Starsky & Hutch Advent Calendar 2016

Author’s Note: When Dawnebeth made her ‘Tuesday Recs’ on 10/25/16 on the 911 lj site, asking for readers’ favorite S&H stories with ‘Love’ in the title, I realized I hadn’t written one, yet. Such an oversight couldn’t be allowed to continue, so….

A 2016 afternoon.

“Uh… uh, Hutch?”

“Hmmmmm?”

“I think I crashed Google.”

“What?” Hutch rolled over and opened a bleary eye. “What did you say?”

“I, uh, I think I just caused Google to crash.”

Hutch sat up, pushed pillows behind his back and rubbed the sleepiness from his eyes. “How could you do something like that, Starsk?” he asked, sharply. “Why would you do something like that?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Starsky, semi-whined. “I just typed one word in the search line.”

“What word,” Hutch asked, suspiciously.

“Love,” was his soft answer.

“And you think that caused the largest search engine in the world to… implode?” Hutch queried, dumbfounded.

“Looks like it,” Starsky replied. “At first, nothing happened after I hit ‘Enter.’ But then I could almost see the ones and zeros smokin’, they were trying so hard to come up with references. The little number of expected hits kept spiraling up, the last I saw it was over ninety-nine billion and then… the screen went white.” He cast a soulful look at Hutch. “Does that mean it died?”

“I don’t know what it means,” Hutch replied, soberly. “Here, let me see your laptop.” He grabbed his reading glasses off the nightstand.

Starsky passed him the small, thin, lightweight piece of technology. Hutch hit a few keys. “Oh, good, at least Internet Explorer is still viable. Let’s try Bing.”

“So I didn’t kill the little feller entirely?” Starsky asked, hopefully, his chin against Hutch’s bicep, granny glasses slipping down his nose.

Hutch gently pushed the glasses back up and dropped a kiss into the convenient salt ‘n’ chocolate curls. “Nope. Possibly only Google’s been affected by your apparently impossible search. They’ll undoubtedly have the problem fixed in no time.”

Starsky sat up but scooted close, putting an arm around Hutch’s shoulders and leaning down to watch the flying fingers.

“Why were you looking up ‘love’ in the first place, Starsk?” Hutch asked as he tried various other search engines successfully.

“Well…” Starsky began, sounding slightly embarrassed, “when I couldn’t get to sleep after we laid down for our nap, I rolled over and watched you.” He ran his fingers into Hutch’s lustrous, silky soft hair. “The sun was peekin’ through the slats in the blinds and couldn’t seem to make up its mind if it wanted to shine you up all silvery, or golden.”

Hutch reached up, caught his lover’s hand with his left and brought it around to his mouth. Slowly, while continuing to type with his right, he kissed and sucked lightly on each of the finger tips.

Starsky’s breathing deepened and he closed his eyes.

“You were saying?” Hutch said, mischievously.

Starsky shuddered and opened his eyes. “Where was I?”

Hutch swallowed a satisfied smile. “You couldn’t get to sleep.”

“Oh, yeah.” Clearly reluctantly, Starsky took his hand away from Hutch’s ministrations and sat back against the headboard. “You were lyin’ there so peaceful and gorgeous and I thought of a Gary Cooper movie.”

Hutch stopped touching keys and looked at his partner. “Which one?”

“I couldn’t remember the whole title so I tried the one word, ‘love’.”

“And that caused all this?” Hutch asked, lifting his hands off the keyboard.

“Yup,” Starsky agreed. “I’ve thought of it now though” he went on quickly.

“Okay,” Hutch replied, typing again. “So which film was it?”

“Love in the Afternoon,” was his timid reply.

Hutch smiled radiantly. “That’s beautiful, Starsk.”

Starsky’s expressive face lit up. “You don’t think it’s silly?”

Hutch caught Starsky’s left hand again and kissed it. “Of course I don’t, dummy.” He went back to typing. “The older we get the more I enjoy your mushy moments.” Sending a quick smile into Starsky’s eyes, he added, “Plus the fact that we both still have them.”

“Okay,” Starsky went on, sounding happy. “Movin’ right along then, you remember the flick?”

“Sure I do,” Hutch replied, “it’s a classic. Billy Wilder directed Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in what I think the reviewers called a ‘sparkling romantic comedy’.”

“Yeah,” Starsky said, sounding pleased with himself.

“Here’s a still,” Hutch said, softly, turning the computer so that Starsky could more easily see the screen.

Starsky adjusted his glasses again and leaned over Hutch’s shoulder.

A frame from the film showed Hepburn at her loveliest, and Cooper at his most dashing, about to kiss.

“Yeah,” Starsky breathed.

Hutch closed the laptop and put it on the floor before turning to his long time partner, best friend and lover. Taking both their reading glasses off and dropping them on the discarded computer, he took Starsky in his arms.

“Am I Hepburn here?” Starsky asked coquettishly, “or are you?”

“Oh, I think,” Hutch mused, “with that gleam in your eyes, you’ll have to be Maurice Chevalier.”

Starsky slid down to lie supine under Hutch’s investigative hands. “Chevalier and Coop, huh?” he muttered, sexily. “I think I can get behind that.”

“Under it, you mean,” Hutch laughed, beginning to plant soft, wet kisses along Starsky’s jaw and down his throat.

Gasping, Starsky threaded his fingers in Hutch’s long, golden silvery strands. “Think we could, maybe, take turns?”

“Oh, yeah!”

Two long time lovers
find joy and fulfillment in
afternoon delight

END

Click here to read Part 1

Chapter Three

Starsky stretched out on the hotel room’s luxurious, over-sized bed—a treat he planned to take full advantage of since they had a four-day break before resuming their typically frenetic schedule. He splayed his arms wide, felt the familiar tug of scar tissue and held in a grunt before drawing his palms under the back of his head.

Hutch came out of the bathroom towel-drying his hair and Starsky’s eyes drifted appreciatively over his bare chest and carved biceps. Hutch was as fit and trim as ever. The attributes that had mesmerized all manner of street people and turned informants to putty had done the same to audiences of all ages across the country.

The shirtless man before him enchanted a stadium of thousands with his effortless charm. Now that magnetism narrowed down like a beam of light to focus solely on Starsky. A wave of guilt washed over him as he realized how much he wanted to keep it that way. He willingly shared one part of Hutch with his adoring fans, but this other more intimate part he wanted to hold to himself.

It seemed Hutch had been born to do two things—be a cop and sing. More and more since Starsky had woken up from his coma to see Hutch across the sterile hospital room, Starsky felt he had died and come back to life to do just one. Love Hutch. Exclusive of all others. Whatever that meant. Where ever that lead.
Continue reading →

“Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight; I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight.”

Starsky leaned back, utterly relaxed, and smiled at the pinpoint of light in the darkening sky. “Remember, Ma? Remember the night you taught me that? We’d driven all the way out on Long Island to see Aunt Sadie and Uncle Herb, ‘cause Nicky’d just had his first birthday and they hadn’t met him yet.” He snickered to himself. “Hellava long drive on Pop’s day off but I was only a five-year-old kid so who ever listened to me?”

The night sounds coming from the small peaceful garden began to pick up as evening descended.

“Remember, Ma? We were sitting on their stoop after supper, swatting mosquitoes and listening to Aunt Sadie coo and babble at Nick. You noticed the star and taught me the poem. You laughed though, said it was probably Venus, ‘cause it was so bright, but that, since Venus is also known as the evening, or morning star, it was okay to wish on it.”

His smile softened. “I did, ya know. That night and every night after that when I saw the first star of evening, wherever I was.”

Through the open window behind him, his partner murmured drowsily, “Starsk?”

“‘m out here, Hutch,” he replied, gently. “Be in in a minute.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

Starsky smiled more deeply. “This isn’t Venus tonight though, Ma. It’s almost directly overhead so it’s probably Vega. Hutch’s been teaching me the constellations whenever we’re out of the city. It’s the only time we can see enough of the stars to make sense of ‘em. It’s my wish star for tonight.”

He settled back against the sun-warmed wall of the cabin they’d rented for the special occasion and stared up, unblinkingly, at the brightening source of photons. “Gonna be a different kind of wish though.” Breathing deeply, he lowered his already soft voice. “I wish… to thank whoever or whatever’s out there, listening. Thank you for my life and all the times you’ve brought me through the rough stuff.”

Turning his head, he looked lovingly at his other half, moving restlessly in the big almost-empty bed. “Thank you even more for his life, and everything you helped him survive.”

Leaning back again, he slowly rotated the ring on the third finger of his left hand. “Most of all, thank you for our life, and the fact that now we can live it openly, together.”

“Starsk?”

“Out here, babe.”

“I know. I can hear you muttering.”

“Just talkin’ to Ma, and the first star.”

“Ah, Venus is up, huh?” Hutch said, knowingly.

“It’s not Venus, smarty pants,” Starsky replied, tenderly. “I think it’s Vega.”

“Probably,” Hutch said, distractedly. “But come back to bed, please, love? We’re on our honeymoon and I’m lonely.”

“No, you’re insatiable,” Starsky said, chuckling sexily.

“That, too,” was Hutch’s considered response.

Getting up, Starsky spared one last look at his wish star. “Thank you.”

First star of evening
Hears everyone’s deepest wish
A few are granted

END