"Starsk, we've never needed words, never needed to say the things that we just knew. But buddy, I've got to tell you..." Hutch's voice cracked with the intensity of his emotion. "When I saw you go down..." Starsky gripped his partner's arm again when the quiet sob escaped from him. They had never really talked about "that day" from Hutch's perspective.

"Hutch, you don't have to do this. It's okay, I know what you're trying to say."

"Buddy, I've got to do more than just try and say this." Hutch took a moment to clear his throat. "When I saw you go down, I thought you were dead. All the other times, and there were too many of those... all those other times when you were hurt I still had hope. There was always something I could do to fix it We always had a chance. But this time I figured our luck had finally run out. And I knew that you stood and faced it so I wouldn't have to... because you loved me that much. And as I stood there watching you bleed to death before my eyes all I could think of was that I couldn't remember the last time I told you how much you meant to me..."

"I knew Hutch. I've always known."

"Yeah, but I couldn't stand the thought of you... of you leaving without having heard me say it, Starsk. You know, I've lived my entire life without ever hearing my father say the words `I love you' to me. Never."

"Mornin'," he said casually, making Hutch jerk toward him and eliciting another groan. "Starsky?" Hutch blinked blearily at him, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"You don't remember nothin' about last night?" Starsky inquired, reaching to the floor for his jeans and groaning a little himself at the movement. Dragging Hutch from bed to bathroom and back again had pulled a few muscles he'd forgotten he had.

Hutch looked bewildered and gazed around himself as though he expected to find the answer on the walls. Starsky's leather jacket was wadded up and tossed against one wall and his shirt lay beside it, rumpled and wrinkled from having been wet and left in a heap. Hutch's robe also lay in a heap on the floor. His forgotten cup of coffee still stood on the nightstand. The empty Jim Beam bottles on the floor, which Starsky had simply shoved out of the way with his foot, leaned against each other on the other side of the nightstand. Then, when Starsky stood up in order to put his jeans on, Hutch realized he himself was attired in nothing but skin. "L-last night?" he asked. He searched his memory. There was a vague impression of lying in bed with Starsky's arm around him, then on his stomach while Starsky stroked his back. His eyes drifted back to the heap of clothes. And his face went scarlet. "Starsk, did we...did you...oh, my God."