Reggie

   The 'unexpected shower' had sobered them all up - all, at least, except for Starsky. Of course, he had four elephantine (Hutch suspected) painkillers in him and the rest had only some of Huggy's house white, so he was still flying while the rest of them were bitching about coming down and being bitched at about 'disturbing the patient.' All of a sudden, it was like Grand Central in the room; in very short order, Huggy's 'large nurse' arrived along with the drunken orderly, two interns, a candy striper with an armful of magazines (although what she was doing there at three in the morning Hutch couldn't fathom), a sober orderly, and a security guard.

   Apparently, the hospital chaplain and the marching band had the night off.

   Starsky just kept giggling at regular intervals, which unnerved Hutch for some reason he couldn't understand; not that he was unhappy that his partner was happy - or at least stoned - but it seemed incongruous that while the large nurse was scolding them and checking bandages and stitches and the drunken orderly was getting underfoot and the sober orderly was trying to strong-arm them all out of the way that Starsky shouldn't have said something. Made a protest of pain. Maybe told them all to get lost and leave him alone.

   Except for Hutch, of course.

   It was - four? - by the time they got the sprinkler turned off, the veal discarded, most of the flood mopped and Starsky moved to another, far drier room. Hutch stood in the corner and watched the large nurse - whose name was not, as it turned out, 'Nurse Ratched', which Huggy kept calling her, but the somewhat less intimidating 'Nurse Betty' - strong-arm the Captain and Huggy out of the room. He thought that by staying really still and remarkably quiet they might forget about him completely; or maybe it was just the fact that Starsky kept staring and giggling at him that made him near-invisible, like Harvey or something. Everyone herded out without landing in a heap in the hallway, Marx Brothers-style, and then it was just him.

   And Starsky. Who giggled at him from the bed, swathed in fresh pajamas. "You're all wet."

   He had to laugh. "Yeah."

   "C'mere, blondie." Starsky moved over on the bed, lifting the covers up.

   Hutch started, stood, and then started again. Want warred - as it was often wont to do - with something more pragmatic and much more readily acceptable.

   "Come here," Starsky said, patiently, and punctuated it with another giggle. He lay his head back on the pile of pillows behind him and closed his eyes. "'M too stoned to watch you move like that. You're making m'head hurt."

   That stopped him in his tracks, halfway to the bed. "Sorry."

   Starsky didn't raise his head. "Don't be sorry. Just c'mere." He patted the bed beside him.

   "My clothes are wet," Hutch said, feeling far, far too sober to be standing in his partner's hospital room at four - four? - in the morning in disheveled hair and shoes that squished with every step he took.

   "Thought we decided that already." Starsky's voice was getting muzzier, the drawl deepening as four painkillers' worth of sleep threatened to claim him at last. "Take 'em off."

   Hutch didn't say anything. He didn't move, either.

   "There's gowns inna closet," Starsky continued. "Watch the back flap."

   "I'm not that wet," Hutch said, and thought, 'I'm not that drunk, either.' He shrugged out of his jacket and rubbed his hands over the front of his jeans. They were damp, as was his shirt, but the jacket had really taken the worst of the storm.

   He thought Starsk might fall asleep and he could just head for the chair, sit there for another night of watching his partner's rise-and-fall breathing, the way he pursed his lips when he was dreaming, listen to the small noises of pain he made when he unconsciously turned the wrong way too suddenly. It was a routine - 'leave' after visiting hours, then sneak back in after bedtime meds were given and Starsky was out for the night, and make his escape before the day nurse came on duty, with no-one the wiser - that he'd followed not every night since Starsky had been shot, but often enough. It gave him a sad sort of comfort to do it.

   It wasn't to be, though. Starsky patted the bed beside him once again, and, although he didn't say anything, Hutch had the feeling that if he didn't get in, neither of them would be getting any peace that night. He threw the ruined jacket on the chair that might have been his bed and gingerly climbed into the too-narrow hospital bed. Too narrow to hold them both for long, but Starsky turned over on his side - painfully, Hutch thought, but maybe only for him - and allowed for more room for his partner.

   Hutch scooted over reluctantly, until he was firmly in the bed, and Starsky threw the covers over him, and then buried himself in his startled partner's arms.

   "Mmm," he said, now almost unconscious. "Tha's better. Dunno how you can sleep in that chair all the time, babe."

   And before Hutch could answer - before he'd even had time to process the statement - the 'babe' in his arms fell deeply, dreamlessly asleep.

********

   if blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
   drying in the colour of the evening sun
   tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
   but something in our minds will always stay

********

   Starsky gave another one of his indulgent smiles when Hutch asked him for the hundredth time if there was anything that he needed before he left. He'd been home a week, was reasonably mobile, was absolutely sure that his PT was a Nazi in a previous life -

   "Not one of 'em regular Nazis, either, Hutch, but one of the really bad ones. Like the guys in Star Wars."

   "Storm troopers?"

   "Yeah, that's him. He's the head trooper."

   - and was only distracted from complete stir-craziness when Hutch was there. Which was, of course, all the time that Hutch wasn't at work, or on his way to work, or on his way from work.

   They'd both decided that he wouldn't sleep there all the time, though; the couch wasn't doing his back much good, especially not after weeks curled in a chrome-and-vinyl hospital chair night after night. Four nights at Starsky's and three nights at his own apartment seemed perfectly reasonable - 'seemed' being the operative word. The first night he'd gone home without protest; they were getting on each other's nerves - Hutch from wanting to discuss the cases he was working on but not allowing himself to, Starsky from watching the war going on in his partner's messed-up psyche. He hadn't managed to get any significant information out of Hutch about anything related to police work, least of all about his new partner; 'temporary' was the word that came out of Hutch's mouth the most of anything. "Temporary partner, Starsk," Hutch said, over and over. "Strictly temporary." Like he was cheating on him, or something.

   "You gonna get something to eat on the way home?"

   Hutch stared at him like he'd sprouted a third head. "I had dinner two hours ago. You might remember it; you were there."

   "Two hours ago," Starsky said, patiently, "I ate dinner and watched you cut up a steak into small pieces, drown a perfectly harmless baked potato in sour cream, move them both around and around on your plate until the secretary of agriculture wouldn't've been able to tell one from the other, then throw it all out. What I wanna know is, are you going to eat something today?"

   Hutch was somewhat uncomfortable being put in the recalcitrant-child mode, after all this time. "I ate."

   "How many cups of coffee did you have today?"

   Hutch shrugged. "Three."

   "Translation: 'Six'. And what about solid food?"

   Hutch thought, wondering why he couldn't just lie. 'Because he'd know,' came the little voice in his head, which sounded remarkably like Starsky's voice. He wondered if Starsky's little voice sounded like him. "I had a Zagnut from the machine over lunch."

   "A candy bar?" Starsky shook his head like he was scolding an errand child. "You need looking after by a Jewish mother, you know that?"

   'I've got one,' Hutch said to himself, and knew that he'd been heard. It was only right, after all, since the little voice sounded so much like the person doing the listening.

   "Okay. Here's what we're gonna do," Starsky said, rubbing his hands together. "It's obvious I can't trust you on the highway in your condition, so you're going to sit down before you pass out, I'm going to order a pizza, and you're going to eat half of it if I have to force it down your throat. Then you're going to get eight hours of sleep." Starsky's eyes darkened a little as he added, "In a row."

   Hutch couldn't contain his glee at having escaped his banishment for the night, even as he grumbled, "Eight hours in a row on that couch? I'll be lucky if I get eight minutes." He was already headed for the closet, though, where the sheets and pillow were barely cool from being put away that morning.

   "I've gotta solution for that, too, Mr. Smart Mouth," Starsky said, dialing the phone. "You're sleeping in the bed with me. Yeah?" he continued into the phone. "Let me have a large pepperoni-mushroom-combo - anchovies?" he asked Hutch, who shook his head automatically even though he'd stopped himself stock-still and was seriously contemplating making a run for it while Starsky was distracted.

   "No anchovies," Starsky said to the phone. "And tell the driver there's a big tip in it for him if he puts a rush on it, okay?"

********

   perhaps this final act was meant
   to clinch a lifetime's argument
   that nothing comes from violence
   and nothing ever could
   for all those born beneath an angry star
   lest we forget how fragile we are

********

   Hutch stood for a long time looking at himself in the mirror. The pizza he'd forced himself to eat two slices of - with Starsky looking at him like Hutch's gastro-intestinal problems were his personal penance for getting shot - now felt like a hard, solid mass in the pit of his stomach, and half a bottle of pink poison hadn't helped him any. He thought it might come straight back up if only it might find a way to edge itself around the lump in his throat. He wanted to scream and cry, and he didn't have the slightest idea why. The last time he'd felt like that was before the ambulance came, when he was watching Starsky's life-blood spill out onto the ground. It was the feeling of impotence, of helplessness; the only thing to do in a situation like that was scream.

   A clue as to the cause came in the form of Starsky yelling at him from the bedroom. "You fall in?"

   "N-no," Hutch said, and cleared his throat. "I'm coming right out." He rinsed his mouth and recapped the bottle, wondering if the stuff was supposed to work on the principle that it was just so vile and so brightly-colored that watching yourself swallow it would make you want to throw up, and clear your stomach that way. He flushed the empty toilet and washed his hands and took a deep breath before he walked out of the bathroom. And straight into the lion's den.

   Starsky looked up from the bed. "Thought I'd lost you," he said, and Hutch had to turn around very, very quickly, stop looking at him, hold the wall, and clamp down on his eyelids and the contents of his stomach at the same time.

   Starsky's touch registered as a gentle, circular rubbing at his back, like the time he'd been coming down from the junk. It was just as welcome now as it had been then - completely and not at all - and he was just as successful at making himself move away from it as he had before.

   "Hey," Starsky said. "What is it, babe?"

   "Nothing," Hutch said, too quickly, too loudly, and too sharply.

   Starsky flinched but didn't stop touching him. "Okay," he soothed. "Come to bed, then."

   "Don't want to," Hutch said, petulantly. "I want to go home."

   That stubborn tone made Starsky cease all movement, although his tone remained gentle. "You're wired, Hutch," he said. "Too wired to drive."

   "I should sleep on the couch, then," Hutch said. "I'll keep you up all night."

   "So who says I wanna sleep, anyway?" Starsky tugged him up to his feet and propelled him over to the bed and under the covers, tucking him in and smoothing the hair away from his forehead.

   "Thanks, Mom," Hutch said, grouchy, and was rewarded with another brilliant smile that made his heart jump up and down.

   "Wait 'til your father gets home," Starsky said to him, and climbed in the other side of the bed. He looked critically at his bed-mate for a moment, and then lifted up Hutch's closest arm and settled his head on Hutch's chest. Somewhat chagrined, he found that he had to pull the arm down and around himself afterwards. "You're stiff as a board," Starsky complained, poking Hutch like the body-pillow he now was. "Relax a little, willya?"

   "Starsk - "

   "How'm I s'posed to sleep on you when you're like this?" He tried a gentle head-butt, and finally found a ticklish spot. Hutch flinched, and squirmed away, stifling his guffaw. "Oh, no," Starsky said, latching on to him and tickling him with his fingers, rubbing his curls over the worn fabric of the t-shirt Hutch had paired with his boxers. It was one of Starsky's, and it hung on Hutch's even-lankier form. When he moved a certain way, ribs showed through, adding to the overall picture of dark circles and hollowed cheeks. Even his jeans hung off his hips.

   Hutch was laughing openly, still trying to get away from Starsky's death-grip. "Quit it," he breathed, gasping. "Starsk, stop. I'm gonna throw up."

   That threat was successful, at last. "How often?"

   Frowning, Hutch looked at him. "What?"

   "You been throwing up? Not eating? You tryin' to kill yourself on purpose?"

   "What the - what are you talking about?"

   Starsky surged out of the bed, and Hutch felt the pain in his chest as if it was his own. Or maybe it was his own. He was dragged over to the bathroom mirror and forced to look at himself, with Starsky's hand in the middle of his back, steadying him. "You've lost weight, Sherlock. A lot more than ya put on lately." Hutch threw him an annoyed glance at the half-dig, but Starsky ignored him. "You look like death warmed over, an' I'm the one who died. I wanna know why you're playing my card. It ain't exactly the best way to score; sympathy only goes so far, an' your scars don't show as good as mine."

   Starsky's did show, of course, at least, some of them did through the front gape of his pajama top, unbuttoned halfway to his navel. Hutch wondered if he'd ever in his life been able to manage to do up all the buttons on his clothing. Before he could give voice to that thought, though, he found himself with his hands inside Starsky's shirt, fingers tangling through the uneven regrowth of chest hair, skimming over the smooth scars. "Too many goddamn scars, Starsk," he said, just before his lips descended on the first of them.

   He kissed each one before it struck him that Starsky had turned to stone under his hands, that he was stock-still and barely breathing. Squeezing his eyes shut tight, Hutch made himself stop kissing his partner's chest, and stood ramrod straight himself before he dared open them again.

   Starsky wasn't looking at him, wasn't looking at anything, just seemed - stunned. As if his world had done a 180-degree turn, way too fast. Which, Hutch thought, was pretty much exactly what happened.

   He managed to get the patient back in bed and tucked in without protest, gathered up his clothes and went to sit on the couch with the bundle on his lap. He sat there all night, not moving, not thinking, not feeling anything but the remembered tickle of Starsky's hair against his lips.

********

   on and on the rain will fall
   like tears from a star
   like tears from a star
   on and on the rain will say
   how fragile we are
   how fragile we are

********

   He left in the morning before there was any movement from the bedroom. Everything followed its regular routine: he called in periodically during the day, and it was only the first time that was awkward, and only for a few minutes. Afterwards, Starsky seemed to acknowledge what Hutch was giving him: an out, permission to pretend that nothing had happened, a go-back-to-the-way-it-was-free card. Neither one of them said anything, but it was obvious what was being done.

   Hutch arrived at Starsky's that night feeling better than he had in a long time, since way before Starsky had been shot. He was hungry, even, as evidenced by the two large bags of Chinese food he'd picked up on his way.

   "Egg rolls, Starsk, may be the world's most perfect food." He set the bags on the counter and slipped out of jacket and holster simultaneously. "You've got your vegetables, you've got your grease, you've got your meat, and you can eat it with your hands."

   Starsky appeared from the bedroom. "Not fried rice?"

   "I'd hate to try eating it with my hands, but I'm game if you are. I got fried rice," Hutch catalogued, as he removed containers from the bags, "egg foo yung, chow mein, fortune cookies - the works. With extra egg rolls."

   "You eat all that and you will throw up."

   "I'm gonna give it my best effort," Hutch said, happily. He opened the fridge and removed a beer, prepared to throw another to his partner, who shook his head, took one of the containers, and sat down.

   They ate without the heavy silence that had been so pervasive over the last couple of weeks - silence punctuated by unfamiliar strained conversations and the need to talk for the sake of talking, rather than because they wanted to tell each other things. Hutch launched into a litany of his day that he hadn't managed in all the time he'd been working with his new 'partner'.

   "She's got this snitch, Starsk, you've got to see to believe. The man - at least, I think he's a man - is a walking, talking encyclopedia of useless information. You can ask him anything - from the current population of Tokyo to the precipitation levels in northern California in January, and he knows it all. And it's true, too, not just b.s."

   "But does he know anything about perpetrators of crime?" Starsky asked, around a mouthful of chow mein.

   "Yeah," Hutch snorted. "That, too."

   The patter was so easy, so familiar, that Hutch was completely unprepared for the way the conversation turned towards the end of the meal.

   He sighed, belly full, a warm beer-buzz muzzing his thoughts. "Did I tell you it was good, or what?"

   "Great," Starsky agreed. "Wonderful. You never offer to cook for me anymore, though."

   "I - I haven't had time, lately," Hutch said, a little stunned. "You want me to make you something? Name it."

   "I never did get to finish that veal that got rained on in the hospital," Starsky said. "How about s'more of that?"

   "Sure. Anything you want, partner. Within reason, I mean," Hutch said, incredibly happy to be asked for something, instead of just making hollow offerings to appease his survivor's guilt all the time.

   "Great. How about tomorrow?"

   "Uh, sure. It might be late, though. I'll have to get the stuff after work - "

   "Why not go tonight?" Starsky asked, casually, picking up the utensils he'd used and taking them over to the kitchen. "There's that twenty-four hour grocery store by your place, right? You said they had the best veal in the city there."

   That was when the bottom dropped out of Hutch's stomach. He held onto the enormous quantity of Chinese food he'd eaten with careful precision. "Yeah," he agreed, thinking, 'He's getting rid of me. He's trying to get rid of me, but he doesn't want to come out and say it. He doesn't want me sleeping here anymore, not even on his couch.' He stood up, standing with a half-full plate. "I can go right away."

   "Good," Starsky said, a little too quickly. "I mean, you got the meal, it's only fair that I do the dishes."

   Something inside Hutch screamed that it wasn't fair at all, but it didn't come out in Starsky's voice this time, and his partner didn't seem to have heard it. There wasn't anything fair about this civility, no argument over whose turn it was to do the dishes, complete with insults and arm-wrestling. "I guess I should go, then."

   Starsky just nodded, already busy at the sink.

   Hutch picked up his holster and his jacket from the counter, then laid them down again. "It doesn't have to be this way between us, you know," he said.

   Starsky's back registered immediate tension, but he just said, "I don't know what you're talkin' about."

   "I take it back," Hutch said, ignoring his protests. "It never happened, Starsk. Everything's the same as it was. It'll never happen again. Just - don't shut me out like this. I can't live in the deep freeze." He took a deep breath. "If you don't want to be my partner anymore, just tell me."

   "Now, why did you have to go and say something like that?" It was Starsky's turn for anger. "Why do you haveta make it so complicated all the time? You're making it harder than it has to be."

   "You've got to tell me what's going on here, Starsk," Hutch said. "Because you're on a completely different page as me."

   "Dammit!" A soggy dishtowel flew across the room, hitting the wall with a wet 'thwap'. "You wanna know what's going on? I'll tell you, then. I got shot. I died, but they brought me back, an' even though that happened, you almost died. You're killin' yourself right in front of me, an' it's like you want me to help you, or something."

   "I'm not trying to kill myself, Starsk," Hutch said, quietly.

   "Maybe not anymore. Maybe you ate good tonight, and maybe you will tomorrow. An' maybe you'll start talking to your 'strictly temporary' partner instead of at her, so I don't haveta worry that I'm gonna get a phone call from the morgue every time you walk out that door." Startled, Hutch opened his mouth, but Starsky wasn't finished yet. "But what happens the next time, when I do die an' they can't bring me back? You eat your gun? Starve yourself to death? How'm I supposed to live knowing I got that kinda power over you? How'm I supposed to be a good detective - and your partner - an' take the kinda risks I've gotta take in order to do my job, knowing that my life means so much to you?"

   Hutch was stunned. "You've always known that. You think this is something new?"

   "I always knew I was your best friend. I always knew I was your partner. I always knew you'd throw yourself in front of a bullet for me. I always knew - " Starsky swallowed " - that you loved me that way, like you knew I did, too. But this - you didn't haveta say it, Hutch. You didn't have to do what you did." He stepped closer to Hutch, offering his face a sad, gentle caress. "It was good, what we had. We kept it good, and we kept it the way it needed to be."

   "Quit saying that like it's over!" Hutch yelled at him.

   "We can't go back, Hutch. You think I don't want to? You think I don't know that you want to? But we can't."

   "Who says I want to go back?"

   "You said - "

   "I lied," Hutch said, plainly. "It was what you wanted to hear. If I could take back kissing you, I would, because it's what you want. Or, at least, you want it to have never happened. But it did happen, and I love you. And you love me. That way." He mirrored Starsky's caress. "Like I said before, this isn't new. It's been there a long time, and yet I've never held you back because of it, and you've never done that to me, either."

   "Okay, so answer me this: How'm I supposed to go back out there, Hutch, and watch something happen to you - watch you get hurt, watch you die, maybe - and not want to eat my own gun? How do I do that?" He looked away. "Do I even want to do that anymore?"

   "You're the only one that can answer that, Starsk."

   Starsky looked chagrined. "That's not the answer I wanted to hear."

   Hutch smiled. "Since when have I ever told you something just because it was what you wanted to hear?" He moved a little closer to where Starsky was standing, in front of the sink. "You ever think that maybe this isn't really about me?"

   "What do you mean?"

   Hutch shrugged. "Maybe you're having second thoughts about going back to work. Maybe this is stress over the fact that not two months ago you got shot three times and died - "

   "Twice," Starsky said, almost to himself.

   "What?"

   "I died twice. Once on the operating table, once in my hospital room. They brought me back both times." He looked up, eyes dark and strangely open at the same time. "Even cats only got nine lives, Hutch. I don't know how many more I got left."

   "This is all normal, Starsky. The doctor told you, remember - "

   "This is not normal!" Starsky shouted. "This is my life. The last thing you can call my life is normal!"

   "Okay, okay," Hutch soothed. "Bad choice of words. You're right - getting shot isn't normal. Having this reaction to getting shot is normal, though."

   "What am I gonna do with the rest of my life if I'm not a cop anymore?"

   "I don't know. Did you really think you'd be a cop forever?"

   Starsky didn't say anything, but both of them knew the answer to that. They both did, hadn't looked any further than a life spent on the Force, with retirement a long way away. A life spent together. But things happened, the way they always would, that changed everything around. Life was full of unexpected 180s.

   "You aren't only a cop, Starsk. Neither am I. Or, at least, I don't have to be."

   "You'd quit if I did?"

   "I don't know," Hutch said, honestly. "I could walk away from it. I don't even know what I'm going to do for sure when I get up in the morning."

   "You an' me both, partner."

   Starsky wasn't looking at him, but Hutch smiled anyway. "That's the only thing, Starsk, I've ever been sure of. You and me."

   "Me and thee," Starsky said, quietly.

   "Yeah," Hutch agreed. "Whatever we do, even if we don't do it together, we do it together."

   "You know what the scary thing is?" Starsky asked.

   "No," Hutch shook his head, thinking, 'There are a lot of scary things.' "What's the scary thing?"

   "The scary thing is - I actually understood that."

   Hutch clutched his chest in mock-horror. "Oh, my god."

   Starsky threw a clean, dry dishtowel at him. "Your turn to dry."

   "I cooked," Hutch protested, throwing the towel back at him.

   "You purchased. I ordered the pizza last time. Equal effort, equal result. Start wiping." Starsky hit him in the face with the towel.

   They labored over the small sinkful of dishes for a little while; when Starsky pulled the drain and let the water swirl away and Hutch was drying the last of the cutlery, Starsky said, "Hutch?"

   "Yeah?"

   "I want my pillow back."

   He was about to ask 'what pillow' when it dawned on him just what Starsky was saying. "I'm not going anywhere," he said.

   "Good."

********

   on and on the rain will fall
   like tears from a star
   like tears from a star
   on and on the rain will say
   how fragile we are
   how fragile we are
   how fragile we are
   how fragile we are

THE END