"My Needle, My Love" Revisited

By: CapLovesGregandJames

A/N: This is an update of sorts to the possible missing scene from "The Fix." This is Hutch's POV.

Starsky and Hutch do not belong to me. If they did, the Torino would be all mine!

My needle, my love. It's been 1095 days, 156 weeks, 36 months, 3 years since my last injection. Amazing really because my attitude is so different from the first time.

The reason I am writing this is because I heard a song last night that dam near caught me in a very weak moment. It was an eye blink away from "doing me in." Here's the quote:

"Just let me lay my hands on you

That's the thing that I want to do

Want to spend some time alone

Give me a chance and I'll take you home."

Then later in the song this statement is made:

"Just let me lay my hands on you; that's the thing that I want to do

Want to spend some time alone; give me a chance and I'll take you home."

Then later in the song this question is asked:

"What's a fool for you do when he's so in love with you?"

And finally, one more line:

"Crazy little things you do make me want to be with you tonight."

I mean seriously. There are days when I am convinced I have a firm grip on my recovery and other days when I really wonder. Like last night. I think one of the most valuable things I have learned in recovery is to pick up the phone instead of picking up a needle. So that is exactly what I did.

I called Starsky and he zoomed right over. He has learned what to do and what not to do when I'm in the state of what he calls "the lunatic fringe." And I might add it comes in various degrees of intensity from very mild to very severe and last night's "lunatic fringe" was off the scale.

I think it was the worst it has been since I've been totally clean. I shook, sweat like a pig and rocked back and forth and Starsky sat next to me, holding my hand and rocked with me as we worked through it together. I swore, I yelled, I cried. And Starsky swore, yelled and cried with me.

I told him I was at the end of the line and had to get fixed. I know what wasn't what he wanted to hear but I had to be honest with him. I kept telling him I was going to die and he kept telling me I would die if I took up with it again.

At one point, Starsky did the unthinkable and I was ill prepared for it. He reached into his jeans pocket and brought out a tourniquet and dropped it onto my lap. I looked at him, shocked and totally dumbfounded and said "What the f***?" and without a word, something that I didn't notice before, he took a syringe out of his right shirt pocket and dropped it on my lap with a look of intensity that scared the shit out of me.

Where he got both of those I'll never know. I wanted to ask him what was in the syringe cylinder but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I convinced myself that surely, Heroin wasn't in there. No. He wouldn't do that. He is my soul mate. But then again, why did he do what he did so far? Has he given up on me and is not telling me verbally but with the intense look? No, what I think he's doing is daring me to do something with it. That would be more like him.

I looked at for the longest time, stared at the contents in the cylinder and held it up to the light and looked that way and couldn't discern whether or not it was in fact Heroin. The syringe was room temperature and that didn't help matters either. So what I did was shoot a tiny bit of fluid into my hand to give it a taste test. Narcotics are always bitter. This would be no exception.

So I walked over in front of him with the tourniquet hanging out of my mouth and the syringe in my hand and squirted just a hair of it in my palm then put my index finger into it to see what the hell it was. Bitter. But not a bitter Heroin taste. I let out a huge sigh of relief. Starsky asked me what the hell it was for and I told him "I have come to the conclusion Heroin is not in here. And I'm relieved."

"I wouldn't be too sure if I were you" came the answer. I wasn't in the mood for a cat and mouse game from him. But I suspected he had a point to make and he was going to make it at my expense and I had to be OK with it. Whether or not I was, that's up for debate.

So we kind of stared each other down for a bit and I said "I don't think I want this as bad as I thought I did. I'm going to go shoot it out in the toilet." And Starsky didn't say anything. I think he waited to see if that was what I was going to do. So I walked into the bathroom and aimed inside the toilet and sure enough "injected" all the contents of it into the toilet bowl and then flushed it down the drain three times to make sure it all got down.

Then I got a pair of scissors out and cut the tourniquet up into very small pieces and put the scissors back and went back to the living room and sat down next to Starsky and put the empty syringe in his lap with the cut up tourniquet pieces. I didn't say anything. I wanted him to start the conversation.

And a few minutes later, he did. "I did what I had to do to show you that you are much more stronger and in control than you think you are. And I knew you were but I had to make my point rather drastically. And you didn't disappoint me because I knew you would pick the best way out. Flushing it was truly the best way out and I am so proud of you. See you're strong Hootch."

I looked at him and cracked a smile and said "What was in it Starsk? Just so I know. I don't care. Well I do but I want to know that I won a true victory here. Was it that or a placebo? Please tell me."

"It was in fact the real thing. I got it from Hug who has connections that we won't speak about. Sometimes you have to do things to show the person you love more than anything in this world that they can live without it. It's just all in the frame of mind. How many times have we heard that at NA meetings?"

"Yep, you're right. We've heard it a lot. I'm so glad I called you Starsk. No one else would have given me that lesson quite so dramatically. You are so good to me. Thank you for being there for umpteenth million time. And this time for showing me that I can live without it when I had a clear chance to go back to it. Thank you for that lesson Starsk."

No more words were spoken; we hugged each other the longest time and then shared the sofa and drifted off to a peaceful sleep together. There isn't a man alive on this earth that is lucky as I am to have Starsky as a friend, soul mate, brother and partner. I don't know what I did to deserve him but I have believe I did something right somewhere to have such a wonderful person in my life.

Thank God. Amen.

The End

The song Hutch is talking about is called "Take Me To The Top" by Loverboy that inspired this whole piece of writing. I really do hope that I do Hutch justice. I'm not good at writing him but I do try my best. Also there is a song called "Lunatic Fringe" and I think that's by Jethro Tull. That's where the expression came from.