peg22 | Writing At Work

So this 9 to 5 thing is working out okay. Got a big chapter of my crossover story done, and finished this little ditty yesterday.

I always see those prompts: 5 things House didn't know; 5 reasons Wilson got divorced - wanted to do one for the boys.

Big hug to Susan for linking my frags . . .

White rabbit, everyone.

Four People Who Knew and One Who Didn’t

by Kaye

I. Huggy

He’d heard Starsky talk about him for months now. Hutch this, Hutch that. But this time, Huggy watched him talk. Watched the way his face flushed, his eyes crackled, his hands became windmills, describing the day’s mayhem, the afternoon’s adventure. The man is whipped. Huggy wondered how long before everyone in the department knew. Wondered how long before Starsky knew. Wondered if he should tell him. And exactly how would that go? Yo, Starsky my man – you in love with this Hutch or what? Would get him a black eye at the least. More likely a bloody lip and traction. The one thing Huggy had already figured out about Starsky was that it wasn’t so until Starsky said it was so. But it was so . . . so.

Confirmation came a week later when they both breezed through his door, seven hours past their first shooting. Starsky had rolled left, Hutch right, and they took down three of Vic Monte’s goons, recovering almost a hundred thousand dollars of stolen merchandise. Their feet barely touched the floor as they ordered pitchers for everyone. Starsky kept telling Huggy how lucky he was that Hutch had a sensitive nose, because he had “smelled the goons before we saw them,” and Hutch sat quietly at the bar, smiling and drinking, his gaze never far from Starsky.

Huggy slipped onto the stool next to him. “So I guess we’d better get used to each other, my brother.”

Hutch just nodded and continued to watch Starsky as he exchanged high fives with three longshoremen and then sauntered back to the bar, wrapping an arm around each of them.

“So you two getting to know each other?”

Hutch spoke first. “Oh, we’re old friends,” he said and looked over Starsky’s head, raised both eyebrows in a question that Huggy answered with a tip of his beer and a wink, and as easy as that, they were solid.

Later that evening, when the buzz of the day had worn them into the back booth, beer replaced by coffee and cheeseburgers, Huggy heard the real story behind the bravado. How Starsky saw Hutch roll, but didn’t know if he had taken a bullet or just stumbled. How Hutch yelled at Starsky and then took cover, but didn’t know if he’d been hit. How the echo of Hutch’s snub- nosed .38 was the “sweetest sound I ever heard.”

“But you gotta get yourself a real weapon, partner,” Starsky teased. “Thought for a minute you’d unloaded a BB gun.”

“Don’t worry, partner. Already got a sweet little Magnum picked out. Just waiting for payday.”

“A Magnum?”

“Python. Sweet little piece.”

Starsky shoved his shoulder in Hutch’s. “Little? What are you trying to do? Make me deaf? Guess it’s okay – the bark alone’ll kill Fat Rolly.”

Hutch snorted. “A loud boo would kill Fat Rolly. Man’s a walking heart attack.”

Huggy watched as they talked. Argued. Reassured each other that they had escaped without a scratch. And as he unlocked the back door and they headed out, he noticed that Hutch kept his hand lightly pressed on Starsky’s back and suddenly felt better about the whole thing. He of all people knew these things tend to work out better when the tracks run both ways. And these tracks were definitely off and running.

II. Aunt Rosie

Rosie sat watching Hutch as he smoothed out the blankets, flicked off invisible fuzz, pushed a stray curl back in place and it hit her like a ton of undercooked matzo. She sucked in a breath and Hutch turned toward her.

“You okay, Rosie?”

She nodded and reached for her knitting needles. “Yes, dear. Just readjusting.”

Hutch turned back, pulled a chair too close to the bed, and sat down, his other hand never leaving Starsky’s. Rosie blew out the breath and settled back into her chair, a new lightness in her shoulders that felt incongruous with the stale sadness permeating everything else.

When Hutch had called her to say that Davey had been poisoned, her heart had stopped, only to be kick-started again by his assurance that he was going to be okay. Antidote, mad scientist . . . she tossed the details aside and marched straight to her nephew’s side. Where she found Hutch. Where she always found Hutch.

She couldn’t remember a birthday or a holiday that didn’t include the both of them. The boys. Her boys. She knew it had broken her sister’s heart to send her son to California that rainy September they put his father Michael in the ground. Knew she had her work cut out for her when he had bounded off the steps of the Greyhound, crossed his arms, and scowled at her from under a Yankees cap, muttering, “Never gonna think this ain’t the short stick. Ain’t never gonna.”

Maybe that was why she favored him, spoiled him. Plus, her own son Daniel had left home the day after he turned 18, and she only knew him these last 20 years through letters from a dutiful but distant daughter-in-law. So she might have overcompensated with Davey. Let him run wild too much those first few years, sitting up nights until she would finally hear the clatter of the chain link when he slipped into the yard and up the back porch steps. She never let him know. Pretended to be fast asleep and fed him extra pancakes the next morning. Did the same thing during his first weeks as a police officer. Stuffed him full of pastrami and pound cake on his days off.

Which soon turned into their days off. The boys. Her boys. Always thought the girls today must have a few screws loose, allowing these fine men to walk around free and untethered for so long. She sighed and dropped a row, cursing under her breath. She looked up and saw Hutch whispering softly, his hand still clutching Davey’s.

How had she been so blind? Boys didn’t need any bubble headed bleach bottle blondes worrying after them. They had each other. The needles clicked and Hutch’s soft murmur soothed her and dispelled any leftover doubt. Finally her Davey had found his place. His Hutch. Finally he had drawn the long stick. She wondered if she could get away with matching winter caps. For her boys.

III. Edith

Edith knew the moment she watched them lift Jackson Walter’s casket into the back of the perfectly polished hearse. Hutch’s hand smoothed the shoulders of Starsky’s suit coat, and then swept down his back, resting lightly on his hip. Starsky’s head lowered and he wiped a hand across his eyes and leaned into Hutch’s hand, into the touch, into Hutch.

She recognized the intimacy. It took her breath away. She felt herself bend towards her husband, standing so stonily, so stoic among the men. She knew that the story would be different at home, when he took off his coat and tie and responsibilities and he could sit at her feet and she would untie the knots in his neck with a whisper and a touch.

IV. Minnie

Minnie had been around the department long enough to know that every rumor had in its center, a nugget of fact. Or in this case, a nougat. It was like Bigelow. He wasn’t really stealing the department blind. He didn’t back up his van every night to the door of the property room and take what he wanted. No, Minnie knew that his in-laws were expected for the weekend, and so he borrowed the shop-vac and a couple of ceramic lamps and saved himself from pointed comments about his failures as a provider for two days.

And she had been around cops enough to know that after a while, partners became as close as husbands, wives. That promotions and transfers could be as traumatic as divorces around here. That it took Campbell six months before he could walk by the desk of his old partner, Ed Jameson. That Starsky had always finished Hutch’s sentences, his sandwiches, his footsteps. That sometimes they reminded her of Fred and Ginger, the way they moved in and out of doors, up and down the hall. It was a thing of beauty, really.

Which was why she found herself on the Friday before Easter, two inches from the ugliest mug that ever tried to put on a badge, Frank “The Slug” Marco. Minnie had the unfortunate timing to walk in on Sergeant Marco spouting off about her boys.

“Faggots. Used to shoot faggots in my day.”

Minnie had tried to ignore him at first. Until he added, “and they don’t care if you know it, too. Drive that damn faggot car, dress like faggots. If I were Dobey, I’d put em on vice permanently – let them troll for their own down on the docks.”

Minnie was around the desk and in his face in two seconds. “You got some kind of mental defect, Marco?”

“Not that I know of, Minnie. Why don’t you go ask Starsky and his girlfriend, Hutch about mental defects, huh?”

Minnie drew herself up, fist balled, face twisted in a scowl. “And if you don’t want to leave here today with a physical defect, you’ll keep that garbage that keeps falling out of your mouth to yourself.”

“You in love with those faggots, Minnie?” Marco held his hands up and stepped back. “I got no beef with you.”

“But you will. In fact there’s a certain secretary down in Traffic that will also have a beef with you . . .” Minnie waited until the information crept into Marco’s tiny brain.

His face turned red. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would. I’m sure she and your wife would just love to get a look at your log book. I’ll just mail them both a copy . . .”

“That’s blackmail.”

“No, that’s Minnie Mail. Fast, accurate, right to your door.”

“Bitch.” Marco walked away, kicking the trash can.

Minnie let out the breath she was holding, but couldn’t resist a final word.

“And you know, Sergeant, I’m almost positive that Captain Dobey would like to hear your suggestion about his squad. Want me to relay the message?”

She didn’t expect an answer. But as she turned the corner, she noticed Starsky and Hutch rolling down the stairs, Starsky taking two at a time, Hutch walking behind him, muttering. She saw Starsky turn and grab Hutch by the shoulder. They stopped for a moment and Minnie felt a shiver right down to her toes when Hutch reached out and cuffed Starsky on the chin. They continued down the stairs, and disappeared through the squad room doors, Starsky holding the door open and Hutch bending down to walk under his arm, poking him in the stomach just as the doors swung shut. Fred and Ginger. Pure Fred and Ginger.

V. Starsky

The whole thing was an accident. I didn’t know he had already gone into the bathroom to wash his hands. To think. That’s all he ever does anymore. Think. So I guess I startled him when I pushed open the door, and he turned and I stopped and then the door bumped me into his chest. And he wrapped his arms around me so that he wouldn’t fall back into the sink, and I grabbed onto his shoulders so I wouldn’t fall on my ass and then our foreheads bumped and he opened his mouth to complain and I opened my mouth to tell him to stop complaining and then everything stopped.

I looked at him and his eyebrow raised and his breath tickled my nose and then I just shoved him against the sink and he pulled my head down and our lips tangled together and I tasted garlic and his beard scraped against mine and for a minute I got distracted by the idea that I was kissing someone who had a five o’clock shadow and then he reached around and grabbed my ass and pulled me right up against him and I felt the hardness and the curves and he sucked my tongue into his mouth and I fell off the cliff.

I was standing in the bathroom of Huggy’s kissing Hutch. And then the word ‘finally’ whispered into my brain and I forgot where we were or who we were and got down to the business of making out. With Hutch. At Huggy’s. Sometimes accidents aren’t so much accidental as they are inevitable.

No one is ever going to believe this.