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Hutch looks good. No - Hutch always looks good, but today he looks better, even from all the way across the room.
Starsky wonders if that’s in his head or if the other two people in this little corner store can see it too. It has to be obvious, right? It’s in the way Hutch stands and the glow of his skin and the fall of his hair and anyway, this is Hutch, the most beautifully odd man on the planet. Who wouldn’t want to pull up a chair and spend a morning just watching him?
Hutch glances over and Starsky raises his eyebrows. It causes Hutch to pull a slightly wide-eyed face, which in turn is enough to make Starsky look down at his notepad, still smiling. 20:00, the first line says in his own handwriting, and then there’s a whole lot of nothing.
“- sad, you know?” the woman he’s talking to says, when he tunes back into the witness statement he’s supposed to be taking down. “So then I said, why are you asking me that, is what I said, and you know what she said? She said she thought I worked here!” She shrugs almost violently, coming close to knocking over a newspaper rack right by the door in her whole body gesture, which functions like an outraged can you believe that?
Starsky has a feeling he can’t, so he just blinks. When after a few seconds the woman still hasn’t picked her story up again, he’s forced to invent a response. “I thought the thief was a guy?” Like Hutch, who is also a guy.
After last night, Starsky should know.
The witness to the seemingly pretty straightforward store holdup that took place twenty minutes ago has no patience for simple joy. “I was talking about the slippery woman who lives down the street. Did you not hear me?”
“Of course,” Starsky flat-out lies. “I’m just making sure that what I wrote down is the correct information. It’s procedure.” He puts his pen to the paper and scribbles a little line. “So remind me how this slippery woman is connected to the theft?”
“She’s slippery,” the witness says, like that’s all anyone could need to know.
Starsky nods like he agrees. If he squints, the line he put down looks kind of like Hutchinson written in cursive by a doctor. He sneaks a glance at Hutch, still talking to the store owner over by the register. “So what makes this woman so suspect in your opinion?”
“She wears a wooly hat in summer,” his witness says, who should have identified herself sooner as a member of the fashion police. Then Starsky would have known for sure what he’s dealing with. “Who does that? Who does that if they have nothing to hide, can you tell me that?”
“I can’t.” Even if it seems pretty likely that what she would have to hide is bad hair. “Can you tell me what eight PM means to you?”
“That’s the time the store closes.”
“Right.” Evidently the Starsky from five minutes ago was not very helpful. Shame on him, Starsky from now thinks, and courageously refrains from looking at Hutch again, because he’s a professional, he’s a serious man, he’s-
Vibrating on the inside like a damn teen with his first crush, and it feels amazing. And it was, it was amazing yesterday: Hutch had cooked him dinner, and afterwards with just some mild prodding he’d taken out his guitar and played a little. “Think you could teach me?” Starsky had asked, and suddenly he had a Hutch-warm guitar in his lap and as if that weren’t intimate enough, he also had Hutch’s hands on his trying to tell him how to move his fingers. He found himself pretending not to get it more than once just for Hutch’s surprisingly gentle instruction and the way it made something in his belly feel like a bucket full to overflowing trying not to spill at high seas.
He was very careful to put the guitar aside before he kissed Hutch. Gotta make sure not to crush Hutch’s heart, first and foremost.
“I really wonder,” fashion cop says, very pointedly and very huffily, “if you’re taking this seriously at all. It may not seem like a major case to you, but it’s a sign of the rapid decay of our city. Crime right behind me, while I try to buy my eggs! It’s criminal! I tell you, officer, it’s all those gosh darn-”
“Miss,” Starsky interrupts, at the precise right moment to not have to hear which group of poor people this particular concerned citizen thinks is actively targeting her omelets. “Could I get your name, address and number, in case we need to contact you for any follow up questions that may arise with further developments in the case?”
It’s a bit of a cumbersome mess of words, but with this type of person, it usually works, and it doesn’t fail him this time. His witness falters in her anger, eager to feel important and involved. She dutifully recites the personal information he asked for, so he puts his pen to the paper and gives actual writing a try.
Thing is, Hutch and he, they really shouldn’t have picked a Tuesday evening for it, amazing and unstoppable as it felt at the time. Friday, Saturday, hell, even Thursday, which at least would have left them with only one regular weekday to suffer through. It’s not that he isn’t trying at all, or that he doesn’t still think that getting justice for the average hardworking Joe is important even when it involves a petty crime like this one, but it’s damn hard to be interested in some wannabe goon making off with fifty bucks when he could be dreaming about the soft pale skin on the inside of Hutch’s left knee, instead. It’s not even close to a contest.
Hutch is like the sun - eclipses everything. Or is that the moon?
Back in the real world, it’s gone quiet again. “Thank you,” Starsky tells his witness, and he’s gratified to find that he’s filled up a few more lines on his notepad since he last paid attention. He may not be completely useless, even with his brain taking a honeymoon. “You’ve been very helpful. That’s all we need for now.”
She gives him one last somewhat dubious look, which he digs up the patience to answer with a face that inspires trust or at the very least won’t make her knock on Dobey’s office door to file a complaint tomorrow morning, and then she turns and exits the store, presumably.
Presumably because Starsky doesn’t see her do it, because all of his focus has already snapped back to the counter, where… the store owner is on the phone to someone, looking as mildly inconvenienced about the whole thing as he has right from the start, and is also completely alone.
Starsky jumps, actually jumps an inch or so into the air when something pokes his side from right behind him. “Shit!” he says, while wheeling around, and right over Hutch’s laughter. Hutch is brandishing his pencil like a weapon, but Starsky can’t even be mad, because this also means Hutch is right in front of him again, finally.
“How’s it going?” Hutch asks, with a residual grin that still hasn’t dimmed completely, and of course he means the case, but seriously, damn work.
“Now? Great.”
“Really?” Hutch sounds surprised, which is very cute of him. “Because the owner didn’t have much to say, except that he doesn’t think he could pick the kid out of a mug book but is willing to come in tomorrow to try, so that’s-” Hutch stops, and he looks like he might want to laugh again. “Ah. You weren’t talking about that, were you?”
Starsky wasn’t. “I’ve seen you-” There’s a hitch in his sentence as he tries to find the right words, and it makes the affectionate amusement flare up all over again in Hutch’s expression and posture, head to toe. It’s like even his hair perks up, getting a little extra shine. “Like you’re now,” Starsky decides, feeling a little giddy himself. “But it was never over me.” It’s mesmerizing, and the biggest ego boost he’s ever had.
Hutch leans in a little more. “You sure you weren’t walking around with your eyes closed?”
That shouldn’t be smooth. Hutch is very rarely smooth, and this is not either, not really. It’s slightly stilted as a line, and Hutch is a little too smug about it, but oh, Starsky is so easy for him. “I feel insane,” he confesses, because it seems like he could tell Hutch anything, show him any part of his deepest thoughts. It’s always been like that, but now it’s gone from a matter of potential to a matter of desire.
“How so?” Hutch asks.
So Starsky tells him: “If you were a girl, I’d be trying to learn your ring size right about now.”
“We just-” We just fucked for the first time last night, is what Hutch can’t say out loud.
Of course Starsky hears it anyway, and he even hears kissed, because that’s what sweet romantic Hutch would put front and center. “Yeah!” he agrees.
Hutch looks at him, and just the way he does it makes Starsky want to whoop. “Me too,” Hutch says, like sharing a secret, and again it’s a little smug, and again Starsky really truly honestly thinks it’s adorable. The cost of happiness may in fact be every ounce of dignity he’s ever possessed.
Not that that wouldn’t sound like a great deal. It’s hard to imagine there’s anything he wouldn’t give for this - to see Hutch smile at him. Somewhere in there are the sun and moon and all the other planets, too. Maybe some stars, for good measure.
“Hey,” Hutch says, tapping his pencil to his notebook with an air of thoughtfulness, “I think we should call Dobey.”
“Right.” Hutch has always been a little more studious, a little better at remembering regulation. “Give him an update.” This is one case that’s a lot less serious than it sounded when it was called in: it was one robber, not three, and he had a pocket knife, not a gun, and he was in such a hurry he didn’t even take all the cash. The perk of making it to Detective is handing stuff like this off to someone else and probably never having to worry about it again.
Hutch nods a bit, but ends it on a yes, but side tilt of his head. “And also to let him know that I’m not feeling too well.”
That’s a good way to make Starsky sink right through the bottom of cloud nine. “What?” He looks Hutch over crown to toe on pure split second instinct, but all of him still looks as amazing as it did from afar. “Are you okay?”
Hutch frowns pitifully and gives an incredibly pathetically acted little cough into his fist. “No, I think I’m coming down with something. Could be a bad cold.” When Starsky is still staring at him blankly after that, he tries on a meaningful look under his faux-regret. “I may need to take the rest of the day off.”
“Oh!” Starsky says, when it finally clicks. He’s a little slower on the uptake than usual, but in his defense he’s too distracted by Hutch to pay attention to him. Can’t see the Hutch for the- Well, all the beautiful little corners of Hutch.
But Hutch soldiers on. “How about you? You, uh-” He puts a hand to Starsky’s forehead, and Starsky swears he can feel it like electricity crackling down his skin, all the way to his toes. It’s the first time they’ve touched since they left Hutch’s apartment that morning - he would have noticed. “You look a little hot over there, partner.”
Starsky grins. That’s not what you do when you’re sick, but there’s nothing for it. “Actually, now that you mention it, I do think taking the rest of the day off would be good for me.” He feels for his own forehead, which is just an excuse to bump his fingers into Hutch’s as his hands retreats. “My health, I mean.”
“Sorry to hear that, buddy. Wanna bunker down together? We could-” Hutch pauses there just briefly, and then somehow manages to make it sound deliciously dirty when he finishes, “-convalesce at your place.”
Forget feeling like a teen, and forget vibrating on the inside. Starsky is a fully grown man, and he’s shivering right out of his skin with need. “Yeah, I think that’s smart.”
And it is, too, because they really might be doing Dobey and the city a favor here. Surely, at some point, it stops being a lie if a person calls in sick because they can hardly think straight or keep standing still from the blinding, stomach-clenching desire to pin their partner to the closest flat surface and stick their tongue anywhere he’ll let them. That’s not a frame of mind that will do anything substantial to drive down crime rates.
“You coming?” Hutch asks, meaning with him out through the door and to the police radio in the Torino, and Starsky would, in fact, jump off a bridge if Hutch told him to, so that’s a delightfully easy choice.
He does a little hop both to catch up on the two foot he’s behind and just because he feels like it. And once they’re in step, it’s completely natural to lift a hand and leave it on Hutch’s shoulder, which causes that same electric crackle, that same excitement, that same need to run his mouth. “Strange time of year for butterflies, don’t you think?”
“Terrible day of the week, most of all,” Hutch says, but Starsky finds he’s already changed his mind about that. As long as it brings him Hutch, scheming to get Dobey to let them make sweet love, any day ending in Y will do just fine.