Great Aunt Gladiola's Fruit Cake

By Kaye Austen Michaels

Secret Santa gift for CC; December 2007

In honor of the recipient of this gift snippet, the generous volunteer spirit of fandom, and the Me&Thee Secret Santa Program. Special thanks to my beta editor. Any mistakes are the author's post beta-edit. The characters of Starsky & Hutch are used with respect and wholly not for profit. Author email: kam2008 (a) bigstring dot com

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Hutch woke to the kiss of a sandpapery tongue and whiskers against his chin and along his cheek. He thought Starsky bristle, oh, yeah, and tried to rouse himself for whatever his partner had in mind, but a soft, mewling cry that Starsky had never made, even at the peak of passion, forced him all the way to alertness. He blinked until his eyes adjusted to the silvery semi-darkness of the moonlit bedroom and found himself staring into the tiny, twin golden topazes that were Crimson's eyes. The five-month-old calico kitten batted her little velvety paws against his nose.

"You can't be hungry," Hutch croaked at her. "Where's your brother? How'd he get out?" The kittens spent their nights shut inside their humans' bedroom to prevent unsupervised remodeling of the household furniture. He patted the empty space on the mattress that bore his partner's indentation and residual warmth. "Never mind that. Where's Starsk?"

Crimson only mewled at him in disdain for his pathetic inability to read her superior mind, but a sudden clink-shatter noise from the living room answered his first question. Unless Hutch was much mistaken, Clover had made another attempt at climbing the Christmas tree, with the usual disastrous results. Hutch wondered drowsily which of Starsky's ornaments had fallen victim this time.

Then a horrifying possibility occurred to him.

Dear God, please not the gold, hard-top '64 Pontiac GTO!

Starsky had given Clover the cold shoulder for a whole day after the loss of the flame-red '66 Chevy Deuce Coupe. To say Starsky adored his replica car ornaments was to call the noon desert sun bright. Their tree could double as a Golden Days of Automotive Design museum, with a few seasonal additions thrown in to appease the non-car-lover Hutch.

Silence urged him quicker out of bed. By now he should have heard Starsky's scolding growl simultaneous with the offended yowl of Clover being gently but forcibly detached from the tree. He pulled his robe free of Crimson's baby claws, engaging in a brief tug of war over the terry sash, and padded over to the bedroom door, which he found ajar and letting in a glimmer of the living room's crystal dewdrop nightlight. So, that's how Clover had gotten out! Starsky had left the little explorer an escape route. Insulted by her defeat over the robe sash, Crimson streaked past him in a multicolored blur.

Starsky had found the kittens huddled together for warmth under the shrubbery by the front steps one morning in early November. Once unraveled, the tightly wound ball of fur proved to be two bedraggled, starving, shivering creatures. Hutch grinned at the memory of Starsky hurrying into the house with the kits bundled in his sweatshirt, bellowing for Hutch and insisting they needed names. And name them Starsky did.

Crimson and Clover.

Hutch blamed his partner's nostalgia for late sixties tie-dyed rock-n-roll. After all, "crimson" might exaggerate the ruddy splotches in the female's fur, but the moniker at least made sense. Anyone with an eye in his head could see the male was a slinky, smoke-gray beast, not some green nuclear-mutant kitty. Starsky said the name matched Clover's eyes, far closer to peridot than Crimson's tawny peepers.

Hutch shook his head. Starsky might be ready to swat Clover up the backside for the Christmas ornament destruction, or chase the intrepid climber around the house with Hutch's plant mister, but the man loved the adopted orphans with a devotion that burned only a few watts dimmer than his love for Hutch.

Not that Hutch didn't have deep, abiding fondness for the furry siblings. He did. In the beginning, though, their addition to the household triggered painful memories. He'd thought the days of frequent doctor's office visits long gone as a healthy Starsky looked forward to the first holiday season of the eighties. Then came that chilly November morning—chillier up here in their new hilltop neighborhood on the outskirts of Bay City—and suddenly they were in and out of the vet's office for kitten checkups, vaccinations, flea treatments, blood work, spaying and neutering, and God knows what else.

Hell, adopting infant human twins couldn't have been much more complicated.

Human babies wouldn't be doing their damnedest to scale the Christmas tree and turn all the decorative trimmings of Hanukkah into their personal obstacle course/playground!

All in all, he had to admit, the animals hadn't wreaked quite the havoc he'd foreseen… and predicted to Starsky. He'd halfway expected the restored 1907 Craftsman bungalow to fall down around their ears after the kittens moved in, but feral existence in the wilds of suburbia had not been kind to the young cats; they had settled ecstatically into their new lives as spoiled rotten indoor pets. Sure, Clover had shredded the shower curtain, and Crimson liked to knock books off shelves, but overall the damage was slight. Hutch had conscientiously kitten proofed while Starsky read aloud from his Happy Cat Parent book from the nearest bookstore, where in the wake of the avid reader only an empty, dust-streaked shelf remained of the cat ownership display.

Now, Hutch stood yawning in the bedroom doorway and surveyed the living room. His eyes had adjusted to wakefulness and the meager illumination of moonlight and nightlight, allowing him to make out the furniture clustered around the TV and the bungalow's signature fireplace. He glanced at the open stairway leading up to the half-story "sleeping porch" that Starsky had converted to a hobby room for his photography. A glance to the right and he laughed at the ridiculous bead curtain in the open doorway to the dining room. Starsky refused to take the antique, hand-beaded curtain down. Hutch's attention turned to the Christmas tree in front of the large front window.

Idly lapping at her right forepaw, Crimson now waited patiently on her haunches beneath the tree, paying no attention to her adventurous brother who clung precariously to one of the tree's thin upper limbs. Every line in her graceful body spoke of haughty aloofness, a nonverbal exclamation of "I could climb that tree better than my jackass brother, but I choose not to. I'm above such things."

"Clover, no, Clover! No!" Hutch scolded, hurrying over to rescue the stranded kitten. At the instant of contact, Clover took up that offended yowling, determined to keep at least one claw of each paw wrapped around a sprig of Monterey Pine. "Come on, little guy. You know this won't end well. You're dangerously close to the GTO. Break that, and Starsky might take all your wrapped Christmas treats back to the pet store."

Clover obviously cared more for the thrill of the climb than promised treats. He whipped his little neck around, trying to nip at Hutch's hands, hiss-yowling all the while.

"Hey! I'm not the enemy here. I'm trying to spare you the wrath of Starsky. Believe me: you don't want him pulling 'interrogation room bad cop' on you."

The swinging click-clatter of beads was the only warning Hutch had before light flooded the living room courtesy of Starsky's appearance in the dining room doorway and a flipped switch. "What the hell?" Starsky demanded while Hutch battled temporary light blindness on top of a wriggling, angry Clover. "Sounds like someone's bein' drawn and quartered in here."

"The feline answer to Edmund Hillary is at it again."

Starsky winced. "Which ornament bit the dust this time?"

"I don't know. I'm still trying to convince Clover that life on the floor isn't all that bad."

As Hutch's unhappy eyes made peace with the new level of lighting, Starsky rushed over to assist with cat extraction. Clover immediately calmed and relinquished his grip on the tree limb, stretching all his gray slinkiness toward his other human. Once curled against Starsky's robed chest, the tree-climber became a furry engine, throwing out a steady purr.

Hutch slapped his hands against his hips in annoyed disbelief. "Well, I like that! I try to help the little ingrate; he wants to deafen me and slice me up into bite-sized kitty treats. You sail right in and, wham, you're the hero!" He stooped and picked up the two halves of glass candy cane, shoving them into his robe pocket for later disposal.

Stroking Clover, Starsky breathed a sigh of relief. "At least it wasn't the GTO."

"It would've been your own fault if he'd smashed the GTO to bits."

"How you figure that?"

"Because you insisted on a Christmas tree when I told you Christmas trees and athletic kittens don't mix, but mostly because you left the bedroom door open when you headed out to… where? The kitchen for a snack?"

Starsky looked sheepish. "Yeah. Got some fresh coffee on if you want some."

"Coffee?" Hutch's frustration faded into concern. "This is more than midnight stomach rumbling then." He knelt and scooped up Crimson, who'd apparently forgiven him for the robe sash fiasco. With Crimson happily kneading his chest, he trailed behind Starsky across the room to the bead-curtained doorway. "Something wrong, Starsk?"

Starsky led the way through the tiny dining room to the larger kitchen. "Woke up thinking about next week's baked goods auction."

Glad Starsky's back was to him, Hutch couldn't suppress a smirk.

The Bay City Police Department's annual holiday fund raiser for needy children had a new format this year—a bake sale meets auction meets secret gift exchange. Volunteers from the department signed up to bake a holiday sweet treat. They didn't get to "pick their poison," though. Each volunteer anonymously submitted his or her own favorite holiday treat on slips of paper. The participants then drew the slips from an open-lidded gift box, responsible for baking the goodie listed on the slip. The baked goods would go to a public charity auction where, after paying a two-dollar donation and handing in a packaged toy as the price of admission, auction goers could bid on each holiday sweet, with the identity of the baker finally revealed after each successful bid.

Supposedly, the event's main attraction was the heavily male demographic of the volunteers. Novelty always emptied more pockets, and the BCPD had never done anything more original than asking a bunch of macho cops to hit their kitchens and get their hands floury.

In the two weeks since they had drawn their respective "orders," Hutch had yet to find out what Starsky had ahead of him in the baking department.

Still cradling their dainty lady cat, Hutch sat down at the kitchen table. Starsky sank back down in front of his half-empty coffee mug and a plate of cold chicken. Never satisfied with inertia, Clover climbed up Starsky's chest to perch on his shoulder.

Hutch could no longer stand the suspense. "Okay, out with it, partner. What are you supposed to turn in for the auction?"

"Fmuictake," Starsky mumbled.

"Hit me with that again, a little louder this time. I doubt even Clover could hear that."

"Fruitcake," Starsky growled.

In spite of himself, and against his better judgment, Hutch burst out laughing. Crimson added her musical mewling. Clover let out a rowr and draped himself over Starsky's shoulder, pawing at the robe's lapel.

Starsky shot Hutch a filthy look. "If you're just gonna sit there and laugh at me, you can go back to bed."

"Sorry. You know, seven out of ten guys in the department would take one look at that slip and head straight for the phone to mail-order a fruitcake."

Starsky's scandalized expression nearly made Hutch laugh out loud again. "You're one of the three who wouldn't."

"And so are you." Hutch smiled.

"Damn right. But fruitcake, Hutch!" Starsky's long-suffering headshake nearly pitched Clover off his shoulder perch. "Fruitcake, I ask ya! Who the hell would pull a lousy stunt like that? I coulda put ponchkes or Rugelach on my slip, but did I? Hell, no. I went easy on whoever got mine. I'd give twenty bucks to know what dickhead in the department put in fruitcake!"

"Ponchkes? I'm not familiar with that one."

"Deep-fried jelly donuts, basically. Ma makes killer ponchkes. She's not so good on the Rugelach, but Gram was."

"All right, what did you write on your slip?"

Starsky grinned. "Brownies."

"Brownies? For your favorite holiday sweet?" Hutch peered at him. "Let me guess. This wasn't just altruism on your part. You hoped you'd draw your own slip."

"Well, yeah. I have the perfect recipe for brownies. Just two ingredients."

Hutch's eyes widened. "Oh, yeah?"

"Sure. A dash of Duncan and a pinch of Hines. If that fails, there's always a sprinkle of Betty and a teaspoon of Crocker."

Hutch gave Starsky his best scandalized look. "But, Starsky, that's as bad as submitting a store-bought fruitcake! Shame on you."

"No, it's not. Rules don't say you can't use a mix. You just gotta bake the stuff. With a mix I'd still be doing all the stirring and mixing and timing it and all. Betcha anything you like, the guy who draws my slip will beat feet to the nearest Vons for some of Betty's best. Problem is, they don't make a fruitcake mix. They oughta. Three-step fruitcake kits for the bachelor, or something."

Hutch feigned shocked hurt. "Oh, suddenly you're a bachelor again? There something you need to tell me, Starsk?"

Starsky risked setting Clover free and eased around the table, swooping in on Hutch and kissing him with the fervor of forever and a day. Between them, Crimson began softly purring. When Starsky had Hutch's head swimming, and heart capsizing for the umpteenth time in a sea of love, he pulled back and dropped a peck on the bridge of Hutch's nose.

"Don't be a numbskull. You're stuck with me for all time, and you damn well know it."

"Yeah," Hutch murmured.

Starsky reclaimed his seat and took a hearty chomp out of his neglected chicken leg. "What'd you draw?"

"Huh?"

"For the auction, Hutch. You know, bake sale, auction, next week? Damn fruitcake. What we've been sittin' here talking about?" Starsky's quirked lips were as smug as his tone. "Turn you inside out, don't I?"

"Now you're the numbskull, asking me that. I drew 'butter cookies.'"

"Aw, come on! No fair! Even I could scrabble together a batch'a those."

"Oh, really? You have a perfect two-ingredient recipe for butter cookies? I'm all ears."

"Three ingredients, actually. There's butter—"

"Naturally."

"Shaddup. And sugar and flour. That's all there is to it."

"Right, Starsky. I want to see you bake butter cookies with just butter, sugar, and flour. You know, we could switch. As long as both items end up at the auction, what does it matter? Anyway, who knows you drew fruitcake besides me?"

"Nope." Starsky's jaw squared with stubbornness and determination. "I drew it fair and square, and the auction'll get a fruitcake out of me."

With a dull throbbing in his chest, Hutch realized that this meant much more than simple volunteer work for a good cause. Starsky had drop-kicked all the odds, proved the multitude of naysayers wrong, and achieved reinstatement, but the process had seemed never-ending. Approval for regular zebra unit duty had just come through in August. Five months back in the game, Starsky hadn't shed the defensive need to show everybody that there wasn't a damned thing he couldn't do now that he'd done before that apocalyptic day in May almost two years ago. Hutch shuddered.

So many changes in the past year.

Committing to their personal relationship and exclusivity.

Buying a house.

Going back out in the line of fire.

Adopting two pets.

Hutch felt the Ohmigod gut check he experienced from time to time. He didn't regret a single step he'd taken with Starsky since May '79; he was head over ass in love with the man, and grateful for every second with him. Still, sometimes the enormity of the milestones crammed into such a short time made him feel his biorhythms had been dumped into a blender with the setting on frappe.

Starsky stretched across the table and clasped his frozen partner's arm. "Hey, hey, wherever you went, come back to where you got a guy and two fluffy, long-tailed kiddies who love you." He let out a howl and glared down at the floor. "Damn it, Clover! Ease off the claws, willya? I need the skin on my leg!"

The sunshine of everyday life with Starsky melted the ice. Hutch chuckled. The chuckle blossomed into laughter. Starsky laughed with him. Crimson yawned, curled up in a calico ball on Hutch's lap, settling in for a nap. Clover gave up using Starsky's calf for a scratching post, opting to play "swat the robe hem" instead.

"I love you too, Starsk. And Miss Priss, here, and Troublemaker down there. Okay. You'll bake your fruitcake, and I know just how to help. We'll consult my dear departed Great Aunt Gladiola's recipe book."

"Gladiola?" Starsky stared at him.

"Uh, yeah. My great-grandmother loved flowers. She named her eldest daughter Iris. Grandmother was Rose. Then there was Gladiola, and the baby in the family—"

"What, she got saddled with 'Daisy'?"

"No. Petunia."

"Geesh! And you complain about Kenneth. In family like that, you oughta be glad you didn't end up Hibiscus or Snapdragon. Your aunt knew her way around fruitcake?"

"She did. Well, she inherited the recipe from her grandmother who hailed from somewhere in Middle Europe, and made fruitcake back in the old country. It's a very old recipe. Gladiola was the only one of her sisters who could duplicate her grandmother's. She tried to teach my mom, but Mom loathes fruitcake and never wanted to bother."

"How'd you come by the recipe?"

"When I moved out here, Aunt Gladiola jotted down some of her favorite recipes in a little flip-book of recipe cards and gave it to me. I've only used a few of them. Most of them are really old-fashioned, labor intensive, all-day cooking kind of things. Not the usual fare for overworked street cops."

Starsky smacked his lips. "Let me at that book. I got a feeling I'll be bribing you with sexual favors to tackle a few of her specialties. You ever try baking the fruitcake?"

"Who are you kidding? According to Genesis, the earth was created in less time than it takes to follow that recipe! And it doesn't come cheap, especially these days. It calls for everything but the kitchen sink. Several kinds of nuts, candied cherries, raisins, currants, numerous spices, dates, blackberry preserves, among other things."

"Currants? What the hell's a currant?" Starsky's eyes twinkled. "What, we gotta run electrical current through this friggin' thing until it gets up and walks like Frankencake?"

Hutch made a face at the ridiculous image of electrodes plastered onto a giant fruitcake with wires running hither and yon. "Very funny. A currant is a fruit, goofball."

"All right, I'm game. We got time to track down all the essentials and do this thing?"

"Yeah. Fortunately, this is one fruitcake recipe that doesn't require aging."

"Aging?" Starsky was drop-jawed again. "Like with wine or cheese?"

"Sort of. Some fruitcakes are aged with small applications of brandy or rum every day for several weeks before they're 'ready for consumption.' This one isn't. Let it cool, wrap it in foil, give it overnight to rest, and it's raring to go."

Starsky's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Hutch, you know an awful lot about fruitcake. Tell me you didn't—"

"Put in the fruitcake slip?" Hutch swiped his hand through the air in a gesture of swatting Starsky on the head. "Where's your buzz-saw sharp detective's brain? Number one, I wouldn't have put it in there when there was a chance I'd draw my own slip. Number two, you know my handwriting better than your own. Look at your slip again sometime."

"Got it right here, matter of fact." Starsky delved into his robe's pocket and pulled out the crumpled slip of paper. After a quick study of it, he frowned. "Nah, it's not your writing. Even a disguised version of it. You're right: you could try to write in calligraphy and I'd still know it was you. Thing is, it looks familiar, but I can't place it."

"I put gingerbread cookies on my slip. Not a no-brainer like brownies, but not culinary rocket science like fruitcake." Hutch yawned. "What's say we hit the sack? We're supposed to have this weekend off. We'll go on a shopping spree for all the ingredients, and spend all the time we need in the kitchen."

Starsky nodded. "Shut the furballs on the back porch while we're gone or call Mrs. Masson and see if she wants to come over and kitten-sit?"

The glassed-in back porch now served as the kittens' playroom. Safely enclosed in the ample space with their favorite toys, food, water dishes, cat blankets, and other necessities, Crimson and Clover could amuse themselves for hours and even spend nights there when Starsky and Hutch drew third shift duty.

Their next-door neighbor, a widow in her early seventies, had volunteered shortly after the fur-babies' arrival to cat-sit during the day shifts and to come over and check on the kittens in the evenings if the detectives got tangled up in one of those marathon homicide cases. She brought her knitting and crocheting, and spent the day happily cuddling the youngsters and watching soap operas on Starsky's crystal-clear color television.

For the "alibi" of a shrewd investment, they had chosen a home with historic architecture in a historic neighborhood. They further protected themselves from police department fall-out with the shield of two bedrooms. Starsky swore they hadn't fooled Mrs. Masson. Hutch agreed that she'd guessed the truth about the "roommates" who shared 27 Summer Oak Lane, but the lady's old-fashioned discretion kept her blushingly silent on the subject. She gave them little knowing smiles and called them "such nice young men" whenever they drove her into the city to run errands or picked up groceries for her.

"I wish she'd let us pay her something for all her trouble," Starsky mused. "We couldn't manage two kittens with the hours we work if she hadn't offered to play grandma. I mean, I guess we could, but it wouldn't be fair to Crimson and Clover."

"I know. Mrs. Masson's a godsend, but she's turned us down twice about reimbursement, and there's no sense in embarrassing her by pushing the issue. Her children and their families are all out of state. She has to get lonely. I think she likes getting out of the house, even just coming over here. She worships the kittens, and they're good company. We'll do up something real nice for her for the holidays. Invite her over for dinner."

Starsky gave him a sultry, gleaming smile that promised they'd do more than sleep when they got back to bed. "See, I knew I was doin' the smart thing snatching your ass off the market and making you mine. More'n a pretty face, you're the man with the plan."

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"…Just a little bobsled, we call it Old Saint Nick. But she'll walk a toboggan with a four-speed stick. She's candy-apple red with a ski for a wheel, and when Santa hits the gas, man, just watch her peel." A kitten curled in the crook of each arm, Starsky danced around the kitchen crooning to the Beach Boys blasting from the living room stereo. "It's the Little Saint Nick, little Saint Nick…."

"Whoa, there, sugar plum." Hutch grabbed Starsky's shoulder and pulled him to a stop. "The batter is through resting, I think. Before you spoon it out into the cake pan, let's do a checklist and make sure you didn't repeat your mistake."

Starsky scowled at him. "Thanks for remindin' me, Ebenezer."

In well-worn, blue-and-yellow sweats, Hutch looked nothing like the Victorian Scrooge, but he could forgive his partner for the insult. Starsky had been through baking boot camp in one evening so far, and he showed signs of beginner's strain.

After hours of ingredient hunting that took them to three grocery stores and two specialty shops, followed by a romantic dinner well out of their precinct, they'd come home to conquer Great Aunt Gladiola's fruitcake recipe. Her butter cookie recipe astonished Starsky; he'd sputtered over the idea that butter cookies could require seven ingredients, including orange liqueur. Then he'd counted up the ingredients for the fruitcake and promptly had a conniption. Twenty-eight! Hutch had calmed him down with promises of what they'd do after the batter was safely in the oven to slow bake for nearly four hours.

Unfortunately, Starsky had remembered after forty-five minutes of baking, and thirty minutes of bedroom gymnastics, that he'd somehow left out the sugar and half the flour. Poof went their afterglow in the face of fruitcake disaster! Grumpy at the interruption in their loved-out nap, Hutch marched his partner back to the kitchen. His insistence at the stores that they buy sufficient ingredients for at least two cakes, considering this was a novice effort for both of them, saved the day and earned him grateful Starsky kisses… on more just than his mouth. Poof went his grumpiness!

He'd watched Starsky like a hawk with binoculars through the second preparation, but he intended to make damn sure the batter that went into the oven this time actually had a prayer of turning into fruitcake. Starsky obligingly carried the kittens out the back door onto the porch and returned brushing cat hairs off his sweatshirt and jeans. At the sink he methodically washed his hands, whistling to "Merry Christmas, Baby" and joined Hutch in front of the huge stainless steel mixing bowl.

"Ready when you are."

Hutch consulted the recipe. "Golden raisins, dark raisins, currants, pitted dates, citrus peel, candied cherries, red and yellow pineapple, diced figs, and blackberry preserves?"

"Check."

"Okay. Almonds, pecans, walnuts?"

"Check."

"Almond extract, vanilla extract, all-spice, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves?"

"Check."

"Butter, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, egg whites, egg yolks, molasses?"

"Check. Y'know, this is a lot more fun than that old checklist we used to run through before we started a shift out on the street."

"Definitely. Okay, slide her in there and let's hope for the best. I won't start my cookies until tomorrow. They won't be nearly as complicated as this."

Starsky set the timer. "This time it's gonna be perfect. I just know it, Hutch."

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"It's purple!"

Hutch winced at the outraged whine in Starsky's voice. He closed his eyes, rubbed them furiously, and then snuck another peek at the cake cooling on the wire rack. All the eye- rubbing he could do in a month wouldn't change the reality. He couldn't deny the distinctly purple tinge to the cake. Hutch held his breath. He must not laugh.

He. Must. Not. Laugh.

Disguising a rebellious chuckle as a hiccup and cough, he turned away from the hilarious spectacle of the world's first purple fruitcake. "I think you overdid it with the blackberry preserves," he informed the rookie baker in a voice choked with suppressed laughter.

"Your aunt's damned recipe didn't say exactly how much to use!"

"I know. It's one of those 'use your own discretion' things cooks encounter with these antique recipes."

"I used my discretion!"

"Well, your discretion obviously needs some—um—tweaking."

Starsky brandished a fist at him in perfect Ralph Kramden fashion. Hutch prepared for imminent departure to the moon. The thundercloud in Starsky's expression blew away, leaving defeat that tugged painfully on Hutch's heartstrings.

"I'm out of ingredients and patience. The thought of tracking down all those ingredients again… man, I was surprised we didn't have to go to the North Pole for fresh snowberries and reindeer milk. The bidders'll just have to deal with a purple fruitcake. Maybe I'll earn at least five bucks for the needy kids."

"Five bucks!" Hutch protested. "What makes you think you won't get more than that? For a cake like that, you should rake in at least twenty, twenty-five. Minimum."

"Aw, Hutch, who'll bid decent on a cake that looks like the love child of an eggplant?"

"I will, you idiot!"

Starsky smiled and kissed him lightly, tenderly. "Thanks, buddy, but you can't."

"Why not?"

"You're a participant."

"So? Rules say participants can't bid on their own entry. Nothing to stop me bidding on yours, and I'll have some competition. Whoever submitted that slip must be hard up for fruitcake. I doubt unusual—uh—coloration will discourage the interested party."

Starsky brightened. "Yeah, you might have something there. Hey, this way, I'll get a pretty good idea real fast who the dickhead was that put us through this."

"Has it been all that bad, Starsk?"

Starsky pulled Hutch close and spun him around the kitchen. "Nope. You made it a lot more fun than I thought it'd be. Couldn't do it without you, gorgeous."

Hutch did his best aw-shucks-farm-boy impersonation. "You did all the slicing, dicing, stirring, mixing, beating, and measuring. All the work. I was just your consultant."

"You're just the best thing this former street punk from Brooklyn ever laid eyes on."

"Yeah? I never saw the likes of you in Duluth. Or anywhere. You can lay something else on me any time you get the notion."

"Right now?" Starsky asked hopefully.

"Sure. You might wanna wrap your cake in foil first. And we need to see if we can settle the kittens for the night."

>>>>>>

Sweaty, loose limbed, and damn near purring like a kitten himself, Starsky curled against Hutch dead center in their big bed and sighed, "Oh, wow,that was good."

Still trying to catch his breath and survive re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, Hutch responded with an appreciative murmur of his lover's name.

For the second time in less than twelve hours, their afterglow shattered like so much glass, this time the result of an unholy, pained yowling. Starsky shot bolt upright at the same time as Hutch, the top of his head meeting Hutch's chin and sending them both sprawling and holding on to their wounded anatomy.

"What in the name'a all hell?!" Starsky groaned.

"The kittens!"

Massaging his scalp, Starsky gave a vehement headshake. "I shut them in the spare room with their blankets and water bowls and litter box. Last I checked, before we got down to business, they were piled on top'a each other snoozin'. How'd they get out?"

"I don't know, but never mind how. Sounds like it's coming from the kitchen."

Frankly terrified at the thought of what could make a kitten wail like that, Hutch raced Starsky to the door and through the living room, nearly ripping down the dining room bead curtain in his haste to reach the kitchen. Beside him, Starsky collided with the dining table, cursing his nakedness and the dangers of combining sharp wooden corners with human hips. Crimson's high-pitched cry blended with Clover's demonic shriek-yowl. Hutch caught the first whiff of a noxious odor that took him all the way back to childhood and the scent memory of his baby sister's dirty diapers.

"Oh, f'the love of—! What's that godawful smell?" Starsky bumped into him in the kitchen doorway and fumbled for the light switch. "Clover!"

The "crime" was only too easily reconstructed. Not only had Clover knocked the wrapped fruitcake off the counter, but he'd also slashed through the foil and consumed a good fourth of Starsky's auction entry. The liquid protest of his bowel's intense disagreement with the rich cake had spread in a foul pool behind the writhing kitten. Crimson had taken refuge on top of the fridge, crying out her distress on behalf of her ailing brother.

"My God, Clover, baby boy, my fault, my fault," Starsky chanted in a tone acutely fearful. He pushed past Hutch and went down on his knees on a clean patch of floor, stroking the kitten behind the ears and turning stark eyes up to Hutch.

"Try to calm him," Hutch advised as he squatted to investigate the ripped foil. He heard the tremble in his own voice. "I'll get on the phone to the vet's emergency hotline."

"How bad will it get?"

"I don't know. The cake didn't have any chocolate in it, thank God, but I can't tell if he ate some of the foil with the cake." He rose and went over to comfort their other little one. Crimson fairly leapt down at him, eager for his reassurance. Hutch didn't complain about the scrape of her wee claws on his bare flesh. He snuggled her, found no evidence of cake crumbs around her mouth or whiskers, and thought it unlikely that she'd gotten any of the foil, but the vet would probably want to examine her as well.

"I shoulda put the cake up in a cabinet and nailed it shut," Starsky muttered. "Christ, what a schmuck for a father I make. I know what a Houdini this little guy is." He pet Clover but carefully avoided the kitten's distended tummy. "Clover, I'm sorry, baby boy. You just hang in there, and I'll let you bat the GTO ornament around the damned living room. That's a promise. Please."

"Starsky, don't—don't blame yourself. I didn't see this coming either." A hardened lump in his throat, Hutch dialed the vet's after-hours hotline and sent a few silent prayers skyward to the God who looks out for first-time cat parents…and kittens that gorge on fruitcake.

>>>>>>

"Starsky, I have to say, this is a fine example of fruitcake." Dobey beamed at the dark brown cake on its decorative plate. He held the plate aloft in a "spoils of war" victory pose that made Edith laugh and shake her head at him. Dobey turned the cake plate in a slow circle, examining the visible chunks of fruit and nuts through the saran-wrap covering. "I won't say I'm sorry to beat you out of this good-looking cake, Hutch. Worth every penny of the sixty bucks it took to outbid you, and for a good cause, too."

"All's fair in love and war and charity auctions, Captain. I'm sorry I lost out on your pumpkin cheesecake entry, but I think that woman was ready to take out a second mortgage to outbid me."

"Yes, I noticed that," Edith teased her husband. "Fifty dollars for a cheesecake? It'd be obscene if the money wasn't going to benefit those children."

"All the bids were generous," Starsky added. "Multiply the average high bid by one hundred entries, plus look at this crowd, at two bucks a pop and a toy! We've done all right by those kids."

"I certainly don't mind the thirty bucks that hopped out of my wallet for these delicate morsels of buttery delight." Huggy clasped a large tin of butter cookies tightly to his chest as if ready to fight tooth and nail to protect them. "These cookies, Hutch. Um, um, um! How 'bout a peek at the recipe? What you say?"

"We'll talk, Huggy."

To avoid the crowd, they stood in a far corner of the newly remodeled and reopened Mardi Gras Ballroom, well away from the stampede of hungry and thirsty auction goers descending on the refreshment tables.

"Harold wanted fruitcake so badly this year," Edith said. "I love to bake, but I've always been hopeless with fruitcake in spite of having his grandmother's recipe to go by. He hasn't had homemade fruitcake since his grandmother passed on fifteen years ago."

Hutch nudged his shell-shocked partner. "You were anxious to know the identity of the fruitcake enthusiast, Starsky. Let me see; what did you say—"

"Said it was a daring suggestion, heh-heh," Starsky interrupted loudly, and Hutch felt the uncomfortable weight of a shoe heel on his toes through the thin leather of his own dress loafers. "Took guts, Captain, putting 'fruitcake' into the pot. Could've drawn it yourself."

"Risk I was willing to take. This cake looks a lot like Gran Turner's."

"It's Hutch's late Great Aunt Gladiola's. The recipe, I mean. With one little change."

Edith tapped the captain on his shoulder. "Harold, we need to hurry if we want to be in time for the concert. Rosie's school holiday concert," she explained to the others.

Huggy glanced at his outlandish candy-cane and holly wreath wristwatch that perfectly matched his green suede pants and red leather tunic. "I gotta get a move on my groove, too. Anita's opening for me, but I don't need her crushed by the holiday rush."

Left to their own devices, Starsky and Hutch took a long, deep breath in tandem, both too tired to do much more than silently and discreetly admire each other in their suits.

"You're the goods, Hutch. Goin' out yesterday morning and buying all the ingredients for me, asking Mrs. Masson if she'd mind us using her kitchen to do our baking and storing the cake and cookies there, 'cause you knew I couldn't—" Strain and worry showed briefly in Starsky's jaw line.

Yes, Hutch had known Starsky couldn't face baking another fruitcake in their kitchen after what he'd seen Clover go through. But he'd also seen the determination in his partner to meet his obligation to the charity auction. Mrs. Masson had been happy to oblige, especially after hearing the reason for Hutch's request. She'd solved the purple cake problem as well. "Blackberry preserves?" she'd gently scoffed. "Whoever heard of such a thing in fruitcake? Pear preserves, young man. You want pear preserves."

"Clover's fine now, Starsk. Just fine. Back to all his kittenish mischief, expect that maybe he's learned to avoid food that doesn't show up in his dish. I know he was a really sick little cat for a while there, but Dr. Kendall's given him a clean bill of health. And thank goodness Crimson was her usual fastidious self and didn't go near the damn cake."

"Guess that's the other side of parenthood, huh? You gotta take the agony along with the glory, the bad times with the good. And worry's the price for all the fun and warm fuzzies. Same thing when you love anybody."

Smiling at the trademark Starsky wisdom, Hutch whispered, "We're well practiced in that, partner."

Starsky returned the smile but then his face turned serious again. "I tell you one thing, Hutch. I don't care how hard Dobey tries to bribe us for another fruitcake next year. A week off with pay. Stakeout duty at the Bay City Yacht Club and Resort. Nothin' doin', hear me? No offense to your aunt, but I'm not goin' near her recipe ever again. I don't care what the books say about cats being color blind. I swear Clover only ate the damn thing 'cause it was purple!"

THE END

Italicized lyrics from "Little Saint Nick" — Christmas with the Beach Boys, the Beach Boys, original release date 1964