Work Text:
May 15th, 2008
by MASHFanficChick
It's strange, really. After almost thirty years, I don't think about him all the time. I can go hours, days, even weeks without the sharp spike of grief that accompanies his missing presence. But when I do think of him, it's only rarely because of something direct. Sure, sometimes it is: a car with a racing stripe down its side, or when yet another cheap Mexican place opens in the neighborhood. But it's usually just something that doesn't matter, or might've mattered, except....
I heard later it made the front page all over. The New York Times, The Washington Post, even The Wall Street Journal. But of course it made the cover of The LA Times, which is what I read every morning with my coffee. I'll be honest: I never even thought about the date until later. Hours later, maybe more. After I'd gotten up, gone for my usual sunrise walk, and come home to the paper sitting on the front porch, and the coffeemaker perking right on time. After I'd poured myself a mug—one of the ones someone had gotten me for retirement, the one that said "I See Guilty People"—and turned the paper right-side up. After the letters in the headline coalesced themselves into recognizable words.
"California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban."
To this day, I don't know how long I sat there, reading those seven words over and over again. Long enough that when I finally let go of the paper, there were sweat marks from my hands along both sides. Long enough that the sun, which had barely cleared the horizon when I got home, was now pouring through the kitchen window. Long enough that my coffee got cold. Which was a good thing, because the first thing I did, after I stopped reading those words, was to throw the mug against the kitchen wall. The second thing I did was clean it up; it wouldn't do any good to have the tiles stained from my temper. The third thing I did was let the tears fall.
Later, after I'd read the article and all of the other, lesser pieces on the topic, I sat down in the recliner I'd bought myself as a sixtieth birthday present and tried to think. It was a given, of
course, that I was happy with the verdict; I'd been involved for years, since my retirement from the force, with various organizations trying to improve civil rights for everyone. But what I hadn't been
prepared for was the anger. It didn't take very long for me to understand why. As long as gay marriage had remained illegal, there was nothing that would or could have been different for us. But now, now that things were different...I was furious. Furious that the laws had taken so long to change, but more than that, furious that we couldn't have waited it out. Granted, over twenty-five years would have been a long time to wait, but hell, there was a lesbian couple right there in the paper saying they'd been waiting thirty-four years for this day.
I try not to dwell on the past. In my experience, it rarely brings anything but negative feelings. And, as usual, it did the same then. But I couldn't stop, just for a moment, playing Starsky's favorite
game of "what-if". What if he'd been able to beat that last infection? What if the next-generation antibiotics had been available just a little bit sooner? What if...what if...but it all came down to the same old question, the one I'd spent the last quarter-century training myself not to think about: What if he'd just listened to me when I told him to get down?
It was then that the date hit me. May 16th, the paper reporting on events that had happened the day before. Twenty-nine years to the day after the shooting that—after nearly two years of surgeries, paralysis, and infections—had ultimately taken Starsky's life, and the life we'd made together. I wondered for a moment if I'd known that subconsciously, or if it really was first occurring to me now; since he'd passed away, I'd always mourned him on April 4th, the day he left this world. I felt the rage boil up in me again, this time at Gunther and his men. The fact that they'd later been tried and convicted of murder never made me feel any less bitter about the years they'd had on earth, years Starsky never got, and years I spent without him.
Well. That was one path I didn't need to go down. No matter how much it hurt that Starsky and I would never make it before a judge as life partners, rather than police ones, the news was good, and deserved a celebration. I walked towards the bedroom to get showered and properly dressed, smiling as I thought of what Starsky's response would be if he knew who I planned to ask to join me. It had been twenty years since he'd been my congressman, winning a seat on his third try; fifteen since he'd left the House, going back to being the quiet, understated teacher he'd always wanted to be when California ruled that an applicant's homosexuality wasn't legitimate grounds for
refusing to hire them. But who he was to me was more important: one of only three people who knew that the small house Starsky and I had shared the last year of his life had been chosen not only for its layout—one floor, with large open spaces that could handle a wheelchair—but so that we could have a place that was "ours", a concept that had suddenly grown very important.
Besides, while the day might have deserved rejoicing, if there was one thing thirty-odd years on the force had taught me, it was that every celebration was bound to be tinged by melancholy, and I could think of a man right then who might be feeling a little of the pain I was. Maybe a few drinks, in memory or exultation, would help it fade. I smiled again as I lifted the phone.
"Peter? It's Hutch."
End.