December 2nd- You Can’t Save Them All by Lilibet, art by Nicol Tyler

Even at dusk, the blond hair was like a bea­con.

“Damn. Why’d he have to walk so far down the beach? I’m get­ting too old for this shit.” He pulled up the col­lar of his navy blue BCPD Acad­e­my fleece jack­et and start­ed the long trek through the soft sand.

As he got close enough to see more clear­ly, he spied the two remain­ing beers of a six-pack. That’s not good, he thought to him­self.

With­out ever look­ing around, Hutch greet­ed Starsky from where he sat in the sand. “Hey.”

“Hey, your­self.”

“How’d you know where I was?”

“When you did­n’t come home, I called the office. Min­nie filled me in. I was hop­ing you’d be at Hug­gy’s since it’s the mid­dle of win­ter.”

Starsky start­ed to sit, but lost his bal­ance and fell into Hutch.

“Easy there, tur­bo,” Hutch said as he reached out, caught Starsky, and helped him the rest of the way down.

Starsky point­ed at the beer. “Care to share?”

“Those are yours. If you weren’t so late get­ting here, you’d have got­ten three.”

Starsky opened a beer and took a long swal­low. “It must’ve been a hell of a day. You’re sit­ting here in the dark, on the cold beach, and haven’t even tak­en your tie off. Wan­na tell me about it?”

“No.”

Starsky sighed. “You can’t save them all.”

“I did­n’t even save one of them, dammit! And he had two more we did­n’t even know about in the base­ment.”

Starsky felt his part­ner’s pain as if it were his own. “But he won’t get any­more. And you know at least their fam­i­lies will now have some clo­sure.”

“Fuck clo­sure. It’s just not enough, Starsk. I don’t think I can do this any­more.”

Starsky should have been shocked by Hutch’s con­fes­sion, but in all hon­esty, he’d been expect­ing the dam to break for over a year. And he knew he should have had a solu­tion wait­ing but now he was on the spot and had to think fast.

“But we’ve only got, what is it, anoth­er four years until we get our pen­sions. You can’t quit now. We just got­ta find some­thing else for you to do. Babs keeps ask­ing when you’re com­ing to work with us at the acad­e­my. He’s got an open­ing when Sim­my retires next month.”

Starsky nudged him with his elbow, until Hutch looked at him. “Think how much fun we’d have back togeth­er again. Those kids won’t know what hit ’em after we take them around the dri­ving course a few times. It’ll be like ol’ times cruis­ing our beat.”

Hutch smiled ever so slight­ly. “Got it all worked out, do you?”

Starsky reached for Hutch’s hand and entwined their fin­gers. “I don’t have to have it all worked out. As long as we’re togeth­er, I just know it will work out.”

Hutch leaned over and gave him a gen­tle kiss on the cheek.

Maybe it was the dark that gave Starsky the courage to ask the next ques­tion. One that he’d long want­ed to ask. Or maybe it was because he knew the dark would give Hutch a chance to answer hon­est­ly, with­out Starsky first see­ing the answer in his eyes.

“Do you ever regret tak­ing our badges back after we threw them in the ocean over there?”

Starsky felt Hutch stiff­en, but he’d learned long ago to wait out the response. He did­n’t have patience for a lot of things in life, but Hutch had taught him the art of patience in a con­ver­sa­tion.

Starsky was begin­ning to think Hutch had­n’t heard the ques­tion after all, but then came the soft reply.

“Yes and no.”

“Wan­na elab­o­rate?”

Hutch closed his eyes; Starsky could bare­ly hear him over the crash of the waves.

“Yes. If we’d stayed off the force you’d have nev­er been shot.”

Starsky was not sur­prised by his answer. He had nev­er recov­ered the mem­o­ries from that day but Hutch, even now, still had night­mares about the shoot­ing. He would some­times bolt upright in bed unable to breathe, shout­ing, “Starsky! Get Down!” As the years had gone by, the dreams less­ened in both inten­si­ty and fre­quen­cy, and Starsky could often calm Hutch back to sleep with just a gen­tle touch.

“And the no,” Starsky prompt­ed.

“If you had­n’t been shot, I don’t know that either one of us would have ever had the guts to take the next step. And I can’t imag­ine what life would have been like for the last fif­teen years if we weren’t togeth­er. How about you?”

Now it was Starsky’s turn to take a minute before answer­ing. “Oh, I think we would have fig­ured us out, even­tu­al­ly. And I think Gun­ther would have kept after us no mat­ter where we were. But main­ly, I don’t like to think about it. I mean, I don’t think we’d have got­ten very far as porn stars.”

Hutch chor­tled and squeezed Starsky’s hand.

Starsky squeezed back. “Come on, Butch. Help me up and let’s go home. These old bones can’t take the chill.”

“But you did­n’t fin­ish your oth­er beer.”

“One of us needs to dri­ve home. And since you’ve had four, I don’t think it would look good on your acad­e­my appli­ca­tion if the SVU Chief was recent­ly stopped for drunk dri­ving.”

Hutch stood up and grabbed Starsky’s fore­arm in a sailor’s hand­shake and pulled him to his feet. They walked back to the cars slow­ly, tak­ing time to enjoy the rare chance to hold hands while walk­ing togeth­er on the desert­ed beach.

They could just see the cars when Hutch stopped sud­den­ly. “Wait a minute. I’m Sun­dance, you’re Butch.”

“That tie must be too tight. I’ve always been Sun­dance.”

“But I ride a horse bet­ter than you. And I’ve got blond hair. Why do you think I grew that mus­tache for God’s sake?”

“I told you then, and I’ll tell you now, it did­n’t look any bet­ter on you than it did on Red­ford! Plus, you’re always say­ing you’re the brains of this out­fit, and that was def­i­nite­ly Butch. We can’t both be Sun­dance.”

As they walked up the dune to the park­ing lot, Hutch asked, “What are we going to do about my car?”

“I used your radio and told dis­patch to send some­one out here lat­er tonight and take it back to the office. I’ll drop you off in the morn­ing.”

“Starsky, you can’t tell them to do that!”

“I might have pre­tend­ed to be you.”

“Moron.”

They got into Starky’s mid­night blue Charg­er, and as he pulled out of the park­ing lot, he glanced at the man that was his every­thing. He could­n’t be sure if it was the con­ver­sa­tion of the future, or the four beers, but Hutch was def­i­nite­ly more relaxed than when he’d first seen him on the beach.

“Hey! I’ve got a great idea!”

“Starsk, I’m not sure how many more of your great ideas I can take in my life.”

“You’ll love this one. On your first day at the Acad­e­my we’ll wear match­ing Me and Thee shirts. Ya know, just to let every­one know we’re back.”

Hutch laughed out loud. “Won’t Babs be jeal­ous?”

Starsky could­n’t hide his excite­ment. “He already is! He’s always askin’ in what uni­verse is he sit­ting at home divorced and alone while I’m sleep­ing with a tall, leg­gy, blond bomb­shell every night.”

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