Visions of a Friendship
Together
by Otterlady (06/01/2000)
Hutch and I have been together for years. First as friends, then as partners, then as...well...friends again. It's hard to explain, I guess, what we mean to each other. Not many people have what we have. We're lucky. Or blessed.
I liked him from the start, that first day at the academy. He looked rather lost, out of his element. Kinda like a swan that's suddenly found itself in a duck pond with a bunch of quacking mallards. Maybe that's what I liked about him. He could have acted like he was somebody better than the rest of us, be he didn't. Hutch never has acted that way with people no matter who they are. Not even with the druggies, the bums, the hookers we deal with on a daily basis. He always treats them with respect. The only people I've ever seen him act superior to are the drug bosses or the cold-blooded murderers that we've gotten off the streets. And I think that's more righteous anger than a statement of being better. Kinda like the avenging angel of God or something.
For some reason, Hutch took to me right off too. We ended up sharing a study desk in one class, can't remember which right now, and the friendship just seemed to be born full and strong right at the first word. Lots of people then - and even now - looked at the two of us and shook their heads. We seemed to be direct opposites, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. And we are, in most things, but not in the ones that are important.
Like believing that everyone has rights. The right to be treated decent. The right to go through life without the fear of being mistreated. The right to love whom you want as long as they're agreeable. Basically, the right to be happy.
We've gone through a lot, especially these last few years. His divorce, Terry...god, Terry.... Shootings, near-death experiences. But through all of it, we've hung together. He's the one person I can always count on. Oh yeah, there's been screw-ups - on both sides - but when it comes right down to it, he's the only person in this world I know will be there if I need them.
I know people - some people - think that there's something going on between us. Something more than simple friendship. And they're right. Well, half-right. We love each other. But not in the way those people think. And that's what's so hard to explain.
What we have *is* like a marriage of sorts. Not on a physical level, but on an emotional one. One made up of trust, respect, love, and need. Now I know that the first two are rather self-explanatory. You have to trust and respect your partner in order to do the job that we do. If you don't trust the guy covering your back, you're going to end up dead. Or he is. Because, if you can't trust him in a tight situation, you're going to be thinking about that and not paying attention. I've seen it happen. And respect goes hand in hand with trust. You may be able to respect someone without necessarily trusting them, but you can't trust them without respecting them. If you understand.
Now the love part. Well, I know that not all cops love their partners. You can trust them, respect them, and still not love them. But you can't love them without the trust and respect. It's complicated but that's the way it is. With Hutch and I, we seemed to love each other as friends long before the trust thing became an issue. I'm not even sure when we realized that we did love each other. It just sort of was always there. And I know that I sure as hell respected the guy. How could I not with the way he treated everyone, especially me? Like I said, he could have acted like he was better than me, but he never pulled that shit. He always treated me like I really mattered. Not just to him, but as a human being. That's a real good feeling.
And I've always trusted him, even before we started working together as partners. And he's always trusted me. Whenever we've a problem, the first person we go to is each other. Even if the problem is with him, I have to talk to him about it. And, usually, we can work out whatever is wrong without too much trouble.
Except this last year, something happened. I don't think that it was lack of trust on either of our parts. It's that both of us were so tired. We'd become jaded, I guess. Too much had happened, both to us and to people we cared about. And in our jobs. We'd gotten to the point where every new case was just a new case. Somewhere we'd stopped caring. Or maybe we cared too much. I'm not sure which. I just know that something was wrong and it started to affect our friendship. Not the partnership. They're two separate entities. Most of the time.
Then Kira happened. That affected everything. Our friendship, our partnership. Trust...respect...love.... It all felt like it had gone out the window. He betrayed my trust in him. I couldn't respect him. Even the love we'd always felt for each other seemed to disappear. Even our captain knew something was wrong with us.
But I still needed him.
There was this big, sucking chest wound in my heart. When I stalked out of Kira's house, I felt as if the ground was crumbling under my feet. And it wasn't because of what he'd done - what they'd done - it was because of what I'd done. I'd hit Hutch in anger. Something I had never done before. Yeah, I'd punched him that time we were trying to find those crooked cops and we were trying to make people think that I was crooked too. But that didn't count. Although it hurt like hell to do it. I almost blew it when I realized I'd hit him harder than I meant to. It was all I could do to force myself to walk away from him lying there.
But this time, I'd meant it. At the moment I saw him walk out of that bedroom with guilt written in huge letters across his face, I think I wanted to kill him. And then he said something, I'm not sure what, and I hit him. In anger. In rage. In hurt. I know I hit him at least twice, and the second time I felt my heart break. Actually heard this tearing sound inside. Like someone had reached in and ripped my heart into pieces.
Hitting him was like hitting myself. It hurt that much. He tried to make me stay, wanted to talk it out, but I had to get out of there. Even if Kira hadn't have thrown me out, I would have left. I simply couldn't deal with what I'd done to Hutch. To my best friend in the whole damn world. To my partner. To the other half of me.
Afterwards, when that girl was murdered, he tried to talk to me again. But I was too confused by the whole thing. I hated him. No - I loved him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to throw my arms around him and beg him to forgive me. I never wanted to see him again. I wanted everything to go back to the way it used to be.
I was a mess.
But then, when it all went down at the dance hall - when Webster threw the armed grenade - I realized in that split second that I needed Hutch. Not as my partner, but as my friend. If that grenade had exploded half a minute earlier, before Hutch had the chance to deflect it my way, he might have died. And I would have too. I knew that. And I think he felt the same way because the look he gave me while we were waiting for the smoke to clear was one of pure fear. Not for himself, but for me. I had that grenade in my hand. I would have died for sure if it had gone off before I threw it behind that counter.
After the ambulance carted Webster off to the psych lock down at the hospital.... After the forensics people came and did their thing.... After Kira went back to the precinct to write up her report.... After we had a chance to catch our breaths, we realized what had happened.
Hutch looked at me. I looked at Hutch. I'm not sure what he saw, but I sure as hell know what I did. My life. My entire life was wrapped up in that blond jerk and if he and I didn't do something to set things right, my life was over. Not that I'd die or anything like that. It just wouldn't matter anymore.
I don't know. Maybe Hutch felt the same as I did. I know that the look on his face almost broke my heart. If it hadn't already been broken that is. I still don't know to this day which one of us spoke up first because all of a sudden we were both talking. And then our arms were around each other and we both were crying. And if you don't think that isn't something, you don't know squat. The last time we both cried was when Terry died. And I'm still not sure if Hutch was crying for Terry or for me that night sitting on my cold kitchen floor.
There the two of us stood. All alone in that empty, debris-strewn dance hall hanging onto each other like there was no tomorrow. Balling our eyes out. Somehow, we pulled ourselves together enough to get out of there. We ended up back at my place. Sat up and talked half the night. Hutch apologized to me. I apologized to him. We drank bear, ate day old pizza, and talked. Cried a bit more. Yelled at each other a couple of times. But the yelling was good. We actually hadn't been doing much of that lately either. Maybe that was part of it too.
Now that I think of it, maybe that was one of the biggest mistakes we made. Not yelling at each other. We've always had these huge arguments. A couple of times people have tried to intercede - make us stop - and we'd turn on them. Yelling was part of how we dealt with each other. One of the ways we expressed our love for each other. Sounds dumb, but it always worked. When we stopped yelling, that's when we stopped talking altogether. And the silences just got deeper and darker. And longer.
Anyway, that night we yelled. I'm surprised the neighbours didn't report us. Or maybe they were as relieved as we were that we were finally really communicating.
By the time we'd yelled ourselves out, it was after three o'clock in the morning. We were tired, a bit drunk, and happy as clams. I don't remember what we said to each other, but I know we did come to the realization that Kira had been using us. And that we were stupid enough to fall for it. Let our little heads do the thinking for us instead of the ones that were supposed to be in charge. If you know what I mean. All rather embarrassing when you come down to it.
It was so late; I didn't want Hutch driving all the way to Venice, so I told him to crash at my place. Like he'd done a thousand times before over the years of our friendship. Something we'd stopped doing in the last while. So many things we'd let slip away. Good comfortable things - like sleeping on one another's couches or yelling at each other in affection. We'd even stopped touching each other. And we'd always been really a pair of touchers. Something else that always led people to believe we were more than just friends.
Anyway, that's why Hutch was sleeping in my bed the next morning when Kira called me. I knew that Hutch's back was hurting from when he tackled Webster so I'd made him sleep in my bed and I took the couch. And I was really out of it when the phone rang. Couldn't for the life of me figure out where I was for a few minutes. Which is why Hutch answered the phone in my room. It must have startled Kira to hear Hutch's voice on my phone at six o'clock in the morning. Why the hell she called so early is beyond me, but she did. And it was Hutch who agreed that we'd meet that woman at Huggy's that evening.
But the funny thing is that the way Hutch talked to her. He made it sound like we were still mad at each other. He told her he'd come over early to talk to me but that I was being a real bastard and he was just leaving when the phone rang. He sat, half covered by the blue sheets on my bed, and strung her a line of BS a mile long. By this time, I was sitting on the edge of the bed trying not to laugh at the expression on my partner's face.
We went to the Pits separately in case she was already there watching for us. I think I even had Huggy half convinced we were furious with each other before Blondie got there. I've never done a better acting job in my life. I should have won an Oscar for that performance. The look on poor Huggy's face when I moved away from Hutch just about cracked me up.
And then we laid our ultimatum on Kira. I could see that for a minute she really thought about it. About how it was both of us or neither of us. But then she said no, for which both Hutch and I were really glad, and we threw our arms around each other and left. We barely cleared the doorway before we were giggling our heads off.
Once again, we ended up at my place. This time we were comfortable with each other again. Whatever it was that had been wrong between us was gone. We were both still more than a little tired of all the shit we put up with on the job. The fact that every time we thought we were making a dent in the crime, some judge would screw up and our case would fall apart. I can't count how many of the criminals we'd almost gotten ourselves killed trying to get into prison were released by some stupid judge or other. It's enough to make a guy want to chuck it all and go raise chickens in Arizona or something.
But no matter how tired we were of all of that, we were together again. Friends. Partners. And something just a little more. That indefinable thing that made him and me us. Me and thee. I don’t think there's a word in the English language for what we are together.
Separately, we're just two people. Two cops. One blond. One dark. One a mid-western WASP and the other a Brooklyn Jew. Two people so dissimilar in everything. Everything except in what counts.
Maybe one day, we'll be something other than what we are today. Maybe we'll stop being cops. Maybe we'll go raise those chickens. I don't know. Maybe we'll even cross some invisible line and become what we've been accused of for so many years. I don't know that either. And at this point in my life, I really don't care.
Because what we are today is what's important. We're us. We're together. And that's all that counts.