THE FULL VALUE OF JOY
by: Callisto
Notes: HUGE thanks to Ancasta for the beta, and for showing me that my muse for this fandom had not disappeared.
Hutch shifted, uncomfortable again. He looked down at his feet. They hung in a rather ungainly fashion over the end of the small, cramped bed. He sighed, turned to his left and glared accusingly into the warm, brown eyes of David Cassidy.
This was what he deserved for listening to Starsky, though it had been a simple enough offer on their way to work that morning.
"C'mon, this way I get to kill a whole ton-a birds with one stone, and you get to drive home stuffed to the gills with homemade apple pie."
"That's not actually as tempting as you think it is, Starsk."
"If you don't come, you and I both know what happens." Starsky spoke as if his meaning were clear and of great significance. Hutch raised a nonplussed eyebrow to dispel any such certainty. This he wanted to hear.
Starsky sighed.
"Fine. Here's how it'll play. The second I get there, Rosie's gonna wrestle the car keys off me, tell me I look too terrible to drive back, even if I don't. Then she'll cluck over me till I'm about ready to throw a plate, and force me to spend the night in the guest room." Starsky was all gestures and animation now. "Of course, that's after I've listened to the nice-girl-settle-down speech, had her advice on how much more painful my physical therapy should be to be doin' any good, and been filled in on a whole bunch of second cousins I don't remember." He paused and settled back in his seat.
Hutch thought it was all over, when another light bulb obviously lit up.
"And had her moon all over you, without you even bein' there." The last was said on a triumphant grin, as if some irrefutable point had been made.
Which in a way it had.
"Moon, huh?" Hutch tried to keep the amusement out of his voice. Aunt Rosie twittered like a schoolgirl around Hutch, which he delighted in exploiting, since it irritated Starsky, who became instantly invisible.
"Moon."
"Well, then why didn't you say so, Starsk? Never could turn down a good moon." He glanced to his right, letting his amusement show.
"Bastard." No heat. Starsky knew when he'd been suckered.
They both knew a visit to Aunt Rosie was long overdue. Starsky's Uncle Al was gone, lost to a heart attack that had felled him while he had a wrench in hand and his head under the bonnet of a Chevy Bel Air convertible. Rosie, who had spent more than half her life with her high school sweetheart, had mourned him deeply. And then she had decided to live a little. So she had passed the garage and the Chevy on to her son-in-law, sold up, and moved into a small canyon community. She got her 'artists and oddballs' as she liked to call her neighbors, but she also got a lot of distance between herself and her favourite nephew. Those miles had kept her fretting long-distance the whole time Starsky had been in hospital. She had managed only one visit, in the very early days, when Starsky had been all tubed up and Hutch had barely been capable of a sentence.
In the car, Hutch marveled at his partner's ability to wheedle. He had been perfectly content to let Starsky have the first visit all to himself, and had been the one to suggest it on the phone to her. Not that Rosie was about to let Hutch get away with the idea of Starsky going alone. With her pealing laugh, she had badgered and cajoled until he was flirting right back at her, at ease like he never was with any of his own aunts.
She was a classy lady, a Starsky to the core in her energy and enthusiasm for life and those around her. She had bad arthritis which, combined with a passion for food and the kitchen, was steadily slowing her down and had contributed to her expanding waistline in recent years. But she still kept her curls the Rita Hayward red she had loved as a teenager, put Chanel Number 5 behind her ears every morning, and chose to limp everywhere rather than use her cane, which was for 'old folks'. Rosie, he knew, would smother and feed Starsky to perfection, something his partner's fragile ego still needed, whether he knew it or not. But the drive was a long one... Hutch shook his head, there was a price for being so overprotective.
"So, you'll come, huh?"
But when you came down to it, the price was easy to pay.
And the drive up had been a good one. With Starsky taking the keys and Hutch only too willing to give them to him. The radio station had been playing 60s pop hits and Hutch had enjoyed himself remembering lyrics, while Starsy had dredged out the occasional names of girls he had kissed to them. Then Hutch had sung along to Mr Tambourine Man from start to finish while Starsky had tapped the rhythm on the steering wheel and smiled at him indulgently. Two songs later and they had arrived.
However, Hutch silently informed David Cassidy, just because he could bring out that smile in his partner, did not justify where he had subsequently found himself.
A few hours previously...
Hutch sat out on the back deck and seriously thought about getting up. Or moving. Or opening an eyelid maybe.
Nope, wasn't going to happen. Rosie had plied them with enough key-lime pie to block an artery. She had stood next to Starsky, beaming and squeezing his shoulder as he took his first bite, so Starsky had dutifully obliged and made a whole range of appreciative noises before nudging Hutch's knee and scraping half of it onto his plate when her back was turned. Starsky was eating again and he was eating well, much better than he had for months. But his stomach was never going to be the disposal unit of his pre-Gunther days.
Hutch sighed and shifted. Talk about eating for two. He stretched his legs out a little more, and tilted his head back until the last of the day's sun found his face. The early evening sounds of nature were starting to set up all around and somewhere behind him he had the murmur of Starsky and Rosie in the kitchen. Moving anything became a moot point.
The screen door banged open but he didn't open his eyes. The swing seat creaked and swayed as Starsky eased himself slowly onto it on his right. He waited for a conversation to start, for Starsky to fill him in on the latest exploits of the Starsky clan, which Rosie had undoubtedly just updated him on. But nothing was forthcoming and the buzz of nature kept his eyes closed and his brain quiet.
Companiable silence. A phrase Hutch had read a few times but never thought about. But this must be it, what he had on this porch with his partner. The rarity and comfort of it squeezed his heart a little.
A knee nudged his.
"Just thought you should know, Blondie, I'm having trouble moving here."
Hutch opened his right eye at that and squinted, but Starsky was looking straight ahead. Hutch relaxed, closed his eyes again and nudged back.
"Pushover," he said.
"Absolutely," agreed Starsky instantly. "Got no willpower whatsoever when it comes to this lady."
"I heard that, David. And if you want to go driving down that long road when there's two fine beds inside and blueberry pancakes waiting for you for breakfast tomorrow, then you go right ahead. Ken, can I get you anything? Would you like a cushion for your back?"
Starsky's hands went up and slapped down on his thighs. Then he coughed. Hutch grinned, ignoring the word "moon" in the middle of it.
"Rosie, I'd slide off the porch if I was any finer. Come sit with us and give this delinquent a lesson in manners, would you?"
"Hey! Who you calling a delinquent? I'm not the one sprawling all over the furniture with the top button of his pants undone."
"Hush, David. And let the man sprawl! It's what a porch swing is made for. You're a sweetheart, Ken, but I have to go and get the bedding and make up the bunks."
It took a moment or two. The pie was still sluggishly moving its magic through his system. And there was the warmth of the sun above him and of the man beside him. Who even as they both yawned, was surreptitiously increasing his lean onto Hutch, slowly but surely comandeering his right shoulder as a pillow. It all meant that his thought process was blissfully lethargic. Then he heard the one word in Rosie's last sentence that he needed to.
He opened an eye.
"Bunks?"
"Uh-huh. Guest room's being decorated."
When nothing else was forthcoming, Hutch opened both eyes and gave the head on his shoulder a jolt.
"And?"
"And what?" Starsky's eyes were still closed, his relutance to snap to attention clear from the way he rubbed Hutch's shoulder a little more with his cheek and laced his fingers across his stomach.
"And where exactly are we sleeping then, Garfield? Apart from here, with you purring on my shoulder."
A yawn cracked Starsky's jaw open and his eyes reluctantly followed suit as he turned his face up toward Hutch.
"Bunk beds. The ones she has set up for Emily and Mikey."
Hutch blinked down at him. "Her grandchildren?"
"Yup, I got dibs on the top one."
"You got...? What are we, twelve?"
Starsky grinned. "Not at all. I'll rock, paper, scissors you for it."
Two rocks to two papers and a blunt pair of scissors later and Hutch had little choice but to accept defeat in the shape of a mattress with a pink coverlet, a heart shaped pillow, and about a hundred variations of soulful brown eyes gazing at him from the wall separating the two bunks.
He looked at his partner, who was trying and failing not to smirk.
"No prizes for guessing which one is Emily's then," said Hutch dryly.
"Sweet, huh? Rosie was telling me in the kitchen, she has a crush on David Cassidy."
"So I see. Now if you don't mind, I call dibs on the bathroom."
By the time he got back, Starsky was under the covers. He had his right arm out through the guard railing and was turned onto his right side, fast asleep. Hutch sighed. He'd been hoping for a little more conversation, as he sure as hell didn't anticipate getting much sleeping done. He peeled back the coverlet, said a silent prayer for his back, and eased his way onto the bottom bunk.
Only to find himself glaring at David Cassidy some forty sleepless minutes later. The curtains were thin, the moon was high, and all those eyes were just too brown and too fucking many. And he could swear there were smudges on some of David Cassidy's lips, smudges that were probably lip-sized themselves, which he really did not want to think--
The bed above creaked and dipped, taking his attention from one David to another. He listened as Starsky rolled over, then he heard him snuffle and resettle. He listened harder and realized with a start that the moon and the bed had not been the only things keeping him awake. He scrubbed his hand down his face, then rested the back of it on his forehead. What he was lying there straining his senses to hear, was actually the sweet, sweet sound of nothing at all. No hiss, no whine, no cough, no wheeze, no rattle, no hitch -- he knew all the nouns there were for the way Gunther had made Starsky breathe in his sleep. He blinked. Maybe he wouldn't need to know them anymore. He blinked again, a little surprised at the moisture gathering in his eyes. But then, this was the closest to a sleeping Starsky he'd been since his partner had turfed him off the couch, hugged him, slapped him upside the head, and told him to go home and get his life back.
Which had apparently happened.
He brought his hand down his face again. He thought of that moment on the porch and of the drive up. How he had done the singing, and Starsky had done the smiling. And then how they had both simply listened, tapping their fingers as the scenery had sped by and got prettier. Starsky was quieter these days, no doubt about it. In so many ways -- some of them a little heart-tugging, some of them worth celebrating. He smiled. The one he had right now? Was worth firing cannons over the parapets for.
He closed his eyes, shut out David Cassidy and let the sound of David Starsky doing nothing at all take him home.
The End