Burying the Past

K Hanna Korossy

Written: 1999

Seasoned Timber 2 (2002)

  “Ben Forest was knifed to death yesterday by a fellow inmate.”  Dobey’s words hung over the room like an unreal cloud.

  The two detectives it encompassed stood staring at him in shock.  This was the last thing they'd expected when Dobey had called them in. 

  Starsky finally cleared his throat.  “Forest’s dead?” he repeated disbelievingly.

  The captain nodded.  “I just got the call.”  He peered at the still-silent blond next to Starsky.  “Hutchinson, are you all right?”

  Starsky was watching him, too, and Hutch finally shook himself back to the present to realize an answer was expected of him.  “Uh, I’m fine, sir, that’s just...a surprise.”

  “If you want to take off early...”

  Hutch waved his boss’s offer away.  “I’m okay.  Was that all, Cap’n?”  Starsky’s eyes were still on him, but he didn’t return the look. 

  Dobey seemed like he wanted to pursue it further, then thought better of it and waved a hand.  “Go on.”

  Hutch didn’t need a second invitation, turning and leaving the room, Starsky close on his heels. 

  “Hey,” came his partner’s voice a moment later, just as he knew it would.  “Hutch?”

  “It was a long time ago, Starsk,” he said, turning to give his partner a glance.  Starsky’s gaze was fixed on him the way it sometimes was when he saw nothing but his partner, and all of the blond, too.  Hutch managed to smile, solely because it was impossible not to appreciate someone who worried about him like that. 

  Come to think of it, no one else even did worry about him like that.

  Starsky ghosted a smile back at him, pure fondness, then flopped down at his desk to get back to what they were working on when Dobey had summoned them. 

  Hutch turned to the coffeepot by the door, studying the mugs as if discerning which was clean enough to use, but his thoughts were elsewhere. 

  All he had left of Forest’s abduction and his own subsequent introduction to heroin were fragments, a jumble of pain and terror and shame, and then after he’d escaped and Starsky had found him, love and gentleness.  Pieces of memories that sometimes fitted themselves into his dreams like random bits of an old nightmare, too vague to cause any more than flashes of panic.  Starsky had defused the worst of it by his mere presence and reassurances, and most of the rest had faded away with time. 

  And still he could hear Forest’s voice.  “That’s fantastic...a little change of body chemistry...”

  Forest’s dead.  Can’t hurt you any more. 

  And, oh, how Forest had hurt him before.

  A hand closed on his own, startling him so badly, the mug fell from his cold fingers, caught by Starsky in mid-air.  The hand that held on to him stilled the tremors that had somehow attacked his limbs; he hadn’t even noticed until then.  Before it progressed to shaking his legs out from under him, the same gentle hands guided him to the nearest seat, Starsky’s vacated chair.  “Sit down,” his partner said quietly, and firmly pushed him into it.  “I’ll be right back.” 

  Hutch sat, not sure what was going on or why it had suddenly gotten so cold in the room, watching with detached interest at the pale hands that trembled in his lap.  Almost like back then, shaking from withdrawal and need...  Hutch squeezed his eyes tight shut, resisting the urge to pull up his shirt sleeve and see if the marks were still visible. 

  There was a flurry behind him of a door opening and shutting, then Starsky was next to him again, this time urging him back to his feet, talking without making any sense.  Before Hutch realized he was moving, they were halfway out the door, Starsky’s arm around his shoulder directing him as if he had no will of his own.  Truth be told, he wasn’t sure he did at that moment. 

  Hutch made a tepid attempt to try to pull his act together.  “What about...?” he waved nebulously back toward the squadroom.  They couldn’t just walk out like that in the middle of the day, could they?  He shook his head, trying to clear it, knowing he should know the answer to that question but didn’t.  What was happening?  He felt unsteady, almost disembodied.

  Starsky was looking at him, speaking carefully, and by both watching and listening, Hutch finally made some sense of it. 

  “...out of here.  Just take it easy.  You’re okay.” 

  Even he knew that wasn’t true, yet Starsky said it with such conviction, Hutch didn’t argue.  Besides, his partner seemed to know what he was doing.  That was enough for now. 

  They stepped outdoors, the sunshine hurting his eyes and the breeze making him shiver even worse for a minute, and a jacket--his jacket, he realized after a minute more--was promptly draped around his shoulders.  Then Starsky was coaxing him into a car, and he got in, grateful to be sitting down, drawing his jacket around him as he strived for elusive warmth. 

  A moment later, Starsky was getting in on the other side, then the car started and they set off. 

  The heater was blowing warm air, slowly defrosting his shell.  Hutch could feel himself uncurl in the heat, sensation coming back into his fingers and toes.  The steady thrum of the engine also began to order his thoughts, giving them a straight track to run along, and they began to sort into comprehensibility. 

  Hutch frowned.  “Where are we going?”

  His partner shot him a long side glance.  “You feelin’ better?” he asked mildly. 

  Better than what?  He wasn’t even sure how the two of them had ended up in the car.  The car...driving to the pier, to his death...  Another hard tremor shook him once, rattling his teeth, and he winced his eyes shut again, trying to separate the past from the present.  They were talking about dumping him into the ocean, drowning him...

  “Hutch?”

  The soft voice didn’t fit with the memory, nor did the soothing massage of his shoulder.  He dragged in a ragged breath, sure it was his first for some time, and the memories ebbed again, returning him to this car and the concerned voice of his partner. 

  “Take it easy, Hutch.  We’re almost there.  It’s okay.”

  No, definitely not okay.  Almost being killed was not okay.  Nor was all that had gone before...being tied up and and held down and utterly helpless to keep Forest from raping his mind and ravaging his body, crawling on the floor, begging, losing his sanity and self.  That wasn’t okay at all.

  Someone was touching him, but before he could fight back, the tenderness of the touch registered, wiping at his damp face.  Tears?  He didn’t know he’d been crying.  He blushed in embarrassment.

  “Hutch, it’s okay.  It’s over.  It’s okay.  Take it easy, Hutch.”  The voice that repeated the words over and over was much more forceful, but just as kind as the touch.  Listening to the chant, he followed its tug out of the nightmare.   

  A deep breath, then another.  He felt so tired.  Tired and ashamed.  Over a year in the past, and here he was losing it because Forest had died.  It should have been good news, closure and all that.  Instead, it felt like opening a door he wanted to forget was even there. 

  One more shuddery breath, then he forced his eyes open.  They were in the Torino, which was stopped in the midst of green surroundings, no life around them but the abundant vegetation.  He was scrunched into his end of the seat, but Starsky was right next to him, lightly rubbing a hand along his jaw, down to curl around his neck, then back again, drawing his attention with patient insistence.  Eyes deep with worry and encouragement searched his own. 

  “Hutch?”

  “Yeah.”  His voice sounded as tired as he felt.  What a wimp.  He hated to think how he’d have fallen apart if news had come of Forest’s release.  Though, through some workings of his partner and Dobey, he’d been assured that that would never happen, even without revealing Hutch’s forced addiction.  Addiction...

  “Stay with me, partner.”  The genial command confused him, until he realized he’d shut his eyes again.  He hurried to obey, blinking at Starsky.  The roughened hand slid up his face to smooth hair out of his eyes.  “Better?”

  He nodded.  For the moment, it was, except the nightmare was pressing in so closely around him, and just a brief slip of his concentration would let him slide back into it.  Even the disjointed pieces his mind had held on to retained a powerful sense of terror and shame.  Complete helplessness, knowing nothing he did could stop the violation of his body or perhaps even spare his life, was not something the mind ever forgot altogether. 

  Starsky was shaking his head, saying something that the pulse pounding in Hutch’s ear drowned out.  But the meaning became clear a moment later as he found himself tucked under Starsky’s chin, arms wrapped around him like inviolate protection from the demons of his mind, a hand rubbing up and down his spine. 

  Different memories.  Tearing apart inside while being held together on the outside by that same unyielding embrace.  Love poured into him as liberally as the sickeningly sweet coffee, filling him up so tangibly that it forced out the pain and fear from sheer lack of space.  All during which he’d thrown up, and his nose and his stomach wouldn’t stop running, and then he’d begged and crawled for Starsky, too...  Hutch tried to pull away, the humiliation unbearable.

  “Don’t.”  It was just a whisper against his hair, but there was iron in it.  Despair made Hutch’s eyes water.  Didn’t Starsky know what he’d done, hadn’t he seen what Hutch had become?  “Shh,” Starsky breathed in his ear, though Hutch hadn’t said a word.  “Not your fault.  I woulda given anything to get ya back alive.  I’m grateful, Hutch.  Nothing’s gonna change that.”

  He would have squeezed his eyes shut again from the sheer misery of it, except that he already had his whole face crushed against the buttons of Starsky’s shirt and he couldn’t see a thing anyway. 

  The hand on his back traced each ridge of his vertebrae with a warm palm.  “Some of it came back?” Starsky asked softly. 

  Hutch nodded, a button scratching his cheek. 

  “Wanna tell me?”

  Why not?  Hutch did, reeling it off like an indifferent tale because he couldn’t think about how it felt anymore. 

  And at the end, when should have come the horror and disgust, Starsky only pulled him more snug against him and, with voice as rough as his hands were gentle, said, “Ah, buddy, I’m sorry.” 

  It was impossible to not hear Starsky really, truly meant it. 

  But sorry?  Sorry, maybe, because it had been done to Hutch, unwillingly?  It hadn’t been his choice to be kidnapped, or beaten, or held down while they’d taken the last bit of his control and gone beyond bodily harm, to hurt his soul.  None of it had been his choice...

  The tears came then, as ugly and difficult as the pain they bore away. 

  Up and down the knobs of his spine the hand went, as if memorizing their texture.  When Hutch couldn’t breathe from his choked throat and stopped-up nose, he turned his head enough to rest his cheek against Starsky’s shoulder.  The arms only shifted to compensate, the soothing rubbing never stopping.  It was impossible to feel empty or worthless, exposed to such tactile love. 

  “I’d hoped you wouldn’t remember any more, but I figured it’d hit ya sooner or later,” Starsky murmured, now right next to his ear.  “Needed to come out sometime.” 

  Hutch drifted on the words for a minute, comfortably hazy in the exhaustion of catharsis, his thoughts as congested as his breathing.  Forest was dead.  The nightmare had been over a long while, but now it was time to bury it.  “I’m glad he’s dead,” he croaked. 

  “No, you’re not,” Starsky gently countered. 

  His eyes blurred again.  He had hated before: Tom and Joey, the two hitmen who had so carelessly played with Starsky’s life; Vic Bellamy, who’d laughed while he condemned Starsky to death; Al Grossman, who had violently ended Gillian’s life.  But Forest...Hutch should have, and he couldn’t.  All he felt was hurt.  And even that had faded to a passive ache. 

  “You’re gonna be okay, partner.” 

  He smiled at the certainty of the tone before he even realized it, surprised he remembered how.  Yeah, maybe he would be, with as patient help as this.  He sighed, watching the wave of branches outside the car window.  “Starsk?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where are we?”

  A quiet chuckle.  “Griffith Park.  All this green stuff always seems t’ calm ya down.” 

  What was inside the car was doing a whole lot more than what was outside, but he appreciated the thought, and the safety of privacy.  If he was going to fall apart on his partner’s front seat, it was nice to at least not have an audience.  Starsky didn’t count.  He’d seen it all and still stuck around, and you couldn’t get any safer than that. 

  Hutch finally pushed himself away, rubbing the sleeve of his shirt over his eyes, laughing once, then hiccuping, as Starsky silently handed him a tissue.  They were both a little rumpled, and Hutch felt twice-washed and wrung out to dry, but it was a cleaned-out feeling.  Forest is dead.  No doubt his dreams would face new invasions in the nights to come, and, like any relapse, there would be a whole new recovery to deal with, but he wouldn’t be doing it alone.  And really, that was the answer to it all, wasn’t it?

  Another thought would have made his cheeks color again if they’d not already been flushed.  “What’s Dobey gonna say that we just took off?”

  Starsky pulled out his pair of sunglasses and handed them to his partner, and Hutch gratefully slipped them on.  “I talked to him.  He knows where we are.” 

  “Oh.”  Not alone, indeed; no doubt Huggy would put in an appearance at some point, too.  The support of such a network of friends was humbling. 

  Starsky started the car and they pulled out.  Though Hutch hadn’t recognized where they had parked, the terrain soon became familiar.  “I’m gonna take you home, then I’ve gotta go back to the station for a while, but I’ll pick up something for dinner and come over after.”

  “Starsk?”

  Starsky turned to look at him, eyebrows arching quizzically.

  “Thanks.”

  A warm smile curved his partner’s lips in answer.

  The past was buried in the woods behind them, and they headed back to the city together.