peg22 | Snippet as Olive Branch: I'll Show You Cranky

So, sometimes the boys are like the best Hallmark card in the world.

Any resemblance to real life (I steal line from LS) is purely accidental . . .

Just a little evening with the boys - somewhere between Season 2 and infinity . . .

I’ll Show You Cranky

by Kaye

"What the hell is wrong with you? You're so cranky tonight."

I'm sure he had more to say, but the door I slammed shut between us muffled anything else. Cranky? Three year olds get cranky. Old ladies who miss their daily spoonful of Geritol get cranky. I wasn't cranky. I was pissed. Steamed. Irritated. But not cranky. Maybe grouchy. I'd take a grouchy. If I wasn't so cranky.

What the hell was wrong with me? I’ll tell him what’s wrong with me. I shoved the door open and there he was, sitting in the chair, book folded on one knee, glasses shoved down on his nose, staring at me over the rim. Waiting. Now that makes me cranky.

He knew I’d come right back into the room. I hate letting even a minute come between fight and forgive. And he knows it. My Aunt Calista’s fault. No, not a my dear old Aunt Calista would always tell me never go to bed angry story, but more like, my dear old Aunt Calista told my poor old Uncle Alfonse to stick it where the sun don’t shine right before he got hit by the five o’clock Newark express story. Seriously. Sat in a rocker next to a soot-stained window for the next three years, rocking and muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over. Finally had a massive stroke on my brother’s birthday. Dad had to cancel the pony rides. Nick never got over it really. Always called her ‘fucking Aunt Calista” after that. Charmer since birth, that Nick.

Hutch was still staring at me. Eyebrows lifted. Fingers brushing his throat. He always does that. When he’s thinking. When he’s hot. Whenever. Strokes his goddamn neck more than . . . okay, so maybe I am a tad cranky.

“What?” I should have stayed longer in the bedroom. Worked on my comeback.

“Nothing. Just wondering if you were done slamming things.”

Cocky bastard.

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not.” Oh yeah, another minute or two would’ve really helped.

He rolled his eyes and picked up his book. All Things Wise and Wonderful. Perfect.

I walked over to the chair opposite him. Sat down. Sighed. Tossed my feet up on the coffee table. Shoved three magazines onto the floor. He just looked up and frowned.

“What?”

He sighed. “Can you have your little fit somewhere else - I’m trying to read.”

“Can you put your goddamn magazines somewhere else? I‘m trying to relax.”

He slammed the book shut. Finally. Not that I was trying to piss him off, but it’s always better when you’re grouchy to have an attentive audience.

“Read your book. I’m not stopping you. Although why you wanna read about a guy with his arm up a cow’s hoo haa . . .”

“Starsky - what is it? You might as well tell me, because all this attitude is starting to piss me off.”

“Oh, sorry. I thought you liked it when I came over. Maybe you’re just tired of me.” Guess I wasn’t exactly done with the fighting part.

“I am not tired of you. But whatever’s got your back up is starting to bleed into my quiet evening I had planned with Dr. Herriot. So come on, tell me. Something happen after I left today? Dobey chew your butt again? Simonetti breathe wrong? What?”

I figured I had two choices. Sit here whining and pissing him off till he was the one behind the slammed door - and he could stay in there for days - no Aunt Calista in his childhood. Just long Minnesota winters with silent suppers that lasted forever. His family believed in avoiding everything for as long as possible. Turns it all into the swirling sewer of guilt I’d been slugging through since our Academy days.

Or I could actually talk. Spill. Tell him why it wasn’t Dobey. Or work. Or the Yankees inability to score a goddamn run after the third inning. Or even the fact that he had put a security deposit on a house on the beach without telling me. I mean, he’s a grown man. He can decide to move wherever and whenever he wanted.

“You planning on moving?” Defense. Offense. All that.

He looked surprised. Good.

“Why do you ask?”

I guess some of those winters were spent learning how to be coy.

“Your realtor called after you left. Said your check cleared. Said you could pick up the key tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. So, what’s wrong with this place?”

“I, uh . . . Oh hell, Starsky - I was going to tell you. I was just waiting for . . .”

“You don’t have to explain.”

He smiled. Which pissed me off.

“You can move anywhere you goddamn want to.”

“Starsky, I . . .”

I held up my hand and he stopped talking. There’s this other part I always forget. The part that comes between fight and forgive. I like to call it “the puke.” Hutch hates that word, which makes me like it better. He suggested once, when I was into the second half of an hour long rant about Simonetti and some missing evidence on a robbery case, that I should just actually puke and save us both some time. I slammed a lot of doors that night.

“Don’t Starsky me, Hutch. Just tell me why I have to hear from a goddamn realtor that my best friend is moving. Huh? I mean, hell. I kinda thought that we . . . well I mean I was thinking we could . . . I guess I just assumed that . . .”

I looked up and the man was actually grinning at me now.

“What?”

Instead of answering me, he stood up and headed toward the kitchen. “You want a beer?”

“No, I don’t want a beer. I want you to tell me what the hell’s going on here? I do something to piss you off?”

“Not yet,” he said from the kitchen, “but the night’s young - is that a yes or a no on the beer.”

I rubbed my face. “Yes. A beer.” I needed one. This was not going at all like I’d planned. “But not one of those piss water Coors. I hate Coors.”

He came back in, tossed me a beer (Budweiser), and sat back down on the couch. I pulled off the tab, tossed it on the coffee table (which I know makes him crazy) and drank half the contents in one gulp.

When I looked over at him he was rubbing his neck again. Even though it irritated me, it also made me a little . . . tight in the trousers. Another phrase he hates. I downed the rest of the beer and ripped a record breaking burp. Again, he frowned at me.

“So, what’s the deal?” I folded my arms. Tried to look uninterested.

“You know this isn’t a good idea, having this conversation when you’re so cranky . . .”

“Stop saying I’m cranky. You’re pissing me off.”

“See?”

“Okay. Okay. I won’t say anything else.”

“Fat chance of that.”

“Fine. I’m going home.”

Hutch just folded his arms and called my bluff. “Good, we can talk in the morning.”

I sighed and rubbed my face again. The beer was giving me a headache. And then I felt his hand on my knee. And he knows that’s not fair. I cannot stay angry at him when he’s touching me. Ever.

“I didn’t decide to move without telling you. I was going to tell you. I was actually going to surprise you. Here.” He reached for his book and pulled out a single sheet of paper ahd handed it to me.

I turned it over. It was a flyer for a “three bedroom bungalow with ocean view, eat-in kitchen and two-car garage.” Nice place. Really nice place.

“Looks nice.”

He squeezed my leg. Which was a little distracting to say the least. “So, you like it?”

Did I like it? It was perfect. “Yeah, it’s okay.”

“It’s ours.”

I looked up now. Hutch was grinning with every tooth in his mouth.

“Ours?”

“I know I should’ve asked you first, but there were already two offers and my realtor said I had to move fast and I just walked in and knew it was where we should be and the garage even has a little work bench and there’s a sun porch, and we’re practically living together already and I know we haven’t really talked about it but I just thought . . .”

I was still stuck back on the pronoun. “Ours?”

Hutch slipped off the couch and knelt in front of me. Took my hand. Freaked me out. I tried to pull my hand away, but he had a death grip.

“Starsky, will you move in with me?”

Move in with him? To the perfect house on the beach. With a work bench? Was I crazy?

There’s one more part of Fight/Forgive. It also begins with F. And I spent the rest of the night letting Hutch know all the reasons moving in with him was one of the best ideas he’d ever had. And he finally made me forget why I was ever cranky in the first place.

fin