Trying again to post this.....



At the hospital, the doctors lather Starsky’s burned face with antiseptic and wrap his wrists in white gauze. When they start to make noises about keeping him overnight, Starsky makes a few louder noises of his own, and Hutch agrees to take him home. In the car, Starsky is quiet, staring down at the bandages. He starts to ask about Gail, then stops, surprised by the realization that he hates her just as much as the rest of them.

Hutch follows him up the stairs and into his apartment – he hasn’t stopped smiling since he found him, like a man holding a winning lottery ticket he doesn’t remember buying, and he keeps touching Starsky’s arm, his face, his hair. Starsky understands it, he’s been on the other side of the missing partner equation himself, but he wants to tell Hutch to knock it off and just let him be.

Instead, he follows Hutch’s orders. He eats the scrambled eggs, drinks the scotch, lies on the couch. Later, when Hutch finally asks what they did to him, Starsky can hear the fear in Hutch’s voice – they’ve both worked the Marcus case too long not to know the answer.

So he lies.

me_and_thee_100

Sometimes I feel like I missed the seventies.  Hutch and me worked so much back then we never got to the movies. I guess that’s why I buy so many dvds these days.

French Connection II seemed like a no-brainer .

Hutch got real quiet when the bad guys kidnapped Hackman’s character and got him hooked on heroin. I tried turning it off, but Hutch laid a hand on my leg and said, “Leave it.”  

He didn’t speak again until we were both still awake at 2am.

“It’s okay. Really. It was a long time ago. ”

“Yeah.”

Fucking seventies.

hardboiledbaby

You spend enough time with a person, eventually you start answering the questions he hasn’t gotten around to asking yet. Works out well with Hutch, since asking for what he wants doesn’t come easy. And since Forest, he acts like he’s lost the right to ask me for anything ever again.   

So I watch him. Anticipate. Pour his coffee, pick up lunch, drive him home. I sit on his couch and watch old movies while he tries to sleep. I wait for the scars to heal.

And when I slip into bed beside him, he asks me how I knew.

hardboiledbaby

mashfanficchick

dipslikeramon

It’s not like I can’t tell the truth. It’s just that lying is easier sometimes.

Like when Hutch asks me again if I’m okay. I got a gut full of poison and twelve hours left on the clock, so I’m about as far from okay as I’ve ever been.

“Peachy keen. How ’bout you?”

“Starsk – ”

“Not yet.”     

Eight more hours gone and the truth rushes in to fill the silence between us. I’m afraid I’ve waited too long – that the time that’s left is no time at all.

He sits down beside me and I reach for his hand.

There were always things that Dean wouldn’t do. Gank a kid, fuck a witch, cry.

He made a list once – back when it seemed like they still had choices. They picked their battles then – a holy war constructed like papier-mâché from the pages of small town papers. Fucking busy work, Sam accused his father that last summer. And then he was gone.  

His list was shorter now – over the last year, the number of won’ts, can’ts, shouldn’ts – had fallen as quickly as the seals. But if Dean had learned nothing else from his time with Alastair, it was that almost everything was negotiable. Hell had made him pragmatic.

So when there was only one seal left, and the line between whom he had become and who he needed to be was as blurred as the allegiance of the angels, the list – a single sentence – became his incantation, his penance for everything that came before.

Never leave Sam.  

Never leave Sam.

Never leave Sam.