Title: "One more step" – Chapter 7

Author: IROS

Fandom: Starsky & Hutch

Disclaimer: I don't own the rights, I don't get money and this is for entertainment only. Oops! Errors are entirely mine.


Soldiers do not talk about failures. If you mess up, everyone knows it, but nobody ever says so. There is no discussion. It is understood that you will be back into battle and either you do not mess up again or you die. You climb back up on the horse, if you will. Maybe at night, when you are all alone, you think about it a little. But you keep it to yourself. Always.

And when the balance is lost, each man looks inside for the cause. Drive himself crazy in the process.

"Yesterday..." Starsky took a shuddering intake of breath, "...when I woke up and you weren't here...", he interrupted himself letting out another shaky breath and turning his face away from his friend.

"I returned the diamond you gave me back to the custody warehouse in Bay City. That's what I did. Now the consignment is whole again. Nobody saw me, nobody knows. We are safe on that side. I even got rid of the paper you used to wrap it. It was a stink bomb, man." He teased the curly, "Don't tell me where you choose to stick that band aid you used to hide it, I'd rather not know."

Starsky fisted the bed covers in pain as he made small choking sounds in an effort not to scream or moan while his friend carefully dabbed his deepest wound.

Hutch stomach cringed at his friend's brave attempts to tough it up. "Do you want me to stop. You can drink some and settle down before we..."

"It's not... like I haven't been hurt... before..." Starsky smiled at him and nodded his consent to go on. "I don't want to lie down anymore." He started to sit up. The blond grabbed his wrist to help and could feel the tension in his arm, the fist clenched where he held onto his friend's wrist, the arm trembling, all of him shaking. Starsky took a deep ragged breath and pulled his arm away. It was a new reminder for Hutch that there was something more to it than a failed mission. Something he could not yet grasp.

"Don't fear the fear, Starsk," Hutch almost pleaded him, reading his mind as always. "It's all part of the journey. And we would do it together. Side by side." Starsky wasn't sure at all whether his friend was talking about the worse part of the painful dance they had been doing those last two days about to start or about what happened between the two that fatal day which was ripping their unusual bond apart. "Tell me you're willing to go there with me because you trust me."

"God, Hutch... finish this... I can't take much more..." Seating on the edge of the bed, by his friend's side, Hutch took him by the back of his neck and accommodated him against his shoulder, head down, to have a good view of the bullet entrance wound on the curly's shoulder.

"Just some alcohol and the gauze, it is almost clean. No need to press much for any filth to come out today. It's healing nicely, you hear?" The brunet's interior shielding walls were still burning with pain, ready to crumble down. Starsky froze, panting, waiting out the hurt. The worst of all the cure, the final bridge, although it never lasted long; he just had to breathe. "Do it quick."

"All right—all right…" Hutch said softly, maybe more for himself than for Starsky's benefit, the uncontrollable trembling of his friend body replicating in his chest. It was so far from all right.

"Deep breath... exhale slowly... " Hutch forced himself to ground to reality as he fought the vertigo it caused the scare of that initial moment when he knew his friend would feel his soft fingers curling around the still so raw wound, the slightest of pressure bringing in new fresh waves of pain crashing over him. "There we go—there we go... Hang on there, buddy... Hang on..." The brunet slid sideways for a moment his body screaming at him to get away but there was nowhere he could go that was safer than Hutch, was there? And, instead, he grabbed the blond' shirt as his life depended on it.

After Hutch had poured the alcohol and started pressing the new gauze inside Starsky's shoulder gash, he instinctively wrapped his left arm around the curly's head, pressing it against him as a sort of comfort for the worst of it, keeping him quiet. "I am sorry, I am sorry..."

Soon Starsky righted himself as his friend continued to clean the blood that his hard ministrations caused. Hutch helped him to sit further forward until his head was almost resting on Hutch's chest. He could feel how badly was the curly still shaking but his muscles seemed to be relaxing and he released his desperate hold on Hutch's shirt. The blond finished bandaging that shoulder and carefully laid his friend back down on the bed, covering him with the blanket.

"World is spinning around here, huh…?" Starsky felt a final squeeze as he moved his right arm over his left, trying to turn on his side to escape Hutch's enquiring eyes. He gazed blearily at the figure of his friend as he moved his hands to help him.

"No.. Don't." Starsk said, breathing accelerated with his heart. The blond mentally braced himself for what might come next.

"I can't go on.... I can't go on..."

"It's Ok... It's OK. I've got you... I'll take care of everything. You are doing good, kid... Hang in there. "

"No... I quit... I gave up on you...."

"I guessed that much and I told you I don't care. Nothing is final. You couldn't slid the mark diamond on Big Tony's pocket and my cover is blown. So what? Just two facts we have to face and keep on going... " Hutch watched as those deep indigo blue eyes closed softly on him and decided to not push the issue further on that side.

"Do you think I could just forget about those poor four kids dead and their families more dead than alive forever... You are thinking: all for nothing. That fat criminal bastard using all of us, our taxes, against ourselves and the best interests of the community... I know how you feel. It was my idea in the first place just bending some to make ends meet. But, Starsk, maybe we shouldn't have started all this and destiny has given us a second opportunity to do things right like we should. I didn't feel good stealing proofs out of our own safeguard warehouse to plant them on a suspect."

"I gave up in Nam and I gave up on you here."

"What it's Nam to do in all of this? Why Nam now, Starsk?"

"You shouldn't have covered for me. You had to take me to the hospital."

"What? So that you would be facing a court right now and even get prison time? You know quite well they have to report bullet wounds. It was you who taught me that real teams do not leave people behind." Hutch saw his opportunity then, Starsky's increasingly quieter breathing telling him his friend's attention focused on him not in his own world of pain. "Did you think for a moment on the devastating effect over the whole of the department and the corps, all that honest people when the press would get its claws on your story and would make account of all the holes in it?"

"I--"

"I know you made that phone call to have me by your side immediately and out of Big Tony's reach. That you thought about get him busted for torturing an agent of the law and you just made it more dramatic for the good measure. Only a few know how Big Tony uses his dogs against his enemies and everybody at the department would have believed you, and then try to plant the diamond on him a second time while in our hands. You didn't care or think about anything else than save my hide and try to take down Big Tony. Wasn't it what all you had in your head then? But you should have counted on me instead playing mother hen, Starsk. I would have told you it could never work. I've learnt quite a few things on those four months undercover. One of them, being that Big Tony's payroll is larger by far than we thought."

"I'm sorry.... I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." Starsky kept repeating in such a heartfelt whisper that it broke Hutch's heart. "I'm sorry.... I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."

"Open your eyes, sunshine. Look at me. (...) Look at me. I'm fine... See? It's OK. Big Tony didn't get me in time. I watch my own back 24/7 when undercover... Look at me, for God's sake.... Look at me. I am all right and so are you. We are a team. And we have been brave enough to go back in time and redo our wrongs. No worries. No harm done. To anyone..."

"Oh, shit... I.... Sorry, sorry, sorry..."

"Hey-hey-hey. I need you to focus. You hear me? I need you to take care of your part now."

"I can't."

"You can't but you'll do it. We have to have you back in a passable shape in no time. We have to report to Dobey the day after tomorrow and you should be able to walk with your usual strutting and do not show any kind of signs of stress on you for a few hours a day or a lot of people is gonna pay for our mistake."

Starsky accepted with a slight nod. He let his head fall sideways for a brief moment before looking up at his friend's sky blue bright eyes.

"Go to sleep now... I'll watch over you.... That's it... that's it... Do not fight it. You are tired... Sleep... Get some rest. We will solve it together. Me and thee, remember? Nothing has changed."

Soldiers did not talk about failures. If you messed up, everyone knew it, but nobody ever said so. There was no discussion. It was understood that you went back into battle and either did not mess up again or you died. You climbed back up on the horse, if you will. Maybe at night, when you were all alone, you thought about it a little. But you kept it to yourself. Always.Starsky was still that young soldier that he so hard had tried to bury down, deep down himself.

"Starsky...?" Hutch called cautiously. "Dave..." Satisfied at the lack of any visible response, Hutch went to the bathroom, his walking stiff, feeling exhausted. He bent over the sink with his elbows on the marble and washed his face, gulping some water in the process. He raised his head slowly to make sure he was able to keep dizziness under control. He took some deep breathes, his knees buckled and he let himself slump to the floor, with his back against the wall, water still running from the tap. Although he tried to relax, he was unconsciously holding his breath. If Starsky could put all his faith in him, still trust him, he could find a way to bring back his own faith too.


TBC