Reggie

   Hutch eased the front door shut, even though there were several lights on inside; it was still the middle of the night, long past the time most people were in bed and asleep. Most people, except for the city's drug dealers and murderers, of course; he thought Starsky had been crazy when he'd suggested a criminals union would be the way to go, but now the idea was looking better and better - start at nine, home by five, statutory holidays off. What criminal in his right mind could possibly object to a set-up like that?

   He took of his jacket and kicked his shoes into the corner, turning off lights as he walked to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door, staring blankly inside before realizing that he was too tired to make himself anything to eat. 'Probably too tired to chew,' he thought, with a snort, and grabbed a beer, downing half of it before shutting off the kitchen light and padding into the bedroom.

   The bedside lamps were on in there, too, on both sides. On his stomach, surrounded by a pile of notebooks and texts, lay Starsky, stripped to his shorts and dead to the world. He was snoring softly, a pencil in one hand, half a beer and a surprisingly intact pastrami sandwich on the nightstand. Hutch put his own beer down and shrugged out of his holster, hanging it up in the closet before trying to decide the best way to reclaim the bed from the forest of trees who had given their lives in the name of higher education.

   He dog-eared corners and stuck notebooks in some of the textbooks, placing them gently and quietly in piles on the floor. One particularly heavy volume dropped out of his hands and he swore under his breath, before realizing that Starsky hadn't moved at all, despite the loud crash.

   Testing, he dropped another. Still no movement. After that, he forgot about being quiet and settled for finishing the task as fast as possible.

   Once finished, he stripped out of the rest of his clothes and headed for the bathroom. Despite his tiredness, a twelve-hour stakeout always made him feel unclean, like the filth of criminal activity somehow rubbed off on him through sheer proximity, and he stepped into a steamy shower, just standing there under the spray for a long time, letting the heat and pulse beat down over him. It was hypnotic, and he could have stayed there for hours if the hot water tank would have held out, but eventually he scrubbed himself all over with soap and shampoo and emerged feeling clean and almost human again.

   Starsky had shifted a little, appropriating some more of the bed, now that there was more of it to be had. Hutch crossed to the other side of the room again, and picked up the untouched sandwich, biting into it. It was good - the bread only slightly crusty from sitting out, the meat thick and covered with spicy mustard, just the way Starsky liked it.

   "Was gonna eat that," Starsky mumbled, eyes still closed.

   "But you're asleep," Hutch pointed out.

   "Oh, yeah."

   "And you wouldn't want it to go to waste."

   "Time'sit?"

   "Past the time for all good little boys to be in bed, asleep."

   That made Starsky's eyes open, and he grinned. "And what does that have to do with me? Or you, for that matter?"

   "Good point," Hutch said, and handed over the sandwich without being asked.

   "Did you catch the bad guys?" Starsky asked, around a mouthful of sandwich.

   "Uh-huh." Hutch climbed over him, into his side of the bed. "Two weeks of stakeouts, and we got three arrests out of it. And, if we're lucky, the evidence we seized might not get thrown out of court."

   "That ADA still on your case? Thought Dobey was gonna talk to him."

   "He did," Hutch sighed. "Couldn't seem to convince him that we're both on the same side, though. As far as he's concerned, I'm public enemy number one."

   "What does that pencil-pushing idiot know? If it makes you feel any better, babe, I personally feel much safer knowing those guys are behind bars as we speak," Starsky said, sincerely. "Even though I don't know who they are or what they did."

   "It does," Hutch chuckled, and bit the last of the sandwich out of his hands.

   Instead of being angry, Starsky regarded him with worried eyes, quickly taking in his lean form for any signs of weight loss. "You still hungry? I could warm something up - "

   "But you're asleep," Hutch reminded him, again. "Don't worry about it. I'll eat two breakfasts in the morning. Promise."

   "Okay."

   Hutch crawled under the covers and lay there on his back. After a moment, Starsky rolled over, half on top of him, head resting in the crook of his neck, in his preferred position to sleep; one arm stole across Hutch's chest, lingering for only a moment over the baby-soft scars. "Shoulder hurt?" he asked, the way that he always did when he saw or felt the evidence of Hutch's most recent injury.

   "Uh-unh," Hutch said.

   "Good."

   It never made him move away, no matter what the answer was; somehow, that made Hutch profoundly glad. "You forgot the light," he said.

   "Damn." Starsky craned an arm over to snap off his lamp, and then settled in, again.

   The position wasn't remotely sexual, but it made Hutch feel warm and loved and - safe - nevertheless, and he listened to Starsky's even breaths for a long time before he turned off his own bedside lamp and went to sleep.

********

********

   Sunlight was streaming into the bedroom when Hutch woke up eight hours later; the torrent of books was gone from the room, and so was his bedmate. He didn't move for a moment, intent on listening, then sighed and threw the covers back when he realized that he was alone in the house.

   It was Saturday, and he had the weekend off, after working two weeks straight on the stakeout. If he pushed it, he might even be able to wrangle Monday off, considering how pleased Dobey'd been that the stakeout had actually, finally produced some results, after looking as though it was going to end up in a figurative bust instead of a literal one. Starsky didn't have classes on the weekend, but that didn't mean that he'd necessarily see him; he had papers and tests and projects due almost all the time, and Hutch knew with no small measure of guilt that Starsky took over more than his share of the household chores, as well, to make up for his guilt over the perceived discrepancy in their finances. He put a robe on and wandered out into the kitchen.

   There was a note on the table:

   After living with him through nearly a year of college, Hutch had learned to read the code in between Starsky's notes: "Gone to the library" meant he would be gone for four hours at the very least, and most likely till the place closed and kicked him out that night. Hutch folded up the note and opened up the oven door to find still-warm blueberry pancakes and bacon. He shook his head, wondering how the hell he could have been tired enough to sleep through the cooking of that. He put on toast and warmed up some of Starsky's industrial-strength coffee and piled everything on a tray that he sat in the living room in front of the TV. It was enough food for two breakfasts, and he ate it all with relish, watching Saturday-morning cartoons. It wasn't until he was stuffed to overflowing and wiping maple syrup from his mustache that he realized how much

   Starsky had rubbed off on him.

   "They say you end up looking like your pet, if you live with one long enough," he mused to himself. "Pet, partner, lover - pretty much got the whole shebang in one."

   He took another quick shower, dressed, and then retrieved the neat list of needed groceries off the refrigerator door, adding "Beer" to the last line, and headed out. It wouldn't take all day to do this chore, but he hadn't seen Huggy in a few weeks, either. "Maybe bring back a pizza for dinner, or some Chinese," he said. "Okay, now you're talking to yourself. You have got to get a hobby, Hutchinson, and soon."

********

   "Did you pay this bill?"

   "What bill?"

   "This red one, marked 'Final Notice'," Hutch said, waving the aforementioned bill in his hands. It was Sunday morning, and he was sitting at the dining room table with their checkbooks, sorting through the mail and bills that had piled up over the course of the month.

   "Oh, yeah, that. No. Yeah, don't worry about it." Starsky appeared from the living room, where he was folding a basket of laundry, took the envelope out of his hands, and disappeared with it and the clean clothes into the bedroom.

   "So, you paid it?" Hutch called out, looking through the past check stubs.

   "Uh-huh."

   "When?"

   "Tomorrow, on my lunch hour," Starsky grinned, from the doorway.

   "You must have a hell of a long lunch hour," Hutch chuckled.

   "What?"

   "Nothing. I just said that whether or not you pay it is strictly up to you, considering that it's for the insurance on your car." He made out a few more checks, balancing the bills reasonably equally in between his salary and Starsky's ever-dwindling nest egg. If he happened to pay a few things on his own, well, what Starsky didn't know wouldn't hurt either of them. "You know, this would be so much easier if we had a joint account."

   "You say that every time you pay the bills," Starsky said. "If you'd let me do it - "

   "When?" Hutch laughed. "Tomorrow, on your lunch hour?"

   Starsky shot him a disgusted look and disappeared back into the bedroom. "Fine. I was just sayin' - "

   "Uh-huh. We have this conversation every time we do this. Tell you what: the next time, I'll do the laundry, and you can sort through the bills." He waited for the inevitable protest from his fastidious partner; it wasn't long in coming.

   "The last time you did the laundry, you shrank my jeans."

   "Oh, no! My secret is out," Hutch said, in mock-horror.

   Starsky's jaw dropped. "You mean you did it on purpose? Those were my favorite jeans!"

   "Mine, too, especially after I shrank 'em. Baby, you have no idea what the rear view is like when you're wearing jeans two sizes too small," Hutch said, waggling his eyebrows in a leer.

   Starsky started to laugh. "You're impossible. Predictable, but impossible." He put away the last of the laundry, and then sat down at the table, opposite Hutch. "You almost done?"

   "Why? You want to do something today?"

   Starsky immediately looked guilty. "Well, I thought if you're done with the table - "

   "You could set up the typewriter and type your paper," Hutch finished for him.

   "Yeah," Starsky said. "I don't have to do it now. I could do it - "

   "'Tomorrow, on my lunch hour,'" Hutch said, before he had a chance to. "Babe, unless you have the longest lunch hour known to man, you'd better do it now."

   "It won't take me long," Starsky promised. "And then I'm all yours."

   "Yeah, yeah, promises, promises," Hutch mock-grumbled, as he finished clearing off the table.

   "What're you gonna do?" Starsky asked, uncovering the small portable typewriter and bringing out his books and papers.

   "Oh, I dunno. Huggy was talking about maybe getting together a pick-up game of ball one of these days. Think maybe I'll go over there, see if he's up to it."

   "Yeah?" Starsky looked almost envious at the notion.

   "Or, I could stay. Keep you company." Hutch nuzzled the back of his neck.

   "Nah. Go. You'd just distract me, and I type faster when I'm not distracted."

   "Is that what it takes?" Hutch chuckled.

   "Get out already," Starsky growled at him.

   "You want me to bring dinner?" Hutch asked, shrugging into a jacket.

   "Yeah. That would be good. I think we got some wine gettin' dusty, somewhere."

   "It's a date." He kissed Starsky before leaving.

   "Have fun," Starsky called to him as he went out the door. "And don't get hurt!"

********

********

   When he got home, with take-out from the Italian restaurant that was Starsky's newest favorite 'reminder of the place where his grandmother lived,' the lights were out in the house. Or, at least, that's what it looked like from the outside; when he opened the door, he found a single light on in the living room, and music playing, and Starsky, sitting cross-legged on the couch, reading a book.

   "Hey. Did you get done?"

   "Uh-huh, just. Did you get hurt?"

   "Nope. And we won."

   "Good." Starsky relieved him of the food, and wrinkled his nose as he came closer to Hutch, dirty and still sweaty from his game. "Whew. If you smell like this and you won, I'd hate to see the guys you beat. Go shower, an' I'll fix this stuff up. Hey," he said, taking a look at the contents of the bag, "this is from that place! Did I ever tell you what it reminded me of, when we were there?"

   Hutch laughed on his way to the bathroom. "Nah," he called out. "You never did." He skinned out of his clothes and jumped into the shower.

   They ate and talked, catching up on the minutiae of each other's lives from the last few weeks, the stuff that they'd missed while having only fleeting glimpses of each other - Starsky seemed either to be asleep or at school whenever Hutch showed up from work, and Hutch was at work a good twelve hours of every day, at least.

   "I told Hug we'd go have dinner next weekend, your treat. He misses you, for some reason."

   "Yeah, that's a good idea," Starsky said. "Feels like a year since I've seen him."

   "Feels like a year since a lot of things," Hutch said. "You done? I'll do the dishes." He stood up and started clearing away the table.

   "I'll help. There isn't that much."

   They were strangely quiet as they did the few dishes, then Starsky took out the garbage and Hutch checked to make sure all the windows were latched and the back door was locked. He wandered over to the stereo to change the music before Starsky came back in, putting on something soft and slow. 'Patented seduction music,' he always teased Starsky about his taste in popular music, but he felt in the mood for a seduction, or for being seduced.

   When he heard the door open, he said, "You know what we've never done?"

   "I'm afraid to ask."

   "Danced."

   "You bump your head again? We've danced lots of times," Starsky said.

   "For work, for fun, with women, yeah. Not just us, though," Hutch shrugged. "You know."

   "But who gets to lead?" Starsky grinned.

   Hutch rolled his eyes. "Shut up and c'mere."

   "I love it when you get all butch and forceful," Starsky laughed, but he nevertheless walked over to Hutch. "I s'pose you think since you're slightly taller than I am, that you're entitled to lead. Even though I have the better moves, and you know it."

   "I have all the moves you need," Hutch pointed out.

   It was awkward at first, but they didn't move much, just did the junior high shuffle an inch in each direction, and, eventually, Starsky's head rested against Hutch's neck, and they wrapped their arms around each other. Then, suddenly, it wasn't awkward any more; it was comfortable as they moved in tandem, like it always had been.

   "Starsk?"

   "Mm?" It was a lazy response.

   "I've missed you."

   "Mm." That had a smile in it. "Missed you, too."

   "Love you."

   "Always, babe." He moved his mouth incrementally closer to Hutch's ear and whispered a suggestion.

   "I honestly thought you'd never ask," Hutch said, and tugged his lover by the hand into the bedroom.

********

THE END

The sequel to this story is Late In The Evening