. Hutch forced himself not to come—something he hadn’t had to do in years. He had waited for this joining far too long. He was not going to spew like a boy with his first wet dream. He was stronger than that.

Although when Starsky released his handful, Hutch wanted to beg him to wrap his fist around Hutch’s member just once. Just one precious time.

Starsky raised his eyes to meet Hutch’s with a sudden vulnerability, a rare glimpse of naked yearning changing the dynamics. Starsky shy? Uncertain about their chances as a couple? Hutch read everything and more that hovered unsaid between them, and nodded. They would weather any storm. As long as they had each other. That would not change once they had sex.

For encouragement, Hutch unbuttoned his plaid shirt, dropping it onto the floor. It was both freeing and terrifying, especially the way Starsky stared at his bare chest as if awestruck.

Starsky yanked his shirt over his head, the muscles of his chest sliding over ribs and sternum with a force that made Hutch’s mouth water. He captured Starsky’s arms above his head, the red and green tee emblazoned with “All I want for Christmas is—“ held like a flag of surrender in one hand.

“Like that,” Hutch said, latching onto one of Starsky’s pert nipples with his mouth. Starsky cried out, lust peaking his nipple to a hard mound that seemed to surge onto Hutch’s tongue.

“H-hutch…” Starsky stuttered, husky with need. “I want—“

“What?” Hutch asked, his tongue gliding from one nipple to the other, a skater on a hairy rink. He liked the crispy rasp of Starsky’s chest hair against his tongue and did it a second time for fun.

Starsky nearly melted against the wall, his knees buckling, his breathing coming in noisy gasps that spurred Hutch on. He swept his arms around Starsky’s shoulders and hips, lifting him up as he once had in 1975, at the Italian restaurant. So long ago. So many opportunities lost. This was their Christmas present. They could celebrate with linguini with clams later.

“Put me down!” Starsky squirmed ineffectually. “I’m not some prince you can take back to your castle and have your way with.”

He was heavy. Hutch could concede that point. “Not so sure you have a valid argument. It’s my castle,” he glanced around at the familiar walls with a slight smugness as he carried Starsky, “and you’re my prince.”

In retaliation, he dumped Starsky onto the bed.

Starsky bounced, laughing. “What does that make you?”

“The king,” Hutch decided. He was not usually so giddy with lovers. Starsky brought that out in him. Starsky would be his very last lover—for the rest of his life, if he had his way about it. “I do live here.”

“King of Venice, huh?” Legs dangling over the edge of the bed, Starsky leaned back on both elbows, almost at the right height to take Hutch in his mouth.

Hutch could so easily imagine that happening that he shoved down his cords and stepped out of them.

“What’s that?” Starsky stared directly at Hutch’s erect cock, amused and very clearly horny. He licked his lips. “Your scepter?”

“I could crown you with it,” Hutch teased, so light-hearted he could float away on bubbles of joy.

“Nah.” Starsky sat up straight. “I kinda like being the prince in this story, come to serve my king.” He’d clearly thought through his mission. He stroked Hutch’s groin down to the crinkly blond hair clustered around the base.

The sensation was fantastic, feathers with a hint of fingernails. Hutch inhaled quickly, his insides quaking as if the earth had shifted again. So much else had shifted, he wondered if the world would look completely different when he and Starsky left the house.

Turned out, Starsky was a master at his craft. He gave Hutch the blow-job of his life. Hutch orgasmed so hard he closed his eyes to relish the aftereffects, seeing brilliant colors under his lids, reds and purples that transitioned to yellow and orange.

Starsky held onto him, keeping him upright until he recovered. Exactly as they had always done for each other. This new phase of their lives would not change what had come before. He and Starsky had always been complete together; now they were almost merged.

Hutch laughed a bit hysterically, opening his eyes to see the one person he desired right in front of him.

“What you laughing about?” Starsky gave him a “talk to me” squint.

“Wondering if I’ll suddenly want salami for breakfast and you’ll start making shakes with kelp and Vitamin E in the morning.” Hutch snorted, dropping down beside Starsky, those joyful bubbles erupting inside him until he was overcome with giggles.

“You’re crazy!” Starsky recoiled, screwing up his face in mock disgust, clearly amused with Hutch’s antics. “I love you, Hutch, but that’s never going to happen.”

The laughter subsiding, Hutch lay on his side, gazing at his partner. Seeing Starsky with the eyes of a lover seemed so different, yet Starsky was exactly the same as he had always been. How could that be?

Those thickly lashed blue eyes, riotous curls, and crooked grin were more precious than any gem Hutch could buy. Both he and Starsky had said, “I love you” before, on more than one occasion. It wasn’t new and yet it was, because it felt all the more special today. This was not in jest, not a love-you-like-a-brother utterance. This was love. The deep, abiding kind, meant to carry them through to old age. That knowledge healed wounds Hutch hadn’t known he had, carried from so many damaged relationships throughout his life.

“This is for real, isn’t it?” Hutch asked softly. “Love. Real love.”

“Yeah.”

Starsky smiled, that mixture of mischievous and tender that never failed to melt Hutch inside. Not that he’d ever told Starsky. They had no problems discussing their feelings—more easily than other men, that is—but there was a limit. Guys didn’t act all soapy—as Starsky called it. Guys were physical; Hutch thought of the many times he had body-checked Starsky on the basketball court or smacked him on the arm simply to touch him. Or the belly pats they’d both indulged in on any given occasion. Touch was what got them through the worst crises.

“I love you, Starsk.” Hutch took his hands, lacing their fingers together.

“You’re getting suspiciously misty eyed,” Starsky accused him. “You start turning into a damp ball of Hutchinson and I’m going to the Pits.”

“On Christmas Eve?” Hutch blinked away the evidence. “Rude, crude, and unrefined, as my mother would say. Not sporting, old chap.”

“Even scolding sounds better in a British accent,” Starsky said, breaking their handhold to reverently touch Hutch’s face. “Since you’ve convinced me not to go for a beer, what else do you have in mind?”

“You’re hard as a rock,” Hutch commented, seeing Starsky’s cock pushing through the gap in his open fly. “And still wearing jeans. Could…do something about that.”

“Y’know what’s weird?” Starsky asked rhetorically.

“You thinking?” Hutch responded as he should. No need to throw out all convention simply because they’d now had sex. Once.

“You’re hilarious,” Starsky deadpanned, leaning in to kiss his lips and then his neck.

Hutch shivered, goosebumps popping out all over. And he wasn’t cold at all—more like heated from the inside out.

“No, it’s that I don’t really care that you got your…” Starsky poked a finger at Hutch’s soft penis as if comparing the two, “rocks off. Because I’m happy to be here, half-naked with you. I don’t want it to end. And it feels like, if we move, go back to work, once we’re cops again—“

“I could interject here and point out that we never stopped being cops.” Hutch added a goofy grin for effect and was rewarded when Starsky stuck out his tongue at him.

“I mean, this is like magic.” Starsky waved his fingers at the darkened world outside the window and the red, yellow, and blue lights strung in an apartment window across the way. “Like the earthquake took us—“

“To Narnia?” The world popped into his brain, memories of the novels his grandparents had sent from England suddenly there as if he’d read them yesterday.

“You read those?” Starsky asked in amazement, his eyes like shining blue stars.

“I’d counter with—you read those?” Hutch retorted. “I’m the one with a mother raised in Oxford, literally ‘round the corner from where C.S. Lewis lived.”

“I’d read anything that took me away from a brownstone in New York.” Starsky sat up abruptly, bringing his knees up under his chin. His penis poked out between his legs in a slightly comical manner, but Hutch was more caught up in the pensive, faraway look in Starsky’s eyes. “After my dad was shot.”

“Doodletown.” Hutch recalled Starsky comforting Lisa when she was going into court after she was assaulted.

Starsky nodded. “And Wonderland, Oz. I got lost in other worlds, where magical stuff happened. Nobody died forever. No grief,” Starsky said softly, turning his face to rest his cheek on his knees and still look at Hutch. “Ma saw what was going on, knew I was in a bad place, so she sent me to California. Supposed to be warm in the winter, to give me a change.”

“Your mom is the smart one in the family.” Hutch listened, gently playing with one of Starsky’s curls, drawing it out so that it would spiral around his finger.

“Arrived on the coldest fucking Christmas Eve Bay City had had in years.” Starsky chuckled. “And there was an earthquake. Probably barely a three point five—nothing major, but I was shook to the core.”

“Good God,” Hutch replied, molding his hand to the back of Starsky’s head, fingers nestled in the curls.

“I figured Ma was just plain wrong about California. You couldn’t go swimming in December and there weren’t any palm trees on the street where my aunt lived.” Starsky smiled ruefully, leaning into Hutch’s caress. “Frost at noon, and the ground moving when I walked into the house was more like one of those stories than anything I coulda imagined.”

He rested his head on Hutch’s shoulder and Hutch pulled him in close. “Rough beginning, huh?”

“But the house was lit up for Christmas—fire in the hearth, stockings hung on the mantel. Ma’s whole apartment; the place me, Nicky, Ma, and my pop used to live in together woulda fit into Aunt Rose’s front room.” He closed his eyes as if picturing the scene. “You’ve seen the house. Next to John Blaine’s old place.”

“I have.” It had been brown with white shutters with a basketball hoop over the garage. Starsky had told him the paint colors had been white with black shutters in his day, but the hoop was the same.

“Ol’ Bing was singing songs on the stereo, my Uncle Bob was making crab for dinner—something I’d never eaten—and my cousins were stringing popcorn for the tree.” Starsky huffed out a breath, clearly reliving his feelings of other-worldliness.

“Sounds a bit like the Christmases at our house in the fifties,” Hutch said, wanting to step back in time to tell that fourteen-year-old Davey that everything would work out. “Except for the crab. We always had duck.”

“Like any kid, I knew about Santa and getting presents for Christmas,” Starsky went on. “Even though we didn’t celebrate, and no matter what some people think, Chanukah’s not the same holiday. The candles—the hope of light is the same, though. I needed that hope.”

“How long had your father been dead by then?” Hutch prompted.

“He died in August—blistering hot, the streets all sticky like the tar was melting.” Starsky bit his lip. “I needed to find something good about life again, and there wasn’t much left in New York. Uncle Bob read the story of Jesus’ birth from the Bible—about the baby in swaddling clothes, angels, n’wisemen.”

“Luke?” Hutch asked. He was a minister’s grandson, he liked to keep his Gospels straight. “Seems kind of strange since you were raised Jewish.”

“I think they were just doing what they always did on Christmas Eve,” Starsky answered philosophically. “Aunt Rose converted to Christianity when she got married.” He pointed to the Christmas tree just visible in Hutch’s living room, the colored lights softly glowing. “All of a sudden, I had fantasy—the whole damned thing was terrific. There were presents for me, eggnog and crab at the same time, which Ma wouldn’t never have done ‘cause it’s tref—y’know—“

Hutch knew enough about Jewish dietary laws to remember that shellfish were not kosher. Drinking dairy with meat was breaking yet another law. “Leviticus,” he said, to prove his Old Testament knowledge.

Starsky rolled his eyes in teasing disdain. “We didn’t ever go swimming that winter, but the sun came out the next day and I played basketball with my cousins Ed and James. It was all kinda magical. To me, it didn’t matter how people worshipped. Just that there was love and a way out of sadness.”

“You found religion?” Hutch asked, quite surprised, because Starsky had never mentioned any of this before. He didn’t go to Jewish services. He owned a Star of David and a menorah, had even once muttered a prayer in Hebrew over a rabbi killed in a robbery on Washington Street. Hutch was the one who felt the urge, the deep need to pray in a church once in a while.

“Nah. Didn’t go to church or nothing. Christmas was something I wanted to celebrate forever. Life, love, miracles… Hope.” Starsky stretched out his legs suddenly, rubbing his calf. “Got a cramp,” he whined.

Hutch gladly massaged Starsky’s jeans-covered calf. This had been such an amazing and utterly different evening that what he’d expected. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, but he wanted to find out. “But you stayed in California.”

“When Ma phoned to send me a return ticket, I told her I wanted to go to Bay City High for a semester. Turns out I graduated from there.” He placed both hands over Hutch’s, squeezing. “I’d found my place. It wasn’t perfect yet—far from it. There weren’t the same kind of gangs as in New York, but I hung with some rough kids, like Huggy and Jackson Walters, but they got me through. I got through ‘Nam, and then—“

“Went to the police academy,” Hutch finished, because he knew how the story ended. Or how it began. He’d found his place in the narrative. “I met you.”

“I met you,” Starsky corrected with a devilish smile. “A Minnesota blond Viking with all those rigid rules on what to do and how to do them. Cured you of that, didn’t I?”

“Taught me a few things, as well,” Hutch confirmed. “Learn something new from you every day, love.” He insinuated his right hand between Starsky’s legs, flicking his fingertips against the blunt head of Starsky’s cock. “Like how to make you believe in another miracle.”

“I dunno…” Starsky’s introspective mood had evaporated. His soft grin was the Christmas gift Hutch would cherish forever. “Helping that woman give birth the same week we earned the call sign, zebra three…. That will be pretty hard to top.” Starsky gasped when Hutch closed his fingers around his erect length.

“That was special,” Hutch agreed, remembering the feel of a wiggling, wet human being slide into his hands. “Love, life, hope. Those are the most important.” He ran his thumb up the underside of Starsky’s cock, scraping the thick vein with his nail.

Starsky would have risen off the bed if Hutch didn’t have him anchored. “What the hell was that?” he asked in astonishment.

“Nobody ever did that to you?” Hutch grinned fiendishly. Gillian had demonstrated that little trick for him.

“N-no, but do it…again.” Starsky was clearly having difficulty speaking, gulping lungfuls of air. “Talk about—“

“A miracle?” Hutch chuckled and repeated the performance.

Starsky threw his head back and came, his chest arching, arms braced against the mattress. Hutch bunched up the sheet to catch the semen, grateful he and Starsky were together. He’d never expected this to happen, and yet he had. Like a gift he’d waited all his life to open, only to find it was exactly what he’d had all along.

“You’re my miracle, Hutch,” Starsky whispered when he could speak. He peeled out of his jeans, discarding them and the wet sheet at the same time. Lying down, he melded his warm body against Hutch’s.

“Miracle doesn’t even begin to describe you.” Hutch placed a reverent kiss on Starsky’s breastbone, sliding his arm around Starsky’s shoulders until he could feel the uneven contour of the scar on his back. Proof of survival after that December night in the Italian restaurant three years earlier. “Merry Christmas.” He settled down against his lover, content. Not just California, but his whole world had truly shifted on its axis, and he couldn’t be happier.

“All I want for Christmas is my best pal, Hutch,” Starsky sang sweetly in his ear, cuddling close.

“Guess I can return the things I bought,” Hutch mused sleepily, “since you’re satisfied with free sex…”

“Don’t you dare!” Starsky pounced, rolling Hutch over onto his back. He gave a little bounce that echoed the jolt and roll of the earthquake’s force. “Time for presents!”

Hutch grinned up into that beloved face. “Always will be with you, babe.”

FIN