This story originally appeared in Venice Place Chronicles, Vol. VI, published by the ever-generous Keri T. Thank you, Keri, for allowing me to be published with such a talented group of writers.

 

Special thanks to Morgan Logan for the beta and subsequent hand-holding Sorry for the sweaty palm thing.

 

This story is a missing scene from "Snowstorm", an early season 1 episode. I've always been struck by the disparity in the Hutch we see in the final cabin scene and the Hutch in the tag. What happened to put that beautiful smile on his face? Something much more than a spotted dog, I think.

 

Shadow of a Dream

by CC

                                               

For one crazy second after I shot him, I was back at the academy in one of those shoot-or-don’t-shoot drills, and I’d shot the pop-up cop target by mistake. Except Burke wasn’t wearing a uniform and it wasn’t a mistake. I knew I had no choice other than to shoot him, but it didn’t stop the bile from crawling up the back of my throat.

The whole case had been nothing but a nightmare from the start. First, a million bucks worth of coke comes up missing from our bust. Stryker, the owner of the coke, gets it in his head that Hutch and me have it, and he tries to make a deal with us to get it back, and when we won’t deal, he sends his flunkies to take us out. Then our primary snitch in the whole shebang gets his ass killed, and we think Stryker did it, and he thinks we did it. Meanwhile, IA is nosing around trying to stir up shit about the missing coke, and the three other cops working the case with us think we put IA on them, when we were the ones trying to keep IA off of them. Plus, for a while there, I was pretty sure Hutch was hallucinating about some dog with spots, but that turned out to be real—the only real thing about the whole deal.

Like I said, a fucking nightmare. And it didn’t get any better when we finally figured out who had the coke. It was the other cops all along. Our brother cops: Corman, Burke, and Kalowitz.

We followed Corman and Burke up to Corman’s cabin at Bear Lake, and when all was said and done, they were both down, and we were still standing. So to speak. It takes a lot out of a guy when he has to shoot another cop, even a dirty one.

Lucky for Burke—or not, depending on what a judge would decide later—I had aimed high and got him in the shoulder. It didn’t look too bad, but before I had a chance to check it out closely, a gun went off inside the cabin. It wasn’t Hutch’s piece, and that scared the living shit out of me. Hutch should’ve been able to take Corman, but a man who’s looking at the kind of prison time Corman was facing will pull out all the stops.

My heart was thundering in my ears and there wasn’t enough air to breathe. I had just enough of my wits about me to remember to haul Burke in there with me. I had only one clear thought. Please don’t let him be dead. I grabbed Burke’s collar and started running.

The cabin looked like a cyclone had blown through. Not that it’d been that great when we’d first got there, but now there was furniture lying every which way and anything that had been on a counter or tabletop was on the floor.

Corman was history—a heap of nothing sprawled on the cabin floor. A big wave of relief washed over me, and I didn’t feel one iota of guilt over being glad it was Corman that was dead and not Hutch. Corman drew on us and wouldn’t have thought twice about killing Hutch or me just to protect his lousy coke. Brother cop, my ass.

Hutch wasn’t dead, but he looked like he wanted to be. He looked up at me from the cabin floor—misery, grief, and exhaustion etched into his face—and I knew this one would haunt us for a long, long time. Even though his face was flushed, the color was fading fast, so fast I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a pool of blood beside him. A chill ran through me when I thought how close we had come to leaving real pools of blood behind.

All of a sudden, my legs went weak as the weight of it all settled in. I shoved Burke into a chair and dropped down beside Hutch, who sat with his back against the refrigerator, arms resting across his upraised knees. I didn’t know how he got there, but I could tell he wouldn’t be moving anytime soon. I squeezed his arm to let him know I understood and that I’d take care of it.

Burke gave up where they’d hidden the coke and the gun—the one they used to take out Crown and Crandall—without any fight at all. Any sliver of doubt that might’ve been floating through my tired brain didn’t stand a chance of surviving after that. Beside me, I heard Hutch blow out a quivery breath. It hadn’t sunk in for him yet. Hell, not fifteen minutes before, he’d been hoping it wasn’t true.

We needed Dobey, and fast. I squeezed Hutch’s arm again and somehow got up and over to the phone, making a point to step over Corman just like any of the other garbage littering the floor. The gesture was lost on him, what with him being dead and all, but I felt better.

~*~*~

Dobey took the news pretty well, considering, and swore he’d have officers on the way as soon as we hung up. More than anything, he seemed worried about Hutch and me, and how we were holding up.

 “I don’t have to tell you,” he warned after I’d explained everything to him, “this is going to be a three-ring circus. Everyone from the mayor on down is going to be involved.”

“I know.” I glanced over my shoulder at Hutch, still sitting on the floor looking so empty and lost, his sad stare shifting from his hands to Corman’s body. The one thing he didn’t need was a lot of people in his face.

“You know the drill. Secure the scene, no talking to each other—and that includes Burke—about anything that went down. We don’t want to give anyone any reason—”

“I know. Just get here.” I hung up the phone.

“Starsk?”

I was across the room in three steps. “Whaddya need, Hutch?”

 “He’s bleeding. He needs to lie down.” After nodding in Burke’s direction, Hutch blew out another shaky breath. “Put a towel or something...” He motioned to his chest and let his head drop forward, out of steam, like just those few words were too much for him.

I couldn’t believe I’d heard him right. Burke would’ve shot both of us without so much as batting an eyelash and Hutch was worried about first aid? But that was Hutch in a nutshell. Tough, not afraid to get in a guy’s face, but not cruel or abusive about it. Not that I was either, but sometimes I wondered if he was the one keeping me from it.

After I got Burke settled on the sofa and found a dish towel for him to use as a compress, there wasn’t anything to do but wait for the others to get there. I went to the kitchen sink and got Hutch a glass of water. He jumped when I pressed it against his arm.

“Drink this.” I pushed it into his shaking hand.

He’d no more than taken a swallow before his eyes went wide and his face went even whiter. He shoved the glass at me and tried to get his feet under him. I grabbed his arm and helped haul him up. He was out the door like a rocket. I could hear him retching outside, and it sounded so awful that I was afraid I might have to join him. I never have been able to handle him being sick.

When he stumbled back to the doorway, I handed him the glass again. He used the first few swallows to rinse his mouth, and then drank a little for real before holding out the glass for me to take.

“Sit there. You might catch a breeze.” I straddled the chair Burke had been in and watched Hutch settle in the cabin’s doorway. At least the puking had put some color back in his cheeks. He still looked like shit, though. I could tell he felt like it, too.

It was strange in a way, that even though Hutch and I are about the same size, there was part of me that wished I could haul his big ass up on my lap and just hold him. Soothe away all the pain and misery and ugliness and make him smile again.

There was another part of me that wanted to do more than just hold him. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted, but I was feeling it more and more the longer we were partners. I tried not to think about it too often, to push it aside, into that part of my mind where I kept far away dreams, like winning the lottery or batting clean-up for the Yankees. Those were fun to think about, to play around with, but not likely to happen in my lifetime. This one was so far in the shadows I couldn’t even see it clearly, but I knew it was there and that it wasn’t going to go away.

Hutch sighed and looked over his shoulder at Corman’s body. “Some big fuckin’ mess we got ourselves into this time, Ollie.”

“Yeah.” There wasn’t anything else to say, so we sat there in the stench of greed and betrayal and let the crickets and the birds and the whispering grasses talk for us until we finally heard the sirens in the distance.

~*~*~

All things considered, the mop up didn’t go too badly. I had expected a lot of shit from all sides, but the only people who acted like assholes were IA, and they get paid to be that way. Sure, it was tense for a while, but once Burke decided he had a better shot at seeing life on the outside of prison again in this lifetime if he talked, everybody started breathing a little easier. Especially Hutch and me. Nobody was acting like we were at a Sunday picnic, but we weren’t going to have to fight our way out of there either.

Somehow in all the commotion, I lost Hutch. You’d think it would be easy to keep up with a big guy like that, but there had to be thirty or more people on the scene. The last time I had seen him was when he disappeared into the cabin with Fargo, the new guy in IA we’d heard some pretty good things about. But then again, we’d seen a lot of good cops go into IA and turn into first class pricks. The word on Fargo was that he was ambitious, and I didn’t want him earning his stripes by taking them out of my partner’s hide, if you know what I mean. Which was why I really wanted to find Hutch.

I caught Dobey as he was coming back from escorting Burke to the ambulance. He looked about ten years older than he had that morning.

“Hey, Captain, have you seen Hutch lately?”

Dobey mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and then waved it toward the cabin. “He was in there with Fargo a few minutes ago.”

“Well, he’s not there now. I just checked.”

“He’s around here somewhere, I’m sure. How’re you holding up?”

“I’m fine. I’m more worried about Hutch though. Did he look like he was doing okay?”

Dobey swabbed his face again then stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket. “Starsky, I believe Hutchinson is capable of taking care of himself for a few minutes without your help.”

That stung a little. I mean, sure, Hutch could manage without me, but Dobey, of all people, knew how badly Hutch would be affected. I started to tell him so, but then I caught the little half-smile in his tired eyes. The big lug was only trying to distract me.

“Captain, if you’ll clear us, Cahill and I are going back on patrol.”

I turned around to find Barnett, a uniform Hutch and I had known for years, standing behind me. He nodded at me and clapped a hand on my back. “You hanging in okay, Starsky?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I seemed to be saying that a lot. “Or I will be once I find my partner. Have you seen Hutch lately?”

He cocked his thumb over his shoulder. “He was back there with Fargo, but I think he took off when we got the word.”

“What word?”

“About Kalowitz.”

“What about Kalowitz?”

“I’m sorry, Starsky,” Dobey interjected. “I thought you’d heard already.”

“Heard what?” I thought I was going to have to hit one or both of them to get it out of them.

Dobey cleared his throat. “When officers arrived at Kalowitz’s apartment, they found him dead.” His hand fell like a chunk of lead onto my shoulder. “Self-inflicted, from the looks of it.”

The world tilted a little, and my stomach pitched. That made two dead and one wounded. Throw in Crown and Crandall and we had a full house. This case just kept getting more and more fucked up.

“Starsky!” Dobey’s grip was tight on my shoulder, and I felt Barnett’s hand under my elbow. “Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”

I shook off the fuzziness and focused on Dobey. “Yeah, no...Cap, I’m fine. It’s just hard to hear.”

Dobey squeezed my shoulder and then let go to haul out his handkerchief again. “That’s the truth.”

A few deep breaths cleared my head, and I turned to Barnett. “Where’d you say Hutch went?”

He pointed to the road leading into Corman’s place. “He took off down there.”

“How long ago?”

“I dunno. Ten, fifteen minutes, tops?”

Dobey didn’t even wait for me to ask. “Go on, find your partner. I’ll see you both in my office first thing in the morning.”

I took off before he could change his mind.

~*~*~

He should’ve been easy to find, a big blond dope marching down a mostly deserted road, but after I’d driven six or seven miles, I hadn’t seen him. Even if he was running, which I doubted, he wouldn’t have made it that far, so I turned around and drove back toward Corman’s place, a little slower this time. I was about a half mile from the turn-off to the cabin when I spotted a little building that advertised itself as a bait shop/grocery store. It made sense. Corman had been carrying a bag of groceries, or bait—I didn’t check—and he and Burke had been on foot.

Whipping into the gravel parking lot, I realized that the place was actually a fishing camp. Fred’s Fish Camp, according to the faded wooden sign propped against the side of the store. Sure enough, I could see a scattering of run-down cabins behind the store. It looked to be deserted, which wasn’t that much of a surprise since trout season hadn’t opened yet, a fact that seemed to have escaped Burke and Corman.

The inside of the store was dim and dingy. One whole wall was lined with glass-fronted coolers. Most had beer and soft drinks, but the one closest to me was filled with buckets and Chinese take-out boxes. I opened it and grabbed a carton, just to see what kind of food the place carried, and I got a close up view of a bunch of worms. I snapped the top closed and put it back, hoping that this was the bait section and not some local delicacy.

“Can I help you, fella?”

I looked in the direction of the voice, but I had to get closer before I could actually see the little old man behind the register. He kind of reminded me of this old street bum Hutch and me saw from time to time, except Elijah’s hair was longer, and he was usually dressed in about six layers of clothes. This guy was wearing a powder blue leisure suit and a green string tie.

“Don’t mean to rush you, but I’m gettin’ ready to close up for the day. It’s Bingo night at the V.F.W., and I don’t want to be late.”

“Uh, no, I don’t want that to happen.” I showed him my badge. “I’m looking for someone, my partner. He’s about—”

“Tall fella, blond hair?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Have you seen him?”

He nodded and pulled a jacket off a hook on the wall. “Came in a while ago and bought a six-pack of beer, then rented a cabin. Number six, there on the end.” He pointed out a window so dirty I could barely see daylight. “Said if anyone in a flashy red car came looking for him, to tell him to buy his own damned beer.”

The relief that rushed through me almost made me cry. I hadn’t realized how worried I’d been until there wasn’t anything to worry about. If Hutch was mouthing off about my car, things couldn’t be all bad. At least, that’s what I hoped.

I passed on the beer, but I bought a couple of peanut bars. I’d share if Hutch would.

The old man hustled me to the door. “If you decide you need more beer or something to eat, the key to the back door is under a rock on the porch of the first cabin. Just put the money in that jar on the counter.”

“Is that safe? How do you know I won’t clean you out?”

“You’re a cop, aren’t you?” He shook his head. “If I can’t trust the cops, who can I trust?”

If he’d only known how we’d spent our day and why he had an out-of-season rental on cabin number six, he might have felt differently.

“Besides,” he added as he followed me out the door, “you’re the only ones here, and there ain’t nothing else open around here this time of year.”

He waved and trotted off to a rusty old pickup truck parked on the far side of the lot. It looked pretty decrepit, kind of like him, but it cranked right up.

“Good luck!” I yelled after him, but I doubt he heard me over the spraying gravel.

I pulled the Torino around the store and closer to the cabins. Dusk was falling quickly, and the shadows were deep, so deep and dark that I was sorry I’d had to turn over my gun for the investigation. Hutch had to turn his in, too, which meant we were helpless if any bears or coyotes or other wild things attacked. All the more reason for me to hightail it to cabin six.

The heat of the day lingered, despite the disappearing daylight, but a slight breeze stirred and I hoped it would cool things off soon. I wasn’t surprised to find Hutch sitting on the cabin’s porch instead of inside, but the sight of him brought me to a stop. Slouched down in a chair, feet propped up on the railing, he stared out at the lake without moving. He might’ve been one of those carved statues, except for the wind that ruffled his hair. Only the set of his jaw and the way he had his bottom lip tucked under his teeth gave the real story of what was going on inside that head of his.

And there it was again, that feeling of wanting to pull him into my arms and do something—anything—to make everything right again. For the first time, though, I took a moment to think about it, really think about it, and I thought I knew what that something was. Hell, I’d known it all along; I just hadn’t wanted to admit it and pull it out of the shadows.

“You were supposed to bring your own beer.” His voice was flat and empty.

“Thought I’d trade you.” I held out one of the peanut bars. He considered it for a few seconds before taking it, then reached down and pulled a beer from the pack.

“Drink fast if you want it cold.”

I popped the top and drained about half the can in one swallow. Nothing ever tasted so good. After checking the porch steps for anything that might bite, I sat down on the top step. The lake was pretty, quiet and flat, with only an occasional fish flop to cause a ripple. We sat there for a good long while without saying anything, Hutch thinking, me waiting. It’s a good thing it was quiet out there, or I would’ve missed his signal—a sigh so faint I could’ve almost imagined it. He was ready to talk.

“Guess you heard about Kalowitz.” He opened another beer.

“Yeah, Dobey told me.” I turned to face him and rested my back against the porch post. It felt good to stretch my legs out. Felt even better to see him. “Guess he was in on it, too.”

“Did you know his wife left him? Took the kids and moved to Bakersfield, according to Cahill.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Burke’s got a daughter at home. Corman has—” He choked and sipped his beer. “Corman had two kids that I know of. Remember how he was always going on about his son’s chances for a baseball scholarship to USC?” He sank lower in the chair. “Shit. All those people, all that—”

“Stop it. They put their families in this predicament, not us, and as bad as I feel for them, those guys made their own decisions.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No ‘buts,’ Hutch. You’ve gotta accept that. They brought this down on themselves and their families.” I leaned forward. “Here’s something else you gotta remember: they could’ve—would have—killed us today if we hadn’t been better cops. We might not like it, but from where I’m sitting, we did the only thing we could do. You know that,” I pointed to my head, “up here. You know that.”

He looked at me for a good long time and then turned back to stare at the lake. I could tell he was thinking about it, and I gave him a while to let it sink in. I had some things to think about, too.

It was dark by then, but my eyes had adjusted to it, thanks to the full moon creeping up over the trees. I shifted and propped my feet on the edge of Hutch’s chair, just so I could watch him while I pretended to study my shoes. Even though the light drew shadows on his face, it couldn’t hide the despair etched into his eyes. I knew he’d get past it—he’d gotten over shit just as bad as this—but it made me hurt just looking at him.

As I sat there trying not to get caught watching him, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like, to him and to me, to put my lips on the worried crease between his brows, what his mouth would feel like against mine, how his hands would feel on me, around me, how his skin would feel touching mine. I wanted to find out, but there was no way in hell I was going to ever know, no way I could talk to him about what I was feeling. Not now, especially, but I couldn’t see it ever happening, really. So I closed my eyes and tried to put the dream thoughts back where they belonged. In the shadows.

“You remember Zack Tyler?” The question came out of nowhere.

“Yeah, I remember him. That car salesman whose wife got murdered, right?”

He nodded. “You remember that story he told us when he was dying?”

“You mean the one about the spider and the frog?” I had no idea where he was headed, but at least he was talking.

“Scorpion. It was a scorpion and a frog.”

“Okay, a scorpion and a frog. What about it?”

He drained the last of his beer and put the empty on the ground, looked at me, then back at the lake. “Sometimes lately...” He bit his lip.

“What is it, Hutch? You know you can tell me.” I leaned forward and tugged his pant leg. “C’mon.”

“It’s nothing.” He shrugged and reached down for another beer. “Sometimes I get to feeling like I’m the scorpion, that’s all.”

I had to think about that. It wasn’t what I expected. Not at all. In the story Zack told us, the scorpion was a scheming, conniving liar who tricked the frog into giving him a lift across the pond, then stung him and killed them both.

“Exactly what makes you think you’re a scorpion?” I had to hear this.

“Just forget it.” I could tell from his tone that he was irritated at himself for saying anything.

“No, I want to know.”

He stood up and leaned on the porch railing, as if that closing that little bit of distance could help him find some answer that had eluded him until then.

“C’mon, spit it out. It’s just us here. What have you done that was so awful?”

He looked over at me like I had two heads. “Did you see the dead cop laying in the floor back there?” He waved in the direction of Corman’s cabin.

“Hutch, you were fighting for your life. Yes, Corman died, and even though I’m mad as hell at what the bunch of them did, I’m sorry it came to that. But it was you or him, and I’m damned glad it’s not you that got carted outta there in the bag. And I can’t believe that somewhere inside that thick skull of yours, you can’t see that the right guy won.”

He didn’t answer right away. He couldn’t; I hadn’t left him any room. I decided to put a cap on it.

 “You’re not telling me you think I should’ve just let Burke shoot me and walk away?”

 “No, he didn’t really give you a choice.” He sighed and looked back out at the lake. “And I didn’t have a choice with Corman, either.”

“That’s right, you didn’t and I didn’t, and as ugly as it feels, we just have to accept that we did what we had to do. We did what we were sworn to do.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.” He grabbed his beer and sat back down in his chair. “Maybe I’m tired of doing what we do.”

If I hadn’t been sitting down, I’m pretty sure I would’ve fallen down. Hutch loved being a cop as much as I did. We’d both had our share of bad days and down times, but we’d never so much as thought about quitting. Until now.

“You wanna run that by me again?”

He leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Think about the people we deal with every day, Starsk. Dealers, pimps, thieves, thugs—face it, we spend most of our time with scum, and sometimes it feels like we’re getting sucked down into the gutter with them. We lie without even blinking, we use people until we don’t need them anymore, we make promises we don’t keep. I tell myself it’s okay, because we’re the good guys, but then a guy like Zack comes along, and I can’t help but wonder...” His voice faded and his eyes were a million miles away.

“Wonder what?” I asked softly, hoping he wasn’t going to clam up again.

His eyes showed so much pain as his gaze drifted up to meet mine. “How much difference there really is between him and me.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I didn’t even pretend to consider what he was saying.

“No, I’m not. I’m sure Zack thought he was one of the good guys, too.”

“Sure, Zack seemed like a nice enough guy, but there was something off about him. Had to be, considering he gunned down a guy in cold blood.”

“Starsk, they raped and killed his wife.”

“And that’s awful, Hutch, but it was our job to get them off the streets and put them through the system, not his to go meting out justice by his terms. He used us to put himself in that situation, but then he got caught up in it, just like that scorpion.”

“We used Crandall,” Hutch muttered. “Rode into that whole setup on his back, and where is he now?”

"Well, he ain’t dead on our account. He’s dead ’cause he was a greedy little bastard who couldn’t pick a side and stay there. He went for the trifecta: Stryker, Corman and his bunch, and us. Guy chases odds like that isn’t long for this world anyway."

“I know, but—”

“‘But’ nothing. Lookit, I know you're feeling bad about Corman and all the rest, and I feel bad, too, but it’s not something we planned to happen. It just went down that way. So sure, let’s sit here and feel bad for a while, but we gotta get past it. ’Cause we still got lots of folks counting on us running around being good guys.”

 He sat quietly for a minute, his eyes vacant, staring somewhere inside himself. “You remember when we were in the Academy and we used to daydream about what it would be like when we got out on the streets? All that talk about bringing down bad guys and helping people...what happened to that?” He looked over at me with his sad, soulful eyes. “This isn’t what I signed on for, Starsk. This wasn’t part of that dream.”

“I know.” If Corman hadn’t already been dead, I would’ve killed him myself for what he’d done to Hutch. “But I also know that this deal was freaky from the start, and like it or not, we did the right thing in bringing them down. Back up and look at the big picture, Hutch. It’s ugly as hell, I don’t deny that, but the right people went down and that’s what matters in the end.”

He didn’t respond, so I could tell it was sinking in, a little at a time. He sat back in the chair again. Although his body relaxed, his face was still so sad it made my chest hurt.

“Hutch, you wanna know the difference between you and Zack, and why there’s virtually no chance of you becoming like him?”

He managed a tiny, half-hearted smile. “Do I have a choice?”

“No.” I stood up and stretched. “The big difference in the two of you is that killing just ain’t in your nature. Look at you; you’re tearing yourself apart over something that you had to do in order to keep breathing. Zack planned an execution—two of ’em really—and then had lunch. No way the two of you could ever be alike.” I stepped off the porch and stretched again. “Hate to tell you, partner, but you’re the most un-scorpion like person I’ve ever known. You’re kind and decent and compassionate. If you’ve got a fault, it’s that heart of yours you keep wearing on your sleeve.”

He didn’t even look up, but I knew he was listening.

“In fact, if I had to choose, I’d say you’re the frog. Best you can hope for at this point is someone to kiss you and turn you into a prince.”

I pretended to stretch a little more, waiting. Sure enough, I heard him snort like he does when he doesn’t want to laugh outright, and when I turned around, he had a sheepish smile on his face. I decided to have a beer to celebrate, and that’s when everything changed.

I don’t know if his legs shifted or I stumbled, but one second, I was leaning over his outstretched legs reaching for a beer, and the next second, I was sprawled half in his lap and our faces were inches apart. He made a soft oof sound, and a look of surprise flashed across his face before being replaced by curiosity and something else I couldn’t define, something that looked an awful lot like desire. We both froze, watching each other.

It was shoot-or-don’t-shoot all over again, and I had no idea what to do. Instinct took over—I guess it was instinct—and I leaned forward. Our lips touched briefly and then again, and then I pulled back. His bottomless blue eyes were wide and wondering, and I couldn’t help but think I’d gone for the wrong target. But then his tongue tipped out to wet his lips, and it was his turn to lean forward.

One kiss followed another, as if we were afraid of what might happen if we stopped and thought about it. His lips were sweet and wet now, and I would’ve been happy to kiss him all night. I shifted to get more comfortable, and then realized it wouldn’t be long until my weight was too much for his legs. When I got my feet under me and tried to pull away and get up, his hands went around my neck and he moved with me. I didn’t know what I had expected when I kissed him, but this sure wasn’t it.

Standing seemed to make us both bolder for some reason, and the kisses got more intense. His hands were still around my neck, warm and soft, but his body was still too far away. So I fixed it. I wrapped my arms around his back and pulled him closer. The first contact made us both groan, and we separated.

His face was flushed and his eyes were darker, more intense.

“Hutch, I didn’t mean to push you—”

His answer was to wrap his arms around me and crush me against him. “It’s good, Starsk,” he whispered in my ear. “Really good.”

“So, you want to keep—”

I didn’t get to finish. His mouth was on mine again, and he backed me against the cabin wall. The doorknob pressed against my back, reminding me we were on the wrong side of it. I planted my hands against Hutch’s chest and pushed him away, turning to open the cabin door. It was locked. He fumbled around and found the key in his jacket pocket, but his hands were all shaky, so I took the key away and did it myself.

~*~*~

Outside the cabin was hot; inside was a blast furnace. Thirty years of habitation by men wearing dirty fishing clothes hadn’t contributed a whole lot to the ambience, either. If not for a sliver of moonlight filtering through the dirty window, the room would have been pitch black. It took a few seconds to get my mind around the fact that an open window might relieve the oppressive heat and get rid of some of the fishy smell. I turned around to tell Hutch what I was going to do and found him staring at me again. His eyes were wide and dark, and I knew from his expression that doubt was starting to take root. As I watched him, he raised his arms, dropped them back to his sides, then lifted them again. I caught him by the elbows before he could lower them again.

“Starsk?” he whispered hoarsely.

“It’s okay, Hutch.” I patted his chest. “Just gimme a minute to get some air in here. Wait right there.” He was beginning to look like he might bolt, so I squeezed his shoulders, hoping he would get the idea he was supposed to stay put.

Once opened, the window let in a nice light breeze and more moonlight. I could make out the shape of a lamp on a table beside the bed. Reaching for the switch, I bumped into Hutch, hovering at my elbow. His eyes locked onto mine, searching for something he evidently couldn’t give voice to yet.

“Starsky, I need...” His mouth kept working, but this was one of those times when he couldn’t find the right words.

“Shhh, it’s okay, Hutch. I know what you need.” I reached for the collar of his shirt. “Let me—”

His arms were around me before I could get the words out, and there was nothing for me to do but hold him until he was ready for more. I don’t know how many minutes passed before I felt the tension begin to leave his body and noticed his arms crisscrossing lower and lower down my back.

“Let me love you?” he whispered. His breath against my ear covered me in goose bumps. For an instant I wondered if he’d heard anything I’d said.

Suddenly I felt like one of those stupid cartoon characters with a light bulb over its head. I’d been wrong about what Hutch needed. I had thought the one thing that would bring him around would be being loved, being shown that the world hadn’t become the ugly place he believed it to be just then. But I was wrong. For Hutch, being loved wasn’t going to be enough; he had to give love, to lose himself in the joy of pleasuring someone else. And the truth of it was that I needed him, too. It was going to take a lot to erase those awful seconds when I heard the shot and didn’t know which one wasn’t breathing anymore—Hutch or Corman. I shivered thinking about it, and he pulled back. His eyes asked only one question.

“Love me.” I barely had the words out of my mouth before his tongue was down my throat. His hands found my ass a few seconds later and he pulled me close, but not close enough for me. The way he kept trying to press us closer told me it wasn’t enough for him either. Suddenly, he pushed away.

“Clothes,” he muttered, tugging at my shirt, and I understood what he meant. We didn’t say anything else. The room was filled only with the clink of zippers and belts and the thud of shoes and holsters hitting the floor. Before the last sound had faded away, his arms were around me again and he was steering us to the bed, but I stopped him when I felt the itchy wool blanket against the back of my legs.

“Covers,” I said into his mouth, and he grunted but broke away long enough to yank both the blanket and the top sheet to the floor.

“Bed.” He pointed to the dingy white sheet and pushed me onto it. I wanted to laugh as he climbed in beside me, but there wasn’t time before his lips were on mine again. We were finally close enough.

Hutch must have thought so, too. He’d been only half-hard when we undressed, but now I could feel his cock pressing into my thigh, seeming to grow harder with every kiss. Mine was flat against my stomach, begging for his touch.

We reached for each other at the same time, which didn’t surprise either of us. We do stuff like that a lot. The first stroke of his hand was electric; the second stroke busted when our wrists bumped together. We tried a few more times before Hutch knocked my hand out of the way and took both of us in his hand. That suited me fine. I spent my time exploring his body, learning what made him shiver, what made him draw in his breath. I had fun with it, teasing him. More than once, I made him miss a stroke. Who knew when I’d have the chance again....

I didn’t know where the thought had come from, but there was no willing it away once it arrived. It seemed to echo in an endless loop in my mind, and I wondered how I could mourn something I hadn’t lost yet. I felt the embarrassing sting of tears building, so I closed my eyes. If a few leaked out, I could say it was just sweat.

Hutch knows me too well, though. He stopped his stroking and gripped my face in his hands. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head and forced a smile. “It’s all good. Why’d you stop? Arm getting tired?”

He frowned. “You looked like—I don’t know—like you were in pain for a second there.”

“Nah, sweat got in my eyes. That’s all.” I wiggled my hips. “Need help finding where you left off?”

He stared at me for a long moment, and I knew he wasn’t buying it. For once, though, he didn’t argue. Instead, he pushed me over onto my back and climbed between my legs, spreading his own knees wide so our cocks could rest together. After giving me a long thoughtful stare, he began moving against me, a gentle undulation that took my breath away. We rocked together for a long time, first gently, then more forcefully as nature took its course, trying to memorize the feeling of each other’s flesh, trying to hold back the moment when this closeness would end. Hutch’s breath grew ragged and harsh, and I was right there with him. He leaned forward and I raised up until our foreheads touched; we didn’t have the breath left for a kiss.

“I love you.” I could barely hear the words, but I felt the puffs of air as they hit my face. I pulled back to look into his eyes and saw the only truth that will ever matter to me: Hutch loves me.

My orgasm was abrupt and powerful. I heard my own cries echoing back in the darkness—IloveyouIloveyou—as Hutch’s movement stopped. He still loomed over me, grinning like the idiot he is sometimes. I guess he knows now that I love him, too. So does anyone else within a mile of Fred’s Fish Camp.

As I slowly came back to my senses, I realized Hutch hadn’t come yet. His cock was heavy and full against my stomach, waiting its turn, so I reached down and took him in my hand. As he began thrusting into my fist, I reached up to caress his face. He opened his mouth and took two of my fingers in his mouth. Shivering and closing his eyes, he sucked them in hard, and I felt his cock jump in my hand as the spatters of his climax joined mine. Chest heaving, he collapsed beside me, and he looked so exhausted I thought he’d be asleep in seconds. But he surprised me by suddenly raising up on one elbow and pulling me onto my side to face him. The kiss this time was tender and patient, but even though I wanted it to last forever, we were too tired and it slowly faded away.

“What’re we gonna do, Hutch?” There wasn’t a simple answer, but I had to know what he was thinking.

He lay back down beside me and hooked his leg over mine, pulling me close again. “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.” He yawned. “Might take a while, but we’ll figure it out.”

~*~*~

He was in the shower when I woke up. At first I thought he’d left me there alone, but then I heard the sound of running water, and when I rolled over, I could see light coming from the half-opened bathroom door, and I could see Hutch just standing there, letting the water run over him. I was tempted to join him, but I wasn’t sure how welcome I’d be, now that he’d had some sleep.

When he came back into the main room, still naked, I expected him to start getting dressed right away, but he didn’t. He saw I was awake, and came over to sit on the bed, looking only a little bit awkward.

“How’s the water?” I asked.

“It’s fine,” he said automatically, and then turned and smiled, understanding what I really meant. “The water’s fine.”

“I was afraid you might regret....”

“Not one second,” he rushed to fill in where I trailed off.

“Good, ’cause I don’t regret it either.”

“I don’t know what it means, exactly. I mean, what do—uh, where do we go from here?” His voice was soft, tentative, and I could see in his eyes a little bit of hope and an equal amount of fear.

I was right back to shoot-or-don’t-shoot. Or that’s how it felt. But then I realized we didn’t have to decide forever at that very moment. Too much had happened, too many emotions were bubbling at the surface, and sitting there in a stuffy, musty cabin probably wasn’t the best place to discuss any of it.

“I say you take me out to dinner and we talk about it there.”

He snorted, which was the reaction I wanted, and laughed. “Okay, let’s do it.”

We were dressed and ready to go, when he surprised me by wrapping his arms around me and squeezing me tight. I let him, of course, and squeezed him back.

“You know,” he said, pulling away, “Corman was right about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You are pushy.”

“You weren’t complaining a little while ago.”

“I’m not complaining now.” He blushed a little and hesitated. “I might need you to be pushy again sometime.”

“And you’ll return the favor?”

“Anytime, anywhere.” He glanced around at our dim surroundings. “Well, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know.”

~*~*~

Hutch was right. We did figure it out, sort of, and it did take us a while. It wasn’t always pretty, and it definitely wasn’t easy, but this many years later, we’re still together. Only now neither one of us is dreaming and all the shadows are gone.

 

The End