Dedication: This is for Kate, who is always in my corner. It is different from the version up at the Me and Thee Archive.

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

by: Callisto

Hutch felt the breath of his partner. It heated the cotton of his shirt first, and then the shallow curve of his shoulder. He hadn't moved in about twenty minutes and he reckoned it was about ten since he'd felt the mattress dip. At the time he had neither opened his eyes nor moved. Just waited, resisting the urge to smile at Starsky's cautious crawl towards him.

As Hutch lay there, listening to the sound and silence of everything right with the world, he thought back to the first time he had stretched out, fully-clothed and exhausted, and awoken to feel Starsky at his shoulder.

All he wanted was to lay his sore back down for just one lovely minute. Flying a desk was one thing, cleaning up Gunther's shit was proving to be something else. Truth be told, it was the most satisfying police work he'd ever done. Every time he chipped away at that mountain and got a result, his soul got another air-punch of triumph, another reason to continue on alone for just a little longer. Another truth be told was that it was the most exhausting police work he had ever done. Having barely convinced Dobey that he could distance his emotions enough to keep his composure, actually accomplishing that required a self-discipline that had his jaw aching at the end of most days. And then at the end of most of those days there was the living reminder of why to go home to.

Hutch had ended up with a kind of temporary cot arrangement in his partner's front room, kindly donated by Minnie and pushed aside in the mornings. Starsky's sofa had declared war on his back from day one -- practically swallowed him whole one memorable evening. Accepting the need for something more comfortable with a lack of resentment he would have marveled at had he taken the time, Hutch simply thanked Minnie and went about setting up this new part of his life. Part of the new set up became the pleasure Hutch took in occasionally napping on Starsky's brand-new orthopedic mattress. Starsky still grumbled about it, seeing it as some kind of comment on his age rather than his injuries. Hutch's back, on the other hand, loved it instantly and without reservation.

That night Starsky was restless. Nothing unfamiliar in that -- his healing body often chose the end of a day to resent being healed. But it meant that when Hutch should have been sleeping he was distracting his partner with chess and a painkiller, and then later he was having his hand gripped in silence, to the bone, while waiting for that same painkiller to let Starsky sleep. Hutch did what he always did. He stayed until Starsky's face and breaths evened out, took the last traces of cold sweat away with a warm sponge, and fell bonelessly across the cot for his own three hours of sleep.

When he came back late that following afternoon after a day spent rushing round the courthouse, the only thing his tired back would let him think of was that mattress. Starsky was not back from his physio session -- he got picked up and dropped off three times a week -- so the quiet, together with the unusual feeling of not having to do something as soon as he walked in the door was enough. He kicked off his shoes, sprawled on his back and spread his arms out jesus-style, feeling his disks and muscles thank him. Two minutes and he'd head for a hot shower..

He awoke when he tried to turn. A weight of some kind was pinning his right arm, numbing it. He blinked himself awake, as hard and as fast as he could, and raised his head slightly. He saw the curls.

"Starsk?" It was spoken as a puzzled reflex more than a real question. He squinted down. He was in exactly the same position, arms still spread, but at some point Starsky had slotted himself in next to him. He was lying on his left side at maybe a couple of inches parallel all along Hutch's length. His head, pillowed on Hutch's upper arm, was the only point of actual physical contact. A soft snore escaped. Hutch swallowed, laid his head slowly back and felt profoundly moved with no real idea why.

Pins and needles eventually forced him up. Not wanting to wake Starsky, who was still dressed in his physio sweats, he held his breath and extracted his arm as gently as possible. Pausing to wrap the thin bedspread around each side of his partner, he got to the doorway and found his head pulled back to look. Every once in a while a gratitude he couldn't even begin to measure sneaked up on him, stopping him in his tracks. A louder snore from the lump in the middle of the bed broke his reverie. Shaking his head at the scene and at himself, Hutch closed the door quietly behind him.

They never referred to it, but Hutch took to stretching out on that mattress at least two or three times a week. Most of the time he had it to himself -- he and Starsky were still on very different time-lines -- but the second time he came to to find that curly head on his shoulder, he merely curled his arm up, splayed his fingers across a bicep that was finally starting to fill out, and went back to sleep. The third time it happened his eyes were open and fixed on the ceiling, his mind too busy with the deposition he had just given. Starsky seemed to hesitate at the foot of the bed when he realised his partner was not asleep this time. Sensing this, Hutch shifted and gave him one of the most uncomplicated looks and smiles Starsky could ever remember seeing. Grinning in return, Starsky inched his way over and took up what had become his unspoken usual spot. After a moment's self-conscious pause, each then proceeded to entertain the other thoroughly with a conversation about the new wardrobe and look Edith was trying to equip Dobey with.

They never woke at the same time. The second time Hutch had again carefully extricated himself and returned to the cot. It was Starsky's bed after all, and injuries or no, Starsky had never been a stay-in-one-place kind of sleeper. Starsky's mother, regular as clockwork, had phoned the third time, just as Hutch was torturing Starsky with the image of Dobey in a lemon pantsuit. She knew to let it ring a while, Hutch realised, as he watched his still chuckling partner take a steadying breath and ease himself slowly to the floor.

Instinct told him now that although some minutes had passed, Starsky wasn't asleep. If he listened over the breaths, which were still a little jagged at times, he could actually feel his partner's eyelids opening and closing.

Weird.

"'S funny?"

Hutch started, unaware that he had made a noise. "I think I can hear your eyelids."

All he got for this revelation was a decidedly unimpressed grunt, as if he had just told him fruit was healthy. A minute or more went by in the kind of silence Hutch's tired nerves had come to savor. He felt himself starting to drift--

"Did you know that the Great Wall of China can be seen from the moon and is 7,000 kilometers long?"

Hutch peered down. "I tell you I can hear your eyelids and this is what I get?"

"It was built by a buncha different leaders and kept out invading forces for more than ten centuries." He paused, still conversational "Imagine that, huh?"

A low chuckle vibrated from Hutch. "Get stuck on PBS again there, Starsk?"

It had happened before. The channel selector on Starsky's TV was fried. Hutch dimly recalled a beer ending up all over it during the welcome home party. For reasons as yet uninvestigated it occasionally liked to flip itself a channel up, which if Starsky was watching daytime Bonanza re-runs, meant the documentary channel.

"Have you know Hutchinson, I am not as lightweight as you think. I watch history."

"Sure you do."

There was a pause.

"Had to wait for Philippe to come in with his key..." Starsky pulled back slightly as the laughter started to shake through Hutch. It was infectious, "...never been so grateful to see a six foot Frenchman." Starsky had recently graduated to twice weekly house visits from a gentle bear of a physiotherapist called Philippe. In true Starsky style, he had given him a front door key 'in case' and nicknamed him the Inquisition after their first session. Hutch pointed out that he was mixing his cultures, but Starsky had just shrugged and grinned, giving him that "potayto, potahto" look.

As the laughter trailed off, Hutch sobered a little. Starsky must have been suffering if he hadn't gotten up to change channel. He took the opportunity to study the man alongside him. There was a definite hitch to Starsky's breathing now, but that just could be from laughing harder than was good for him. However, Hutch could also see a tightness about the way Starsky was lying, as if he were holding himself back and in from something. He hesitated, unsure how to help, or even if he should. Starsky's hard-won independence still tended to dig its heels in at any and all offers of sympathy and comfort, even from his partner. Sometimes especially from his partner.

Doing his best to stay where he was, yet unsure if his muscles were going to let him, Starsky's breath hitched and caught as he shifted. Hutch bit his lip. A tremor stiffened the arm muscle under Hutch's right fingers, and this time it was Starsky who bit a lip. No more thinking. Hutch brought his left arm over, took the forearm of Starsky's right, which had bunched up between them, and brought it across his own body.

"Tough day?" Was all Hutch said.

It took a moment for the answer. "Bit, yeah."

In truth, he had spent a miserable hour riding out the kind of spasms he was leaving behind too fucking slowly as far as he was concerned. Philippe expertly kneaded them out, but the experience had left him tense and battle-weary. Starsky swallowed, momentarily floored by the truce and clarity this simple action was now bringing him. He tried and took his first deep breath of the day. As if at a signal, Hutch's hand then dropped to his back, just behind the right lung and began a gentle, open-palmed pressing.

Somewhere a dam broke.

The last of Starsky's reluctance to allow this comfort took flight. With a grunt of pure relief his body unlocked and tipped forward, taking itself over those last inches that had kept them parallel as he came to rest all along the right side of his partner. He blinked unsteadily at the overwhelming peace of it all, his eyelids brushing against the neck and collar he suddenly found himself pressing into.

"Ssh, 's okay, it's okay. Just relax, buddy. I got you, Starsk, 's okay." The words scarcely mattered. The tone, the touch, that was where the healing lay. Somewhere in the release Starsky felt the tight misery of the afternoon let him go. When Hutch's left arm came up to complete the circle he was held in, he did as he had done long ago on a rickety step, he buried himself into his partner and gave his pain and suffering up to another. No smell of warm leather this time, but the echoing sense of being safe and being home filled him just the same.

Hutch's hands gradually relaxed their pressure as he felt Starsky's composure return.

"You okay?" He had felt the moisture on his neck.

"Think so." A little hoarse, but tremor free.

Nothing else needed to be said or done right then. It had always been that way, moments of unspoken solace given and taken with no need to either thank or explain. Starsky's breathing slowly evened out.

"Hutch?"

"Mmm..."

"Just so we're clear? 'M firin' Philippe and hiring you."

"Hey, caught me on an off-day, pal. I won't always be this nice."

And just like that, the universe tilted its way a little further to what would eventually pass for the even keel of their lives. Hutch would wonder at the simplicity of it all later. For now he was anchored beyond words by the weight of the man on his shoulder. His gratitude, it seemed, had finally found its measurement.

Starsky shifted in the loose clasp Hutch still had him in and Hutch realised that before he got too comfortable, now was the time to get up and let Starsky have room to stretch and move in sleep as his body would demand.

"Hey! Where you going?" Rather touchingly, Starsky's hand flew out to grab a sleeve at the first signs of movement away.

"Starsk, we're both dressed, it's getting dark, I'm tired and you're sore."

Starsky eyed him critically." You ain't wearing nothin' you can't sleep in, and neither am I."

Hutch started a mental count to ten at the logic, determined not to be swayed. "What if I lean on you or something by mistake, I mean, I could hurt--" A hand over his mouth and a deep-throated chuckle cut him off.

"Never happen." Starsky put his head back on the shoulder and smiled as something came to him. "What can I say, Blondie? You ain't thousands a-kilometers and no-one's gonna see ya from space, but you're the Great Wall Of China, Hutch. Built to protect. 'S all there is to it."

In the growing dark, Starsky knew when Hutch had taken that in. A hand drifted briefly to his cheek, then settled back on his arm. Starsky giggled, he couldn't help it."The Great Wall Of Hutch."

"Starsk?"

"Yeah?"

"Need to hear those eyelids closing, buddy."

The End