|
(with
apologies to Author: Mogs Rating: PG Type: Gen ...
so far Feedback:
Please. I'm stressing out and it'll
make my day. Disclaimer:
Not mine. Belongs to some american dude whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. Summary: A
mysterious man has been hired to do a very dangerous job in Hutch's
apartment. A/N: Started because someone on the loveofmeandthee yahoogroup
wanted people to write a paragraph of description without adjectives. This is what mine has now turned into. This thing is
harder than it looks: I've shamelessly ignored the rules where adjectives
like 'no', 'both', and quantities are concerned, & have tried to cut down
on common adverbs like 'even',
'again', and 'now'. I haven't
even tried on adverbs like 'not'. So
it's mostly adjective-free rather than totally adjective-free. Oh, and this
is what happens when I get both bored and stressed. The way my mind is working at present there
will be more. Flee, all of you! Flee
while there's still time! Make for the
hills! (Did I
mention I'm stressed?) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The figure
paused in the doorway to the room, blade in hand, and looked down at the
bed. He'd laughed when he'd gotten the
assignment; now he was starting to appreciate some of the difficulties
involved. There were no
lights, but the streetlights outside gave him some help. The sleeper faced away from him, hair like
a cornfield glimmering in the gloom.
He rolled over with a sigh as the figure watched,
the sheet that covered him twisting around his legs and revealing a foot and
ankle as it receded. Another sigh, and
the sleeper slept on, face turned toward the watcher. On the
nightstand, a clock ticked. The
watcher stepped toward the bed. The sleeper's
eyeballs did not even twitch under their lids. The lips opened, just a crack and with each
breath exhalations of air stirred the hairs of the mustache. The watcher eyed the mustache
with trepidation and brought up the razor in his hand, wondering how on earth
to assassinate that strip of hair before the sleeper awoke. Get with it,
man, you're a professional, the figure told himself. A professional in both senses of the word
too: the people who knew how he had made his living in the decade before he'd
become a barber could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. It was just a shame that one of those who
did know had chosen tonight to call in the favor he
owed him--to exercise both his professions--and on a cop, of all people. And why? His
hirer had called him away from a night out with his girl to call in a favor for this piece of insanity? There'd been no way to explain to He paused,
telling himself not to store up trouble.
His victim had drunk seven pints tonight: he wasn't likely to
wake. But even that knowledge did not
stop sweat from running down his wrist onto the handle of the razor. He put the razor down on the nightstand
without making a sound and wiped his palm.
Time to get to work. Scissors
before razor. The snick of the blades
made him jump, but the sleeper did stir at all. An exhalation of air carried the hairs away
to fall onto the pillow. He moved the scissors and cut, timing it so that the
sleeper blew the strands away as before, and then repeated the motion, until
the ends were stumps that could be shaved away, the hairs floating away on
clouds of breath scented by beer. He
warmed the metal of the razor against his palm; there was little he could do
for the foam, but the absence of response from the man on the bed eased his
worry. With only a handful of strokes
the stubble from the cornfield was swept away. What a
difference five strokes of a razor could make! The intruder pocketed his razor and lowered
the foam into the bag he had brought, careful to make no sound as they hit
its base. The sleeper's face had lost
years, maybe decades, as though the razor had shorn not hair but barriers
away, and the intruder let himself smile.
He was an artist, and now, looking at the sleeper's hair, he felt the
scissors on the nightstand burning a hole at the edge of his vision. Such a work of art he could create ... just
a little harvesting of that cornfield. The sleeper
stirred, nestling into the pillow, and the watcher stepped back. He'd done as he'd been asked, he was in a
cop's home, for He wrapped
his hand in the handkerchief and then brought out the note and laid it on the
nightstand, reaching to pick up the scissors as he did so. The streetlights glinted off their blades,
onto the sleeper's hair and the artist within broke free. He warmed the blades as he had the razor,
so that the cold wouldn't disturb the sleeper and eased the hair at the nape
down. The sleeper
stirred and mumbled something in his dreams.
It sounded like a name, and turned into a purr of pleasure. "Starsssk..."
The burglar-turned-barber-turned-burglar froze in his tracks, fingers
still brushing the sleeper's neck. The
head turned a little, and then the sleeper's breathing deepened, as though
this Stars's presence was a reassurance and no
threat. Ten years of breaking and
entering told him that this sleep was no sham. He brought the scissors up, lifting and
moving the hair with the gentleness of stealth, and no more motions disturbed
his work. The cop did not react to any
move he made and even turned for him without waking once. Once he had
finished his masterwork he was close to disappointment. He knew perfection when he saw it and knew
that even one more cut would pass that point, but he wanted to run his
fingers through that cornfield, get to know its moods and find out how it
lay, and he could do no more than watch it glimmering in the streetlight's
glare. It was time
to go. He tidied his scissors and with
the handkerchief folded around his fingers teased open
the note on the nightstand, the note his hirer had given him. Next time,
pay your tab. Huggy. The intruder
looked at the note and sighed. He
didn't want to know what was going on here, but either Huggy
had lost his marbles this time or he was hallucinating. It was time he got out of here before the
hallucination got worse. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Huggy
didn't *do* sleep when his accountant started demanding the books, and this
time was no exception. He was leaning
on the bar with piles of papers spread round him, trying to find bills from
three months back that matched his bank statements. Huggy was
'street', which meant that numeracy was innate for
him, at least where currency was concerned.
It just wasn't so easy to keep the evidence straight that he was an
entrepreneur who did right by the law. The door
opened, and then banged shut, and he looked up to see "You done it, my man?" "Keep
your threads away from my livelihood and the Bear will happily
provide." He stared at Huggy
handed a half of beer to his visitor, watching as he took a deep swig from
it. "You ain't seen the size of that bar tab,
my man, or you would not ask that question. The Revenue are
on my back, and they ain't going to take no flak. When the IRS start
calling time, Huggy calls in every dime." "Man,
you need a new girl," Huggy said. "Drive
safe, my man." He began to gather
the receipts into a pile again. * * * "Ohhhhhhhhh..." Hutch
groaned, and then cursed as the sound reverberated through his head. Someone had clearly taken a pneumatic drill
to his head and his stomach wasn't too sure where it was. Everything
hurt--even his eyeballs seemed to be pulsating this morning--and if he didn't
move soon there was gonna be an accident.
He lay there for a moment, eyes closed,
trying to deny that there was daylight on the other side of the lids. If he didn't move... If he didn't
move, the situation would get worse, at least in the bladder department. He gave a mental count to three and lurched
to his feet, and towards the bathroom. That's the
last time I tie one on, he thought, as he dealt with the most pressing of his
problems. It's just not worth the pain.
He stumbled to the sink, barely giving his blurred reflection a
glance, and threw handfuls of water in the approximate direction of his
face. His mouth tasted like the bottom
of a parrot's cage, and he had just reached up for his toothbrush when he
froze. His ... reflection
... didn't look like him. Well, it did
look like him, but not like he'd looked for ... for some time. His mustache, for one thing. He'd grown it fourteen months back when
it'd become clear that his on-again off-again relationship with Starsky--the private one, not the professional one--was
off again and wasn't likely to go back
on again in this lifetime. Clearly, he
was still drunk, but he didn't think he'd drunk that much. "Get lost, you," he mumbled at
the younger him. "'M not in the
mood." The
reflection got lost, but mostly because it was too much effort to focus on
the mirror for long. He shook two
aspirins out of the jar, filled a glass with water and drank it, and scrubbed
the parrot's cage lining out of his mouth with a toothbrush. After that, heading back to bed seemed the
easiest thing. Normally he'd
have headed straight for the kitchen and his vitamin stash during a hangover
like that one, but that took levels of determination that were currently
beyond him. He'd get up again when he
was sober. He stumbled
back into the bedroom, catching himself with a hand on the nightstand before
he overbalanced, and collapsed onto the bed.
He lay there for a moment before attempting to pull the covers over
him, his right hand still resting against the nightstand, on a piece of
paper. Okay, so you
did all kind of things when you were drunk, but he didn't remember having
left-- He turned his
wrist to grip it, not opening his eyes, and brought the paper in front of his
face. A cascade of feather-light somethings fell onto his bare neck and chest and he
opened his eyes in surprise, lowering and rotating the paper until he could
read the words on its surface. Next time,
pay your tab. Huggy. Wait ...
what? He turned the
words over in his head, much as he'd turned the paper, but he couldn't wrap
his brain round what Huggy was saying, apart from
the obvious. He felt for the particles
that had fallen on his neck and chest, caught two and tried to read them with
his fingers. They felt like hairs ...
short, coarse hairs. And the world
spun giddyingly back into its appointed place, as
Hutch remembered that image in the mirror and realised
what exactly one pissed-off bar owner had done to him. He lurched once more towards the bathroom
to confirm the truth of what his suspicions were saying, and to find out just
how bad the damage was. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hutch gripped
the edge of the sink hard and stared into the mirror at the new image that Huggy had inflicted on him. The image stared back, clearly as unhappy
has he was with the situation. Huggy
hadn't just cut off his mustache: he'd done something to his hair too. The
shape was different, more subtle than it had been, slightly layered at the
sides, so that it caught the light more now.
Objectively, it was a classy cut, and it suited him, but he looked .... He looked
fragile. Well, of
course he did. You didn't wake up with
a hangover like that without looking as bad as you felt. The difference was, with his old face, it
had given him a look of don't-mess-with-me grumpiness; with the new one he just
looked like a sick kid, cop's hard body notwithstanding. You had to be tough to take a face like
this on the street, and right now there wasn't enough tough left in him for
that. He turned
away from the mirror, relieved that the jackhammer in his head had calmed
down to a mere background unpleasantness, and was headed towards the kitchen
when the phone rang, far too loudly. He sank down
on the bed again and snatched it up before it could ring again. "Yeah." "Hey,
Hutch, you ready to come n' play tennis with me yet?" It was Starsky. A loud, ebullient, and not at all hung-over
Starsky.
Hutch felt a pang of guilt at having forgotten. "Ah, Starsk, can't we cancel? I gotta
hangover." "Aw,
c'mon, you can't let that stop you!
It's my last day of freedom today, remember? You can't let me spend it on my
own." He could almost feel the
pout coming through the telephone wires.
It was on his mind to Starsky that from
tomorrow when Starsky hit the streets again they'd
be back to all but living in a car together, but he suppressed the urge to
snarl. "Starsky, I feel like shit. You had as much to drink as I did. How come you're not feeling bad." "Just
lucky, I guess. Don't forget, I had
the big burrito bonanza at Taco Shack, and all you had was a small green
salad and a glass of water, so it figures you'd feel it more. Hey, I always told you that healthy diet of
yours was gonna off you some day." The mere
thought of burritos was making his stomach churn again. "God, Starsk,
do you have to be so-?" Words
failed him. Starsky's digestive system
was a freak of nature, he told himself.
It had to be. The guy had lost
a part of his stomach as a result of the shooting, and according to the
doctors what he had left was still slightly larger than the average, and
disgustingly healthy to boot. "Hey,
what did I ever do to you?" "You're
being cheerful" "And
that's a crime? Hutch, you-" Hutch flinched a little, held the earpiece
a little further from his ear, and then felt a little guilty. Starsky was on
top of the world; the least he could do was to make a little effort.. "And
loud," he said. "Very
loud. If you wound up dead, there
wouldn't be a jury on earth would convict me.
Ginny'd say it was natural causes. Starsky
laughed at that. "I'll make you
something to fix it when I come over." "You're
coming here?" The horror in his
voice was only partly feigned.
Hangover or no, he didn't feel up to facing Starsky
yet, not with this face. "Yep. Can't neglect my partner when he's under
the weather, can I?" "Great. I'll get my gun." Starsky
laughed again, and then paused, and Hutch could almost hear him growing more
serious. "Listen, I can leave it
if you want. Don't want to force my
company on you, 'cause God knows, you'll be stuck with me enough after
today." Once again, Starsky had read him too right. "Ah, no, Starsk,
it's not that. I gotta
go see Huggy, pay my tab." "Oh
yeah, he mentioned that to me last week." "What
did he say, exactly?" "Just
that he wanted everything outstanding paid by Friday, or he'd have to resort
to what he called 'cruel and unusual punishments'. I told you, remember?" "You
didn't mention the cruel and unusual punishments." "I
didn't?" Starsky
sounded puzzled, and then shocked.
"Ah, man, I didn't realise it was that
time of year again. So what did he
do?" "I don't
want to talk about it." Hutch
blinked at the phone. "You mean
this has happened before? Why didn't I
know?" "You
were laid up at the time. Remember "Vividly." "Well, Huggy told me to pay my tab, 'cause he'd had this large
tax bill come in, and I couldn't lay my hand on the money right
then." Because he'd just bought a
car for his laid-up partner, Hutch suspected, but Starsky
would never mention that. "And
... well ... he took all my sneakers hostage until I
paid up." Hutch
chucked. "Really?" "Yeah. I had to spend a day wearing your boots
before I could get the money together.
It was that or carpet slippers, and I thought the perps
would laugh." He paused. "So what did he do to you? Raid the
greenhouse?" "Look,
I'll tell you later. I got to go and
pay the man before anything worse happens." He put the
phone down before Starsky could ask anything else,
and stalked into the kitchen in search of his vitamins. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Hey
Hug, how's it hanging?" It was around
two in the afternoon as Starsky sauntered into The
Pits looking as nonchalant as he could, and the majority of the lunchtime
rush had subsided to a manageable trickle.
Huggy was behind the bar, and Starsky swung himself up onto an empty bar stool closest
to the bar, thinking that his friend looked remarkably depressed. "It's
hanging down, my curly friend, unless I can get some more of the green in,
P-D-Q. What can I get you, my
man?" Starsky
would have killed for a beer just then, and said so, and Huggy
stepped over to get it for him. There
was an account book lying open where Huggy had been
sitting, he noticed, covered with corrections and crossings out, and
surrounded by papers including a list of outstanding tabs. Hutch owed Huggy
300 dollars? "One
hair of the dog, for Metro's returning hero." "Thanks,
Hug. Hey, has Hutch been in yet?" Huggy
scowled. "No, he ain't. You heard
from his blondness this AM?" "Oh, I
heard from him all right. He's back
home nursing a hangover and doesn't want to talk to anyone, but he said he
was coming here to pay his tab."
He watched Huggy's smile suspiciously. "So, Hug, what did you do to the
guy? He sounded like his dog'd just died?" Huggy's
smile was positively enigmatic. "C'mon, Huggy,
you can tell me. I won't tell, I
promise." "No way,
miracle man. That's between me and
that partner of yours." "Hey, I
told you about calling me that." "What
else am I supposed to call you, my man?"
Huggy made yet another annotation to his
cashbook. "Man, you have had more
holes in your body than my cousin Godric, and not
only are you not feeding the worms, you're about to go back to scaring the
bad guys." Godric? Starsky ran a
mental inventory of Huggy's known relatives through
his head, before remembering that Huggy's cousin Godric was the one who ran a body-piercing clinic on Monsarrat. Starsky
grinned crookedly at him. He supposed
he didn't really mind the name.
"Well, what else was I supposed to do? Get a job with the IRS?" Huggy
shook his head with a sigh.
"Those fiscal fiends are no friends of the bear." He slammed the account book closed for a
moment, leant forward, propping himself up on an elbow. "So, tomorrow's the big day for for the big duo.
You cool with it?" Starsky
smiled so widely he could almost feel his face crack. "You kidding? Tomorrow's when we take this city
back. Huggy,
I haven't felt like this in years."
"See
what I mean, miracle man? It's
unnatural. Five bullets, a minute of
death and three months in the hospital, and you're happy as my aunt "Yeah
right. And what would you know about
that?" Starsky heard himself say much too
sharply. Huggy gave him a plaintive look. "Man,"
he said. "Most people, when they
go through a thing like that, dream of pain and dying and stuff. You dreamt about not being able to get it
up again." Starsky
looked up, a little annoyed. He'd had
a psychiatrist on his case for months, and the last thing he needed now was
the amateur shrink act. What gave Huggy the right to judge what a 'normal' nightmare
was? Sure he'd had his share of
screamers in the past, but they'd always been about his dad or Hutch or "Hey,
listen! If that's not a nightmare, I don't know what is." Starsky frowned
into his beer and gave an exaggerated shudder. "I tell you, Hug those dreams were the
most frightening I've ever had. I
mean, imagine going through all that and living, and then finding out that
you've nothing to be living *for*.
Don't you think that would have you waking up in a cold
sweat?" "You
might be right, bro, you might be ri--" Huggy's
voice trailed away as his head shot up and he looked towards the door of the
Pits. Starsky
twisted around on the stool, as the most incredible creature he'd ever seen
strode into The Pits, slamming the door after him. His eyes widened. It was
Hutch. Not
Hutch as he'd sat in here last night, drinking the night away, nor
the hung-over creature he'd been visualising from
the phone call earlier that morning, but a perfect vision in gold and
blue. He was standing tall and
bowstring-tight with anger, striding towards Huggy
like an avenging angel. "Oh ...
man," he heard Huggy say in a low voice. The vision
approached Huggy and slapped something down hard on
the bar. "Your money," it
said harshly. "And if you ever,
ever pull something like that again, I'll have the public health department
down on your ass." Did you know
your eyes flash a beautiful shade of blue when you're angry? "Hutch..."
Starsky's voice trailed off as he realised he had
no idea what he had been about to say, his eyes widening as he got his first
close look at Hutch. "You
look..." The
forefinger emerged, stabbing towards him.
"Don't ... you ... start," Hutch breathed. "What you're looking at is Huggy's idea of revenge.
It has nothing - nothing - to do with me." Starsky opened
his mouth to speak but Hutch got there first.
"And that's another thing.
I'm gonna be stuck with you driving for the next ten days, because I
now have fifteen bucks left in the world to live on until pay day." He turned on
his heel and strode away, leaving both onlookers staring at him, speechless. Starsky
looked up at Huggy, who was watching the bar door
swing shut after him. "I think
I'll have another beer now, Hug," he said weakly. He glanced
down, feeling an old familiar tightness in the crotch of his jeans. Deep in the earth, something stirred, he
thought in his best horror-movie voice.
At least it was nice to know that the nightmares about his virility
were utterly unfounded. And at least Huggy didn't know exactly who the co-star of those
nightmares had been. Forgetting the
beer he'd just ordered, Starsky pushed himself onto
his feet and plunged out of the door in search of his partner. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Hutch,
wait!" Hutch already
had his hand on the car door when he heard the voice behind him, and he
pulled it open as Starsky rushed out behind
him. "I
already told you, Starsky--" "Hey,
calm down, Hutch. I'm sure Huggy didn't think--" "So,"
Hutch interrupted, "am I." "What's
so bad about it? All he did was give you a haircut, and a pretty good one at that." Hutch sighed. He'd hoped that Starsky
would have had some sympathy with him, but the man insisted on missing the
point. "No. All he did-- Wait! What did you say?" "What?" "Haircut." Hutch stalked to the trunk of his car and
then wheeled round to look at Starsky before pacing
back to stare at his partner. Dammit,
all this time and he hadn't had the brains to think it through like a
cop. "Huggy
has the IRS on his back, he's up til all hours
trying to get his books ready for them and find enough money to pay
them. When's he gonna find time to
break into a guy's house and cut his hair?" Starsky
looked at him blankly. "You got
me there." Hutch met his
eyes--It certainly beat looking lower down his partner's body. "Like you said, it's a quality
haircut. Huggy
doesn't have the skills, and he doesn't have the time." "You
know for sure that it was Huggy?" "The
note was in his handwriting, I'd swear it." "So he
got someone else--" "SHIT!" Hutch almost pounded his fist on the roof
of his car, but at the last minute changed direction to drive his fist into
his thigh. "He let someone break
*in* to my apartment." "Now,
Hutch, don't make assumptions. He mighta lent them your spare key." Hutch spun
round to stare at him. "You think
that makes it better?" "Well
... you might just have a point there, buddy." "Besides,
I took my key back from him when you got back to driving again," Hutch
said thoughtfully. Starsky
had a wary look on his face, as if he considered a thoughtful, angry partner
a more dangerous thing to be around than a merely angry one. "Someone broke into my home, at Huggy's request, without leaving any signs of a break-in,
and did -- this -- to me while I was asleep." He turned and
strode back into the Pits, barking "HUGGY!" in a voice that
silenced every diner in the place, and then turned to glare at them all for
daring to turn and stare at him. He
stalked over to the bar again. "Blondie,
I'd appreciate if you didn't scare off my paying customers, man." Hutch lowered
his voice so that nobody else could hear him.
He could feel Starsky standing close behind
him. "Huggy, who the hell cut my hair?" Huggy's
sudden impassiveness was all the confirmation he needed that he'd gotten
someone else to do the deed. "Who, Huggy?" Huggy
shook his head. "No can do, my
man. The bear never gives up an
amigo." "Huggy, I'm a cop.
You let someone I don't know break into my house and--and vandalise my face."
He leant forward a little closer, feeling that the intimidation
gesture would have been much more affective coming from his old face. "You expect me to just let it
go?" "You
owed me the money, Hutch." "That's
not the point." "Hutch,
my man, I've seen you and your brother cop at work. There ain't nothing you can do that can scare the bear." "Were
you at least with him while he was in my apartment?" The silence
told him everything he needed to know.
"Fine," he said, and turned on his heel. He could hear
Starsky hurrying to catch up with him as he stalked
out, and just before he reached his car again, Starsky
grabbed his arm. "Hey, at
least he didn't--" Starsky
didn't get to finish his sentence because Hutch had jerked hard on his arm,
dragging him towards the car door which still stood open into the
street. "Get in the car." "Now,
c'mon, Hutch, don't you think you might be overreacting a bit?" Starsky tightened
the grip on his arm, and Hutch gave him an irritated glance. At least he wasn't throwing a damned rod
any more. "Get in
the car, Starsky." "Hutch,
listen, it can wait 'til you've calmed down." "The
car, Starsk." Starsky
gave him a very doubtful glance, and got into the car. * * * Huggy
counted the money
that Hutch had slapped down onto the counter carefully, and
then stowed it carefully into the till.
Then he picked up the telephone and dialled,
listening for a few moments before the call connected and " "Hey, There was a
deep sigh on the other end of the line.
"What is it now, Huggy?" "Well It
doesn't necessarily mean trouble for you, catman,
but I've just had a very angry blond bombshell storm out of my bar--with a
very shiny new 'do'." There was
silence on the other end of the phone.
Huggy hadn't really been expecting an answer
anyway. "Man, I said just the
mustache. That meant nothing else, you
dig?" He heard Huggy
sighed. "It's no skin off my
chin, man," he said, "but "I hear
you, Huggy," ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part 6. It took Hutch
all of three phone calls to identify the most likely suspects--and none of
the calls were to the parole service. Starsky
was impressed, in spite of himself--Hutch definitely hadn't slackened off any
in his absence. It occurred to him
that he'd have a lot of learning to do come tomorrow to get back in the swim
of things where the snitches were concerned.
To be sure, Hutch has kept him up to date on the gossip, but there was
a huge difference between hearing it and living it. Not for the first time,
the anticipation sizzled through him, threaded with only enough fear to
sharpen the anticipation with adrenalin.
Tomorrow--when tomorrow came he'd be back on the streets. The drive
over was mostly silent, with the typical heavy silence of the Brooding
Hutch. Starsky
stayed quiet too--timing was everything when handling the Brooding Hutch, and
hopefully the silence would give his partner time to cool down before he did
anything stupid. With this in
mind it was only when they'd parked outside the very ordinary-looking
barber's shop that he reached over and touched Hutch's arm. He noticed the
tension in the muscles with a sinking heart: clearly Hutch was still nowhere
near relaxing and forgetting it. "Hey
Hutch, are you sure you want to do this?" Starsky had to
restrain himself forcibly from using the word 'overreacting'. Of course, it was a beautiful tactic to use
when you wanted the man to blow his top but right now, a rational Hutch was
what was required. "Starsky," Hutch turned to look at him, and Starsky's
heart sank. The blazing fury was gone, and in its place was a cold rage that
made even Starsky back off. "How would you
feel if you knew a hairdressing ex-con had broken into your home?" Aha! Rational
thought! You'll pass. "Good point. I'm coming with you." "It's my
show." So he'd be ignored, but it was still better than nothing. Hutch
swung the car door open and climbed out, slamming the door and setting off
the car's mechanical rattling that always set Starsky's teeth on edge. "This,"
Starsky muttered in the brief silence that followed
Hutch's exit, 'is gonna be interesting." Then he
climbed out of the car and went to follow his partner. * * * " He could feel
a hot gaze on the back of his neck. "I'll be with you in a minute,
sir." Something about that gaze made him feel nervous, so he didn't let
himself pay attention to it. The side of His first
reaction was a moment of
sheer creator's pride. The haircut may have been done on a
sleeping man while in terror for his life, but it was good, it was right, and
by some creative alchemy it complemented the man's waking face perfectly.
Like a warrior out of legend, with those angry blue eyes and upright,
outraged posture. He came to
his senses fast. The cop was here. And he was angry. And he knew damned well
who was responsible for his (probably unwanted) new look. The flashed
badge confirmed his fears. " He nodded,
throat dry. "Police.
We've got some questions we'd like to ask you." We. For the
first time he noticed the
cop's partner, leaning against the wall by the door of his
shop, arms folded and one leg crossed casually across the other. His eyes
were watchful, his face expressionless and enigmatic. He didn't need to say a
word to exude an air of menace. He wanted to
bolt for the back door, but at the last moment, professional pride took over.
"Let me finish up, and I'll be right with you." It was the blond's partner who answered. "Take your time. It was a
moment before he realized he was now alone with the two cops. As the door
shut, the cop's partner flipped the sign on the door over to read 'Closed',
and pulled the blind beside it. 'It was you,
wasn't it?" There didn't seen any point in lying about it. "Yes." "You
know that's breaking and entering." "I never
stole anything." "Oh?"
"Look, I
don't do that shit any more. It's just that someone called in a favor." The blond
raised his eyebrows. "Huggy did, you
mean." The blond cop
raised a finger, his eyes intent on him. "Now, c'mon, I want some
answers here! You must have agreed for
a reason." "You
think I'd let you near me again?" Now that
hurt. "I'm a
cop," the blond growled, and "Listen
... Once again, "Fix
it." The blond seated himself determinedly in the chair in front of the
mirror, grimacing at his reflection.
"Go on. Stop me looking like a fuckin'
kid." Fix it. At least it beat being menaced even
further. "I can't
do it," he said. "Why
not?" "I got
it right. I can't knowingly ruin--" "Do
it!" "No,"
he said. It was a decision; it was
also a promise. He felt, suddenly,
utterly at peace, as though his calm was strength, and the rage and fury of
his adversary merely weaknesses. He
was a craftsman, and his work was right, no matter the circumstances that had
brought it forth. "I will never
go near your home or your hair again. But I stand by what I have done, and I
will not change it." There was a
moment of indescribable silence, and then the blond got to his feet. As The moment
the door shut behind him, * * * "Looks
like even an ex-con barber can defeat me." When Starsky got outside, Hutch was back by his car, leaning
on it. Starsky
recognized the switch to sarcasm mode instantly, and suspected it was a
last-ditch defense. Not that that
meant anything--Hutch could carry on fueled by sarcasm alone for days--but it
was a start. He didn't
want to get into the sarcasm game, though, so he ignored the comment. "You're wrong, you know. You don't
need to prove anything--people know you're tough." "Oh,
yeah, sure I was, way back when we were young and stupid. I grew out of it." Oh to be that
young and stupid again. Starsky didn't let himself react to the sarcasm. "You're the guy who brought down Hutch waved
it away as though He feels he's
doing it alone, Starsky realized suddenly. Come to that, for the past eight months he
*has* been doing it alone. Or maybe,
he thought, remembering the screw-ups of the time before that, maybe longer
than that, even. Hell, I know I did. "Hey,"
he said quietly. "Don't forget
you've got backup." Me, he added mentally. That word didn't need to be said aloud. Hutch looked
at him sharply, his eyes filled with a pain and tenderness he hadn't seen in
them since "Take me
home, Starsk."
His shoulders heaved in a sigh.
"Please, take me home." He'd gotten
through to him. Starsky
held out his hand for the car keys, and Hutch handed them to him, the long
fingers brushing momentarily against his.
Hutch's hands always felt cool to the touch, in
comparison with his own, and today they felt positively chilled, in
need of warming. Starsky
smiled, and held the car door open for his partner. Guess what? he
thought, I know just the man for the job. TBC |