Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this.
A/N: Written for hc_bingo square - blackmail. Pairing suggested by Animegirl 1129, who encouraged me as I wrote.
Starsky takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. He can do this. He can walk in through the front doors of the police station and face his partner and lie to him. He can, and will, do it, because, if he doesn't, then Hutch will die.
Smiling so hard that the muscles around his mouth ache, Starsky pushes through the double doors, and enters the police station. He smiles and nods at the people he passes, tilts his head at the desk sergeant who looks like he could use another coffee, or a day off, perhaps a doughnut.
He takes the elevator up to the third floor, jabbing the number to his floor with an index finger several times, as though that will help make the doors close faster – not that he's in a hurry to face his partner; he isn't. He's in a hurry to get the day over with and go home so that he doesn't have to see Hutch. It'll be much easier for him to keep Hutch in the dark if he doesn't have to look at the man.
Starsky's heart dances a jig inside of his chest, and his footsteps slow as he nears the work station that he shares with Hutch. They've been partners-friends-brothers, for what feels like forever, and Starsky knows that this day is going to be like walking through Hell on a particularly sunny day.
Hutch grabs him by the arm, and starts pulling him back in the direction of the elevators. "Starsky, you're late, c'mon, we've got a case."
"What'd you tell the captain?" The nervousness that's been steadily building up in his stomach starts to subside, because if they've got a case to work on, Hutch won't have time to notice that anything's amiss.
As far as distractions go, a double-homicide –on a busy street, in broad daylight, with no witnesses – works well. They don't even have time for lunch, and the only thing that they do talk about – when they talk – is the puzzling case. It's perfect for Starsky, and he ignores the guilt gnawing at his conscience, because he needs this distraction, and he doubts that the two men who were murdered – known gangsters – will have anyone mourning their loss.
At the end of the day, Starsky manages to keep his secret from Hutch, and the man is none the wiser. Had it been a slow day, Hutch would've known that something was wrong, because the man could read him like a book.
"Catch you tomorrow," Starsky says, not looking at his friend, hoping that Hutch won't question him when he says that he doesn't want to go out for a beer. Heck, he's hoping that Hutch won't even say anything, though there hasn't been a night, especially after such a difficult case, where they haven't gone out for a beer, or more, after their shift.
"Hold the elevator," Hutch calls, reaching for the elevator doors as they are about to close. Starsky's pushes the lit up number for the first floor repeatedly with his index finger, and silently cursing when the doors slide open, and Hutch slips inside. He gives his partner a smile that he doesn't feel and jams his fisted hands into his pocket.
Hutch is frowning at him, and Starsky shrugs. "Sorry, didn't hear you," he says, putting every ounce of sincerity that he can muster into that statement.
His first lie to his partner falls miserably flat, and Starsky can tell by Hutch's raised eyebrow, and the sardonic twist of his lips, that Hutch isn't buying it. If he can't even get his partner to believe a little white lie like this, he's doomed, and Hutch is dead. That isn't going to work.
"Listen, Hutch, I…" Starsky runs a hand through his hair, and grimaces when it comes away feeling greasy. "I'm not feeling all that hot right now. I think I'm going to call in sick the next couple of days."
Frowning, Hutch leans in close, and, before Starsky can even open his mouth to protest, Hutch has got the back of his hand pressed to Starsky's forehead. His frown deepens, and Starsky tries to pull away, but Hutch's hands have now caught him by the shoulders, and he's peering into Starsky's eyes, as though he'll be able to discover the reason behind Starsky's lack of fever within his partner's eyes.
"You don't feel warm." Hutch's forehead is wrinkled with concern; the corners of his mouth are deeply furrowed, and Starsky wishes that he hadn't said anything. Before the man can move one of his hands to Starsky's stomach, as though, if by placing it there, he could determine whether or not Starsky had a stomachache, Starsky intercepts it, and gives his friend a shaky smile.
"It's nothing, just the start of a cold, or something," Starsky says, hoping that Hutch will buy it and leave him be.
When Hutch reaches around him, and pulls the emergency stop button on the elevator, causing it to come to an abrupt, shuddery halt, Starsky sags back against the elevator wall and closes his eyes, knowing that the jig is up, and that, in spite of the danger, he's going to have to come clean with Hutch. His partner won't let up on him until he does.
Hutch takes a step back, giving Starsky some space. Starsky opens his eyes, and regards Hutch warily. His friend is watching him, arms crossed over his chest, eyebrow quirked.
"Out with it," Hutch says simply, and Starsky shakes his head.
"Sorry, buddy, can't tell you," Starsky says, hoping to god that his partner will, for once, listen to him, and not press the issue.
"You don't have a fever, I'm not buying your line that you're getting a cold, and you've been preoccupied the whole day. Something's wrong," Hutch says. "There are no secrets between partners. Out with it. What's her name?"
If only things were as easy as that, Starsky thinks, his stomach sinking when Hutch sets his mouth in a determined line. His partner was like a dog with a bone – once he gets a hold of something, he refuses to let it go.
Taking a deep breath and raking a hand through his hair, Starsky looks at the floor, and, though he knows that it's going to hurt Hutch – him – he says, "I…there's a…that is…I met a girl," around the lump in his throat.
His heart's pounding like a tympanic drum, and he's dizzy, but he forces himself to look up, to look into Hutch's eyes. His partner's eyes are stony, his mouth's set in a thin line, and the muscles of his jaw are taut.
"She's…" he stumbles over the telling of it, though it's a lie that has to be told, to keep Hutch safe, to keep his partner, the man he loves, alive. Starsky has to swallow past the sudden dryness of his throat, and he keeps his eyes trained on Hutch's hard glare.
"I met her at the bar the other night. You'd gone to the bathroom, and I…"
Hutch's hands are clutched into fists at his sides, and he's shaking his head. "I should have known that you couldn't …not after that last time. I should have known, but, no, I was stupid. I believed you when you said that…I believed you. Stupid me. Well, buddy, guess what? I'm not making that mistake again."
Before Starsky can say anything else, Hutch unstops the elevator and turns to face the closed doors, in essence, cutting Starsky, and their conversation off abruptly. He shrugs off the hand that Starsky places on his shoulder, and, when the elevator doors open, he exits immediately, his long strides taking him away from Starsky at a clipped pace.
Starsky doesn't even try to follow. Instead, he sinks to the floor of the elevator, and lets the doors shut. He knows that he can't spend the rest of the night, huddled on the elevator floor, that he did what he needed to do to keep his partner safe, but Starsky doesn't feel any relief at knowing that, because he lied to Hutch, Hutch won't have to share in the pain of what he's going through.
The thought that he might have lost Hutch, this time for good, keeps Starsky frozen, even when someone – Officer Barkley or Barnes…Bar something – gets onto the elevator and gives him a funny look, asks him if he's okay. He nods, waves the man's concern off without really looking at him.
"Hey, Detective Starsky, isn't it?"
The officer is apparently not going to drop it, not going to let Starsky ride the elevator to whatever floor it's going to take him to next. He's pulling at his arm, and, though Starsky wants to shove the officer away, he doesn't need to draw that kind of attention to himself, so, reluctantly, he lets Barnes, or Barnaby, or whatever the heck his name is, pull him to his feet, and stumbles from the elevator. If it wasn't for the officer's quick thinking, Starsky would've landed on his face.
"Rough day?" The officer's clear blue eyes are like a kick in the gut as they make Starsky think of Hutch.
"Yeah," Starsky says.
Truth is that it has been a rough day. It's been a rough week, except he can't tell Barnaby, Barners, Barn…whatever, any of that, because he can't tell anyone about what's really going on. He doesn't want anyone, not even this pushy officer, to get hurt.
"You work with Detective Hutch, right?" Something in the officer's voice causes Starsky to take a good, hard look at the man, and his breath gets caught in his throat.
Starsky blinks, and shakes his head, and tries to back away from the man standing in front of him. Not only does he have eyes, blue as Hutch's, but he's got his hair cut in a similar fashion to Hutch's, and Starsky can see that it's been dyed to match the color of his partner's hair.
"What are you doing here?" Starsky's surprised that his voice actually works.
The man actually has the audacity to smile at him, and Starsky wonders if there is really an Officer Barnwood who works for the department. If this man who's been blackmailing him, forcing Starsky to pay him money to keep his relationship with Hutch a secret from the captain, has been working at the station all this time. He's always been a faceless voice threatening him on the phone, slipping envelopes with grainy pictures that show Starsky and Hutch kissing or touching or in compromising situations beneath his door, a voice outside his door making demands, forcing his hand.
"Do you like my new look?" the man asks, his hand on Starsky's elbow, steering him from the building, around the corner, into the dark of the cool night. "I like how you dispatched of your partner. You were so efficient."
"Look, here," Starsky tries to pull his elbow free, but the man presses the barrel of a gun to the small of his back, and Starsky stills. "I've done everything that you asked me to do. I've got the rest of the money, back at my apartment. I was going to…"
"We're going to your apartment. You're going to give me the rest of the money that you owe me, so that I'll keep your dirty little secret from the captain of the police department, and then, Starsky," the man's breath is hot against the back of Starsky's ear as he shoves him into the passenger seat of a black sedan, "you and I are going to get better acquainted with each other. I've decided to change the details of our little bargain."
Starsky goes numb as he tries, but fails to comprehend what his blackmailer-turned-kidnapper is saying. It doesn't make sense, not with the cryptic, yet ugly messages that the man has been leaving on Starsky's phone and beneath his door for the past three weeks. Disparaging words of hate for what he and Hutch are – homosexual deviants unworthy to live, let alone wear the Bay City Police badge.
That the man is possibly thinking of doing what Starsky thinks he was alluding to goes against the violent tone of the blackmail notes, and only serves to terrify Starsky even more than the notes themselves had when they'd begun to mention the possibility of harm coming to Hutch if Starsky told his partner what was happening. Not that he'd been planning on dragging Hutch into the mess that he'd found himself in.
With the gun pointed at Starsky's head, the kidnapper slips into the driver's seat and peels out of the darkened alleyway. Throughout the drive to Starsky's apartment, the blackmailer keeps the weapon trained on him, making it impossible for Starsky to escape.
"Tell me," the blackmailer's voice is almost conversational, as though he isn't holding a gun on Starsky, like they're just a couple of old friends catching up, "what is it that Hutch has that has attracted a lady's man like you?"
The gun wavers between the two of them as the man talks, like it's an extension of his arm. Starsky tries not to look at it, to focus on the man behind the gun, because he, not the gun, is the real threat, and, if Starsky has any hope of getting out of this undamaged, it's the man that he's going to have to appeal to, not his weapon.
If he tries to go for the weapon, in all likelihood, it'll go off, and there's more than a fifty-fifty percent chance that he'll become the casualty as opposed to the man who's holding him hostage. It's not a chance that Starsky wants to take, because, if he fails at this, he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the man will go after Hutch next, even without a means with which to blackmail him.
"What is this?" Tired of allowing fear to color all of his interactions with this, heretofore, faceless man, Starsky lets some of his pent up anger leak through into his voice. "Some kind of sick perverted game? You into threesomes? What? Money not good enough for you anymore?"
The man laughs. "No, it isn't," he says, and he shoves at Starsky's chest with the barrel of the gun, pushing him back in his seat. "Quite frankly," the man gives Starsky a look that makes his blood run cold, "money wasn't what I was really after in the first place."
Starsky opens his mouth to say something, anything that will take away some of his fear. He's normally good at that kind of thing, Hutch would call it blustering or bullshitting, but, when he glances at his captor's face – the hard lines set in a wicked-looking grin, his too-blue eyes glittering with his madness – Starsky knows that nothing he can say will get through to this man, and, given how he'd left things with Hutch in the elevator, he's on his own.
"So…" Starsky coughs, clears his throat, and tries to ignore the gun that's now being pressed to his side. "Uh, how long did you, ah, have this planned?"
The man laughs, and works the barrel of the gun up underneath Starsky's shirt, the cool of the metal against his bare flesh makes Starsky flinch and shiver.
"Since the moment I set eyes on you," the man says in a voice that's barely above a whisper. "You and him. The two of you. Light and darkness. Hutch and Starsky. Starsky and Hutch. Inseparable. Dynamic duo. Feared, and vaunted by many. I wonder, detective, if those innocent unsuspecting citizens of Bay City knew just how inseparable you and your partner were, if they'd feel quite as safe. What do you think?"
"I think that you're completely out of your gourd," the words are out of Starsky's mouth before he can take them back, and he bites his tongue, two seconds too late. "You're giving off mixed signals, buddy," Starsky presses it – in for a penny, in for a pound. "And, I gotta say that this whole, I'm gonna kill you – you like my new look? routine is giving me whiplash."
"Shut up," the man's voice snaps like a switch, and the man's gun hand moves far quicker than Starsky would have thought possible.
The gun tugs at the edge of Starsky's shirt, as the man pulls it up, snagging and ripping some of the fabric. Starsky absentmindedly bemoans the damage to one of his favorite shirts – a random gift from Hutch on a lazy Sunday afternoon they'd spent doing close to nothing – and barely registers the pain when the butt of the gun is slammed hard against the corner of his mouth.
The taste of salt and copper floods his senses and Starsky breathes through his nose as blood fills his mouth, choking him. His hands fly up to his face, though they're much too late to protect him as the man hits him again, this time with the side of the gun, the metal connecting with his cheek, causing pain to explode across his face, and filling his vision with brilliant white and gold sparks that grow dark as he fights to stay conscious.
"Shut up," the man repeats, pressing the barrel of the gun against Starsky's temple.
Starsky tries to blink away the tiny stars that are marring his vision, but they don't seem to want to clear off. He swallows some of the blood in his mouth, grimacing. He doesn't know what his blackmailer has planned for him, but Starsky's starting to think that maybe this is it for him.
He wonders if Hutch will find his killer, or if the man will go after his partner next. It's that thought that keeps Starsky awake, even though he feels like giving into the pull of his mind to give up the painful reality of consciousness, just until the pain and confusion pass.
"Stay awake," the man growls, and the gun's barrel feels like it's being drilled into his skull.
Starsky can't help it, he laughs, though there's no actual humor behind the act, and it comes out like more of a sob than anything else. He manages to roll his eyes, though it's painful, and he turns his head, getting a minute amount of relief from the pressure of the gun against his temple. It's a short-lived reprieve as the gun follows his movements.
"Stay awake." Starsky wonders if the man's some kind of robot stuck on repeat, but he wisely keeps that thought to himself as the interior of the car fades in and out of focus. "We're almost there."
Starsky tries to focus his eyes at some point, any point, outside of the windshield, but it's all blurry. He thinks that he recognizes the area, but he can't be sure. It's dark. His head is pounding, and there's a gun glued to his temple.
"And," Starsky's voice is so soft that he can barely hear it, and it hurts to speak. "Where are we?"
"Your place," the man says, and Starsky laughs – a dry, hollow choking sound – at the absurdity of it.
"My kidnapper is bringing me back to my apartment," Starsky says the words aloud, trying them out, seeing if, when they're said aloud they make more sense than they had when he'd just been thinking them. They don't, and he's hit with another bout of laughter that does nothing good for his condition, and causes his head to swim with dizziness.
The tinny taste in his mouth reminds him, a little too late, that he's sharing a car with an unstable man. The gun strikes him on the forehead before he's got time to brace himself, and there's another burst of stars. It takes a solid minute for the ringing in his ears to stop, and for Starsky to remember where he is, what's happening.
"Out."
Starsky shivers as his eyes struggle to focus, his mind to grapple what it is that's happening, what he's seeing, what's being demanded. There are stars. A gun. His head hurts, and the man staring down at him looks like Hutch, but the voice, and the man's stance, is all wrong.
Starsky takes the hand he's offered. It doesn't feel like Hutch's – warm, calloused from growing up on a farm in Minnesota – it's hot and sweaty, and soft. Starsky shrinks back from the hand, but it's stronger than he is at the moment, and he's being pulled to his feet without much of a protest.
"Get your hands off of him," Hutch's voice registers sluggishly in Starsky's mind, and he stumbles when the hands that were clutching him are suddenly not there.
"Hutch?" Starsky isn't able to stay on his feet, he ends up on the ground, kneeling, watching the two men – both of them looking like Hutch, but only one of them real – fight.
It's strange, and Starsky's not able to follow any of it very well. The sky's an inky black, with only the light of half a moon illuminating the scene playing out in front of him. The streetlamps on Starsky's street have been out for over a month now, something about the copper of the cable having been stolen. It's a ludicrous story that Starsky thinks the city made up, because they can't afford to pay to light every street.
There's a moment when Starsky holds his breath, his eyes unable to focus clearly on the action unfolding in front of him, both Hutches grappling with a gun. He shivers, and tries to stand, using the car behind him as a kind of support, but his hands slip, and he crashes onto his knees.
The pain helps him focus a little better – once the stars stop spinning – and Starsky's able to see things a little clearer, though he's unable to pick out which Hutch is which. Both are dressed in similar colors, the blackmailer having removed the uniform jacket in the car.
The shiny barrel of the gun glints in the light of the moon as the men jerk it around, each trying to gain control of the weapon. It points in Starsky's direction for a few stilted heartbeats, and then it's being pressed up beneath the ribcage of one of the Hutches.
Starsky's eyes fail him when he tries to make out which Hutch it is when the deafening roar of a gun going off at close range explodes in his ears. Blood sprays out onto the pavement, across Starsky's face, into his gaping mouth, making him choke on the sweet, coppery taste as he instinctively swallows.
For the space of what feels like several lifetimes, Starsky's heart simply stops beating. He's frozen in place, not daring to breathe, because if he breathes, that would make what happened real, and it can't be real, because if it's real, then that means that one of the men who'd been fighting over the gun was shot, and has fallen, and is dead, or dying, bleeding out in front of him. And, it could be Hutch – his Hutch – who's been shot. It could be his Hutch, not the wannabe imposter, lying in front of him, dying or dead.
The sickly sweet scent, the briny taste, the dark crimson of the blood spilling out onto the pavement becomes the whole of Starsky's universe. He tries to reach out to touch, to stop the blood from flowing. His arms feel stiff, wooden, like they've been turned to stone, and his heart feels like it no longer knows how to work.
"Starsky," the voice is gruff, the hand on his shoulder viselike in its grip. He tries to wrench free of it, tries to go to the bleeding Hutch, but the other prevents him. The gun, lying forgotten on the pavement, seems to call to Starsky, and he pushes past the stiffness that's settled into his limbs, reaching for, grabbing the gun, pointing it at the man knelt in front of him.
"Starsky!" The man shakes him, but Starsky focuses on the man bleeding out on the sidewalk. The dark, viscous liquid is worming its way across the pavement, spidering into the cracks, reaching for him.
Starsky holds the gun in one hand. The hand not holding the gun trembles, but the one holding the gun is steady. He puts his finger on the trigger, ready to pull, to shoot and kill, to end what his blackmailer started several months ago.
"Starsky, babe," the voice sounds broken, and Starsky swallows. He doesn't know which voice to believe – the one of the man kneeling in front of him, or that of the spilled blood, calling out to him to make things right, to avenge the death of the man that he loves .
He absentmindedly checks the weapon, to make sure that there are enough bullets for what he's got to do. Like Romeo and Juliet, there's no Starsky without Hutch.
He clicks the hammer back, and listens to the blood. It's crying. Crying. Someone's crying. Someone's crying, and Hutch's hair is glinting golden, like a halo, in the moonlight, the inky black of the sky throws the man's face into deep shadow.
"Starsky, listen to me," the voice is soft, broken, desperate. "It's over. It's over. It's over, and I've got you. I've got you, partner."
There's no demand for him to give up the loaded weapon, no plea for him to spare the life of the man knelt before him. Just a soft, gentle reassurance that it's over, and the press of warm lips against his own blood spattered ones. A hand – strong, calloused from long, Minnesota summers spent digging holes for fence posts on a farm – clasps the back of his neck, pull him close, trap the gun between them.
When fingers, steady, and sure, pry at Starsky's fingers, pulling them loose from the gun, Starsky doesn't protest, he just breathes into the kiss, feels the light pressure of a tongue against his own as the gun is removed from his hand, and lowered to the pavement. The hand at the back of his neck moves, and Starsky's face is caught between two firm hands roughened by cold, Minnesota winters.
"I've got you," the voice, no longer disembodied, promises, and Starsky can breathe on his own again, because the weeping blood isn't Hutch's.
Later, after the police have come and gone, and their John Doe, posing as a non-existent police officer, has been carted off to the mortuary, Starsky explains everything to his partner. The sleepless nights, the constant threats to their livelihood, the money that was never going to be enough, and, the final straw – the threat made to Hutch's life if Starsky mentioned anything to Hutch about what was happening when the blackmailer upped the ante, demanding more from Starsky than what he had to offer.
Starsky refuses to go to the hospital, insisting that he's fine, that he's not hurt beyond what Hutch and he can handle on their own. Truth is, he doesn't want to let Hutch out of his sight, even for a second, though he knows that the threat to the other man's life has been neutralized.
"I thought I'd lost you," Starsky says, lips trailing kisses along the outer edge of Hutch's collarbone.
They're naked, sprawled out atop Hutch's bed, neither man wanting to spend the night at Starsky's until they can be assured that the blackmailer who'd made himself look like Hutch, hadn't been inside of Starsky's place. Though his head hurts, and his cheek feels like it's swollen to twice its size, Starsky's happy.
"Thought I'd lost you, too," Hutch says. His voice is low, and husky, the way it always is after they've made love. He drags his fingers through Starsky's sweaty mop of hair, gently tugging at the knotted curls, untangling them. The rhythmic action is soothing, and Starsky lets his eyes slide shut, knowing that he's safe, that Hutch is safe. With his lips pressed flush against the smooth expanse of Hutch's chest, Starsky falls asleep.
Please review, and let me know if you liked. Thanks