Work Text:
The first Christmas after he was divorced—living alone in a furnished apartment three blocks from the station—Hutch signed up for all the shifts no one else wanted. She sent him a card—fir trees covered in snow, smoke rising from the chimney of a small stone cottage—and signed it Love, Vanessa. He tucked it into the mirror over his dresser and stared at it each morning as he dressed.
The third Christmas after he was divorced, he took two weeks vacation and drove east to Minnesota. The seasons changed from summer to fall to winter as he drove, and he had the sense of driving backward in time, ending up outside his parents’ farm a younger and happier version of the man he’d become. Every afternoon, he played hockey on the frozen pond with his father. Then they sat on the rough wooden bench they'd built together years before, drinking hot chocolate laced with Canadian whiskey from a small thermos they passed between them. He told his father about his job, how sometimes he felt like it was changing him, making him harder, and how much that scared him. His father, raised by men who didn’t hug or kiss their sons, briefly rested one hand across his shoulder as they walked back to the house. He called Starsky on Christmas Eve—a little embarrassed by how much he missed him—but there was no answer and he didn’t try again.
The fifth Christmas after he was divorced, he and Starsky filled in for Peters and Waltham. They sent them home to their wives and children and spent the long, quiet shift talking about ex-girlfriends and old cases. They exchanged small presents in the Torino—a new key chain for Starsky, a book of sheet music for Hutch—and Starsky dropped him off at the end of the shift. They met up again later at the Dobeys for dinner, but Hutch left early, rubbing his forehead and saying he felt a migraine coming on. There was no headache, just the vague, sad feeling that his life had not turned out as he planned.
The seventh Christmas after he was divorced, the last he ever measured this way, he spent the day walking the halls of Memorial, while Starsky fought off pneumonia. This particular bout, which Starsky had named the Scrooge flu between fits of coughing, had sent him back to the hospital after only a month at home. He ate pressed turkey and canned cranberry sauce in the cafeteria while Starsky slept, and later heard the doctor—as unhappy as he was to be spending Christmas at the hospital—order a new, stronger round of antibiotics. After the doctor left, Hutch sat by the bed, held Starsky’s hand under the blanket, and recited what he remembered of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! He refused to sing the song though, and Starsky managed a small, weak smile and told him his heart was two sizes too small. He leaned forward and kissed Starsky lightly on the forehead, and whispered, “I wish it was, because then it wouldn’t hurt so much.”
This year, their tenth Christmas in Colorado, he bought the five CD set Bing Crosby and Friends Sing Christmas. He found it in a bin at Target in Estes Park three days before Christmas for only $12.99 and added it to his cart while Starsky looked at power tools and air filters. On Christmas Eve, they decorated the small tree in their living room while Bing sang White Christmas. The next morning, they took Titus for a long walk in the woods and went skating on the pond after lunch. They passed a thermos of hot chocolate between them while they walked back to the house, and he told Starsky about the year he drove east to spend Christmas with his parents. How he’d told his father how the streets frightened him sometimes, but that he’d just gotten a new partner—someone he knew from the academy. How he’d told his father if anyone could make him believe in the job again, it was Starsky.
Starsky stopped and kissed him, his lips still warm and sweet from the hot chocolate. He told Hutch how he first knew he loved him that same Christmas that Hutch had driven away “in that pile of shit you called a car. I was sure you were going to call me to go rescue you somewhere in the desert. But you never did. I missed you like crazy.”
“You did rescue me, Starsk. You still do. Every day.”
He kissed him again. “And don’t you forget it.”
Hutch laughed and whistled for Titus. They walked home in the falling darkness.