Chapter 7: The Bottom of the Sky
Below Hutch the mangled trees thrust up at angles like sticks in a badly made fence. The trenches were narrow gutters, and helmets like flat plates tilted, faces round as cups peeking out. Then No-Man's-Land stretched under him, a desert of barbed wire and mud and more sticks. He dodged above what had once been an orchard, where nobody had tried to dig out the burnt remains of trees to make trenches, and though he knew he must have been seen, there were certainly no big guns wasted here.
The reason this area near the Louen valley was relatively unguarded was that there was little left in it that either side wanted. It wasn't even really on the way to anywhere—he'd have to turn north again in another five miles or so to find the railroad line.
Here was the river itself, running brown and white over rocks and logs, and edged with more mud and rocks ... the impression was probably all in Hutch's mind, but the water didn't look clean. Hills rose on either side, and they did cover him but they also shut out the low sunlight and made him feel he was running late. "Oh, my ears and whiskers," he said aloud, looking up again. He kept checking, kept thinking he heard another motor, kept gauging the depth of danger above him. He had always—as long as he'd flown at all and certainly every minute he'd flown in combat—hated having to fly low, at the bottom of the sky.
Starsky had never minded as much.
Hutch looked up again and began to whistle, forcing his mind away from the thought of Starsky.
The river passage seemed long, even dull, but was safe. Now as he hopped the plane up over the ridge of the northern hill, he took a deep breath—and let it out as he saw nothing but the dark-green/light-green/gold/brown patchwork of farmland below. Now he flew low enough to see the rows of plants, swooping up to cross the tree-lines at the edges of each field, then down again. Almost too easy.
He found a road, roughly north-south, so he followed it, buzzing along at about the height of the poplars, sometimes between them. Nobody was driving here. He did surprise a boy on a bicycle, which fell over and spilled groceries from its basket into the dust. Hutch felt sorry about it but of course could only fly on. A dog jumped and barked as if it thought it could catch him. That made him smile.
And then—he almost missed it—there was the train track, crossing the road and leading east and west. He turned east. He had to fly higher here, as the trees on either side of the tracks were too close together for the plane to fit, so he could see better over the fields and the shallow roll of the land. The sun was low now, the shadows long, the clouds grey and blue where they had been white and pink and golden.
This was the time the German patrols came back to base.
If he didn't outright run into them, this timing might be an actual advantage, as the fliers would be tired and the planes nearly out of fuel. Even if they were called out after him, they'd either have to delay to fill their petrol tanks or come out for only a short flight.
Anyway he hoped so. He would really rather be able to go back and hear Starsky scold him for his trick with the cachet.
A train passed under him, headed west, and he hopped up to avoid the wind it swept with it. Then he came down again, over the long narrow roof of a station.
After a little more time, the buildings he passed were closer together, more vehicles were on the roads he could see when he flew a little higher, and there was a haze in the air from the mass of chimneys ahead—it was the city. And this track was leading him straight into the district he needed, past little storage sheds and scaffolding and—ah! Now that was gunfire! Hutch tipped the plane and wove left and right, looking over the side to locate the gunners, and saw a row of them with machine guns no larger than the ones he had himself. Not much to worry about, but they did show him he was getting closer to something of military value. Yes, ahead were scaffolds and large flat roofs, train-cars lined up and loaded, men and barrows, lorries and automobiles passing busily back and forth. A much bigger gun spoke, and a shell burst not six feet from his right-hand wing. He kept straight, and managed not to fly into the path of the next shell, on his left. He rolled and twisted in the plane. He was so close.
A train was passing under a bridge, full of provisions or ammo, so he dropped one of his own bombs and got a direct hit. Swerved to the side before the guns could find him, found a cluster of warehouses and scaffolds that looked pretty bombable, so he dropped two, one after the other, and swooped up as tall plumes of brown and black smoke leapt at him, carrying beams and large chunks of something, maybe corrugated iron.
"Whoa!" he shouted. Another shell burst close by. He dipped lower and buzzed the top of another warehouse, saw men running across the roof and dropped another bomb. This time the smoke caught him and he closed his mouth tight, dust and ash and little chunks striking the plane and his body like hail. He coughed.
There was a siren wailing and a lot of engines below, so he almost missed the buzz of planes behind him. He wheeled and drove right at them, supposing they'd be protecting the ammo dump, and dropped a bomb that blasted like a volcano, lifting and tossing his plane and the others as well. Yes, that was the dump. He fought his tiller and throttle, dipped and rolled, and the other fliers must have been disoriented, because he was nearly at the edge of the warehouse area and they hadn't found him again. He dropped his last bomb on a cluster of railroad engines, and put his throttle on full, roaring west as straight as a bullet.
"Let's see," he told himself, "let's just see, here, just—"
He flew past fields and roads, a whole little village and a vineyard, over a set of hills and into a broad valley, keeping as low as he could stand to be and trying not to actually cross his fingers. "Let's see if—let's just see—"
Then a German air patrol found him.
Though Blaine hadn't really expected to see Hutchinson before Starsky left, and wasn't terribly surprised not to see him just after the plane took off, it began to be ... odd ... that the squadron CO didn't come back from wherever he'd gone to ground. The dusk dimmed into night; still Blaine was alone in the office. Phipps came in and began to do paperwork, and he didn't know where the major was either. Blaine dozed in the chair by the fire, waiting.
And then a noise woke him, a shout, and another—a pounding on the stairs—stunned silence in the mess—the office door slammed open so hard that it bounced back and was slammed again. Blaine got himself out of the chair and turned to confront ... Starsky.
"No," said the younger man. "No." He looked around as if Hutch were to be found in the dark corners of the room. Then he darted suddenly to the other door and into the CO's bedroom, and then backed two steps out of it. "No." Blaine moved and so did Starsky, and the older man caught the younger one by the shoulders and looked into his wild eyes.
"Where's Hutchinson?" Blaine asked stupidly, because he had heard the plane take off and there was only one place Hutch could have gone if Starsky was here.
"No," Starsky repeated.
"Pull yourself together," Blaine said, wondering if the other man could. He'd never seen shell-shock induced quite this way, but then he wasn't a doctor.
Nothing seemed to change in the oval face, but after a few moments Starsky said, "You came in a car. I need it."
"Nonsense," Blaine said. He gave the thin shoulders in his hands a little shake.
Starsky didn't visibly react.
Blaine tried a new tack. "I don't understand what happened. I thought you had accepted the mission."
"I had," Starsky answered fairly naturally. "Hutch—Hutch—I don't know what he did. Put me to sleep. Took my place. Must have done." He stopped speaking, face still blank.
After a little while, Blaine shook him again. "Starsky."
Starsky's eyes met his again, and he said, "You're right about the car, I wouldn't be able to get through. And not a plane either ...."
"You're not going anywhere. You're the senior officer now," said Blaine.
"Oh, no," said Starsky, "you're not doing that to me."
"There's no one else."
"Squires. Phipps. I don't care," said Starsky, brows drawing together and eyes really focussing, "if you fucking appoint Botts, but it's not going to be me. I'm not going to be here. Unless I bring Hutch back."
"That's desertion," Blaine told him.
Starsky picked Blaine's hands off his shoulders but didn't back away; he tilted his head back and his lips parted, but it wasn't a smile. "That's your decision. You can send me on a daring one-man rescue mission or list me as missing or AWOL or call the military police to go after me—whatever you like. But I'm going."
Blaine shook his head.
Starsky's expression became less feral, and he put one hand against Blaine's chest. "Don't you see? It's Hutch. It's Hutch."
"You still think this is some kind of ... game." Blaine stepped back, and again, and found himself against the desk.
"Oh, no." Starsky folded his arms, pulling into himself. "Not a game. I've learned a lot since you left, Blaine. How to get along without," and he took a breath but visibly decided not to explain, "an awful lot."
"Even honour?"
"I'd trade my honour for Hutch's life," Starsky said. "How could I not?"
"But, you fool, it's not like that. Not a game. Not a trade. He's living or dying out there now and what you do won't affect that."
"I'm going to find him!" Starsky shouted. "I'm going to find him, Blaine, I'll find him alive or, or—I'll find him. I know where he went. How he'll come back. Where he'll cross. I'll—" he paused—"I know. I need Flaherty. He'll go with me. He's with the 19th Ambulance, call them, will you? Phipps—" he turned, and Blaine didn't understand how he'd known the man was in the room when Blaine himself hadn't seen him come in—"Phipps, will you call? And if I could have the car to go that far, it'd save time."
Starsky hadn't taken in a word Blaine had said. Seemed to have forgotten altogether that he was a soldier, that Blaine was his superior officer, that this was an ongoing war. Phipps should call the military police, and the two of them could hold Starsky down physically, if necessary, until the men came. Blaine stared at the indomitable figure in the centre of the room, shadow to Hutchinson's light. He opened his mouth—and heard his own voice say, "Call the ambulance, Phipps."
He only hoped none of his own superiors would ever ask him to explain.
Hutch woke up, groggy, raised his head and banged it into metal. Let it fall again, against another hard surface, and thought about where he could be and why everything seemed to hurt. And it was so dark. He raised one hand, unsteadily, gasping as a fiery sensation stabbed his upper arm, felt up the leather of his coat anyway, found the thin, torn metal of a wing over him and pulled back as it cut him. Made a fist to protect his hand and bumped along the edge, puffing at the jolt of pain in every movement, found the part above his face and got his hand around it, found that it was loose. Come to think of it, the metal had jounced when he put his head into it. He tried to push it away, but the effort hurt too much.
He moved his other hand up his stomach and chest to his face, tugged at the goggles until they went onto his forehead, and discovered that it wasn't as dark as he'd thought. Night time, must be, but he was outdoors and a gentle grey came in around the wing. He pushed up with both hands and dislodged it, slid it to one side until it caught on something else, and he could see the sky.
He rested for a little while, looking at the stars. The sky was such a tender evening colour. Like Starsky's eyes. He thought he could feel something wet, not sure where, and wasn't eager to find out if he was badly injured. Maybe he'd rest just a little first. His eyelids were drooping.
Some time later he jerked, gasped, and woke again. For a moment it didn't matter where he was: he remembered so vividly the swooping, rolling, rattling movement of the air battle, the smell of smoke and petrol and his own sweat, the late sun in his eyes and the shadows of the other planes crossing him. Machine guns. Tapping and then punching holes into his arm and leg, and then trailing down out of the body of the plane. They hadn't hit the engine, and he'd gasped for grateful breath and tried to fly with one hand, moaning with pain—nobody could hear him, after all—and trying to see through the water in his eyes and the dirt on his goggles. Hearing the screech of the plane dropping too fast and unable to do much about it. "Starsky, Starsky," he'd said senselessly, and now didn't remember anything after that.
He wondered if he could move. He lifted his head carefully and looked down his body, still half-concealed by the broken wing, but it didn't look like much other debris was around him. The dark lump to one side and the other one in the branches of a dead tree were enough for most of the plane. If he was careful he could probably sit up.
He managed that, and squinted a little in the dimness, trying to see what his injuries really were. His thigh was bleeding pretty freely, but when he eased his hand over the wounds he couldn't feel pumping, just oozing. And there seemed really to be only one wound in his upper arm—though it burned fiercely, the bullet obviously hadn't broken the bone or hit an artery—he thought he'd be dead if that were true.
He pulled off his helmet with his good hand, and unbuttoned the top part of his coat, so he could reach in and get his handkerchief. He remembered getting Starsky's for him and grinned a little. Actually, though, wiping his face would be a bad idea. The dirt wouldn't hurt him up there, and he would probably need the cleaner cloth later. He let his hand slip out of the coat again.
He felt as though his mind was moving very slowly. Wished he could think better, because when he made it back to Starsky, he knew he'd have an argument on his hands, and he wanted to be better prepared.
Eventually he mocked up a rough bandage around the outside of his trouser leg, untangled himself from the debris of the plane, and managed to locate a length of slim pipe or curtain-rod or something to be a kind of walking stick. The moon was up and he got a good look at his surroundings.
It was not going to be an easy walk. He was in the middle of one of those villages that had been in the path of the ground war, reduced to rubble, skeletons of buildings and lines of walls looking only half-built, no higher than a man's waist and ragged at the top. In all directions were bricks and bits of furniture and trash of every kind. Things were rotting and weeds were trying to grow. There must have been streets here once, but Hutch was not sure he could find them or that finding them would do any good.
Well, no use looking any more. If he didn't get moving, he'd never get back to Starsky. Just one little step at a time, just keep moving west, and he'd run into somebody sooner or later.
He hoped they wouldn't be German soldiers.
By dawn he had found a real road. It even went west.
"Going west," he said to himself, "gone west," and couldn't decide whether that was quite a good joke or rather profound.
He tried singing to distract himself from the way each step jabbed at him like a knife, sometimes icy and sometimes scorching. "Mademoiselle from Armentierres, pa-arlez vous! Mademoiselle from Armentierres, pa-arlez vous! Mademoiselle from Armentierres, hasn't been fucked in forty years—hinky-dinky parlez vous!" A lot of verses, it was supposed to have a lot, but he could only remember this one, so he sang it over and over for a while. The song had a nice rhythm for walking. He tried "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," but he didn't know all the words to that either. He was beginning to feel cross.
He was so hot, and the coat was heavy, and though he talked to Starsky the exasperating man wouldn't answer.
"Poor Butterfly," he sang, "'neath the blossoms waiting—"How's that? I know all the words!" But nobody replied.
Poor Butterfly, for she loves him so.
The moments pass into hours,
The hours pass into years,
And as she smiles through her tears,
She whispers low,"'The moon and I
Know that he'll be faithful,
I know he'll come
To me by and by—
And if he don't come back,
Then I never sigh or cry,
I just must die,
Poor Butterfly!'"
His leg wasn't working very well now. He tried to lean more on the pipe, but it was on the wrong side. "You are utterly wet," he told himself. "Stop grizzling, get on with it."
He rested a lot. Getting up was the hard part.
He had been lying under the poplars, looking at the way the leaves brushed back and forth against the sky and wondering why that rather flat blue seemed so much closer while he was lying in the grass than it did when he was flying in it. He must have fallen asleep again, though he didn't remember closing his eyes, because he woke up hearing shouts and the sound of a motor, and tried to sit up, thinking about machine guns and planes. But that made him roll a little onto his wounded arm and he fell back, making some sort of weak noise, and then hands were grasping him and his muscles were too lax even to struggle.
"Hutch," he heard, "Hutch! Hutch, come on, Hutch," and he couldn't figure out why, after ignoring him all day long, Starsky suddenly wouldn't shut up. He dragged his eyelids up and looked. Starsky's face hung over him, mouth unsteady and eyes seeming to bulge, and Hutch tried to figure out how to ask about it, but then the strange-looking eyes blinked and bright sparks dropped and were wet on Hutch's face. And then Starsky's head was a weight somewhere near Hutch's throat, and there were some odd choking noises and their bodies moved in little jerks.
Hutch raised his good hand and pushed his fingers into the thick curls. "Ah, no," he said, or meant to; his own voice wasn't steady. "No, don't cry. You found me, I'm here, don't." He found the bare skin of Starsky's neck and rubbed. Starsky held on tighter.
After a while, he took a deep, long breath. "You ever, ever, ever do that again and I'll fucking kill you myself," he told Hutch, the words muffled against the leather of the flight coat.
Hutch smiled. "You promise?"
"Where are we?" he asked as they were trying to get him into the sidecar.
"Somewhere in France," Starsky answered, preoccupied.
"I know that," Hutch said irritably, pushing at his lover's hands.
"You need ether, I do believe," said a voice he remembered, but not well. He turned his head and frowned, thinking.
"Flaherty," said the other. "Don't bother, you already said hello when I bandaged you. You don't remember."
"Why not?"
"Well," and a surprisingly gentle touch came on the back of his head, "It might have to do with this lump here. Now be a good boy, will you now, and let us get you in this car, so we can take you back to something resemblin' civilisation?"
"Home?"
And Starsky, already in the car and pulling Hutch down on top of him, began to laugh. "Oh, I wish," he said. "Come on, turn more, you great lummox."
"It would've been better if we tucked him up in here an' you rode behind me," Flaherty said.
"No," said Starsky, and Hutch settled against him, liking the firm voice and the supporting arms. And the hand stroking into his hair. Flaherty tugged on his legs, bent them, and Hutch yipped; Starsky held more tightly still. "It's going to hurt, boy, I can't fix it," he said.
"All right," Hutch said, gritting his teeth. The hand on his face and the neck his forehead fitted into were nicely chill, but it occurred to him that chilliness and skin were not compatible concepts. "You're cold," he said as the motor was starting.
"You're burning up," Starsky said a few moments later, and Hutch wasn't sure he was answering.
He was never very clear about the ensuing events. They seemed to have stopped at the farmhouse, or anyway he rather thought he heard Watkins' rooster crowing, and Starsky said impatiently, "I can't get out, now can I? He'll have to come to me," and the whole vehicle shook though it felt as though it was not driving any more. Hutch tried to lift his head, but Starsky pushed it back down. He was talking again. Hutch couldn't make sense of it. Another hand touched his hair, and he knew it wasn't Starsky's; he pulled his brows together and tried to lift his eyelids, but they were so heavy.
"Major Starsky?" he thought he heard Flaherty say, a while later.
"Apparently," Starsky answered.
They were on the road again—Hutch couldn't tell how long—the rocking motion and buzzing sound had become as normal as the rise and fall of Starsky's chest and the sound of his swallow or his voice. Then they stopped, and with a great effort Hutch opened an eye, but there was nothing but poplars and sky to see.
"Just a minute, Flaherty, for God's sake."
"Well, I need to take a piss anyway."
"Fine, go on."
The motorcycle woggled. Starsky's hand patted Hutch's cheek. "Hutch, are you awake? Could you just wake up for me, a minute?"
"'M'wake," said Hutch.
"More than that," Starsky said tenderly, and drew in his chin, wiggling his shoulders and pulling up on Hutch's head until they could see each other. Hutch leaned into Starsky's hand, took a deep, sudden breath as his leg bumped the side of the car while they moved. Those eyes, that were deeper and so much safer than the sky, held his. "I'm seriously considering shooting myself in the foot," Starsky told him.
"One's, one 'f us," said Hutch, feeling rather fuzzy but determined to get this out, "is enough to have a g'mpy leg."
"Yes, you're right. And I have to go back, I suppose. I mean, who's left, Mitchell?"
"Be careful."
"I will. Oh, Hutch, I'll be there alone now," and Starsky shut his eyes.
Hutch carefully stretched his neck, reached with his lips, kissed one eyelid and then the other, and Starsky smiled even before he opened them again.
"Why we stopped," Starsky whispered and kissed Hutch, drinking the sleep and pain from his mouth, sucking it away, making the sick fever that drained his strength into a flare of sexual heat that made him feel briefly energised. So long since they'd been like this together. He tried to rub his turgid cock against his lover and gasped with pain. "No, no," Starsky murmured, kissing gently over Hutch's face, "later for that, later, save it for me, won't you?" Their foreheads pressed together. "Don't go falling for some nurse," Starsky said, and the emotion in his voice was probably laughter.
"No," Hutch promised. "And you, don't you go pub-crawling with Flaherty."
"Who's taking m'name in vain, then? If you're talkin' about me then your lovemakin' must be over." Hutch put his head down again when he heard the driver's voice, and soon the motorcycle was gunning up. "Only a kilometre or so now to the hospital," Flaherty said. And they drove off.
Chapter 8: Letters from the Front
At the hospital, Hutch was bathed and re-bandaged and packed in cold compresses, covered up and checked so frequently he felt he'd never sleep solidly again. But after a day or two, he began to really sit up and take notice enough that he was allowed pen and paper. As soon as he was, he wrote to Starsky.
"How do you like it? I hope it's not too hot. The bottle is in the lower left-hand drawer, even handier for you, leftie. Get Phipps to get you clean glasses. It isn't bad here, or wouldn't be if it weren't a hospital. It was a nice house before. I felt like that about the farmhouse too." He paused, looking at the way the sunlight came in the far window and fell across two other ward beds, presently empty. This letter was almost certain to be read by at least one other person than Starsky, somewhere on the way to him. "A pleasant little building, and I liked the fieldstone," he wrote, wanting to say that remembering their last kiss, all their lovemaking, sustained him. Instead he went on, "I think a good deal about the things we did to pass the time when we weren't flying. Do you remember running across the fields that day?" He stopped again to think of it himself. Another time Starsky had given him renewal. "Don't let the bedbugs bite," and he wondered if he'd have the nerve to write a more tender avowal even if he could be certain only Starsky would read it. "Give my love to the bees and the chickens."
The days were long without the structure of A-flight and B-flight and the paperwork and the phone calls and the next day's orders. Before he even got a letter back from Starsky, Hutch was telling him about it: "I never thought," he wrote, "that there was anything in those days but fear and boredom—and my friendship with you, of course. But now I don't have the fear pressing on me, and the boredom is," he paused. Looked up into the shadows of the ceiling. Put the letter aside for a while. "Overpowering," he finished eventually.
He played checkers with the man who cleaned the wards at night, who was a local called Pierre Boule, and with the day nurses, when they weren't run off their feet. Those games were slow, though, because the nurse could only drop by his bedside and move a checker at a time. He read old newspapers and magazines and single-sheet flyers about venereal disease. "They're wonderful motivators," he wrote to Starsky, teasing him. "I don't know what I might not do without them. I'm having to beat the nurses off with sticks." In fact the women who worked the wards moved in a kind of weary routine that he recognised from the big-push times at the farmhouse. Their faces brightened professionally when they saw him, but he couldn't flatter himself that they thought of him as anything but a patient who wasn't as much trouble as some.
His wounds continued painful. His arm felt as though it had a cord drawn through it, and pulled whenever he moved it; the entry-point was bruised, he noticed when they changed the dressing. But the hole itself was closed, and wasn't swollen, or hardly so. The wounds in his leg, though ... they'd had to remove two bullets, and so the openings were larger; around the stitches, his leg was puffy, discoloured, and it ached persistently and deeply, as if the very bone were bruised.
He didn't write to Starsky about any of this. He wrote about the dog that lived on the grounds and barked outside his window; about the food, which was quite good; about the men who came and went in the other beds of the ward.
One he mentioned but didn't give many details about was an artilleryman named Henderson, who'd been blinded and buried in a trench. He couldn't seem to understand that his eyes were really damaged, and all day he spent picking at his bandages and pleading with everyone who neared his bed to put on a light, to take off his helmet, to get rid of this terrible blindfold .... Matron came to see him, and then authorised Sister Cartwright to give him something strong enough to make him sleep. Later stretcher-bearers came in and moved him out.
"Where is he going?" Hutch asked Cartwright, who was standing near his bed.
"A private room," she answered. "He's disturbing the whole of the ward, and keeping him under isn't good for him."
That night, Hutch dreamed of being stuck in the dark, voices passing him but refusing to tell him why he couldn't see.
When he got the first letter, he kept it for an hour or two unopened, looking at the slashing black strokes of Starsky's penmanship, knowing that reading it would take little time and rereading it would never be the same. He worried at the envelope flap, trying to convince himself that it was important to get it up in one piece.
"My dear friend," the letter began, and Hutch smiled involuntarily, staring at the line. He read it again, "My dear friend," and touched the margin nearest the words. "I've got your first letter, in which you say so little about your condition. You need to do better, Hutch. I had no trouble finding the bottle, thank you, and Phipps has been invaluable. He asks after you. Everyone does. I can only tell them you remember the farmhouse, for pity's sake. You see?
"It felt so strange giving orders for the first time, especially as they all knew I'd been out looking for you, but I was able to tell them you were alive and that the 59th had been given a commendation for our part in stopping the enemy advance. I bet they haven't told you that, so I'm writing it to you.
"Something happened to me. I don't know whether it was while Flaherty and I were driving around the front, questioning men in lookouts and anti-aircraft hides, and just about anybody we came across, after a while. There are places—I knew, but I hadn't seen them—where the trenches are dug right into the bodies of the troops who were there when the last trench collapsed. There are so many places where people used to live, but I'm not sure they ever can again. Or maybe it was afterward, when I was looking at all those young faces—so young—and telling them about the commendation. But I'm really proud, Hutch. You did an amazing thing, and a lot of boys like those won't be dead in the walls of trenches because you did it.
"We're still training whenever we have a free hour .... Now those dots represent a pause to talk to young Jones, who I agree with you has a good deal of potential. He wants to do some of the training, and while I would have laughed at the idea a week ago, I think now he does have something to teach. And I have a soft spot for him because he's one of the men who asks after you. Hum, wonder if he does it on purpose?
"He also reminds me of Nicky."
Hutch put the letter down and let his head fall back on the pillow. Seeing Nick's name on paper brought back how it had felt to write the condolence letter after his death, and made him think that he really should write to Mrs Starsky again. And to his own family.
Even though he wasn't at the front now, England still seemed very far away.
In the next letter, Starsky mentioned Nick again: "I can't help but think I ought to have looked for Nick as I did for you. I wonder sometimes about whether he was still alive when the plane crashed. I saw him go down, but I didn't see the crash—some Hun was firing at me by that time—the front of his plane was smoking, but that doesn't always mean anything. Of course if he'd survived I would have heard by this time."
This letter was a lot of short paragraphs about a variety of disconnected things, and seemed to have been written over the course of days.
"Phipps and I read bits of our letters to each other. Quite a domestic scene. His wife tells him that their dog has had puppies but hasn't enough milk for all of them. They're not sure what to do because the milk rationing is too strict to hand any of it over to the dogs. Phipps said sadly that the war seemed to be turning the whole world upside-down, as he had always considered puppies to have their own automatic milk rations. He also began to think he'd like a dog round here. I certainly hope he doesn't find one. Can you imagine having a dog yipping round the mess? Or on the field when a flight's taking off?
"And then there's the question of what we'd do with it when we went home.
"Watkins keeps trying to recruit helpers with the bees. He's got this trick in which he gets them to crawl all over his chin and neck, clear down onto his shoulders, a whole swarm of them, like a long beard. He's been showing it off, and he can't figure out why the boys aren't eager to have such a close relationship with 'the most industrious of God's creatures'!
"I reread your letters; do you mine? I walked around the fields just today while A-flight was gone. I can't stay shut up in the office all the time.
"We lost seven men this week—a whole flight's worth, though not all at once. I'm trying to think whom among them you knew: Keighley, Hunter, Poole, Fitzgerald, Carter, Scott, Christopherson. The last three are Canadians. In fact, Carter handed me the orders for his crew the same day I took command, so I know you never met them. The very first thing they heard from me was about the commendation. I do hope they didn't feel they had to live up to it.
"I'm becoming a regular old woman on these boys' behalf, don't want them to do anything rash."
That did amuse Hutch: Starsky as old woman. For some reason he imagined a Breton sort of high hat and white mobcap, voluminous skirts and little black shawl—at last he realised he was thinking of a child's book with Mother Goose on the cover. Starsky as Mother Goose. He laughed aloud.
He wrote back to tease Starsky about that, and to say, "Of course I reread your letters, over and over. I miss—" and then had to remember the censors again. He wanted to say, miss you, miss your hair and skin under my hands, miss your mouth and the way we hold each other, miss the sounds you make when we're together ... he closed his eyes and let himself visualise, feel it again. Without looking, he put the letter things back on the bedside table, heard the pen roll and fall, but he didn't care. He reached under the bedclothes to find the swelling evidence of his memories, held it and wished Starsky was holding it, or that it was Starsky's flesh in his hand. How Starsky's mouth tasted, his sweat when they were making love, beading on his forehead and on his throat and in the crook of his arm and ... Hutch clenched his teeth. If he thought about Starsky's cock in his mouth he'd be undone. He didn't know what he wanted: the desire was so fierce, but he knew he'd not want to face the nurse when she changed him. He twitched and bumped his leg and pain shot through him, so acute that it distracted him completely.
Later the nurse applied carbolic acid, and the smell of the wound as it bubbled and hissed was worse than the pain, though that made him writhe. "Sorry, Sister," he forced through his clenched jaw, and she smiled but her expression told him that she was apprehensive.
Later, when he could sit up, he started a new sheet of paper and wrote rapidly and messily, "God, Starsk, it hurts, it hurts so much, I don't know how I can stand it. And it's so ugly. I don't see how it could ever heal. It will be so ugly, how can I stand you to see it? What if it just stays open? I know some wounds do, they just never seem to get better—or maybe there'll be gangrene, what then? I could die here in this bloody hospital, and you so far away, I love you Starsky, I love you," babbling to the bottom of the page, and then he didn't even wait for the ink to dry before he tore it in pieces and crumpled them into another sheet.
He was writing more awkwardly, because he couldn't balance the board they'd given him on both legs any more.
He wrote his real letters very carefully, sending news about his arm and asking to be remembered to Phipps and Watkins and Jones.
He'd just put a letter aside and was setting up a game of patience on his writing board when Flaherty came into the ward. Hutch wasn't the only man there he knew, and he stopped at two other beds briefly, but the bouquet of chrysanthemums in his hands was for Hutch, as the giggling young nurse who brought them a vase confirmed.
"You really shouldn't have," said Hutch, a little grim at the laughter up and down the ward.
Flaherty grinned. "Now would you deprive them of this innocent amusement?" He bent over Hutch and fussed with his pillows in a totally unnecessary manner. "A tisket, a tasket," he murmured, "I brought a letter—it's under the edge here."
"Romantic," Hutch said as the motorcycle driver sat down.
"It is a bit," Flaherty admitted. "I've a soft spot for it."
They chatted a little, and then Flaherty said, "You'll be wanting to read that letter, maybe answer it too—I've some official business hereabouts, so if you want me to courier for you—I'll stop back, shall I?"
"Do," Hutch said, and shook hands with him.
He managed to wait until Flaherty had left the ward, to turn fairly naturally to the side and find the folded paper, to pull some other pages onto his board so he could cover the letter if he needed to.
"Hutch, my Hutch, my beautiful lover," it began. "I lie in this bed you used to sleep in, and I can't believe I refused you when you wanted to share it with me. I dream about you. I daydream of you. I walk around in a daze, sometimes, thinking of your smile and the way the light sits in your hair. I remember you in flannels and in that silly swimsuit you wore when we bathed in the sea at Portsmouth. I can see you with a book under a tree, a picnic I would wager you don't even remember, and I stared and thought I would never forget how you looked then. I miss the touch of your hands, so much. I can't write it."
Then, after a gap, the colour of the ink seemed a little different. "I wrote that for myself, really, but now our friend is here and he says he'll see you get it. I want you to know this. Don't ever doubt it. I love you.
"I think it's better not to sign this, so you'll have to guess who I am."
The last line made him laugh though his eyes were wet. And now for the first time he understood the way Phipps always kissed his letters from home after reading them. It had seemed silly. Now it didn't. He touched his lips to the paper and tucked it into the front of his pyjama top.
"I love you," he wrote shakily, at the bottom of the nearly-finished letter, "David, don't forget, whatever happens. Sometimes I'm frightened here. But not as badly as I was before, when I thought I might lose you. I do remember the picnic. I have nothing to do but lie here and remember everything about you and everything we've ever done together. Thank you for sending that note. I'll treasure it. I'll love you forever." He was nearly weeping just writing it.
When Flaherty came back, he asked, "Why are you playing messenger?"
"Ah," Flaherty said, "we Irish know how rare a thing it is to have a happy ending. I'm glad to look on at it, to be sure."
"It's not ended," said Hutch, keeping his opinion about happiness to himself.
The doctor had mentioned gangrene. Hutch was afraid, from the look in Flaherty's eye, that he had somehow found out.
He was sure when he got his normal mail a few days later. The letter from Starsky was very short, this time. "Dear Hutch: You need to tell me all about your leg now. Don't keep me in the dark and don't lie to me. Read this, and then close your eyes and think about the times we've been closest, the times you've been held most tightly, the times you have felt the very safest. Then open your eyes and write. I must know." And then nothing but the signature, bare at the bottom of the page.
He waited until after the doctor's next rounds to follow the instructions.
Normally, the man talked mostly to the nurses, but Hutch put one hand on his wrist and held him until the calm, scholarly-looking face turned toward him. "I know," Hutch said carefully, "that you treat many soldiers who can't make any decisions for themselves—" he thought of Henderson—"but I'm in my senses and I want to know about my leg."
"You were watching while I examined it," Doctor Franklin said.
"I know it doesn't look good, and it hurts a great deal."
"There's not much circulation lower down. The flesh is low in temperature, swollen and discoloured. We shall start injections of hydrogen peroxide tonight. The choice at this point is to send you home now, or to continue treatment here, even to amputation."
There it was, the word he'd feared next to death, and it was a strange comfort to hear it, to believe that he wasn't just panicking unduly.
And as for the choice, that was easy. If he went to England, he wouldn't have an unguarded word from Starsky so long as he was in the army.
"If I'm going to have a leg taken off, I want it done here."
"It's not entirely your decision to make," the doctor said mildly, looking through the tops of his glasses.
"Of course. But I want it understood that this is my preference. It would be too bad," and Hutch tried a smile which he thought wasn't entirely unrecognisable, "if you sent me home because you thought I wanted it."
"Many patients prefer the thought of major surgery done at home rather than in a military hospital," Franklin commented, "or abroad at all for that matter."
"I trust you," said Hutch. "Not as if you don't have enough experience!"
"That's so," said the doctor, his mouth twitching. "Well, this is all before the fair. Let us see how the peroxide injections go, shall we?"
"Right," Hutch said almost breezily.
He talked to the nurses too, about the amputation procedure and the recovery process. Starsky would want to know. And Hutch did too. Like any other fear, when he faced it, it was lessened.
Still, he literally did close his eyes and remember the trip in the sidecar, the time in Amiens, the thousands of times he'd looked in Starsky's eyes and had known he was exactly understood. And then he wrote. He described his leg, the way it felt and the way it looked; he reported what Franklin and the sisters had told him; he wrote about his fears. "If it heals cleanly, which it well may, I'll be stronger afterward, not fighting the infection any more. I can't get a false one made here, they tell me, but eventually they would have to send me home to England even if they aren't too busy to amputate me here. I should be able to walk, and you always did tell me I couldn't dance. No more sea-bathing, I suppose.
"It will be quite unattractive, I'm afraid. But then, it's not a thing of beauty right now.
"I'm a bit nervous about going under, and my observations of people on morphia here are not too cheerful either. Terrible dreams they seem to have. Though I know it's foolish to worry about dreams.
"I'm sure it will go well. I'm sorry it took me so long to write to you about it. I just funked—there's no excuse."
Flaherty brought the answer, and a good thing too. As it was, Hutch didn't know where he'd keep it to be absolutely sure the nurses wouldn't find it.
"You know," Starsky wrote, "how I've loved both your long legs, especially when they're wrapped tight around me or hung over my shoulders. But I don't love one of them more than the other—or wait, I lie, now I come to think of it. The right one is my favourite. It's got that little mole behind the knee—such a good place to nibble—what a relief to know it'll still be there. The other one was a beautiful thing too, but I can learn to do without it if you can. I'm thinking some positions will be easier. You know those moments when we seem to have too many arms and legs for comfort. Perhaps I'll do some sketches. Perhaps I'll just sit here and think about it....it's a good thing Phipps isn't in the office with me at the moment.
"Hutch, just get well, just be alive, and I'll survive too. And we'll have that bed and that Vaseline. No fear.
"I have some ordinary news too, but I'll send that in a public letter."
Blaine had taken the telephone call from Starsky with a good deal of apprehension, unable to imagine what new rule-bending he was going to be asked to support. But in fact, Starsky was apparently not planning to desert his post in the near future.
"We've got a prisoner here you might want to talk to for yourself, before they come for him," the young major said.
While Hooper drove into the farmyard, Blaine looked around, again feeling that peculiar nostalgia. He had hated every moment of the time here, hadn't he? Why did he feel as if the youngsters climbing into their planes had a brightness, a liveliness, that nobody he'd ever seen elsewhere could match?
Starsky was sitting, hatless, on the barrel under the tree; one leg was drawn up and one arm propped on it. He was looking up through the branches, his head leaning against the bark. Blaine got out of the car.
"Hello, Major," he said.
"Oh, hullo, Blaine," Starsky said. "Beautiful day, don't you think?"
He cleared his throat. "Yes."
Starsky smiled broadly and jumped down off the barrel. "The trouble with you, Blaine," he said, dusting off his backside unselfconsciously, "is that you don't appreciate the little things. Now you look up for one moment."
Blaine did. The tree had lost a lot of foliage but what was left was a poignant, almost springlike yellow, streaked with green. Above, the sky was a plangent autumn blue, deep and clear.
He looked down to see Starsky still grinning at him. "Hutch says it seems closer when he's grounded. The sky. What d'you think?"
"I think the both of you are a little mad," Blaine said without really planning to.
Starsky laughed. "You always have," he said. He reached out and patted Blaine's shoulder, then guided him—not to the office door, but toward the barn.
"Is it your prisoner that's made you so happy?" Blaine asked.
"No," Starsky answered. "I've had a letter. Never mind that."
"Where are we going? You're not keeping the prisoner out here?"
"No, I want to show you the real reason I asked you to visit."
Blaine looked at him with deep misgiving. Starsky laughed again. "Oh stop!" he said. "Honestly, it won't bite. I won't bite." He held open the barn door and waved Blaine inside.
Blaine stood for a moment among the smells of old fodder and petrol and metal, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. There was a bulk in front of him—an aeroplane—a red one?—a German one.
"The order of events," said Starsky, still sounding amused, "was as follows: one of the A-flight men brought this bird down. The pilot, a youngster by the elaborate name of Von der Jost und Reidtstadt—we could probably call him the Pink Baron or something—managed to get himself down without too much damage. He ditched the plane in an unused trench. He also knocked himself out, and spent most of the day there, then got out, disoriented, and wandered around looking for someone to give him a lift back to base, not realising he was behind our lines. He did find someone, who brought him here, and he's tucked up nicely waiting for you and Phipps to speak to him. But take a look at this, Blaine. This plane can practically fly right now. And over here—" Starsky beckoned, moving closer to the plane, where some bulk of machinery hung like a square metal wart, "is the reason he was flying along surrounded by an escort. It's a camera."
Blaine could see that it was. "Well, Intelligence will want to see the film," he began, but Starsky was shaking his head.
"They can have that, but it's small beer. Don't you see what we could do with this bird?"
Blaine remembered this voice using the phrase 'daring one-man rescue mission' and said, "D'you mean what you could do with it?"
"Oh, actually no," Starsky said. "I've got a couple of volunteers. I want to try the thing out, of course," and he grinned again, "but it needs someone who can work the camera and I've only taken a few shots with a Brownie. We've got a man, matter of fact, who's a regular enthusiast, could tell us what the difference was to an English-made camera, everything. And he's got a best chum, quite a good fighter. What I need is the all-clear from Intelligence, the paint and supplies to fix this plane and camouflage another one, and then we can send up a reconnaissance flight to beat them all. Get some good shots of Von Richter's new 'drome, wouldn't you like that?"
Blaine looked at him for a moment. "Who are you?" he asked. "I've never met you."
Starsky folded his arms. "No, perhaps you never did," he said. "D'you remember telling Hutch he had to grow up?"
"Yes."
"Well, I think I have done. Anyway, I've a whole new appreciation for getting out of this war in one piece. And getting as many of these boys out in one piece as I can. This," he patted the camera, "this isn't just sending boys up in old crates to get taken apart, or over the top to get blown into tomorrow. This is a good risk. I'd take it myself, but I wouldn't be as good at it as Grant and Jones will. That's the honest truth."
Blaine looked at the man before him and thought it was. And wished he really had met this Starsky before.
Chapter 9: Scars
"I don't think you ever told me what happened to that information, whatever Grant and Jones found out," Hutch said, adjusting his hat so the brim shut out the late sun that had lain across his eyes and shone white in his lashes.
"Never knew," answered Starsky, rolling his head to one side to look up at Hutch.
Blaine watched them with an emotion he couldn't quite define. There were only two canvas chairs at the beach house, so he had one as the guest while Hutch had the other; Starsky sat on a rug next to Hutch's chair, leaning back against Hutch's leg—his false leg, stiff under the cotton sheath of his trousers. Blaine didn't understand how Starsky could be comfortable there. The brunet had another rug over his knees, presumably for modesty as the day was warm and he was wearing a bathing suit.
"Did you, Blaine, or did it just vanish into Intelligence's vast maw and never come out?" Starsky was looking at him now.
"What an image," said Hutch. "Please let's not dwell on it."
Starsky thumped the wooden shin, but not hard.
"No, I never found out either," Blaine said.
"I rather expected it to end in some sort of mission, you know, probably a suicide one—another single-bomber sort of thing like you tricked me out of," Starsky said to Hutch.
"He envies me because I get the good seats," Hutch said to Blaine.
"But I suppose what really happened was that it went into a file somewhere or was making its way through dozens of forms and offices, and before anything could get done, the Yanks arrived."
"Or Armistice," Hutch added.
"Probably," Blaine agreed. "I don't know."
Hutch picked up a glass of lemonade from the little crate beside him and sipped from it; then he handed the glass to Starsky, who also drank, now looking out to sea. He just glanced at Hutch as he gave the glass back.
Blaine asked, "Are either of you going to France this year? For Armistice Day?"
"No," Starsky said absently, still looking toward the horizon.
"Neither of us needs to go back to remember," Hutch said, his hand resting briefly on Starsky's hair, then on his shoulder.
Starsky sat up straight, and Hutch's hand fell away. "That's quite a cloud bank out there," he said, "looks like rain. If I want to bathe I should probably do it now. Do either of you mind?"
"No, no," Blaine said.
Starsky got to his feet, dropping the rug in a heap, and Hutch smiled up at him. "Go on, have your paddle."
Starsky bent and tapped Hutch on the nose with one finger. "You're only lucky we have a guest, or I'd haul your carcass down there and drop you in."
"And make my buckles and hinges rust," Hutch said.
Starsky tapped once more, then sketched a salute for Blaine and went off down the beach.
"You could bathe too, if you wanted," Hutch said.
"Oh," Blaine said, startled, "no. Thank you, but really I'd rather not."
They both sat and watched Starsky wade in, pause, wade farther, and then begin to swim.
"A lot of us do go, especially on anniversaries," Blaine said. "That's all, why I asked. It's been ten years."
"I know," Hutch said. "And we have been back, actually, to Amiens and to the hospital I was in. Not to the battlefields. Or the graveyards."
"No?"
The blue eyes that had once haunted his dreams turned toward him, and Hutch said evenly, "No. The dead we remember—well, you know, Blaine, if you drop a corpse from a hundred feet up in a burning plane, there's not much left to bury, as a rule, or any reliable ID. If Nick had a marked grave we might visit it, but as it is .... Do you go back?"
"I've been," Blaine said. "I took my son."
"That's a different sort of reason," Hutch said. "He's young for it—did he understand, you think?"
Blaine shrugged. "He seemed to. I—" he cleared his throat—"didn't tell him everything, of course."
"You can't tell everything." Hutch's voice was thoughtful. "I learned that in France, actually. In hospital, writing to Starsky. We wrote a lot. I did. I opened my heart. But I never could tell everything, you know, and that was to Starsk, who knows me better than anyone. And he never could tell me. Not everything. He still hasn't. He has dreams ... well, so do I, sometimes. So do you, I expect."
"Yes," said Blaine.
"Yes," Hutch echoed. He fingered the arm-rest of the chair, then put his hand on his leg and worried at the material of his trousers, as if he weren't aware of doing it. Then he seemed to notice, and stopped.
"How is your family?" he asked after a pause.
"They're well," said Blaine, smiling. "Maggie's blooming and Johnny, well, every father thinks his son remarkable."
Hutch made a grimace that might have been the sun in his eyes again, or some measure of agreement.
Blaine wanted to ask about his hosts, whether they ever planned to have families of their own. It seemed a little adolescent, self-indulgent, to live like boys on holiday or collegians or something, endlessly. Surely they weren't still .... Blaine stopped himself from speculating, the denied memory of that night scene of a decade past blinking at him, bright and distracting as a warning buoy.
"So you come here every year?" he asked, changing the subject.
"When we can. Last year Starsky's mother was ill and we stayed in London."
"Do you do everything together?" Blaine was appalled to hear his own voice say that.
Hutch was amused. "Not everything. He loves those dreadful comic films." He turned his gaze back to the water, where Starsky was standing up in the shallows and waving. Hutch waved back. "And I seldom swim."
Blaine suddenly wanted, badly, to be frank, to ask everything he knew was rude and intrusive and altogether wrong. "How, do you," he said, and his voice was so strained he hardly recognised it himself.
"It's amazing what can be hidden in plain sight. What can be written down to pity. People think Starsky positively heroic and self-sacrificing," and Hutch's voice was warm. "He laps it up, of course. Loves it."
"That doesn't bother you?"
"Sometimes. But, Blaine, should I just eat myself up with wanting something I think I oughtn't to have? Is that a good way to live?" And now Hutch's gaze was ruthless.
Blaine couldn't hold those eyes. His own fell.
"I rather like where we've ended up, myself," Hutch said.
Later, after Blaine had gone, they'd had their evening meal and taken a late walk because it didn't really rain, and were getting ready for bed. Starsky cleared his throat and spoke after a lengthy silence: "Sorry I cut out on you."
Hutch raised his eyes from the leg harness he was unbuckling. Then lowered them again. "And I thought you really wanted to bathe," he said.
Starsky, clad only in his short underpants, knelt on the sand-strewn floor and started to work on the buckles himself. "What I really wanted was to get that suit wet," he said, mouth twitching into that half-smile of his. "Love the way you look at me then."
Hutch loved to look. The suit was dark blue, and clung round Starsky's chest, his ribs and hips and heavy genitals; when it was wet, the man might as well have been naked. The back view was good too.
Hutch reached out and ran his fingertips along Starsky's jaw, which tilted up and their eyes met. That anyone could look away from Starsky was incredible to Hutch. He reached up with his thumb and ran it along the scar from cheekbone to jaw, pale even though they'd been so often in the sun lately; shifting his hand slightly, he drew the same thumb down Starsky's nose and dropped to trace his lips. Then Hutch opened his hand and covered as much of Starsky's face as he could, holding it. Starsky closed his eyes.
Then he opened them; Hutch dropped his hand; they worked on the harness and resumed the conversation. "So you gave Blaine a show too," Hutch said.
Starsky glanced up sceptically under his lashes. "You really think he is, don't you?"
"Certain of it," Hutch said. In the decade they'd lived together since the war, he'd come to feel that no man who loved men could hide from him—which was probably conceit, but he'd never admit it aloud. Anyway Hutch could tell the gaze of men who were attracted to him.
They finished removing the harness and Starsky got up, dusted off his knees and put the leg away. Hutch slid and hopped along the edge of the bed, then swung his real leg up. They kept a crutch on that side in case Hutch needed to get up at night. Starsky took off his underwear and came to bed. Hutch watched.
There was a scar on his chest, too, and along one upper arm, all the marks of a crash just as one of B-flight came in to land, and Starsky had been first there, trying to free the pilot from the wreckage. That was one of the things he dreamed of; he'd said as much.
"Tired?" Starsky asked, pausing on his hands and knee on the mattress, cock and balls hanging, his eyes bright.
"Come here," Hutch said, rolling on his hip, and Starsky did.
They'd discovered each other in sex and comforted each other, explored and celebrated, been angry and desperate and full of grief, lazy and good-natured and even a bit bored; how anyone could be more married, Hutch could not imagine.
For some reason, the love they made here at the beach house was often special. As they kissed and petted each other now, Hutch thought tonight would be a good one. He felt unusually aware of the textures of Starsky's hair and scalp under his moving fingertips, the tastes of his mouth and lips and cheek and neck, and when Hutch blinked and looked, the long curve bobbled as Starsky swallowed, lashes dark against his sun-tanned cheeks just brushed with red.
Hutch placed tiny, teasing kisses on the pulsing artery, sucking but keeping the contact short, and Starsky made a quiet sound and moved toward the headboard to get the softer skin of his lower throat into the way. Hutch obliged, and then lapped the spot just above his lover's collarbone, and Starsky hummed again. A slow, sweet night, it looked like.
Starsky moved his hands on Hutch's head, combing through his hair, carding and tangling it. Hutch was glad he hadn't had it cut, though he'd meant to. The fingers closed and tugged a little. Starsky raised his head, looked Hutch in the eyes, then came down, taking his mouth, the slow rhythms of jaw and tongue and lips pulling Hutch to and fro like waves. Starsky's hand, too, swept up to Hutch's shoulder and down the spine, up and down, pressing flat and dragging slowly while the other hand still held and kneaded his head. Hutch's leg slid between Starsky's, which twined around it, rubbing too. Hutch pulled the sturdy torso even closer, squirmed to feel their cocks rub together, grow together, moisten each other.
He arched his neck and pulled in a deeper breath, and another because Starsky was kissing his throat now, rolling him onto his back and lying on him, hands moving up and down both Hutch's sides, reaching lower, one hand skimming over his thigh and the other cupping the stump. Rubbing it gently. Hutch's cock was held between their stomachs and Starsky's hung next to Hutch's leg, brushing farther along the thigh as Starsky moved to suck on Hutch's nipples.
That felt good, but pleased Starsky more to do than Hutch to have it done, and after a little while Hutch rubbed his lover's cheek to get his attention, stretching his other arm to the bedside table and the tin of Vaseline. "You?" he asked.
"Yes," Starsky said, "yes," rising, pulling the lid off but not taking the tin. He knelt straddling Hutch, flipped the lid toward the table, and took his own buttocks in both hands to separate them. Hutch scooped out some of the greasy ointment, put the tin in the corner of Starsky's leg and his own side, and reached under to play around, moisten, stretch, fondle the opening while he took the eager cock that bobbed in front of his face firmly in the other hand. Starsky rocked back onto one hand and forward into the other, swivelled and twisted, threw his head back.
"Yes, dance for me," Hutch said.
"Angel," Starsky said, and he sat down on Hutch's hand, not entirely on purpose. He got up again, both of them grinning and Hutch scrambling underneath to position his cock, and Starsky sat again, slowly, groaning, holding the stump that Hutch pushed against him, gripping and releasing each inch of cock as he took it. Then pushed up and sat down again, and now the moan came from Hutch, who pressed into him as much as he could, then sagged as Starsky raised himself again.
It would be perfect, Hutch thought, if only he could suck Starsky at the same time, but such contortions were beyond him. Instead he fumbled for the Vaseline again and used both hands, spreading grease back and forth the length of Starsky's cock, twisting round a little and squeezing a little, swirling around the head and finding the sweetest spots. "So good," Starsky told him, moving faster.
Hutch let go with one hand, moved it to finger, then press, then rotate the balls in their fuzzy sac, feeling them contract and roil, and at the last moment rocked up, holding tighter, pushing down with his leg and up with his stump to hold Starsky in place, tilting the stiff cock upright and mouthing whatever skin he could reach, hair and scar and nipple as Starsky let his orgasm go.
Hutch fell back and Starsky fell with him, making a sound midway between laughter and speech, his muscles still contracting and forcing Hutch's mouth open in a silent cry. Starsky grabbed the headboard and thumped it against the wall, said "Yes, come on, come on," in Hutch's ear, and licked—that did it for Hutch, a drop like a change of air-pressure while flying, and another, and again.
Starsky closed Hutch's mouth with a kiss, holding on with all four limbs. Hutch slid his hands up from waist to hair and gripped, back to kissing as if they could start all over again, though he knew what would really happen now was a slow drift into lassitude and sleep.
And later they'd start again.
But Hutch dreamed.
He was back in the village where his plane had crashed, but his leg was already gone. He was on crutches, and he had been swinging himself awkwardly though ruins for hours, it seemed, without ever reaching the road.
He had to find ... he knew it was someone, and he knew he'd done this before without ever finding ... whoever it was.
His leg hurt. Gone, but it hurt anyway, and blood gushed out of him. He twisted his head around, rocking dangerously, to see the trail he was leaving.
He was in No-Man's-Land; he was climbing a hill; the hill was made of rubble and he saw corpses buried there. A hand was hanging out of a gap between two stones, livid, dead, with Nick's medal cupped in it. Hutch remembered he had promised to keep the medal safe, so he reached for it—fumbled and dropped it, and it slipped farther away the more he pursued it, rolled down the hill. As he looked down after it, nearly weeping in frustration, he could see the poppies and the crosses, emblems of the harvest of blood these fields had borne.
There wasn't a hill. He had no crutch. He crawled from one of the white crosses to another, searching for Nick's name. For Starsky's. He began to cry, deep wrenching sobs, and the movement woke him although his blinking eyes were dry.
It was very dark, the middle of the night. Starsky was muttering and moving his head, dreaming too. Hutch's leg, the one that was not there, ached—and at the same time he felt Starsky's body pressing tight where the leg would have been, filling the space. The double sensation was stranger than his dream.
He tightened his arms around Starsky, kissed the damp neck and inside the nearest ear. "Da-avid," he whispered, rocking a little. "David my only love."
"Ut-th," Starsky muttered, three parts asleep.
"Yes," Hutch breathed, tucked his face in behind Starsky's head, and slept again until the sun woke him, woke them both. And then they made love.
Love is the divinity who creates peace among men
and calm upon the sea, the windless silence of storms,
repose and sleep in sadness.
Love sings to all things which live and are,
soothing the troubled thoughts of gods and men.
—Plato, Symposium