STARSKY/HUTCH MISCELLANEOUS

When he allowed himself to think about Starsk–which wasn't often, because he couldn't just think about him, thought never stayed just thought, it turned into dreams of life, and life was never only about wanting something and having the want fulfilled, it was about the look on other people's faces and the way they edged away from you and the job you didn't have any more, and oh god, the partner you wouldn't have any more either . . . but sometimes late at night when he couldn't sleep and the memories came at him inexorably of Starksy's ribs under his hands and Starsky's arms on his back and Starksy's shoulder against his cheek–it was that one specific moment in Gillian's apartment that he blamed. It was her fault–if she hadn't died, they'd have been happy together, to hell with what she'd been to Alfred Grossman. It didn't matter. Not to him. It wouldn't have mattered to Starsk if he'd known Hutch was happy. If she had lived, he'd never have felt Starksy's body against his own when he was in such a vulnerable condition, when everything in him cried out for the touch of the one he loved, when he could be imprinted with the heat and the smell and the feel of Starsky's body like a new-hatched chick homing in on its mother.

In more rational moments, he accepted both that the attraction to Starsky had started long before he met Gillian, and that there had been the occasional flash of interest in other men over the years as well. But it wasn't until after his mind had focussed on Starsky that he realized the significance of those early covert glances, what it meant that he had watched the contour of another boy's dick against his jeans, or that he had compared the shape of one man's ass with another. Girls were available, and interested, and they flirted and made him feel liked, and it was easier to do what one was supposed to do and what made other people happy. He could do that for days, weeks, even months at a time before some little incident brought up remembered images and half–formed fantasies, and after all, what harm was a little fantasy?

So here they were now, he and Starsk–partners, buddies, best friends. Here they were alone again at Christmas, because Starsky couldn't afford to fly home to see his mother and didn't have enough leave for the time it would have taken to drive. And because Hutch understood that his own mother's tentative question about his Christmas plans wasn't really an invitation to invade his parents' carefully structured peace with the subliminal violence that always seemed to hover around a cop. Here they were again with the annual argument over whether they should put up Starsky's pitiful excuse for a tree and hang red balls–red balls, for god's sake! there had to be some sexual sub-text to Christmas that everyone was carefully not noticing–around Starsky's apartment.

He sat sullenly on the arm of Starsky's couch watching Starsky's ass, beyond caring where his thoughts had gone or what kind of beating his emotions were going to take later, when he was home by himself with no other distractions. Starsky stood on a box, legs spread, head turned up as he contemplated the most appropriate place for the garland draped around his shoulders like a gold boa. He swayed, he jiggled, he twitched. He moved one leg and moved it back. He glanced over his shoulder at Hutch and moved the leg out again, watching Hutch with twilight eyes. "Whaddya think?" he asked.

"Uh . . ." Hutch's voice came out all rusty, as though he hadn't spoken in years. He thought he was probably lucky he could speak at all. Silhouetted against the late afternoon light from the window, the space between Starsky's legs was the exact dimension of the thickness of Hutch's palm. Starsky wore shorts–it was warmer than usual this winter, even at Christmas. With the glare in his eyes, Hutch couldn't make out the hair on Starsky's legs but his mind supplied the image that his eyes couldn't see, the strands curling around the hem of the shorts, just like they curled around the waistband of his briefs after he showered, and up the skin of his belly to his navel, and on to outline his nipples. What he could see was the inverted vee of the legs rising powerful and unmoving now to the juncture where Hutch's hand would fit so exactly that he could feel the moist heat against his skin.

"Hutch."

Starsky was turning, and although he'd said only that one word, Hutch's name was a command. Hutch rose stiffly from the couch, almost shaking with tension, and crossed the room. Outside in the street someone's horn honked, and blared again, and a woman's voice yelled, "Just a damn minute already!" but here there was nothing but the two of them. He thought fleetingly that the world could hold a nuclear war outside and he wouldn't notice. Starsky looked down at him with the compelling gaze he used so successfully against suspects in the interrogation room.

"Why're you looking at me?" he asked.

"Not . . . "

"You are." There was no anger in the voice, just flat undeniable statement of fact. Perps said, "I didn't do it," and Starsky said, "You did," and half the time they folded, just like that.

"You been looking at me for a long time," Starsky said. "Not in front of other people, but when we're alone, and you think I don't notice."

Anything he could say would be a lie, and he'd let himself be stripped of everything before he would lie to this man, and so he said nothing.

Starsky flipped the free end of the garland so it landed over Hutch's shoulder. He pulled it back slowly, watching Hutch's face, not teasing now as he had been when he'd done it earlier. The rustling of the crinkled plastic as it scraped over the shirt fabric drowned out the thud of Hutch's heartbeat. He obeyed the slight tug against his shoulder and stepped closer to Starsky.

Starsky broke eye contact and looked down at himself, and Hutch couldn't help following the gaze. Down where his sex swelled out the front of the knit shorts, his soft flesh snugged tight against the inside of the fabric at exactly the same height as Hutch's mouth.

"That's what you want, isn't it?"

He still couldn't lie, even to keep Starsky's friendship and respect. But he couldn't say the words either. Hutch the partner–Hutch the buddy, the friend–would be shocked at the accusation–vocally, loudly shocked. Starsky would not have said those words to that Hutch. So it was all over anyway. He condemned himself with silence, and stood mute, ready for the final blow.

"You been watching me," Starsky said again, in that soft piercing voice that reduced suspects to grovelling pleas for a deal. "Maybe in Minnesota, guys don't know what it means when another guy looks at him like that, but on the streets of New York, they know, Blondie."

He put his hands on Hutch's shoulders. Hutch expected to be shoved, or perhaps just shaken. Instead, Starsky stepped down from the box and slowly pushed Hutch backward until his knees hit the arm of the couch. He stopped there, pressed into a half–sitting position. Starsky didn't stop. Starsky pushed between his legs, forcing them apart, until his cock was compressed against Hutch's, his hips tight pressed between Hutch's thighs, his hands clutching Hutch's shirt. Hutch closed his eyes and went deep inside himself and made his body obey his will.

"Six years we been together," Starsky went on in the same deadly tone. "Six damn years we've talked about everything. I told you stuff I never told anybody else." He paused. "You listening to me?"

Hutch could only nod.

"One thing I never told you," Starsky went on, even more softly.

Hutch waited, eyes still closed, expecting accusations and condemnation. Instead, the hands shifted to a bruising grip around his upper arms and the body between his legs moved, and against his mouth there was heat and pressure and a tongue forcing itself between his lips and he was so shocked he couldn't respond, could only just sit there and let Starsky kiss him.

"Hutch," Starsky said again, when it was over. "Look at me."

Hutch opened his eyes. Starsky's face was still close to his, unsmiling. "You thought I was gonna belt you?"

Hutch swallowed and nodded once, jerkily, speech still beyond him.

Starsky smiled a bitter little half-smile. "Guess if I couldn't say anything to you, I didn't have any right to expect you to tell me."

"How long . . . " Hutch found his voice at last, and still didn't have words for what he wanted to know.

"How long have I wanted this? 'Bout as long as we've known each other. Didn't let myself think about it, though." He looked away and sighed, with a disgusted grimace. "Sometimes I'd find someone who looked a little bit like you. I'd come home feeling like crap and swear I'd never do it again, but I always did."

He looked back, and ruffled Hutch's hair. "You're an addiction, Blondie."

"You knew you were . . . " Hutch choked on the only words he had: queer, fag, homo. None of them were Starsky, not the David Starsky he thought he knew.

"Gay?" Starsky said it for him. "Never thought much about it, to tell you the truth. Lotsa guys like both, you know."

"Do you?"

Starsky shrugged. "S'spose so. Don't have that much experience with guys. Just a coupla times in 'Nam, and–" he hesitated. "Maybe five or six times since then."

Still fishing, Hutch said, "Always seemed like you were happy with the ladies."

"Looked like you were too," Starsky pointed out. "You got married."

It was Hutch's turn to shrug. "I was. But it wasn't what–" What I needed, craved, lusted after, his mind supplied. But men didn't crave things, or admit to that kind of need. "What I really wanted," he finished lamely, and then amended, "Who I wanted."

Starsky just said, "Yeah," like he understood.

Hutch felt curiously let down, as though he'd suddenly been given everything he ever wanted, all at once, and it turned out not to be what he wanted after all. This wasn't the way it was supposed to have happened. His erotic fantasies always began with one of their typical late-night conversations, tentative revelations of self to the other in quiet, often disjointed, remarks. One of them, for no good reason, would touch the other, and the touch would turn to a caress and suddenly they would be kissing. By that time his body generally took over and details became fuzzy. He'd never imagined a scenario where Starsky just came right out and calmly said he wanted Hutch too. What did they do now?

Starsky was still very close to him. Talking had distracted Hutch for a moment, but in the pause, his instincts took over. In a second, with no warning, he was rock hard and trembling, clenching his hands into fists to keep from grabbing Starsky.

Starsky sighed softly and stepped back enough to break contact.

"We don't have to do anything, you know. We haven't really done anything yet. One kiss–" he shrugged. "You didn't do anything at all, except be polite enough not to knock me across the room."

"What–I thought you wanted . . . "

"What I want hasn't got anything to do with it," Starsky told him flatly, no emotion in the usually expressive voice. "We have to get along in the world. You know what happens to gay cops."

"You mean killed? Or just fired." They had never really discussed their feelings about John Blaine. Starsky had brought it up every day for a week and then backed off and refused to talk about it, and Hutch had been relieved when he finally dropped the subject altogether.

"Fired's not bad enough?" Starsky demanded. "I don't plan on flipping burgers for a living."

Hutch finally had his wits about him again. "So that's it? Gee, Hutch, I've been lusting after you for years, and now I know you want me too, but we can't take a chance on getting fired, so–so . . . " He ran down, shaking his head. "Why did you even bring it up then? I'd have been better off not knowing."

"I didn't say I didn't want to do anything. Just said we didn't have to."

"So . . . what does that mean?"

"It means be real sure what you want. There ain't no goin' back, Hutch."

Hutch stuck out an arm and pulled his partner back. His erection still throbbed between them, but Starsky didn't seem to notice. "Going back on what? Liking men better than women? I don't even know for sure if I do. Never had a chance to find out." He studied Starsky's closed-off face for a moment. "Wanting you? I'm never going back on that."

"All declarations of love cheerfully accepted," Starsky said, with no humor whatsoever. "Never is a long time."

Perhaps he had noticed after all. He extricated himself from Hutch's grasp and backed away. "Wanna beer?"

The universal panacea, Hutch thought wearily. "Sure."

After a longer time than Hutch thought it really needed, punctuated by unidentifiable thuds and the clinking of cans, Starsky reappeared from the kitchen with a beer in each hand, and plopped down at the other end of the couch. Hutch pushed up from the armrest and joined him, leaving more space between them than he normally would. Starsky's hot and cold moodiness, though it didn't surface often, could be volatile when it did come out.

"Why did you say anything?" Hutch asked quietly. "You always have a reason for things, crazy as your reasons sound sometimes."

Starsky aborted the motion of can to lips and gave Hutch a sideways glance.. "You got it bad, buddy. We get teased enough as it is. What if one of these days you forgot and mooned at me in public like you been doin' in private?"

"So . . . are you just telling me to back off, then? You could have done that without saying anything about yourself."

"Hnh!" Starsky's snort made it clear what he thought of that suggestion. "What was I supposed to say? 'Hutch, you're looking at me like I was a big red candy cane? So please knock it off before everybody starts to notice?' Would you have admitted to that?"

He set the beer can on the coffee table with a thump. "I was gonna catch you off guard–that's the only way to get anything outta you. Tell you I appreciated the thought, but no thanks." His gaze swept over Hutch's face, softening to a rueful twitch of the lips. "You looked like I'd caught you robbing a bank or something. Couldn't leave it like that."

He picked up the beer again and sat looking at the can, elbows on knees, as though analyzing the patterns of condensation on its side. "Guess I didn't do us any favors, after all." The half smile had gone, the suppressed jittery tension was back.

"When you did find some guy," Hutch asked cautiously, after a moment, "was he really a substitute for me, or just another man?"

"'Nough men out there I didn't have to go hunting a big blonde," Starsky said, without looking at him.

Sometimes the best way to get Starsky to talk was to just ask questions. He'd dance all around any attempt at subtlety, and then surprise you with a frank and honest answer to an open question.

Hutch tried again. "You said 'never is a long time.' You think I'd get tired of you?"

"I think you'll meet the right lady, one of these days, and settle down. You keep looking for her, dontcha?"

"I was," Hutch answered honestly. "But I kept saying 'Me and thee,' too, remember?"

A small smile crept onto Starsky's face, and was as quickly gone. "They don't let married cops be partners. I'd rather be your partner than your wife."

"Goon." Hutch poked him hard.

Starsky flinched away, but only to protect his beer. "Jerk," he said mildly, as he always would have done.

The old horseplay between them felt good, but its ambience died away almost immediately, leaving a chilled silence in its wake. Even the usual street noises seemed muted. In the breeze from the half–open window, the bells Starsky had hung on the doorknob stirred vaguely, with a faint tinkling sound. The garland lay discarded on the floor and the box of red plastic balls sat on the chair where Hutch had dumped them. The room felt empty and lifeless. It was so seldom that neither of them could think of anything to say to the other that it was almost like sitting next to a stranger. A dangerous stranger–Starsky had an aura of building up to something, despite the intermittent moments of normality.

"So . . . " Hutch said again, "what do we do? Just go on like nothing happened? Is that what you want?"

"What I want," Starsky said with sudden savagery, "is for nobody to care who I go to bed with. But I can't have that." He took a deep breath and looked over at Hutch, the anger simmering, but still held in. "So I'll settle for what I can have. My partner."

"And one of these days you'll go cruising again for someone who looks like me?" That wasn't fair, and Hutch knew it, but the thought of it hurt badly enough for him not to care. It was childish pain–bitter, immature, you-hurt-my-feelings pain, but it felt good to let it out and be damned whether it hurt Starsky's feelings or not.

Starsky set the beer down again, and from the exaggerated care with which he placed the can on the table, Hutch knew whatever had been lurking below the surface had finally come to a boil. Starsky rose, shoved the coffee table away with his knee and stood over Hutch, a stranger in blue shorts and a Doors t-shirt with a level of suppressed violence in his face that Hutch seldom saw even on the street.

"You keep asking what I want," he whispered. "You don't really want to know, partner, but I'm gonna show you anyway."

He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of the shorts and thrust his pelvis out, almost into Hutch's face. "Yeah, I cruise. Not around here. Up north, where I wouldn't be recognized. I find a bar and I watch for a big blonde, someone built like you. Doesn't hafta look like you, but he has to walk like you do–graceful, y'know?"

"Starsk," Hutch murmured, shattered by the sandpaper voice and the destructive fury in Starsky's face. "Babe . . . don't."

"Too late, Blondie." Starsky's fingers came around to caress the mound along his fly. "When I find the right guy, I let him see I want him." The voice dropped to a harsh whisper. "That part's easy, 'cause by then I'm wanting somebody real bad. I don't take that kind of chance until I can't stand it any more. And I can tell from the look on his face that he wants me too."

Starsky began to ease his zipper down. "We go into the john, and he sits on the commode, and I get it out for him."

His voice was shaking, and Hutch thought, He doesn't really want to go through with this, but Starsky went on anyway in the gritty voice that Hutch had heard only once or twice before. He pulled his cock out, and it wasn't even hard. "He sucks me off, and he says–" Starsky's voice caught in his throat, and the words died away in mid-sentence, the enormity of what he was doing catching up with him finally..

"What does he say, Starsk?" Hutch flashed a glance up to Starsky's face, pale now with appalled self-awareness, and felt the shift of energy between them. "Does he say, 'You're beautiful'? Does he say 'I love the way you look'?"

He'd seen Starsky before, of course, but never at such close range. Even quiescent, the organ was large. "Does he touch you with his hand?" Hutch whispered relentlessly, sliding his own hand up Starsky's thigh. "Or just his mouth?"

He cupped the prick in his palm and ran a fingertip along its length. Later, he knew, he would have to think about how easily he had done that, but right now he was running on intuition alone. Starsky made a choked unwilling sound, and his cock twitched and throbbed in Hutch's hand. "Hutch. No."

"Too late," Hutch said, cruel echo of Starsky's earlier words. "Way too late, babe."

He leaned forward and touched his lips experimentally to the head of Starsky's cock. It swelled and flushed, and the whole cock leaped in his hand. Starsky made a strangled noise in his throat, and moved his hand as though to push Hutch back.

Hutch knocked the hand away hard enough that he knew the blow had to have hurt. He was angry now himself, with an unfocused fury that encompassed his partner, and society, and all the fellow cops whose condemnation they would have to hide from, and at himself as well, for the naivete that had kept Starsky from telling him this one essential fact about himself. "Does he tell you he loves you, Starsk?" he whispered, driving the knife in and twisting it. His breath gusted against Starsky's cock, and the sound Starsky made this time was a whimper.

Hutch put his lips against the head and wet it with his spit. He hooked his fingers into Starsky's pockets to anchor him and drew the length of the cock into his mouth. He sucked once, and again, and curled his tongue along the throbbing underside, and Starsky groaned and filled his mouth and throat. Hutch had tasted his own come once; the salty flavor was no surprise. The volume was, though–too much to swallow. Starsky was swaying, barely staying on his feet. Hutch yanked him forward so that Starsky practically fell into his lap, and hauled out the bottom of Starsky's tee shirt to wipe his mouth.

They stayed that way for a moment, Starsky curled around himself as though in pain, with his head almost on Hutch's chest. Then he put a hand on Hutch's shoulder and got his feet under him again and stood, breathing in deep raspy inhalations. Hutch pushed him away a step, so he could get off the couch. His own cock was achingly hard, and his anger fast ebbing, but there was something he had to say while he still could find the emotion for it.

"I'm going. I'll leave you alone. You don't need to worry about me 'mooning' at you in public. But if you ever again use someone else as a substitute for me, and I find out about it, I'll beat the living crap out of you. Understand?"

"Hutch . . . "

"You understand me?" Hutch shouted at him, and Starsky nodded in mute acceptance. He looked so lost, standing there with his fly open and his shirt pulled half out and a bewildered whipped puppy look on his face, that Hutch almost relented and came back from the door. But he couldn't deal with his own feelings right now, much less Starsky's. Better to let it rest for a while, let them get back to some kind of normal footing, and then they could talk about it. He went out the door and down the steps and started the car, revving up the engine in a way that Starsky would have given him hell for, and which generated a squeal of protest from somewhere under the hood.

Across the street a man and woman got out of a car, laughing at something. Hutch couldn't hear them, but he saw the joy in their eyes, the smiles meant just for each other. Like a bad joke, the man was tall, well-built, and blonde, the woman only slightly shorter with a frizzy halo of dark hair. The man threw his arm over the girl's shoulder, and she swayed her hip into his side as they walked away from the car, and it was obvious they were in love. Hutch shut the engine off and let the rest of the anger drain away into the resulting silence, and made himself think about what Starsky had said. There's enough men out there, I don't have to find a big blonde. He didn't have to–he could pick up anyone he wanted, Hutch was sure of that. But he looked for someone built like Hutch, who walked like Hutch. Looked for me.

And where had that remark come from–All declarations of love cheerfully accepted. Starsky's sarcasm seldom involved personal feelings. It was much more the sort of comment Hutch might make, in certain moods. Starsky's sarcasm was for cars, and food, and fashion. When it came to how he felt about something, he had no trouble just saying the words.

He glanced up at the apartment, wondering what Starsky was doing. His partner. Maybe not his buddy any more, after what had happened between them, maybe not his friend–and that possibility hurt enough to make him grit his teeth and swallow–but until Captain Dobey said otherwise, still his partner. You ran out on him. For all the pain of the confrontation, Starsky hadn't done that to him.

He slammed the car door behind him and somberly climbed the steps. Starsky had been right–there was no going back. His passion for his partner had been strong, but ill-defined, unfocused. He'd wanted the feel of Starsky's body against his, had dreamed of kissing his mouth, but beyond that, the mechanics of sex between two men had still carried a faintly distasteful overtone in his admittedly staid and conservative mindset. Now the desire was as sharp and specific in his mind as in his body.

Cocksucker . . . The word brought an unwilling smile to his face, where once he would have sneered. Starsky's cocksucker. The play on words amused him even more, but the smile died away when he opened the door and found his partner sitting head down on the couch. Starsky didn't even look up, though he must have heard the door open.

Hutch walked across the room and squatted on his haunches in front of Starsky, trying frantically to come up with the right words. The inanity of Are you okay? wasn't even tempting. I'm sorry was true, but Starsky wouldn't understand what he was sorry for.

He touched Starsky under the chin, and tipped his face up, studying his partner's features with new eyes. At the bottom of it all, there was only one thing to say.

"I love you, Starsk."

He'd said it before, as Starsky had said it to him. "I love you, man." Guys could say that to each other and no one would make too much of it. Best friends, and all that. The words hadn't changed, but the intensity was new, the meaning unmistakable.

Heat touched Starsky's eyes for a moment, though his expression didn't change. "And I love you, ya big idiot." New lines creased his face. "What does that get us? One more thing to keep from other people. You think we can work together now without it showing?"

"Yeah." Hutch said it confidently. "Sure. We already have a reputation for being close. Best buddies. We just have to keep dating, now and then, that's all. Talk about the ladies. Leer at the secretaries once in a while. People have an image of us in their minds–all we have to do is reinforce it."

Starsky snorted softly. "The world's just basically a good place for you, isn't it? No matter what the problem is, you've got an answer."

He sounded more resigned than argumentative. Hutch pushed himself up from his squatting position and eased down next to Starsky on the couch. "I guess that's true," he admitted, and added impulsively,. "Van used to hate that. She couldn't understand why I didn't get all worked up about things like she did."

"I'm not Van," Starsky said, his voice somewhere between annoyed and amused.

Hutch curled his fingers around Starsky's jaw and turned the face to him. Starsky resisted for a moment, but gave in and let Hutch move his head back and forth gently, watching Hutch's perusal with a slowly growing sardonic grin.

"Satisfied?" he asked, when Hutch released him.

"Yep. Same old Starsk." Hutch paused, then said daringly, "My Starsky."

Starsky's thick lashes fluttered down and back. "Dahling!" he caroled mockingly "You're so possessive!" But a stain of red swept over his cheeks, and in spite of the sarcasm, Hutch thought he was pleased.

"Don't go getting all queeny on me," Hutch told him, though he wasn't seriously worried about the prospect.

That got him a snort of genuine laughter. "I'd have to shave my legs. Fat chance."

Hutch couldn't refrain from the thought of Starsk in a cloud of bubbles in the bath, one leg artistically extended as he wielded a razor. No, not going there . . .

"I can just see you in heels," He snickered instead. "Tall red heels, with fishnet stockings. I'd ask you to dance with me."

He expected some other sarcastic response, but to his surprise, Starsky just gave him a speculative look and then got up and went across the room to the stereo. He sorted briefly through the stack of tapes on the bookcase, and put one in the player while Hutch watched in growing and disbelieving anticipation.

"High heels I ain't wearing for nobody," Starsky said, turning back to him as the music began. "Not even you, Blondie. But if you want to dance with me, all you have to do is ask."

I want to hold your haaaand, the Beatles bellowed encouragingly.

Hutch shook his head in wonderment and got up from the couch. He took Starsky's outstretched hand almost tentatively, unsure where hands and heads went when you were dancing with another guy. Starsky pulled him in and slipped both arms around his waist.

"Like this," he murmured, and like a miracle, they fit together as perfectly as always. He could feel Starsky's ribs through the soft tee shirt, the muscles of his thighs, the calf of one leg as it pressed against him, and every place where they touched was like some new part of his body that he'd never noticed before. Starsky's crisp curls pressed against his ear, his hair more coarse, more alive, than the contrived curls of any woman he'd held. Starsky's cheek rasped slightly along the line of his jaw, and that should have felt strange, but it was Starsky, and so it was perfect.

They weren't really dancing, just swaying together, Starsky's solid heat enfolded in his arms. He didn't have to bend his head to reach Starsky's lips, not much. Starsky breathed against his mouth, a tiny gasp that echoed Hutch's own sudden need for oxygen, and if he seemed to stiffen suddenly in Hutch's arms, Hutch was practically shaking himself.

He licked Starsky's lips and pushed gently with his tongue, and the lips parted, and the room and the music retreated to a far away place. Here there was only the rough swipe of tongue against tongue, the symbolic penetration of each other's mouths, the answering echo from where Starsky's prick jabbed against his own.

He'd been holding Starsky's sides, had slipped his hands up under the shirt to the hot skin underneath. He dropped them to the waistband of the shorts and worked his fingers under the elastic. Starsky trembled against him and pulled his head away from the kiss. "Hutch . . . " he said thickly.

"Hmm?" Hutch was focused on where his hands were going, and on the musky scent of the skin just below Starsky's ear. His hands found their target, and Starsky twisted under them. Perspiration sprang out on his neck. Hutch licked it.

"God! Hutch!"

Hutch paused to consider whether that was a protest or an invitation, and Starsky broke out of the circle of his arms.

"You catch on awful fast," he said accusingly, his eyes huge. His dark curls sprang moistly away from his forehead. Hutch suspected that 'adorable' was not a word to be uttered out loud at this moment, but it came to mind.

"Running on pure instinct," he announced, with a smirk that rivalled some of Starsky's own.

"Let's . . . take your instincts to a more comfortable place." Starsky's eyes flicked toward the bedroom door.

Hutch could feel his grin fading. Was that a challenge? Or an opportunity for him to back out gracefully . . . He couldn't tell which. He'd have been happy to give it all up to Starsky right there on the living room couch. Starsky's face revealed nothing.

"Yes," he said simply. There was no decision here that he hadn't long ago made. He might still be fuzzy about the details, but inexperience didn't seem to be getting in the way so far. "Whatever you want."

Starsky's expression sobered in an instant, and Hutch could almost hear him thinking. Can't have what I really want.

"We won't always be cops, babe," Hutch said.

The glance Starsky turned on him was more irritated than reassured. "I'm not exactly looking forward to retirement," he said sourly. The warmth of a moment before had evaporated, and Hutch wondered uneasily whether he should have agreed to the bedroom after all. He wanted Starsky back in his arms, swaying to the music, growing so hard and needy against him that they couldn't stand to have clothes between them. Not this tension that he still couldn't, dammit, figure out or pin down.

But Starsky pushed the bedroom door open and walked across to switch on the lamp next to his bed. Its soft yellow glow warmed the room, more intimate than the whiter daylight from outside. He lowered the blinds, leaving only the lamp for illumination when Hutch shut the door behind them. In the dim light, Starsky turned to him, his face shifting again to his earlier vulnerability.

"Let me undress you?" he asked softly, and Hutch nodded, swallowing. Whatever you want, he'd said, and perhaps Starsky had guessed the fear lurking under that declaration. His fantasies had glossed over such details as taking off one's clothes, and the various and subtly manipulative ways in which he had managed to undress his women had no place here.

Avoiding his eyes, Starsky undid his shirt buttons one by one, and pulled out of his slacks what little of the shirt was still tucked in. Good Minnesota boy that he was, Hutch usually wore an undershirt, but an unusual degree of laziness with regard to laundry recently had resulted in an empty spot where undershirts usually resided in his dresser. He'd shrugged and considered a knit shirt instead, but finally, running late, had just grabbed a wash 'n' wear sport shirt from the closet and thrown it on. Now he was grateful for having been the slob he'd accused himself of earlier.

Starsky parted the front of the shirt and ran a finger gently down his sternum. "I useta watch you in the showers," he murmured, with a self-conscious, half-embarrassed glance at Hutch's face. "Wondered what this would feel like."

"Did you?" Hutch said, unreasonably pleased that he hadn't been the only one sneaking looks at the other. "You were pretty good at it–I never noticed."

"I'd ask you some question so you wouldn't think it was strange I was looking at you," Starsky explained, with a sideways "gotcha" glance.

"I wish I'd realized. Might not have taken us as long to get to–oof!–this . . aahhh!"

He'd meant "this" to be the circumstances in general, his realization that Starsky wanted him, their confession of love to each other. But Starsky added a whole new dimension to the pronoun, lips and teeth around a nipple, fingers stroking up his side. Hutch squirmed frantically, unsure whether the tickling fingers or the sucking mouth was contributing more sensation. Starsky proved merciful–after a moment, at least. Shaded eyes glanced up at Hutch from the region of his chest, not a place he'd ever considered an erogenous zone. The fingers stilled, the mouth moved away after a goodbye lick.

"Like that, huh?" Starsky asked him, playing innocent.

Hutch grabbed at his wrists, prepared to show him what he'd thought of the tickling, but Starsky stepped swiftly back.

"Unh–huh! You said I could undress you."

"Undress, not tickle!"

"Details, details!" Starsky declared lightly. He stayed safely out of reach for a moment longer, though, using the time to good advantage by skinning his own shirt over his head. That amount of flesh was nothing Hutch hadn't seen before, but knowing it was on display for him made his breath catch in his throat, and his throat choke up.

Starsky could obviously see the effect it was having on him. "More?" he asked softly. Another lightning shift of mood–deliberately provocative now. It felt wrong, somehow, but if a striptease was what Starsky wanted, Hutch sure wasn't going to stop him.

He nodded, mute. Starsky slowly pushed down his knit shorts and underwear, his expression somewhere between self-conscious and defiant. A distant voice in Hutch's head said, He hasn't done this before. Whatever Starsky's previous experience had been, he'd never deliberately undressed for another man. The fact that what he was revealing was already known to Hutch made the act somehow even more erotic, the familiar become new, the commonplace exotic.

Hutch reached out to stroke Starsky's chest, the same as Starsk had done to him. Again, there was that un-nerving shift of perspective. He'd only touched women like this before, all smooth and pale skin. Starsky's hair curled around his fingers, heavy and wild. Under the hair, tiny paps hid from Hutch's fingers, but puckered and swelled when he found them. Starsky breathed in and closed his eyes, and reached blindly for Hutch's waistband.

Hutch stood as motionless as he could while Starsky undid belt, button and zipper. He moved only to facilitate pushing the slacks down and away. What he wanted was to grab his partner, but it was clear that Starsky had his own timetable. He left Hutch's briefs where they were, though he was nude now himself. Hutch wasn't sure whether to be relieved or impatient. The cloth rubbed against him, irritating and cold where his erect cock had made a sizable wet spot, but taking them off felt like crossing that last final point from which they could never go back.

He kicked out of his loafers and stood shivering a little in jockey pants and socks. Starsky seemed not to know what to do next, still swinging in wide emotional arcs from flirtatious teasing to fearful hesitation. Hutch could almost see the wheels going round in his head: Partners don't sleep together. Cops don't screw other men. He'd seen that kind of reasoning before–the girls Starsky took to bed were never women he'd be happy with for any length of time, and the ones he might have wanted to marry either walked out or died on him. He ignored the sardonic voice in the back of his head which reminded him that he hadn't done too well on that score himself. Time for someone else to take the lead here.

"Starsk," he said gently, and when Starsky began, "Hutch, I don't . . . " he interrupted, "Listen to me. Just shut up for a minute and listen."

When Starsky didn't reply, he said, "All right?"

"I'm listenin'."

"Okay . . . " He wasn't sure himself what he wanted to say, except 'I love you.' He figured he could say that for the rest of his life, if Starsky would let him.

"You're all hung up on something. Maybe part of it is people finding out about us, but I think there's more than that."

Starsky shot him a look. "Yeah?"

"You've been playing prick tease with me, leading me on and then backing off." He raised his hand when he saw Starsky about to fire something back at him. "Let me finish. I'm not some hooker you picked up, or some guy you met up the coast in a bar somewhere. I'm your partner, Starsk, and that's not gonna change if we start going to bed together. I'm still the same person–I'm not going to start lisping or flopping my wrists or wearing pink leisure suits!"

"You'd look pretty . . . weird in a pink leisure suit," Starsky said, but without conviction, as though he couldn't think of any better comeback.

"I'm right, aren't I? No matter how much you want me, you can't see me in the same light as other . . . " he hesitated, but used the word. "–queers."

Starsky winced. "You're not!"

"Are you?"

Starsky backed away and sat on the bed, looking pained, a dark gamin in skin and nothing else. "I don't know," he said slowly. "You mighta had ideas, but you never did anything. I been out there right in the middle of it."

Hutch eased down next to him, searching for the right words. "Where do you look for women?" he asked. "In the bars?"

"Not always!" Starsky retorted, but sighed. "Yeah. Not that I don't find girls I like other places, but I s'pose that's where I look. Just seems . . . easier."

"Sure, because they're looking too. And how often have you met a woman in a bar that you'd like to take home and introduce to your mother?"

Starsky's lips twitched, and then curved into an outright grin. "I offered to take you home, didn't I?" The grin faded. "Ma would have a stroke. I can just hear her."

"She'd be more upset about no grandbabies than about who you sleep with," Hutch said with certainty, and Starsky gave him a surprised sideways glance.

"You're probably right. S'pose we could adopt?" He answered his own question with an eloquent grimace and a snort.

"So what were you going to do?" Hutch persisted. "Marry some poor twit who'd make babies for Ma and not ask what you were up to on Saturday nights?"

Starsky exploded, as he'd anticipated, twisting away from him and flinging himself to his feet. "It isn't that simple! You want to see everything in black and white, and it doesn't always work that way!"

Hutch hauled him back with an implacable grip on one of Starsky's wrists. "Yes, it is that simple," he said flatly. "We're partners already. Some day we tell your mom that we're partners more ways than just the job. Some day maybe we can tell the whole world. Until then we're just best buddies. How is that any different from what you've been doing, except you're sleeping with me instead of some stranger?"

He kept his hold on Starsky's wrist and pulled him closer. Seated, his face was close to Starsky's groin, where Starsky's cock hung heavily flaccid. Hutch touched it gently. "This is mine," he said, halfway surprised at his confidence. He had no right, after all, to that degree of possessiveness, except for some instinct telling him that Starsky needed it. "I don't want you giving it to anyone else. Understand?"

Starsky gave him an incredulous look, but didn't try to pull free. "We haven't even done anything yet."

"Yet?" Hutch asked him, with his own version of Starsky's provocative smile. He pursed his lips and blew gently on Starsky's cock, and it twitched encouragingly back at him.

"C'mere, babe," he said, pulling Starsky back down. "It'll be all right. I'll make it all right." He wasn't sure which of them he was reassuring.

Starsky hesitated, but allowed himself to be pressed down full length against Hutch's body. Only then did Hutch release his wrist. "Okay now?" he whispered. "Not gonna take off again?"

Starsky shook his head, and Hutch bent his head and began to kiss him–gently at first, then with increasing passion until Starsky moaned under him and pulled away.

"Wait," he said breathlessly, and then, "Don't," when Hutch smoothed his hand up Starsky's leg toward his groin. "Not gonna be able to hold back, if you do that again. Just wait a minute."

Hutch smiled and lay back. "You know what you could do instead," he suggested, amazed at his own daring.

Starsky looked just as surprised. "You sure you haven't done this before?" he asked accusingly.

"It seems to come naturally," Hutch said, knowing how that sounded, and not as disturbed about it as he would have expected. "Maybe I worked so hard to make sure no one thought I was gay that I never really thought about it myself."

"I never thought you were gay," Starsky said, edgily defensive again, and making no move toward what Hutch had suggested.

Hutch sighed. He started to ask what the hell was wrong, and thought better of it. Getting Starsky all riled up again wasn't going to solve anything. It was ironic, he thought, that he'd started out the afternoon in a foul mood, only to have his wildest dream fulfilled, while Starsky–who had been at least superficially cheerful at first–was now touchy as a wet cat.

He levered himself up on an elbow and considered how they had gotten to this point. It had started off all wrong, for one thing. His long–held fantasy drifted back. Sitting close together on the couch, talking softly about nothing important, the sudden realization that 'best buddies' just wasn't enough any more . . .

He sat up and swung his legs over the other side of the bed.

"Where're you going?" Starsky asked, comically distressed. Hutch relaxed a fraction. If Starsky had shown any evidence of relief, he'd have done his best to laugh off the whole episode, even if his heart was breaking inside. C'mon, Starsk, he'd have said, you're my best friend in the whole world, but let's not screw up a good partnership. The inner voice that monitored all his thoughts and actions snorted in eloquent disbelief, but he ignored it. The important thing now was to get them back on the same wavelength.

"I'm not leaving," he reassured Starsky. "Just . . . bear with me for a minute, okay?"

Starsky shrugged but stood up as well, watching Hutch put on his slacks. After a moment he retrieved his shorts and pulled them on. "I guess you're not walking out dressed like that," he allowed.

Hutch went out into the living room, growing dim now in the early evening twilight. He pulled the drapes but left the lights off. Starsky stood silent in the bedroom door, watching.

The Beatles had moved on to Mrs. Robinson, and their nervous energy was not what he wanted. He stopped the 8-track and set the tape aside while he sorted through the others. Elton John? That was more his style than Starsky's. He gave the label a closer look, and sure enough, there were his initials in the corner. He had no recollection of bringing it over here, but they both complained that half the time they wanted something, it was in the other's apartment. It suited the mood he wanted to create, and he slipped it into the player and turned to survey the room.

It wouldn't work to get too fancy about this. Candles and incense were fine for a traditional seduction scene but he wanted a more typical ambience. Beer and tacos . . . Well, beer, anyway.

"We never finished our beer," he said to Starsky. "Go sit down, and I'll get us a couple of cold ones."

Starsky gave him a baffled look, but obeyed, still silent. Hutch fished two cans out of the fridge and carried them back in without bothering to open them, not wanting to leave Starsky alone for too long. He handed one to his partner, popped the top on his own, and then plopped down next to Starsky on the couch, swinging his legs up to rest on the coffee table.

"Comfy?" Starsky asked sardonically. But he didn't shift away from the casual pressure of Hutch's hip against his.

"Mm."

He tilted the can up and took a long swallow, fresh and cold. Starsky mirrored the movement with a swift sideways glance, as though humoring him. Hutch burrowed a little deeper into the couch, and after a moment, Starsky relaxed against him. In the background, Elton's husky tenor crooned in eerily apt coincidence, I took a chance and changed your way of life; You misread my meaning when I met you, closed the door and left me blinded by the light . . .

"Let's see . . . how long did you say we've been together?" Hutch asked conversationally.

Starsky looked surprised, but counted swiftly on his fingers. "Including the Academy? Nine years, if you count from when we first met. Almost six years at Metro. Why?"

"Just wondered. Sometimes it feels like I've known you all my life."

"Wish . . . " Starsky began, but stopped. Hutch knew what he'd been going to say. Wish I had. Wish you had.

"Yeah. But I wonder, if you do know someone all your life, do you get to the point where there isn't anything to talk about any more, 'cause you already know everything about each other?"

Starsky was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Maybe you don't ever really get to that point. Maybe no matter how long you've been together you don't ever really know the other person all the way to the bottom."

"Tell me something I didn't know about you." After what Starsky had already told him, it was a crazy challenge, but it felt right.

Starsky gave him an incredulous look, but he just gazed back calmly. "Doesn't have to be anything major," he said. "Just something you know I don't know about. Like–what was your mom's pet name for you. Anything."

Starsky snorted. "I tell you that, I'm liable to hear it in the squad room some day. Not a chance."

Hutch shrugged, not promising anything. "I'll tell you what my sister used to call me," he offered.

"Never mind."

That was too quick a surrender, which meant that whatever name Starsky's Ma had used was worth finding out. But not now. "Well . . . anything, then."

"I–I got arrested, once, when I was a kid. For–shoplifting."

Hutch moved a finger and ran it down Starsky's hand where it gripped the edge of the couch. He would always have done that, even when they'd hardly known each other. "I said it didn't have to be anything major."

Starsky shrugged. "You said something you didn't know. That's something you didn't know."

"Tell me, then. Was it in New York?"

"Nah. After I came out here. Swiped some cigarettes from a convenience store." The memory seemed less embarrassing than Hutch would have expected. "My uncle whipped me. Tore the living daylights outta me."

The bewildered misery in Starsky's voice puzzled Hutch. "Guess you deserved it, didn't you?"

"Yeah, sure, but the store was selling cigarettes to kids, and he didn't even care. You could go in there and buy them and not even say they were for your mother, or anything. And beer, too, they didn't even ask how old you were. But I grabbed a pack of Camels, and got caught, and he whaled me until he made me cry."

Ah. That explained why the memory was still so vivid, especially for someone whose moral and legal priorities were usually in better order.

Starsky twitched his hand away from Hutch's still stroking finger. "Your turn," he said tightly.

With no choice but to play the game he'd started, Hutch said, "Uh, yeah." He tried to think of something Starsky didn't know about him. "Um."

Starsky leaned back on the couch with a snort. "C'mon, Mr. Sensitive Man of the Seventies, you mean you've completely bared your soul? There's gotta be something you haven't told me."

There were plenty of minor details about his early life that had never come out, but nothing of the magnitude of what Starsky had revealed, and he felt as though he should give back in like measure. And then he thought of one incident that he'd never mentioned, probably because it was so humiliating that he seldom remembered it. It scored right up there with being arrested for shoplifting on any scale you cared to use.

"Come on, give."

"Yeah." He could feel himself turning pink, and was thankful for the lack of light. "Yeah, uh, well, the very first time I tried to do it . . . "

"Do what?" Starsky said blankly, and then, "Oh!"

"Yeah. I, uh, well, this girl . . . we were kissing." He couldn't believe how embarrassed he felt. He should be able to make a joke of it.

"And then?" Starsky obviously wasn't going to let him off easy.

"Well, I was touching her, and getting all hot, you know." The words came easier. "And she was too. Let me touch her breasts. I didn't think she would–she was the niece of one of Dad's partners, and I figured she was Miss High Society, like her mother, but she let me put my hands inside her shirt."

He stopped again, because talking about this in front of Starsky was having a strange effect on him–hot and cold, tingling with incipient arousal and stiff with remembered shame. He felt Starsky's hand on his arm, just rubbing up and down. The atmosphere he'd wanted to create, to let them get close to each other again, had backfired on himself. But he made himself go on.

"She was wearing shorts–it was hot, middle of summer. Summer before our senior year. I'd made out with girls before, but nothing like that. You always knew how far you could go."

He paused, and saw Starsky's silent nod of agreement. "Yeah," Starsky said. "The sixties changed a lot of things."

"Well. Anyway. She let me touch her, and I was so turned on I thought I'd come in my pants, and she said, 'You want to do it?' And I was so shocked that I couldn't even think what she meant for a minute."

Starsky snorted appreciatively. "Not what you expected from Miss High and Mighty, I guess."

"No–shit, I figured any second she was going to shove me off and start screaming at me. And instead, she–she offered."

"So . . . did you?"

That was the hard part, and the gentleness of Starsky's voice meant that he'd probably already figured out the answer.

"I was going to. I wanted to, that's for sure. She took off her shorts and her panties, and spread her legs, right there on the ground, and it was so strange that I just shriveled up, and I couldn't. And she got all pissed, and put her clothes back on and got up and walked off. We were out in the woods behind my house, lying on a blanket. And she just walked off and got in her car and left."

It was coming out all disjointed and wrong, but he stammered through it. "And then–and then–you won't believe this, Starsk, but she told her brothers. Told them that I couldn't get it up for a girl. One of them came to me and said I'd better not ever go near his sister again. Filthy queer, he said. Like I would."

"And you spent the rest of your time in school making sure no one thought you were gay."

The compassion in Starsky's voice was almost too much to bear. His hand had stilled against Hutch's arm. Hutch made himself look at his partner. Starsky gazed steadily back, the love that had always been there shining out of his eyes. They would have come to this point a long time ago, Hutch thought, if they hadn't both shied away from it so vigorously.

"Guess that was pretty stupid, huh?" he asked shakily.

"I never thought you were gay," Starsky said again, as he had earlier, but this time Hutch heard regret in his voice.

He opened his mouth, and the little voice in his head said Shut up! and for once he listened to it. Despite a reputation to the contrary, Starsky was the one with verbal skills. Hutch could write better–even Starsky admitted that–but it was Starsk who led interrogations, Starsky who always had the right comeback on the tip of his tongue while Hutch searched for something to say. They let people think otherwise when it suited the circumstances, but they both knew the truth. So he kept his mouth shut and let Starsky find the words for them now.

"Do you think you are?" Starsky asked him directly.

"I don't know," Hutch said honestly. "Don't know if it matters. All I know is that you mean more to me than anyone I've ever known. You mean everything to me. If feeling that way about another guy makes you gay, then I guess I am."

This wasn't exactly the way the scenario had run in his fantasies, but it felt right. Starsky had lost the bowstring-tight tension that had been driving him earlier, caught up in the old familiar protectiveness for his partner. Hutch acknowledged, in an ironic thumbs-up at himself, the good old formula for dealing with Starsky–just put himself in some kind of trouble and Starsky came roaring in to fix it, all thoughts of his own problems set aside.

The silence drew out between them, but it was the same sort of comfortable silence that had punctuated many of their conversations. Starsky sighed a little, finally, and turned to him, still saying nothing, just gazing into his face. Hutch let him look for a while, but when the perusal began to drag out, he felt himself begin to smile.

"I really haven't changed," he said. "Same old Hutch."

Starsky sniffed, but his face softened. "Same old Starsky, same old Hutch. 's funny, but you know, I think you're right. Maybe that's what had me so worked up."

"What?"

"I guess–thinking if you weren't the same old Hutch, if you were . . . queer, it would still be like–like going to the bars, only it'd be you instead of some stranger. And the easier it seemed to be for you, the harder it got for me, thinking about you being just another guy who–who sucked me off." He gave Hutch a look of such embarrassed misery that it was almost funny.

Hutch thought about that for a moment. It made some kind of crazy sense, but he wasn't sure how Starsky had gotten such an idea to begin with.

"How did you think it might ever happen with us?" he asked finally. "Did you think we'd be talking some time and you'd tell me? Or . . . how?"

"Hutch, I never thought you'd find out at all!" Starsky burst out. "I didn't mean to tell you today. It just–" He exhaled violently. "It just came out."

Hutch suspected that for the truth to have come out in such an explosive way it must have been roiling around just under the surface for a lot longer than Starsky thought, but they could talk about that another time. "What if it hadn't just come out?" he asked. "What would you have done if you'd decided some day to tell me how you felt?"

"Shit, I don't know. A seduction scene, you mean?" He glanced at their beers, and at the stereo, a smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. "Is that what this is? I thought you were supposed to get candles, and wine, and fancy food."

"You want wine, don't stock the fridge with cheap beer," Hutch told him. "You got what was available. Now if I'd been setting this up . . . " He realized where that was leading and shut his mouth fast, but Starsky took him up on it instantly.

"Oh yeah? I wanna know–come on, what would you have done?"

Hutch could feel the color rising again, but hell, he'd walked right into that one. And it was the opportunity he'd been looking for–a chance to act out the setting that all his erotic fantasies had found so alluring.

"Well . . . first off, I wouldn't fix you a meal. You'd know something was going on, for sure."

"Do I get candles?"

Hutch considered candles. "Yeah, I might light candles. You wouldn't think that was too weird, for me."

"And then what?"

"Oh, maybe we'd watch a game on tv. Has to be something we might do anyway, you know? So you didn't think I was up to anything."

Starsky leaned back on the couch, arms crossed and a doubtful expression on his face. Before he could say anything, Hutch moved the arm that was already across the back of the couch and rested it very lightly against Starsky's shoulder. "Tired, buddy?" he asked.

Starsky gave him a puzzled glance. "No–" and then his eyes narrowed, and very slowly he leaned back into Hutch's arm. "Maybe just a little," he offered, a tiny smile hovering on his face.

Hutch ruffled the curls on the nape of his neck, letting his hand linger there a bit longer than usual. "Wanna turn around, I'll rub your shoulders."

Starsky promptly shifted around on the couch. "Take you up on that any day," he said, and Hutch grinned behind his back. This was turning out better than he'd ever thought it could. Fantasy was twice as much fun when your phantom partner came alive and colluded with you in it.

He kneaded Starsky's back and shoulders gently, a more sensual massage than he would have allowed himself before. Starsky relaxed very slowly, with long soft exhalations and a definite list in Hutch's direction. By the time Hutch was ready to move on to something else, Starsky was practically leaning back into his lap. An ear was handy, so he pursed his lips and blew a soft raspberry at it.

Starsky twitched, but didn't take off like a rocket, as he would probably have done any other time–which confirmed Hutch's suspicion that the ear had been deliberately offered.

"Blow in my ear, I follow you anywhere?" Starsky asked lazily. His voice had dropped half an octave, sultry in a way Hutch had never heard, even when he'd watched Starsky chasing a new conquest. He could definitely get used to this.

"Oh?" he teased back. "Is that all it takes? I thought you were really gonna make me work for this."

He leaned forward to salute the ear again, and at the same moment, Starsky turned his head to look at him, and whatever Starsk had been about to say came out as a little gasp instead, because their mouths were barely inches apart. Starsky froze, all levity gone. The moment so exquisitely, perfectly matched the corresponding instant in Hutch's daydreams that it was almost an effort to let it go. "God, Starsk," he murmured, wanting to hold on to this forever, to freeze the moment in time so he could take it out and enjoy it over and over. The next instant was even better, though, because Starsky very slowly twisted back against him and sweetly lifted his mouth to Hutch, letting go the fear, breaking through the barriers–trembling a little, but in full surrender.

Their first real kiss, while they were dancing, had been nice, no question, but they had been two other people then, working at cross purposes and blind to each other's needs–he in full pursuit of what he'd thought he wanted, Starsky trying to hold on to his image of his partner. That kiss had felt good, but this one was setting off little explosions all over his body, nerve endings firing everywhere they touched. When Starsky's lips parted, inviting him in, he shook all over, as if with a chill.

"Oh, God," he said again helplessly, a prayer if he'd ever uttered one. When their tongues met, the sensation burned a path all the way to his cock. Starsky made a guttural sound and rolled fully over against him and they fell back on the couch with Starsky on top, clutching frantically at whatever they could reach of each other. Starsky fumbled ineffectively at his waistband, and Hutch shoved him away long enough to lift up and push his slacks and underwear out of the way. Starsky took the hint and yanked off his own shorts and came back to him, and nothing, nothing! in all the years, in all the ways, of having sex, had prepared him for the desperate thrust of Starsky's cock against his own, and the look on Starsky's face when he threw back his head and cried out Hutch's name, and the sensation of his hot come flooding out all over Hutch's cock. A light like a thousand suns burst before Hutch's eyes, and a sound he'd never heard himself make before came from his throat.

When he came back to himself, he was lying awkwardly on the couch with his head at an angle against the armrest and Starsky shaking all over in his arms. He tightened his hold on his partner. "Starsk, babe, what is it–what's wrong?" Starsky raised his head and there were tears streaming down his cheeks, but the joy in his face was almost too much to bear.

"I'm all right," he said, swallowing hard. "Shit–sorry, I'm dripping all over you."

He started to say "sorry" again, but Hutch pulled him back and kissed him hard enough that their teeth bumped together. Starsky's tongue came so deep into his mouth that it was like having his cock there all over again, and his own cock throbbed and jerked like it hadn't done after an orgasm since he was a teenager.

Starsky broke away from the kiss and dropped his head to Hutch's shoulder, still shaking, and Hutch stroked down his back and whispered, "Love you, Starsk, love you, babe, always love you." All the sloppy sentimentalities that he'd ever heard were running through his head, and he knew he'd inflict them all on Starsky eventually, if only to tease, but for now, all he could say was, "I love you," like a broken record.

There was no answer from Starsky, but he turned his head and relaxed into a dead weight on Hutch's chest. "Too heavy?" he murmured, after a moment.

Hutch whispered back, "Never too heavy for me," and in the silence broken only by their breathing, Starsky said in a barely audible voice, "Love you, Hutch."

Hutch reached up to tug at his curls gently. "Yeah. I know." It felt like an exchange of vows, except they'd gotten it backwards, he thought–they'd said "till death do us part," a long time ago, like one of those arranged marriages where one day, like some kind of crazy miracle, you woke up and realized you'd fallen in love with the one you'd promised to spend your life with.

He shifted a little to make them more comfortable, and Starsky slipped between his legs. He could feel the heavy weight of Starsky's cock slide along his balls to his ass. Starsky froze and looked up at him, almost as though he thought Hutch might take offense.

"You want that, don't you?" Hutch asked him, a little breathlessly. "I do–I want everything we can do. Everything, Starsk."

The relief and joy in Starsky's eyes were all the answer he needed. "I never did it with anyone else," Starsky told him solemnly.

Hutch reached down to cup his ass. "Saving yourself for me," he said smugly. Starsky made a face at him, the long-suffering expression he did so well, and their real world settled into place around him again. Tomorrow they would have to go back to it–back to the job, to Dobey, to the streets. Back to people who'd be happy to kill them for a hell of a lot less than just going to bed together.

Same old Starsky. Same old Hutch. Same old world. Brand new dream. "Sweet dreams, partner," he whispered, as Starsky, who was now getting really heavy, began to snore against his chest.

END