They sat opposite each other in the cafeteria. Hutch had a cup of coffee in front of him that served to occupy his hands. Luyu had a cup of tea. She'd just finished talking and was staring at Hutch, waiting for him to respond.

Hutch had gone silent, staring at his cup, trying to put the pieces together.

Luyu couldn't take her eyes of the still ugly bruising on his face. The white pieces of plastic that held his healing nose in proper place. The contours of his profile would change. He would look just a little different than he had before. Still handsome. But not the same Hutch.

A lot more than a broken nose had happened in the past few weeks and she could sense the changes in him. Most prominently, he was tired. Tired physically, emotionally, spiritually. She'd felt the weakness of the bond between the two brothers. Never before had she witnessed it so strained.

She knew that her news only further strained that bond, pulling Hutch away from Starsky and toward her, but...he had to know. It affected him. It affected them both, and the tenuous relationship they'd maintained over the past few years.

Her news would affect her health, her future, the remainder of her schooling, what she could do when she began a psychology practice.

Hutch had a decision to make. It wasn't a fair decision, though she'd done everything in her power to make it fair.

He would need time, she told herself. The time that she'd had to discover, to think, to plan. Time that she'd robbed him of unintentionally.

To that end, Luyu squirmed in her chair then got to her feet, wincing a little at the constant pain in her lower back. Hutch watched her stand and scrambled to his feet a second later.

"Where are you going?"

"I have to use the restroom. It's one of those things about this. You have to pee a lot. I'll be fine. I'll be right back." She said, waiting for the panic in his eyes to dull before he nodded and collected his coffee cup.

Then he said something that warmed her heart unexpectedly. "I'll go with you."

He rose and came to her and she pulled him into a careful hug. She felt his arms tightening around her, felt her doubts sweeping away with the desperation and desire that translated through the embrace.

She also felt the desperate need to empty her bladder and had to push away. She kissed him, promised that she was only using the restroom, and suggested he stay there.

He caressed her cheek, kissed her lips, then perched back on the table and watched her leave for the restroom. Her body had changed, but her muscles had adjusted. She moved with the same grace of before, only slightly hampered by the change.

Even with the little that he could see, Luyu looked…

She definitely looked pregnant.

Five months, she had said. Five months since he had last seen her. Since they had last been together.

That meant, in four months, he would be a father.

To his horror, Luyu had immediately offered him an out. She was keeping the baby, she had said, but if he wanted nothing to do with it… She'd left it dangling. He'd been too stunned by the look of fear on her face to respond. He loved her.

He LOVED her but she was afraid of him. No...not of him. Of his response.

He had a good idea why. She'd told him years ago, the first night they'd met. She'd been raped as a teenager and had been completely responsible for picking herself up, getting herself treatment, and moving on with her life.

No one had been there to comfort her. So she'd comforted herself. She'd also, subconsciously, taken full responsibility for the incident, as victims often do. The end result had been a fierce determination to make it on her own, and a distrust of men.

That distrust had begun to melt the more time she spent with Hutch, but...but then she'd discovered she was pregnant. She'd been alone at the time. Had been too afraid to call Hutch and tell him right away. Afraid he would reject her. Afraid he would hate the child. Want her to get an abortion.

Baseless fears. That's what Luyu herself had called them. "Baseless fears, I know, but...I could lose myself in work and school. I called the morning sickness a bout of the flu and I just...kept going."

Until she started to show. Until three months turned into five and she realized she had to tell the father.

"I know I picked a bad day to do this…" She'd said, apologetically. Hutch had been too stunned to reassure her, too tired to pick up on the unspoken question. He would fix that as soon as she got back, he told himself.

Then he thought better and left the cafeteria, found the closest women's restroom and waited outside its door for Luyu to come out.

Baby's were supposed to be joyous occasions, he thought. The creation of something wonderful, generally between man and wife. The start of a new beginning. The gestation of a new generation. A new child was a gift.

Luyu had presented the news like the kid was a curse. A curse for Hutch. A curse that she loved and wanted Hutch to love too.

It meant complicated changes that Hutch couldn't think about with his city up in arms, his partner unconscious and fighting for his life.

He wanted Luyu there, yes, but he couldn't think about the baby. It was a distraction that he was trying not to resent. He was working on instantly loving the baby when a woman came out of the restroom. Not Luyu.

Hutch jumped forward and grabbed her arm and she jolted and stared at him wide-eyed.

"I'm sorry...I'm...I'm sorry. Was there anyone else in there?"

The woman jerked her arm from his grip and stomped away, looking like she was going to tell the first security officer she saw that there was a man lurking outside the women's restroom. Hutch groaned and sighed and knocked on the restroom door, listening. He pushed the door open a few inches and knocked again. "Hello?"

He heard a sob, then a quiet, "Oh Hutch…"

He pushed the door further open and stepped into the room, overwhelmed with a wave of moist air that smelled of perfume and baby powder. The world of women.

"Luyu.."

There was a wet sigh, an intake of breath and Luyu opened the door to the last stall in the row. She'd been crying, was still crying. Her face was splotchy with emotion, her arms crossed above her rounding belly. She leaned against the door jamb in the stall, watching Hutch invade the privacy of the women's restroom, looking like he was 10.

"I...I was concerned."

Luyu nodded.

"I scared a lady."

"What?" Luyu asked, laughing softly.

A weak grin lit his face and Hutch said, "She came out of the restroom and I grabbed her arm."

Luyu sighed and shook her head, the smirk still there.

"I may be dragged out of here by a security officer before long."

Luyu snorted and pushed away from the stall facing herself in the mirror. She turned on the hot water and let it run, her fingers sliding under the stream, adjusting the temperature before she pushed the sleeves of her blouse to her elbows and put soap on her hands.

Hutch watched her, going through the motions of a doctor scrubbing carefully to get rid of all the germs and bacteria. Not for her sake, but for the sake of whoever she would touch next. A protective act that she did out of habit. Not because of the new baby necessarily, but because it was who she was.

"You don't need to protect me." Hutch blurted.

He felt, more than saw Luyu startle, but her hands stayed under the stream until all the soap had been washed away. She reached for the towel hanging by the sink and pushed her hands through its depth.

"Maybe I'm protecting me." Luyu said, watching her fingers appear and disappear as she dried them, more thoroughly perhaps, than need be.

There was a jar of lotion in the corner of the sink and she used a small dab, spreading the cream over her hands and working it down her wrists, her knuckles almost white with the pressure she used.

"From me?" Hutch asked.

Luyu's hands froze. "No." She said, then closed the distance between them. She put her arms up around his neck and Hutch pulled her in tight. She laid her head against his chest and listened to his heart beat, and the roar of his lungs.

"Do you know...if it's a boy or a girl?"

Her head rocked against his chest. Hutch let his cheek fall against the top of her head and they stood, locked together comfortably, the baby pressed between them.

"How long can you stay?"

"I have to start clinicals. I can start them here. I have an interview tomorrow. I just...I didn't know…"

"Will you move in with me?" Hutch asked. "I...I need to be here-"

Luyu nodded. "You need to be here for your brother. And I want you here for him. I will be with you when I can be."

"And when I come home?"

Luyu lifted her head, her hands slid down, resting with her palms against his chest. She played idly with a loose button on his shirt. Hutch ducked his head, captured her eyes, drew them back to his face.

"I should probably cancel the furniture I rented." She said.

Starsky was awake the next day. He ate breakfast and lunch in the span of two hours then went back to sleep again, a bundle of energy until it ran out and he had to recharge. That's the way it would be for a while, the doctor's said, and Hutch recognized it from a previous long hospital stay.

He could deal with that. As long as Starsky kept waking up again. As long as he wasn't stuck with days of wondering if Starsky was going to sleep for forever.

Hutch had spent so much time watching his partner sleep he felt like he had to be there for those rare waking moments. There was still work to be done. Work that had been lying in dormant piles on his desk and Starsky's desk, growing by the hour. Hutch worked out a system with the nurses.

As soon as Starsky was awake they were to call him. If they couldn't get him at the station they should try his home phone number, and if that didn't work, his beeper. He made sure he had fresh batteries in the thing for just that purpose and went to work the following day with a cloud hanging over him.

The cloud contained a terrible battle of wills. The battle of his thoughts of the baby versus his concern for his partner. Somewhere in there was his love for Luyu, his need to do his part in helping the city recover, and tracking down Vega.

The cloud stayed with him for a week, only clearing when he was with Starsky, or with Luyu. When he was with one or the other he could concentrate on them. When he was with Luyu they didn't talk about the baby. They talked about his work, and her clinicals, and what they were going to do over the weekend. They talked about Starsky.

When he was with Starsky they talked about the case, the brunet's recovery, Luyu being back in Bay City semi-permanently. Hutch still hadn't told him about the baby. He didn't know why.

Starsky saw it, that one vital piece of information that Hutch was holding back, smoothly, or so he thought, avoiding.

On the morning before he was to be released, on the way from his room to X-ray, Starsky leaned toward his partner and idly asked, "So who died?"

"Hmm? Died? Did somebody die?"

Starsky gave him a long, pointed look then shook his head. "You walk around with somethin' on your brain for a week. I see it every time you walk in that door, but you haven't said a word about it. I figured...maybe he's keepin' it to himself. Doesn't want to upset me while I'm weak and vulnerable." There was a hint of sarcasm in the statement along with a rare show of Starsky's maturity.

The mix almost seemed morbid to Hutch and he sighed, "Starsk.."

"But this is ridiculous. I'm gettin' out tomorrow. I'll be back in the office on Monday. So...who died? What's the big secret?"

Hutch sighed and Starsky could feel it there on the tip of his partner's tongue for a long second before Hutch reeled it back in.

Starsky stopped, "No, no...you're my partner. We're best buddies. And we've already done all of this before." Starsky's gesture seemed to include most of the hospital as well as the spot where the surgery stitches had been. "That's not what's buggin' you. It's something personal...what is it your parents? Your sister? Luyu?"

Hutch didn't react. It was the total lack of reaction that clued Starsky in and he nodded, then said, "You two break up?"

"She's livin' with me, Starsk, you know that."

"Yeah...you lived with Vanessa for a long time, too."

Hutch gave Starsky the withering glare that he deserved but his partner had made a good point. "No, we haven't broken up."

"You ask her to marry you? Did she say no?"

Hutch thought about it. He hadn't, she hadn't hinted at marriage. It had never come up in conversation. It wasn't something either of them wanted. Yet that was the normal course of things. He was lost in wondering about it and Starsky had to go in to X-ray before he could pester Hutch out of his reverie.

He realized Starsky was back when a headache started to form right behind his forehead. It pounded in tune to the questions.

"Did she get kicked out of school?"

"No."

"Did she quit school?"

"No, Starsky, she's here for her clinicals."

"Did she have a fight with her brother?"

"What? I don't know."

"Is she sick?"

Hutch didn't respond, glaring under hooded eyes and holding the door to Starsky's room open, waiting for his partner to go in. Starsky crossed his arms over his chest and stayed in the hallway.

"Go in there, take your meds, and I'll tell ya."

"Sure you will. You'll stall til I'm tired then make some excuse to leave." Starsky said bitterly, but he walked into the room. He was moving faster and easier than a week before, and his nurses had told Hutch he'd been doing full miles and more on the treadmill in the therapy room. It was good news for his lungs, good news for his body. Good news for the healing, traumatized ribs.

He knew Starsky was more than bored at that point, plenty frustrated at the lack of progress on the case. Hutch wondered why his own personal cloud was such a fixation for Starsky until he thought about finally spilling and saw something golden, silver and beautiful on the metaphoric horizon.

It was the light at the end of the tunnel. It was the prize at the end of a marathon. It was relief, acceptance. The end to a fight. A fight he hadn't realized he'd been embroiled in. For a split second he had absolute clarity and he knew precisely why he'd held the news off for so long.

Then it disappeared in a flash and Hutch blinked at his partner, perched on his bed, glaring at him.

"What's wrong with Luyu?" Starsky demanded, crunching down on the pills that he hadn't bothered to take with water.

"She's pregnant." Hutch said.

Starsky froze, mouth full of bitter, powdered pills. He leaned toward the glass of water on the bedside table, swallowed it in one long gulp, cleared his throat and asked, "Pregnant?"

Hutch nodded.

"And do you know who the father is?"

"Starsk! I'm the father."

Starsky grinned. It started out slow but became the kilowatt variety in very short order. "You're gonna be a dad?"

Hutch could feel the flush of blood to his cheeks and looked away, accepting the rush of embarrassment along with the joy that effused from Starsky's grin. "You're gonna be a dad, Blintz!"

Starsky was almost shouting and Hutch put a hand up to calm him a little.

"How far along? Boy or girl? When's it due? What are you gonna name it?"

Hutch barely managed to field the first two questions with a half-uttered "Five months, and I don't know."

After that he just shook his head listening to Starsky plan a baby shower for Luyu and for him, planning the cigars he would buy, the cradle he would ask a carpenter friend of theirs to make.

Starsky practically had the kid in college by the time his pills kicked in and his words started to slur.

While he helped his partner under the blankets Hutch tried to think of him as Uncle Starsky...or would it be Uncle David?

He hadn't thought of the baby as having gender. As needing a name. As needing a special bed to sleep in. Clothes to wear. Food to eat. The baby didn't have needs beyond what Luyu could provide, so he hadn't thought about it.

That was why he hadn't told Starsky. Starsky would start him thinking about those things. Worrying about them. Starsky would find a way, directly or indirectly, to remind Hutch of his own parents, and the possibility that he could become what they were with a baby on the way.

Hutch's fear...that his future child would get the same treatment he had received, blossomed into being and grew into a Herculean spectre in the time it took for the blond to reassure himself that his partner was comfortable and asleep. It was no longer a shapeless, nameless cloud that followed him out the door.

It was an eight-foot shadow of the father Hutch had always feared becoming, closer than it had ever been before.