Epiphany

976

Hutch was beginning to regret all the complaining he’d been doing. He’d convinced Starsky to quit police work by telling him that he’d be happy as long as they were together and he’d done nothing but gripe since they started working here. But of all the places he ever thought he’d end up, fast food was not one of them. It was demeaning for him. As far as he could tell, Starsky was truly enjoying himself.

 

This one could probably fall into the Alternate universe category, because it’s hard to imagine them in the ‘fast food’ setting, but it’s just one of those ‘what ifs’ you just gotta try.

---

“Tell me again why the hell we’re doing this.” Hutch tugged at his uniform top and flexed his broad shoulders in the too-tight garment. “And quickly, please, before I blow a gasket.”

The dinner crowd had steamrolled their way through the place and it looked much like a war zone. The two ex-detectives were on their break and Hutch was frazzled. His hair was damp and hung limp, with little tendrils curling around his face. He had red spots all over his arms from the French fryer, making him look like he was suffering from some exotic disease.

He noticed Starsky was staring at him with a cow-eyed expression on his face.

“What’s the matter with you? You look like you’ve been pole-axed.”

“Did you know that you’re beautiful?”

“Keep your voice down, Starsk. There are still people eating here. If that’s what you call this crap.” He pried his hamburger apart and studied it closely. After inspecting it for a few seconds, he dropped it back down on the paper that it had been wrapped in and wadded it up.

Starsky got excited and started flopping his hand around, groping toward the offending morsel of food.

“What’d you do that for? I would have eaten it.” he growled testily.

Hutch rolled his eyes.

“You work here, moron,” he said, pointing toward the counter. “Shovel them in as fast as you can and you still don’t have to pay for them. I can’t understand why anyone would want to put down good money for this.” He shivered in disgust.

“I don’t think they’re that bad.”

“Obviously.” Hutch looked pointedly at the small mountain of trash in front of the other man. “Anyway, back to the question…I don’t know if I’m in the middle of a particularly disturbing nightmare or have been drop-kicked into the Emerald City, but I don’t remember signing on for slave duty aboard the Titanic.”

“You decided that we were going to quit our jobs and there was no talking you out of it. You bullied me into handing in our resignations right away, just before Christmas. We didn’t want to use our savings for Christmas presents, so we signed up with a temp job place. This was the only temporary position they could find where we could work together and that was part of our deal, Hutch…you know it was.”

“It sounds a little familiar around the edges. But I don’t quite remember it like that. Who is this mystical ‘we’ you keep talking about? You got a mouse in your pocket I don’t know about?”

Starsky’s eyebrows made the trip up and down a few times.

“No, but I got a monster in my pants,” he quipped in his best Groucho imitation. “Just us closing up tonight. Wanna meet me later back by the shake machine, partner?”

Hutch ignored the lewd proposition. “Technically, you shouldn’t be calling me partner. You are my boss, now.”

Starsky actually puffed out his chest. “They could tell right away that I’d make a better night manager.”

“Didn’t have anything at all to do with that pimply-faced manager being a recent transplant from Brooklyn and having an aunt who actually goes to the same synagogue as your mom does, did it?”

“Quit being so grumpy, Hutch. It’s only till Christmas. Then we’ll get something better while we’re deciding what we want to be when we grow up.”

“We have plenty of time. I know for a fact that you never will. I wish I’d been home when that temp agency called. You had no business accepting this job for the both of us. There is no way.”

“Something’s better than nothing, Hutch.”

“Oh, well now, that’s profound. Are you trying to impress me with your enormous brain?”

Starsky looked at him skeptically for a second. “Well, I think I have a better than average one.”

“Maybe, but your entire frontal lobe is located in a position where you could easily lobotomize yourself if you’re not careful zipping up your pants.”

“You set me up for that, didn’t you?”

Hutch chuckled. “Just like a bowling pin.” He licked his index finger and marked himself a point in the air. “Strike.”

“How’d you get so mean?”

“Working for minimum wage with no benefits, taking abuse from those either less intelligent or younger than I am, working with teenage girls who stand and stare at me instead of working….”

“Bullshit, you were mean when I met you.”

Hutch was beginning to regret all the complaining he’d been doing. He’d convinced Starsky to quit police work by telling him that he’d be happy as long as they were together and he’d done nothing by gripe since they started working here. But of all the places he ever thought he’d end up, fast food was not one of them. It was demeaning for him. As far as he could tell, Starsky was truly enjoying himself.

“I’m sorry, Starsk, I’ll try not to bitch so much. I know it’s only temporary.”

“Well, if nothing else, we’re saving on food, aren’t we?” Starsky prompted, looking like a little kid, trying to find anything good about a bad situation just to please his dad.

“That’s true. I just wish there was something green around here to eat.”

“There’s lettuce back there. Comes in the Double Grand-burger.” Starsky was feeling very defensive about what he’d gotten them into.

“I’ve seen that lettuce and I repeat…I wish there was something green around here. I wonder why they don’t offer a salad in these fast-food joints.”

Starsky laughed. “Like that would ever happen.” He stood up. “C’mon…up…up, we gotta get back to work.”

“Starsky, if your balloon doesn’t land pretty quick, I may be forced to take a pin to it.”

As they headed back toward their workstations, a young woman approached them. “I have a complaint about the food. Who would I speak to?”

Smiling with innocent charm, Hutch gestured with his thumb over his shoulder.

“That’d be him…the night manager.” and he walked a few steps away to watch.

Starsky shifted into what Hutch called full flirt mode. ‘He just can’t help himself…it comes as naturally to him as breathing.’ he thought. He’d always made out fine with his country boy shy manner and gorgeous blond looks, but he wasn’t sorry that particular part of his life was over. Even though he carped a lot, life with his aggravating and somewhat perplexing lover was very fulfilling and there was definitely enough variety and spontaneity in their sex life to keep him content, if not a little worn out. He wouldn’t change a thing…except this damn job. He felt a little pang of jealousy as he always did when it occurred to him that Starsky might miss the thrill of the hunt, the triumph of a new conquest.

The young lady went away smiling and Starsky joined his mate.

“Well, did you get her phone number?” Hutch growled.

Starsky targeted him with a withering look.

“If you’re done pissin’ in all the corners to mark your territory, we have a job to do. The customer’s always right, you know,” he said in a lofty voice.

“Sorry, I forgot we have a duty to mankind.” Hutch said in a mournful voice. “How low the mighty have fallen.”

Starsky stopped and turned around. Hutch momentarily shut his eyes as if to ward off what he knew was coming. Here it was…the look…the one that he both adored and despised…the look that made him want to possess the power to stop the world and re-create it into just whatever his partner desired. The pure, unadulterated love shining from deep midnight blue eyes pleading for understanding stopped him cold. That cock-eyed worshipful smile that could, and had…charmed the pants off of half the female population of the free world, the hair that he loved to weave his fingers through, pulling the curly head down toward….

Hutch felt lightheaded…disoriented. He felt like he must be dying, drifting out of his body, suspended weightless inches above the floor. The two of them were standing alone in the light and all was misty darkness around them. Colored lights drifted here and there like butterflies. He fell into those impossibly fathomless eyes, and could see the stark, sweet, bare essence of what made up the man he loved and it was so beautiful, so pure, both inside and out. He felt like he’d been standing there for hours, studying the familiar, yet somehow visually enhanced contours of Starsky’s face and body. In an instant, it came to him He would willingly follow this man, this beautiful man, past the gates of death, walk by his side through the flames of hell and take his back against the devil himself and his minions if need be. And he knew that Starsky would do the same for him. The love that he felt was a physical ache deep inside his flesh. Which of the gods had singled them out for this kind of love and why? Why did he fight it? If his dark-haired lover should get them a job mucking out stables, he’d be there knee-deep in horse shit right beside him. He might complain, but he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. ‘Oh, God, let me die happy right now.’ he groaned deep within his visceral regions.

“Hutch? H-u-tch!”

Reality returned with a force that nearly toppled him to the floor.

Starsky hovered over him, concerned.

“Are you all right? You didn’t answer me.”

“I’m okay, Starsk. I think I just had an epiphany.”

The other man instantly turned solicitous. “You’re just not used to the food here yet. Come on back and I’ll get you an Alka-Seltzer. Does it hurt much?”

Hutch smiled tremulously. “More than you know, buddy. More than you’ll ever know.”

Hutch felt physically weakened as he followed Starsky back to the counter and behind the scenes of the Incredible Grandburger fast food establishment.

“Hutch, quick…c’mere!” Starsky yelled from the back much later as they were cleaning up.

“I’m almost done, Starsk,” he said somewhat irritably. “Can’t it keep?”

He trudged back, shocked to see Starsky standing there with his jeans around his thighs,

his thick, rigid cockhead standing up, straining to break free.

“I don’t believe you. You think we’re gonna do it here in front of god and everybody?”

“Nobody’s here, Hutch, and I just gotta have you. Bend over that thing and I’ll do ya.”

“Jeezus, that’s the French fryer! It’s still hot! You, being the manager, wouldn’t know that, I suppose.”

Starsky was comically inspecting every surface around him for its feasibility as a sex utility. He looked desperately at Hutch. “I gotta have you, babe.”

“Let’s just wait until we get home, Starsk. I’m feeling kinda inhibited about doing it here.”

“Come on, Hutch…please.”

“We can go into the junior G-man’s office, huh?”

“But it won’t be the same.”

“Sure, it will, we’ll just leave the door open. It’s a tiny closet, but at least it’s got a desk.”

“Okay, it’s better than nothing.”

Walking back to the tiny office, Hutch quipped, “Just what turns you on so about this place, all the raw meat lying around?”

Starsky smiled. “The tiny element of danger, I suppose. It’s a public place, but we’re not liable to be disturbed.”

Hutch dutifully dropped his pants, bemused more than aroused by the whole thing. He soon began to feel more than a mild interest as his lover caressed him to get him ready.

Starsky started using his mouth on the other man’s neck, shoulders and down his back, concentrating on Hutch’s pleasure, rubbing his butt and occasionally allowing a finger to stray into the opening between. Hutch was more than ready when Starsky whispered in a love-besotted voice.

“You ready? I put French fry oil on it so it’ll go in easier.”

Hutch rolled his eyes. If it didn’t go in relatively easy by now, he wanted to know why, but Starsky was an always solicitous sex partner, making sure that he gave as good as he got, if not better. He shifted a bit to give his lover the easiest entry.

“I love you, babe.”

Hutch was just about to reply, more than ready to receive Starsky’s homage, when a disembodied voice came out of pure air.

“Do you have any plain buns here?”

Starsky, bewildered for a second, looked down at the part of Hutch that was right before him. Then awareness returned. “Hutch, didn’t you turn off the squawk-box?”

The laughter was starting to well up in Hutch’s throat. His cock had gone instantly from rock-hard to a dead, lifeless object and although that wasn’t really funny, the situation and Starsky’s immediate response to it grabbed him and he knew it wasn’t going to let him go for awhile.

The voice came again, more insistent.

“Buns, do you have plain or sesame seed? I don’t like getting those seeds in my teeth.”

Starsky ran to the order window, leaving Hutch to collapse with his pants twisted around his legs. He lay there, laughing, unable to breathe.

“We’re not open!” Starsky growled.

“You’re not?”

“No, we’re not.”

“But the light’s are on.”

“Well, nobody’s home. Now get outta here!” Starsky yelled, his patience teetering on the edge.

“Could you just open up long enough to fix me something? Nobody else is open either.”

Hutch was feeling a little more composed and walked out of the office fully dressed. He noticed Starsky was so upset that his pants were still around his ankles.

“The customer’s always right, Starsky.”

“Put a sock in it, Hutch. That doesn’t count when we aren’t open.”

“Okay…you’re the boss.”

That seemed to put things in perspective for Starsky. Turning to the mike, he said sweetly, “No, it’s against company policy, sir, but if you come around tomorrow, I’ll see that you get two Grandburgers free of charge.”

“Very nicely done, Starsk.”

“I suppose sex is out now.”

“It most certainly is.”

“Can we do it when we get home, Hutch?”

“As long as you don’t have sesame-seed buns. I sure wouldn’t want those little buggers all over the sheets.” The laughter trailed behind him as he returned to his work.

The End.