Saving Starsky

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143,609 words.

Saving Starsky follows Unbreakable.

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PROLOGUE

“Suppose he thinks I’m crazy and has me admitted?” Starsky asked.

At first, Hutch ignored him and instead rode that morning in the passenger seat of Starsky’s car with the window rolled down and the crisp spring air tickl­ing his face. But he eventually broke from his enjoyment of the early day’s peace­ful­ness and replayed Starsky’s question in his mind. “It’s com-mit­­ted,” he corrected him.

“Committed. Admitted. What fucking difference does it make?” Starsky retaliated. He maneuvered his red and white-striped Ford Gran Torino through light city traffic and fumed over Hutch’s answer to his serious ques­tion. “Why is my language more important to you than the point I’m making?”

“It’s not your language that’s at issue,” Hutch said with a grunt of enjoyment—because he knew he continued to bait Starsky. “It’s your gram­­mar.”

“You just did it again,” Starsky noted, frowning in disgust. “Can’t we have a conversation without all the spelling checks?”

“If you used your words correctly, we could,” Hutch decided. “For example, it’s not your spelling I was correcting.” He had to admit he enjoyed the banter, even that early in the morning, even in light of the circumstances that put them on the road before seven a.m., even despite Starsky’s frustration. “But I got your point,” he added. “You’re afraid he’ll think you’re crazy for French kissing me—you, a straight guy; oh, and me, too. The salient question, however, is: What does it say about me that you think you might be committed to an insane asylum for kissing me?”

“C’mon,” Starsky implored him, angrily, “be serious.” He gripped the steering wheel to purge his annoyance, but it simply got replaced with his anxiety. “Suppose he thinks I’m, you know, suppose he thinks there’s something wrong with me? And don’t go saying there’s a whole list of things wrong with me. Talk to me about this seriously, will ya?”

“He’s not going to think you’re crazy,” Hutch assured him. He didn’t know Dr. Steven Jade, had never met him, but the licensed psych­ologist was highly recommended by Starsky’s girlfriend, so he was sure Jade had to be a reasonable man. “And he’s not going to think there’s anything wrong with you, either—because there isn’t. I don’t have a list.”

Starsky looked over at Hutch just as Hutch looked at him. Those blue eyes were sincere, Starsky noticed, and compelled him to believe, too. Hutch wasn’t facetious. He did care about Starsky’s dilemma and Starsky’s con­cerns. It was written all over that perfect face of his. The silent exchange they shared softened them both.

“Pull over,” Hutch then said, “and let’s have another round.” He couldn’t help but feel extra close to Starsky at that minute, given the reason they were on their way to seek professional counsel­ing. Kiss­ing Starsky was a pleasure he rather enjoyed, despite the punishment he always got from it—whether it be verbal or physical.

Starsky crookedly smiled and put his eyes back on the road. “Okay, so maybe I’m not crazy, and maybe there isn’t anything wrong with me, but there’s definitely something off, don’t you think? You haven’t given me any evidence. You can’t just say everything is okay when every­­thing is obviously not okay.”

“Yeah,” Hutch said lightly. He looked out the window again and watched the city scenery pass his gaze, disappointed that Starsky hadn’t pulled over for a kiss, but also appreciating all the reasons he couldn’t.

“Yeah, what?”

“Yeah,” Hutch repeated. “I don’t have any evidence. All I have is what I feel and what I feel is okay with me.”

“It’s okay with you that we French kiss? You’re still not bothered at all by that, especially how much we’ve done it now?”

“Yeah,” Hutch said again. “I don’t have issues with it.”

“How can I be this fucked up over it and you don’t have issues with it?” Before Hutch could speak, Starsky quickly said, “Don’t answer that. I don’t want another lecture about ‘it is what it is.’” He slowly braked to a stop when the light turned red, and then used the stall to breathe deeply. “Maybe you don’t grasp the concept, hm?” he asked. He looked over at Hutch again and made a connection for longer that time, caught momentarily by the affectionate looks in their eyes, by their bonding familiarity with each other, by their unusual circumstance, by their appear­ances—the blue-eyed blond and the blue-eyed brunette, neatly groomed and dressed that morning—and by their forever interest in each other’s lives.

But Starsky had asked a question and Hutch finally heard it. “I don’t grasp the concept?” he mulled. “Oh, I think I get it. You corner me and put your mouth on mine. You corner me so you can put your mouth on mine. We kiss. Kiss, I say,” he said with emph­asis, to let Starsky know he knew the exact details of the ‘concept.’ “We suck on each other’s lips and tongues. And it’s wet and it’s sensual and it’s erotic and it’s warm. Actually, it’s rather hot and, dare I say, leads to our boners.”

Starsky stared in disbelief at him. He didn’t like how casually Hutch had described their behavior to him. It made him extremely un­com­fortable and it showed on his face. It was only when a horn sounded behind him that he realized the light had turned green, so he broke eye contact with Hutch to step on the accelerator. The movement forward made him anxious and he audibly exhaled to release it.

Hutch didn’t retract his words. Instead, he embellished them. “Grant­­ed … your hard-ons are apparently more compelling than mine—which makes you more frustrated—but you’ve always had a stronger drive than I have, so maybe that’s why.”

Starsky had to look out the side window for a second to escape what he heard Hutch say. The insight had made him more em­bar­rassed.

“It pisses you off,” Hutch continued, knowing he’d pushed Starsky emotionally out of the car, but not stopping the remainder of his answer, “so you take it out on me by poking or punching or slapping me afterward—as if it’s my fault I got cornered.”

Starsky looked through the windshield again and huffed out a twinge of panic. Were it not for the concentration required of him to drive through traffic, he may have had a full-blown attack instead. He definitely felt the sweat break over him.

“But who knows?” Hutch imagined, turning his attention to the scenery again, “maybe I’d have stronger erections too, if, unlike you, I didn’t get punched in the middle of having them.”

When no further words were said, when the car returned to the morn­­ing’s peacefulness and it seemed Hutch had finally let him up, Starsky mumbled a quiet, but audible, and therefore heard, “you’re such a dick,” under his breath.

“See what I mean?” Hutch noted, riled. “I can’t even talk about it without getting punished for it. So, what do you think? Do I grasp the con­cept—or not?”

* * *

KISSING KEN

“Can I get you boys anything? Tea? Beer?”

“Water’s good for me,” Hutch said. “Room temperature if you have it.”

“I’ll take a beer,” Starsky said. It was early morning, but he thought it might help settle his nerves.

Dr. Steven Jade disappeared into his pantry to retrieve the refresh­ments after he invited his new clients to make themselves comfortable in his office. He was curious about their desire to see him; he’d coun­seled married couples too often to count, but he’d never held sessions for two men; gay men, yes, singly, but not both men together. Still, he didn’t think Hutch and Starsky were gay; the brief conver­sation he’d had over the phone with Starsky when they made the appointment gave Jade the impression that they sought his help for business mediation. But Jade was intri­gued when he emerged from his pantry with their drinks and found the men side-by-side on the sofa. They sat so close, they touched each other. Jade expected at least one of them to have chosen a chair.

He handed a bottle of room-temperature water to Hutch and a cold beer to Starsky. Then Jade sat in the armchair on the opposite side of the coffee table, across from the men, and popped the lid on his iced tea.

“Nice office,” Starsky noted.

“My daughter decorated it,” Jade proudly explained. He looked at the room with them and admired it all over again. Though he didn’t appear old enough to have interior decorating offspring, he was actually in his late forties and had a son even older than she. His office was dressed in warm colors of green and brown, comfortable furni­ture, and organized bookcases, more like a living room than any office, and his clients had the choice of the lounge area or the two chairs in front of his desk. These men had chosen the more inviting sofa.

“She’s award-winning,” Jade added about his daughter.

“Maybe we should hire her,” Starsky said to Hutch. “Our office could use a professional touch, don’t you think?”

“I do the hiring and you pay the bill?” Hutch answered with a wink.

“I think it’s the other way around,” Starsky playfully argued.

“What do you boys do?” Jade was cued to ask them.

“We’re private detectives,” Hutch told him. He comfortably leaned into the sofa, drank a long swallow of water, and then gave the doc­tor more details. “Before that, we worked for the city police depart­­ment doing relatively the same job.”

“What line of investigation are you in?”

“Homicide. Rape. Kidnapping. Other crimes of violence.”

Jade had a brief thought that anyone in that line of work should get regular counseling.

Starsky followed Hutch’s lead and melted into the cushions behind him, but he didn’t make eye contact with Jade; he felt too awkward and embarrassed to look at the doctor because he knew their reason for being there was so personal. He left the answers to Hutch.

“How long have you guys worked together then?” Jade asked.

“About ten years,” Hutch said.

Jade whistled. “How long in ‘private’?”

Hutch looked to Starsky for confirmation and then replied, “About a month now.”

“Have you hit a snag?”

“In business?”

Jade was surprised to think it could have been anything else. There were no telltale signs in body lang­uage, speech, or manner—other than that they sat close to each other—that made him think the men were in an intimate relationship together, but one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. “I take it you’re here for a per­sonal problem, then,” he said.

Hutch was annoyed to learn that Starsky hadn’t told Jade why they wanted to talk to him. The picture focused: Starsky had solicited the highly recommended cognitive psychologist, the way he would an interior decorator, but he left the details to Hutch; in this case, to bare their souls for them. When Starsky’s avoidance of both Jade’s question and Hutch’s annoyance confirmed his sus­picion, Hutch opened the dialogue.

“Personal problem?” he quipped. “It depends on which one of us you ask.” He drank water, looked into Jade’s light brown eyes, and clar­ified, “I’m fine with things, but he’s troubled. I think he’s tem­por­arily confused is all. He doesn’t need a cure—he’s not sick—so don’t feel you’ve got some psycho­babble challenge on your hands; he just wants some­one—other than me—to delve into his mind and force him to answer to himself. If we come to the same con­clusion with an expert that I’ve come to just from having known him so long, then he’ll pay me back for the sessions.” He tried a laugh, but Jade only half-smiled, so he sobered. “Okay. It looks like I’ll be the one to break the ice.”

Jade could tell right away that Ken Hutchinson—the taller, leaner, better-dressed, blue-eyed blond—was emotionally more confident; he’d been the first to speak, while David Starsky—the nearly as tall, almost as lean, casually dressed, dark-haired, sleepy-eyed one—seemed not to even want to be there; he instead studied the room. Or he at least pre­­tended to study the room. Jade made sincere eye contact with Hutch. He wouldn’t waste their time, either. “What can you tell me?” he asked.

Hutch didn’t know where to begin. In the end, it was actually a complicated and highly personal matter, one that few would under­stand and appreciate, let alone find acceptable, but Starsky wanted therapy and Hutch would give him any­thing—including professional help. “I can tell you that you won’t find two people closer than he and I are.”

“I assumed you were close when you chose to sit together,” Jade confessed.

Hutch leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and slowly twirled the water bottle in his hands. “Well, we’re so close—emo­tion­­ally, intellectually, phys­ically—that we’ve been mistaken for gay, but we’ve never had sex with each other. We’re not that close.”

Starsky borrowed Hutch’s line. “Actually, that depends on which one of us you ask.”

“Oh?” Jade then imagined that one of them had made an un­wanted pass at the other, though it didn’t explain why they’d sit so closely. Or maybe one had suspicions about the other—or about himself and there­fore wanted to explore the deepest parts of his mind. But that didn’t explain why they’d want to share sessions, either. Jade was genuinely intrigued. “Then let me ask you.” He wanted to hear from Starsky, giv­en that Starsky was the man most ‘troubled’ and the one to have made the innuen­do. “Have you had sex with Ken?”

Starsky looked at Jade. “Yeah—sort of.”

Hutch glanced over his shoulder at Starsky to reprimand him with a scowl for his half-assed answer. “Why don’t you tell him why you’re here?”

“You tell him,” Starsky said.

“You’re the one who wants his help.”

“You tell him,” Starsky repeated.

“Show some backbone, buddy boy.”

Starsky rolled his eyes. “Don’t let him fool you, doc,” he said. “He’s all bark.”

Jade leaned in his chair and looked at each of them. He already decided Hutch was wrong: The ses­sions with these men would be a challenge after all. And he liked it. “I can’t help but think you both bite,” he commented. “So, Ken … your turn.”

“Call me Hutch. Call him Starsky.”

“Okay … Hutch … have you had sex with Starsky?”

“Define sex.”

“See what I mean?” Starsky warned Jade. “He dissects words. That’s why I need your help, to get around this guy. He’s been fucking with me for weeks over this thing.”

“What thing?”

“Having sex with each other.”

“You mean, ‘sort of’ having sex with each other,” Jade clarified.

“Right. I mean, we haven’t, you know, been naked with each other, handled each other’s man parts or anything, but we’ve…”

“Kissed each other,” Hutch said, to finish Starsky’s sentence. “He calls that sex because we’re guys; I say it’s not.”

“I’d call it sex if I kissed a woman that way, too,” Starsky count­ered. “French kissing is sex.” He hit Hutch’s arm. “Tell him.”

“I think we just did.”

They looked at Jade—and he almost smiled. They were certainly livelier than any divorcing married couple, and their predicament fas­cinated him already. He drank from his iced tea bottle, capped it, and set it on the coffee table. “Here’s what I have: You guys worked as police detectives for a decade and then, about a month ago, you started your own business. Somewhere in that time, for some reason, you French kissed each other. The kiss troubles you,” he said to Starsky, and then to Hutch, he said, “and you’re fine with it. But you’ve both apparently been arguing the more pressing point: Was the kiss sex­ual? So what if it was? Is the question that explains why you’re in coun­sel­ing closer to, ‘Does that kiss make me gay?’”

Starsky mocked a pistol with his hand and aimed it at Jade.

“Kissing like that doesn’t make us gay,” Hutch argued with Starsky.

“But he thinks it might,” Jade concluded.

“He fears it might,” Hutch corrected him. “He’s hoping you’ll settle it for him one way or another. Then I guess he can either freak out or take the next step into gay sex—except it won’t be with me.”

“You’re not gay,” Jade surmised.

“I’m not anything. I don’t put labels on myself—or anyone else, for that matter. I am what I am. What I have with Sara is what I have with Sara and what I have with him is what I have with him. I’m not going further than a kiss and he can’t make me. I reserve my ‘man parts’ for women, that’s all. As far as I’m concerned, Starsky’s not gay, either, and what he has with Grace is what he has with Grace and what he has with me is what he has with me. It’s just the way things are.”

“This is what I’ve been dealing with,” Starsky explained to Jade. “He’s sure of himself, so he figures I should be sure of myself, too.”

“I think you’re confused,” Hutch told him—again. “And you’re con­fused because you think you have to categorize or explain every damned area of your life when some things are just the way they are. How many times do I have to say it?”

Jade made an effort to ease the tension. “Tell me how this more inti­mate contact between the two of you began.”

* * *

Hutch woke from his peaceful doze with a start when Starsky drop­ped his arm across him and the jarring blow to his stomach made him open his eyes and cuss out loud. “Do you have to be such a dick?” he growled.

Starsky lay on his back in the tall grass beside him. He grunted and wisecracked, “What’s that you say about my dick?”

Hutch ignored him, closed his eyes again, and covered his face in the bend of his elbow. “I meant to say asshole,” he mumbled. Truth be told, he couldn’t have been more content than he was that morning, despite Starsky’s abuse.

Hutch was the Nature Boy between them and doz­ing on his back under the shade trees in the growing grass beside his partner, with an early spring blue sky overhead and the sweet songs of birds in the fresh­ly leafed trees, was all he needed to stall his urge to further punish his confidant. And it had been such a tranquil morn­ing up until then, too; they talked about building Starsky’s house right where they lay, but not until they’d gotten into a playful wrestling match and ended up in the grass laugh­ing like boys. All Hutch wanted to do then was nap. Life had returned to normal—and it had been long overdue.

But Starsky had other plans. “Make up your mind,” he prodded Hutch. “Am I a dick or an ass­hole? And whichever one I am, you must be the other.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Starsky rolled onto his side and right into Hutch; any closer and he would have been on top of him. “I need to talk to you about something,” he said. He had stopped playing.

Hutch wanted to sleep a while longer. He thought if he pretended not to hear Starsky, his partner would leave him alone and he could get back to his dreaming—but he should have known better.

Starsky nudged Hutch several times, succeeding only to keep him awake. He lifted his eyes then and gazed across the meadow for a few minutes. It was so quiet—save the occasional bird song and bee buzz—that he could hear Hutch lightly breathing. It was, admittedly, a perfect day. It had become an almost perfect life again, too. But for some reason, and one Starsky didn’t fully understand himself, he wanted that final bit of insig­ni­ficant closure. He pushed Hutch. “Look at me.”

Hutch didn’t budge except to outstretch his other arm on the ground beside him. “Dream on, buddy boy,” he said in a whimsical voice. He was fully aware that Starsky lay up against him, pressed along his length there in the grass like two lovers might have been, and that Star­sky genuinely sought a connection with him. But he himself was sin­cerely lazy and didn’t want to abandon the peacefulness of the day and the comfort of the green grass for another of Starsky’s emotional purges—even as neces­sary as they’d been and probably still were. So, for a while, Hutch’s mind contentedly drifted to nowhere. He was thought­less, sort of liber­ated from just about everything in his life. “Give me another five min­utes, will ya?” he implored Starsky.

Starsky gripped Hutch’s chin and shook him. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

Hutch still didn’t appease him. He didn’t even smile, though he found Starsky’s physical attempt to get his attention rather amusing. “What could you possibly tell me that you haven’t already?” He couldn’t imagine there was more to know about the days and nights Starsky had been held hostage; Hutch had seen and heard enough to make him sick for a life­time. “Is it about what they did to you?”

“No.”

The answer pleased Hutch and paved the way for a couple more minutes of blissful sleep. “Then it can wait,” he decided.

Starsky dropped his hand to Hutch’s chest with the same intent he’d had earlier when he allowed his entire arm to fall across Hutch’s belly. The brunt of Starsky’s chest punch had the same unsuccessful response, though it did elicit a few more cuss words. He waited instead for Hutch to surrender to the guilt he wrestled for ignoring him. When that didn’t pan out, Starsky’s atten­tion finally drifted elsewhere. He silently asked him­self the question Hutch had posed: What could he possibly tell him that he hadn’t already?

The answer was obvious: Nothing.

He lowered his eyes then to Hutch’s face, most of which was hid­den behind the bend of his elbow. Still, Starsky could see enough of the man he called his best friend and his teacher, his brother and his partner, his equal and his savior, to remember why he needed and hon­ored him. He lowered his arm into the grass above Hutch’s head and gently pulled at Hutch’s blond hair. He didn’t stroke him to wake him, but he could tell, from Hutch’s grunt, that Hutch thought he had. Starsky simply wanted to lay his hand on Hutch with affection that time—because gratitude was what he’d begun to feel. He combed Hutch’s disheveled hair with his fingers, brushing it into place from their earlier wrestle, and hoped Hutch knew he didn’t plan to pester him any longer.

Starsky’s action made the corners of Hutch’s mouth turn into a smile, but he remained wordless.

So Starsky continued to stroke Hutch’s hair and he studied what he could of Hutch’s face, and he slowly and with interest looked Hutch over from head to foot. He took stock of Hutch’s tucked long-sleeved shirt and his unbelted jeans, the style of shoes he wore, his legs crossed at the ankles, the way Hutch shielded his eyes behind his arm, the shape of his relaxed hands, his quiet and timeless breathing, how his belly rose and fell with each slow breath he took, his lips set so reso­lutely, and how he’d begged Starsky only minutes earlier to let him sleep. What Starsky wanted to talk to Hutch about could wait after all. To even hint at those horrific nights would only mar the otherwise peace­ful day and the tranquility between them.

But those five minutes Hutch wanted eventually lapsed. He couldn’t fully escape the fact that Starsky needed him—and he couldn’t escape Starsky because the man lay so snugly against him. His awareness slowly found its way to the pain­ful events of the past couple of months when he consciously sensed Starsky’s silence and felt Starsky’s fingers in his hair the way he did. Hutch finally lowered his arm from his face to look at him, but Starsky didn’t return the eye contact. “Hey,” Hutch said. “What’s the mat­ter?” He could tell, from the far-away expression on Starsky’s face and simply because he knew him that well, that Starsky was in trouble. He nudged Starsky’s thigh with his own. “Talk to me. I’m listen­ing now.”

“I just wanted to say thanks,” Starsky said, making eye contact that time.

“For what?”

“Everything.”

Hutch appreciated the sentiment, but he also knew something else brewed. “I did everything you’d have done for me,” he replied.

“Maybe,” Starsky said, not certain.

“No maybes.”

“Okay,” Starsky agreed, “but you’d deserve all I would do for you.”

“Why did you deserve less?”

“Because I knew better. I knew better than to open the door that night, you know? I had three clues and I ignored them because I was lazy. You wouldn’t have done that.”

Hutch was sorry Starsky couldn’t forgive him­self for opening the door. “We don’t know what I would have done,” he argued. “But even if I hadn’t done what you did, you need to let it go, buddy boy. For­give yourself for that one painful failure of reason—and move on.”

Starsky was truly at a loss. “How am I supposed to do that, cow­boy?”

“You recog­nize that you made a grave but innocent mistake—and you accept the fact that, as a fallible human being, you’re entitled to your mistakes, even the big ones.”

“Says you.”

“Well, then, you tell me: In your lifetime, have you ever done any­thing else you knew better not to do and have long forgiven yourself for?”

“Probably.”

“Probably indeed,” Hutch said, laughing. “So how was this differ­ent—except in consequence?”

“But how can you rule out conse­quence?” Starsky asked, frustrated. “Seems the more serious the outcome, the stupider the ‘fal­lible human being’—in this case, me—and the less should be the forgiveness.”

“So it’s just a matter of degree,” Hutch surmised.

Starsky appreciated Hutch’s sensibilities, but he didn’t have the words to tell Hutch how much; he wasn’t as articulate as his partner. He leaned on his elbow, up against Hutch, and looked into Hutch’s blue eyes. “I like you,” he said.

“I know,” Hutch replied. They laughed until Hutch affectionately smacked the side of Starsky’s head. “But what’s your point?”

“My point is, I wish I could see things the way you do. I wish I could forgive myself as easily as I’d forgive you if you’d done the same thing.”

“Then look at it another way,” Hutch suggested. “Think about what you got out of this ‘stupid and unforgivable mistake’. In the past couple of months, you got bonded to a beautiful woman, a woman you would not have noticed otherwise. You’re going to build a house right here where we lie. We started our own private detective agency so you can kick some bad guy butt the way you want to.” He remembered then how he himself hooked up with Sara—at that Victims of Violent Crime workshop Starsky had signed up for. “Hell, even I met someone,” he added with a laugh, “a woman I’d never have run into were it not for what you went through.”

“I’m here to serve,” Starsky said dryly.

It was just like Starsky to discredit the positive. “Don’t make light of it,” Hutch warned him. “You paid a hefty price and you should get some­thing back for it.”

“Except I wouldn’t have paid that price if I’d been smarter.”

Hutch pet Starsky’s hair and looked back into his eyes and felt suddenly quite helpless and inadequate. Nothing Hutch said, nothing he’d said since, seemed to have eased Starsky’s guilt. All Hutch had left to offer were his own thoughts and feelings. “I know the worse thing they did to you was what they did to you and you lived through it so you have a lifetime of battling all this shame, guilt, embar­rassment, and con­fusion. But, in my mind, the worse thing they could have done to you was kill you.” He squeezed the back of Starsky’s neck to drive home his point with as much physical affection as he was able to give him in that tight position they were in. “So, you see, I think you’re a pretty lucky guy.”

Starsky didn’t intend to make Hutch feel impotent; he tried to find something to empower him. “You mean, the worse thing they could have done to you was kill me—which makes you the ‘pretty lucky guy’ that they didn’t.”

Hutch parted with a soft smile; he knew Starsky’s sarcasm was an effort to make him feel better since it was Starsky they both tried to con­sole. “If that’s the only redeeming thing to it,” Hutch wisecracked, “can’t that be enough then? Isn’t my happiness worth some­thing to you?”

Starsky scratched Hutch’s chest. “It’s worth every­thing to me,” he said in a low voice. He was no longer sarcastic.

“Then accept what happened and know it wasn’t all for naught.”

Starsky laughed, lightly. “You have a warped sense of values.”

Hutch laughed, too. “Probably so.”

“Isn’t there anything in your life you feel guilty about?” Starsky asked.

“Guilt? No. Demons? Hell, yeah.”

“Name one.”

Hutch thought only for a second. “That I didn’t know you were in trouble sooner.”

“So you could have grabbed me from them and spared me what happened?”

“Like that.”

“That’s a wish,” Starsky argued. “My wish, too. Wishes don’t count. You don’t really regret not having been at a place in time-and-space that you couldn’t have been, do you?”

“Like I said,” Hutch explained, “it’s one of my demons. I forgive myself for it, but it haunts me just the same.”

Starsky studied Hutch for a minute. He knew Hutch was serious because he could hear it in his voice. He had another wish then, that Hutch didn’t have such a wish, such a demon as that one, though Starsky imag­ined he’d wrestle the same evil were the tables turned. It made him examine Hutch’s experience more closely. “How long did it take you to notice I’d gone missing and start looking for me?”

Hutch stared at the blue sky as his mind drifted to that fateful day some couple of months earlier. He remembered it all too vividly sometimes, but Starsky wanted an answer, and he’d give him one. “About twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes?”

“Too long?”

Starsky laughed at Hutch’s notion. “How could you possibly have thought something was wrong in less than half an hour?”

“You asked how long it took to notice you were miss­ing, not that anything was wrong. I didn’t know anything was wrong until I got to your house; all I knew was your car wasn’t in the parking lot when I got to work and no one had seen or heard from you. When I got to your house, I found that everything was accounted for—your car, your badge, your pistol, your wallet—every­thing but you.”

Starsky felt the chill along his spine that Hutch must have felt. “I’m sorry,” he said. He wouldn’t have wished that fear on anyone, let alone Hutch.

They looked into each other’s eyes then—at length—too emo­tion­­al to speak, but time eventually eased their unexpected grief and Hutch, as usual, finally broke the silence.

“When I got back to my truck,” he recalled, “a handwritten note inside told me to check out your video player.”

And, of course, that’s what Hutch had done.

That’s when he knew just how terribly wrong things were.

Starsky’s empathy for Hutch’s pain overwhelmed him and he apologized again.

“Yeah,” Hutch replied. He gently scratched Starsky’s cheek. “I’m sorry, too.” For as long as he’d live, he’d never forget what he witnessed on those videotapes. But, mostly, he’d never stop feeling sorry for Starsky. No one should have gone through what Starsky had.

No one.

But especially not him.

* * *

“What did you see in the video?” Jade asked.

Hutch shrugged, at a loss for words to describe it—or permission, for that matter. He summarized it. “Three men beating the shit out of him—so badly, I thought they’d kill him and I’d have watched them do it.”

There was a minute of silence in the room. Jade looked at Starsky, who wouldn’t look at him, and then waited to hear what Starsky would add to Hutch’s abbreviated portrayal of such a grave ordeal. But when Starsky continued to elude him, Jade made a mental note to revisit the issue at a later session, and then refocused. “Why don’t we back up and answer me this,” he said. “Grace and Sara: Are they wives? girlfriends?”

Together, Hutch and Starsky said, “Girlfriends.”

“Either one of you ever married?”

“I was married,” Hutch said, “years ago. I’ve had four serious relationships since. I met Sara about, well, about a month back, just around the time Starsky accepted my offer to build him a house on my land. He’s known Grace for two-and-a-half years as friends, and she’s still em­ployed by the police department. They got into a romantic relationship about, what?” he asked Starsky, “a month ago or so, too? He thinks he’ll ask her to marry him after the house is built.”

Jade looked at Starsky. “And before Grace?”

“Too many women to count,” Starsky said.

“Because you’re confused about your sexuality?”

“Because I’m horny. I’d fuck a snake if someone held its head.”

Jade sternly looked at Starsky until his client coughed up the real answer.

“I don’t know,” Starsky said. “Fear of commitment, maybe? Until now.”

“Or maybe he just really likes women,” Hutch argued. “This is what I mean: Everything has to be analyzed to the nth degree; things can’t just be what they are. He likes women. Lots of them. Some more than others. But the odds were against him that one of them would find her way to his heart—and she didn’t have to go through his dick to get there, either. Can’t things just be like that?”

“They can be,” Jade agreed. He noted Hutch’s demeanor. “You’re angry.”

“Because I think all this analysis is going to make him more con­fused. I’d rather take him someplace where he can learn to accept things as they are, but this is his trip—and I helped get him into this mess.” He caught himself then. Angry wasn’t what he wanted to be. He wanted to be supportive. “I’m just frustrated.”

“We can see that,” Jade said. “Let’s slow down and take our time and maybe that’ll ease both his confusion and your frustration. I’ll do my job: I’ll ask a million questions. You guys decide what the answers mean. Honestly, Hutch, I appreciate your take on things. I’m not much into labeling people, either. But if it helps him—and you obviously care about him—then let’s play the game by his rules for now. If it only serves to complicate matters further, we’ll try it your way.” He looked at the men until he got their approving nods. “Okay, Starsky, so how about you tell me why that kiss between you and Hutch bothers you so much.”

“It’s not the kiss that’s bothering him,” Hutch injected with a smile; suddenly he was amused by the situation. Such serious discussion over something so innocent.

“Oh?” Jade asked.

“It’s the kissing that’s bothering him.”

Jade would definitely enjoy learning about his new clients. “I see. So, there’s been more than one kiss,” he assumed.

“Lots of them,” Starsky said, embarrassed.

“Then let’s start with that first kiss. How did it come to pass?”

Hutch glanced at Starsky to allow him the explanation, but Starsky nudged Hutch’s knee with his own to return the request, so Hutch looked at the doctor, thought back to that first kiss, and then explained, “Well, while we were lying there in the grass—and after we’d had that heart-to-heart about why he felt grateful that I was helping him get his life back—let’s just say his every­day affection for me turned into some­thing a little more than that…”

* * *

“You’re going to be okay,” Hutch soothingly reminded him. “Still get­ting to your feet, but okay in the long run. You’re unbreakable.”

Starsky looked into the blue eyes he’d been admiring for more than a decade. He stroked Hutch’s hair, held Hutch’s chin in his hand, turned Hutch’s face toward him, and lightly tapped his finger against Hutch’s cheek, pushed there by a startling im­pulse—one he’d never enter­tained before.

Hutch thought Starsky might kiss him, given the seemingly loving way Starsky held his face and stroked his hair, by how he’d been set up, cradled, as it were, in Starsky’s hands, and by the way Starsky fond­ly looked at him. He tried a smile to ease the be­wildered look on Starsky’s face, but it didn’t work. Starsky seemed momen­tarily timid, which wasn’t like him, espe­cially when it came to his partner. He seemed to wait for permission to carry through on his urge, so Hutch gave it to him by the soft plea in his eyes and by the invitation of his quiet voice. “Tell me,” he said—and he knew full well that Starsky’s reply wouldn’t be in words.

So right there in the grass, alone with Hutch on the ground beside him, and the blue sky overhead, Starsky pressed his mouth to Hutch’s with­out another second’s thought. He closed his eyes and kissed Hutch—or, rather, he touched Hutch’s lips with his own—and then held them in that connection for half a minute. The contact was softer and much warm­er than Starsky expected, despite that Hutch didn’t notice­ably respond—except with a deep, slow breath. Starsky could smell Hutch, too, his skin and his sweat and his cologne, and he could feel their heartbeats, at least his own, pounding away in his chest, and he was aware of the supple flesh-to-flesh feel at his lips. He inhaled out of pure apprehension and desire, and then he waited—for a repri­mand, for a rejec­tion, for a reply—before he could exhale.

But none came.

That was because Hutch sensed Starsky was too anxious about what he did to make it heartfelt. Hutch could have helped him, but he decided first to wait, to see whether Starsky would find his courage. He himself couldn’t have been more relaxed if he tried; his body lang­uage and his passiveness couldn’t have been more inviting. Besides, he enjoyed the unexpected pleasure of Starsky’s mouth against his. It was vaguely familiar and completely natural for him; he’d never been afraid of physical contact with Starsky—and he wasn’t then, either. It was just a kiss, after all.

Starsky froze. He noticed Hutch hadn’t pushed him away or tried to escape him, and he relaxed enough to hear their collective breathing, but he couldn’t find the backbone to retreat or continue. He felt Hutch’s skin at his fingertips, Hutch’s cheek and his unshaven chin in one hand and his hair in the other, his mouth pressed to his, their lips together, was aware of Hutch’s fresh smell and his unusual patience, his willing tolerance and his maleness, and Starsky realized and under­stood what he had done and what he did. Still, he didn’t break or pursue the touch of their lips; he simply waited.

Hutch had always guided him. Maybe Starsky waited for guid­ance. Hutch was the first to distinguish the good from the bad and to put them in their rightful places. Maybe Starsky waited for judgment. Hutch would tell him what he thought about an action such as his. Maybe Starsky waited for commentary. But still nothing came; Starsky was left to decipher it himself—and couldn’t. He quietly broke away, fully released his breath, and leaned back to focus on the blue eyes that fondly and curiously looked at him.

Hutch expectedly spoke first. “I thought we weren’t going to do that again,” he said. It wasn’t actually an “again.” The last time their lips met, it had been an overtly obvious, sensual, and passion-driven kiss, a kiss, not a touch, not a mere connection, something much more than that, and one Hutch had initiated.

“We thought you weren’t going to do that again,” Starsky corrected him.

Normally they would have found any reference to the kiss they’d shared some three years earlier while trapped in that air conditioning shaft to be something terribly funny because it had been the most un­expected and intimate experience between them, but there was no humor in its memory on that late spring morning in the tall grass with the blue sky above them. Perhaps the serenity of the touch itself had required a more somber mood; that, and Starsky’s verbally impotent feel­ings for Hutch that day.

“I didn’t know what to say to thank you,” Starsky explained with a shrug. “Or how to say it even if I had words.”

Hutch watched Starsky. They did, in the end, lie in the grass like a cou­ple of lovers, but the affection hadn’t alarmed or offended him. After all, he’d had a similar urge years ago when the two of them were trap­ped for hours as snug as two people could be in that alum­inum shaft. But he also imagined Starsky was confused. He still climb­ed out from under the weight and damage of the violence that had recently slammed him.

Perhaps the non-kiss, that half-minute-long mouth-to-mouth con­nection with Hutch just then was simply a fleet­ing urge of curiosity. But Hutch also sensed it had been half-hearted. Starsky’s tentativeness didn’t com­pletely convey what he felt, so Hutch pressed him. “I’m not sure I heard you,” he said.

Starsky squinted at him. He believed Hutch baited him; Hutch was well-rehearsed at baiting him. So Starsky thought about playfully call­ing Hutch a “greedy bastard” and ending it there, but he was struck by an intriguing notion: that Hutch actually gave him an honest op­por­tunity to pursue his intention. Starsky was given per­mission. That meant he could abandon his anxiety about it and really be in touch with himself when he touched Hutch that next time.

Hutch helped him take the step. “I said I didn’t hear you,” he re­peated quietly. “Maybe you should turn up the volume.”

Starsky kissed Hutch that time; he didn’t just touch him. And he didn’t kiss him tentatively, either. They’d kissed once before; it wasn’t a completely foreign interaction, but this time it was Starsky who initiated it and so it was he who would take full respon­sibility for it. He sum­moned his feelings of gratitude, his respect and his admiration, his brotherly love and his life’s passion for the man he called his hero—and then he kissed Hutch.

Their lips joined in a full and lengthy kiss, an endur­ing kiss, spur­red further by its own sound, its compliance and its animalism, a kiss that hesitated only long enough for Starsky to take a breath and kiss Hutch again. That next kiss, more heart-driven than the first, com­manded as passionate a kiss in reply, and then evolved into shorter-lasting kisses with earnest liberation, with genuine feeling and con­viction, with determination and fearlessness. Their lips were perfectly matched, fluid and warmly responsive, and they didn’t miss a beat. It was as if they’d spent a decade practicing.

Hutch enjoyed the feel of their lips together so much, he moaned to express his pleasure.

But neither of them laughed. And they did not retreat.

And not that Hutch tried to break away because he didn’t, not even for a second, but Starsky gripped Hutch’s face just the same, held him tightly in those kisses with him, lest Hutch end it sooner than Starsky wished. He was spurred by the contact itself, by the taboo intimacy, by the underlying and pressing aggres­sive­ness, by the pure sensuality of it, by Hutch’s smell and taste, by the outdoors, nature herself, and by his inexplic­able feelings for his brother-by-fate—as much as he was emotionally aroused by the enthu­siastic reply.

But, at the height of that moment, in the midst of the dance of their consensual lips, their desperate kisses, and the soothing cadence of their responsive breathing, Starsky’s mind con­sciously grabbed him. If he didn’t quit right then he was liable to make it more than a slow rhythm of sen­sual kisses. He might actually open his mouth and let Hutch in, though Hutch hadn’t given him any indi­cation he wanted in, or wanted more than they had, or that Hutch sought a sexual con­nection with Starsky of any kind. Ever.

Starsky broke away to spare himself the notion that it was he who wanted more, so when Hutch let him go as easily as he did, Starsky was im­measurably relieved. His heart raced. He’d scared him­self.

They breathed heavily, in a unified pant, and looked into each other’s eyes for a minute as their heads spun.

Starsky uncharacteristically broke the loud silence between them in an effort to distance himself from what he’d just done. “This is where our girl­friends drive up,” he said.

Hutch appreciated the comic relief. “And then beat a strategic re­treat,” he imagined.

“Never to be heard from again,” Starsky said.

“And who could blame them?”

* * *

“Two things,” Jade noted. He looked at Starsky. Then was as good a time as any to revisit what may be at the root of their dilemma. “You were severe­ly beaten.”

“Some guys broke my arm and a rib,” he said. “A few stitches here and there.”

“Why?”

Starsky shrugged, as if he didn’t know, but answered, “They pun­ished me for a wrong­doing.”

“And what wrongdoing was that?”

Starsky shrugged again. “Who knows?”

Jade noticed that Hutch looked at Starsky as if there was more to the answer than the one Starsky gave, but of course there was, so Jade asked, “Then how did you know it was a revenge beating?”

“Three guys jumped me,” Starsky finally confessed, “because they thought Hutch and me are queer.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because I touch him a lot, I guess.”

“Touch him, how?”

“You know, like friendly. Like close hugs or something. Like I put my hands on him to get his attention or to let him know I’m there instead of just saying ‘hey.’ Sometimes I lean on him—physically, I mean, or sit on him. Like that.”

“Sit on him?”

“Yeah … like hang out on him.”

Hutch nodded at Jade to let him know he thought Starsky’s explan­ation nicely summed up their way of touching.

“And he you?” Jade asked Starsky, about Hutch. “He sit on you?”

“He more than me. I mean, he touches me more than I touch him, though not by much. We touch each other more than guys are supposed to, I guess. Even you noticed we sat here together; we didn’t notice. We’ve been like this just about as long as we’ve known each other.”

“These guys who beat you up … how did they know you?”

“One of them was married to an officer in our squad room. I guess she told him about us—not about us maybe being gay, I don’t think, but enough to get the guy’s attention—or he stopped by the station and didn’t like what he saw. Then he got a couple of his buddies to tag along on the adven­ture…”

“And why did they beat you and not Hutch?”

Starsky looked at Hutch. “That’s a question we’ve never asked.”

“I figured the answer was obvious,” Hutch said. “I live fur­ther out of town. Starsky was more convenient prey.”

Starsky gestured to Jade that that must be the answer. “Or,” he added on second thought, “I come across as queer and Hutch doesn’t. Isn’t that why I’m here now? To figure that out?”

“What is ‘queer’ behavior to you?”

“Well, like I said … touching Hutch the way I do.”

“And if he touches you the same way, as you’ve said, does he ‘come across as queer’ to you?”

Starsky snorted. “No.”

“So, only you come across that way—even though you both be­have similarly with each other, right down to kissing.”

“Well, I mean, maybe they picked up on something that they didn’t pick up on when they saw him—that I … act just enough dif­fer­ent than him to make the difference.”

“Were they ever caught?”

“All three of them were—one way or another.”

“One way or another?”

Starsky didn’t want to talk about his assailants any longer. He closed his mouth and hoped Hutch would answer so he didn’t have to.

Hutch sensed Starsky’s stall. “The two who were arrested pled guilty,” he told Jade. “The third shot himself in the head when we closed in on him.”

Jade winced, then noted, “I guess it’s a pretty stiff penalty for as­saul­t­­­­­ing a police officer, so stiff that he’d rather die than face prison.”

Hutch glanced at Starsky to see if he wanted him to share more details, but Starsky lowered his eyes, slightly shook his head, and pursed his lips. Hutch then told Jade something he was allowed to tell him. “Assaulting a police officer carries the mandatory penalty of life in prison without parole.”

Jade keenly felt their hesitancy, but he wouldn’t pry. Not then. “Quite a stiff penalty,” he concluded, and then asked, “Is that why you boys decided to go into private practice—to get away from such risks?”

“Mostly.”

Whenever their answers were abrupt and incomplete, Jade thought they had more to tell, but didn’t want to, or didn’t feel comfort­able shar­ing, or they didn’t think Jade should know; he wasn’t sure which. But it was too early in their therapy to push them, so Jade let their load­ed answers slide and followed with his next line of questions. “Second thing, then. You kissed each other once before. Three years ago, was it?”

* * *

“This sure showed us,” Starsky mumbled, disappointed by their decision to break into the after-hours warehouse that night in search of case clues—and accidentally getting locked in. “When you do something illegal, you get your ass kicked one way or another.”

“The payoff was worth it,” Hutch decided. “We can add yet another adventure to our list.”

“It’s too long already.”

“Then settle for being glad the air conditioner isn’t running tonight.”

“You and your positive attitude … and never mind that we’re in this situation in the first place.”

They had been trapped in the small office for a good couple of hours that weekend before they decided it was better to risk life and limb and crawl into another—presumably unlocked—office, via the building’s air conditioning duct. It took some doing, but they were able to eventually pry off the vent and climb into the aluminum shaft. Instead of escaping, though, they got lost as they crawled around the tight spaces—and Starsky began to feel claustrophobic. Despite finding two vents in the ceiling from which to exit the maze of tunnels, they were unable to budge them. Hutch suggested they continue to search, that the odds of finding someplace to escape grew in their favor with each turn they made.

Starsky didn’t believe him, but he appreciated Hutch’s effort to keep him from panicking. He thought they should return to the room they’d been trapped in, that someone would find them there soon enough, while the “adventure at hand” would only shorten their lives and leave their corpses forever abandoned in the rat trap in which they’d been caught.

“Well, not forever,” Hutch corrected him. “I mean, it is an air conditioning shaft, after all. The stench of our decomposing bodies will waft through this entire building and get us out of here sooner than that.”

Starsky called Hutch a “son-of-a-bitch” under his breath and Hutch punched the bottom of Starsky’s shoe in retaliation while Starsky led them in the tunnels. “If I get out of this alive,” Starsky promised, crawling along on his belly with an occasional whistle to keep himself cheered, “I’m going to be the one to kick your ass.”

“If we get out of this alive,” Hutch replied, laughing, “I’m going to help you kick my ass.”

“You’ll change your mind when I’ve beaten you to within an inch of your life,” Starsky warned him. “You’re going to think this was an easier way to die.”

“Killed by rat maze,” Hutch mulled.

They eventually followed the brighter light and found a third vent into an office room below. The grate was already somewhat loosened and it gave Starsky hope that he could work it free or punch it out. But he wasn’t able. He was tired, demoralized, and a little slap happy, all at the same time. Hutch proposed that they try to kick it out, but that required backtracking to get them both turned around and Starsky wasn’t too pleased to do that then. So Hutch said he’d give the effort an honest try.

Starsky rolled onto his back, pressed the top of his head against the grill, and took a few relaxing breaths of fresh air. Maybe if he could keep his composure, as well as muster some strength, they’d be better able to free themselves. That was his plan, anyway.

Of course, the shaft was quite narrow and Hutch had to practically crawl on Starsky to get to their possible escape route since Starsky hadn’t wanted to retrace their steps to some intersection in order to let Hutch get to the grate before him. But the two of them, panting and wedged into the same space, broke Starsky’s effort to relax. “Hell with death by rat maze,” he said, then laughed. “How’s this going to look when they find us?”

“Like we had a good time before we died,” Hutch said. They laughed like they hadn’t heard anything funnier. And they knew they were punch-drunk, laughing at nothing, but it somehow released them from the idea that they were permanently trapped.

Hutch gripped the mesh and violently rattled the grill. He thought he could pry it off if he abused it enough. They were lucky, he said, to have found one that already hung by its screws, because if that vent was tough, they could never have removed the others, no matter how hard they tried. He repeatedly hit the grate with his fist and, with each blow, he felt the metal plate give way a little bit more.

After a minute, he was consciously aware that he was pressed up against Starsky. If the shaft were even an inch narrower, he’d have been on top of his partner; as it was, he lay snugly against him—while he paused to examine the situation. The office light filtered through the vent and onto Starsky’s face and he thought Starsky appeared anxiously tired.

“You’re not really going to panic, are you?” Hutch asked. “We’re almost free.”

“You said that half an hour ago,” Starsky reminded him.

“That’s what I meant by ‘almost.’”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? I’m the one who’s going to get us out of this mess.”

“You’re the one who got us into this mess!” Starsky said, accusingly.

And they broke out laughing—and not because it was funny.

When their laughter stopped, they patiently looked at each other. Was it because they were in that predicament that Hutch felt all the closer to his partner, or was he simply faced, yet again, with that personal, private nagging in the back of his mind, the one that had made him wonder on several occasions if he wasn’t drawn to Starsky in more ways than he thought he was—especially after having recently and nearly lost Starsky to otherwise multiple bullet wounds? Maybe it was just gratefulness he felt not to have had to bury him.

“Get back to work,” Starsky said, and then scoldingly added, “and stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re thinking about doing what you’re thinking about doing.” He didn’t avert his eyes, but he was sure he was about to be engaged by Hutch in a way he’d never been. It didn’t scare him. In fact, he thought it was comical. He laughed with Hutch because they both knew what seemed to be transpiring between them and they were equally helpless to avoid it.

“Don’t look at you like I’m about to lay one on you?” Hutch pretended to wonder. Laughing still with Starsky, he said, “Is it the look that’s troubling you? Or is it the action that will follow the look?” Before Starsky could reply, Hutch followed his impulse. He kissed Starsky—a brief, unfeeling, somewhat forced, purely meaningless kiss, his mouth to Starsky’s mouth—during which the two of them laughed, making it more of a contact action than an actual intimate encounter.

“You son-of-a-bitch,” Starsky affectionately cussed. He laughed as he raised his arm and tried to punch Hutch’s shoulder, but he couldn’t reach him, wedged as he was against the side of the tunnel. “Help!” he called out to no one. “I’m stuck in a rat trap with a sex predator!”

“Dream on,” Hutch razzed him.

They laughed like boys. Then the laughter ended, abruptly, and they looked at each other again—intently.

Hutch noticed the way the light from the vent grid lit Starsky’s face in a criss-crossing pattern, at the way his partner eyed him, as if Starsky waited for Hutch’s next move, not afraid of it, not resistant to it, and almost expected it. The notion made Hutch’s heart pound. Had he been granted permission to follow his deeper impulse? He decided not to give it thought; to do so would be to lose the moment. Starsky would let him know if he crossed the line.

Because he was snug against Starsky, the move Hutch made was a small one; there wasn’t any distance between them, so there wasn’t much space to close. He had just touched Starsky’s mouth with his own, a taboo contact he’d never made with any man in his lifetime, and it hadn’t deterred him. It hadn’t aroused him, either—he didn’t think—but he was curious about how it would feel to more intimately kiss the person he was closest to—a person he’d give up his life for.

So that’s what he did. He kissed Starsky—bent over and kissed him. His lips touched Starsky’s at first rather tentatively, then with a certain confidence, and finally with the freedom he gave himself to fully feel the contact, as well as Starsky’s warmth and their friendship that allowed it.

Starsky didn’t resist. He didn’t even react. He was, initially and momentarily, stunned, even though he predicted the kiss, but then it quickly became an affectionate engagement—from someone he dearly loved. He was also curious about why he’d been kissed and where Hutch imagined it would lead, so he allowed the experiment by way of his passiveness.

The kiss lasted longer than either of them expected. Hutch pushed beyond his awkwardness and apprehension; Starsky’s submissiveness gave him rein to do that. But once past it, Hutch indulged himself. He closed his eyes to thoroughly isolate the touch of their lips—to keenly feel the pleasure of the flesh contact itself—and was determined to get some response from Starsky—either way. He completely abandoned any notion that he offended his partner, or that he had crossed over a line into something repulsively taboo, or that it meant more than it meant at the time of its engagement.

He kissed Starsky at length and with feeling, with passion and out of pure love and possession, with warm kisses, with moist kisses. He then encouraged Starsky to respond to him by making each release and next kiss more sensual than the last, the way he might try to break the resolve of a woman who eluded him—except that Starsky hadn’t resisted; he simply hadn’t reacted.

Hutch breathed heavily and his heart pounded. He smelled Starsky’s mouth, which hinted of the apple Starsky had earlier eaten, and he was exhilarated by the aliveness of Starsky’s skin, and he allowed those things to drive him. Perhaps it was his audible breathing that broke Starsky’s will—it was, after all, rather primal and aggressive in its cadence.

Starsky had two choices: He could fight off the increasingly powerful advance—or he could indulge it. He chose the latter for the sake of fate. Who would know, but them? Other than conditioned taboo and unfounded fear, Starsky didn’t have reason not to; he wasn’t afraid of Hutch any more than Hutch was afraid of him. He finally returned the kisses, each one of them, and equally delivered their intensity in reply, a passionate fulfillment that aroused him, and pushed him further into the experience as they filled the narrow shaft with their quiet kissing smacks and fierce breathing.

Hutch hit the line he pursued, the one that would permanently define who he was and redefine who they were together. He’d never been uncertain of his sexuality—or afraid of anyone else’s, for that matter—and he wasn’t apprehensive of retaliation, either, but he realized in an instant that he wasn’t prepared to change the nature of their friendship. That was something they should do with foresight, if ever they were to do it.

He abruptly withdrew and quickly made eye contact in the dim light to measure Starsky’s overall evaluation of their actions. They were wordless and took the time to catch their breaths. After a minute, Hutch lightly laughed. “I’ve often wondered what that would feel like,” he said.

Starsky raised an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?” He knew how he felt about it himself, at least at that time, and he wasn’t sure he was happy with the feeling.

“Yeah, seriously,” Hutch said. “In moments like this, when we’ve been up against each other or we’re in the middle of something horrific, sometimes I get to feeling needy for salvage—like in a tourniquet situation, for example,” and the idea made them both laugh at Hutch’s absurdity, that he had wondered how it would feel to kiss Starsky if one of them might bleed to death.

“Sometimes I’ve questioned this thing we’ve got, this brotherhood,” Hutch said, trying again to explain, “and where does it really come from? Am I drawn to you in other ways besides friends and partners? Like that. Haven’t you ever wondered?”

Starsky laughed at him. “No, man, not once.” But now he wondered why he’d been aroused by the kissing. Shouldn’t he have been offended instead? Wouldn’t he have killed any other man for making such a pass? Wouldn’t he have never indulged it—even with Hutch?

There wasn’t any time to assimilate the answers. They busted out laughing because Hutch had shared something extremely personal with Starsky while he thought his partner may have felt the same way, only to learn he never had. But Hutch wasn’t embarrassed and he didn’t wish he hadn’t confessed.

“But, seriously, what do you think?” Starsky asked. “Are you a homo sexual?” He purposely broke the word into two so Hutch would give him credit for not using the word ‘queer.’ Besides, whatever Hutch’s experience was, it would be the one he should adopt, too.

“No,” Hutch replied with conviction.

“You’re not queer?” Starsky asked for clarification. “How do you know that, especially after what you just did?”

“Because I’m not attracted to men,” Hutch said, as matter-of-factly.

“Then why did you kiss me?”

“To test whether I’m attracted to you.”

“So, you wonder if you’re queer?” He used the word that time, thinking Hutch hadn’t understood him the first time.

“Were you listening?” Hutch reprimanded him. “I’m not attracted to men. But maybe I’ve been attracted to you.”

Starsky didn’t appreciate the distinction. “So … are you attracted to me … like that?”

“I don’t think so,” Hutch said, honestly.

“How would you know if you was?”

“If I was? I’d have gotten a hard-on a minute ago.”

“So?” Starsky asked emphatically. “Did ya?” If Hutch had, and he wasn’t gay, then it would ease Starsky out of his own unexpected questioning about himself.

Hutch had to think back. He wasn’t sure. Finally, he settled on a more accurate answer. “I did feel a bit stimulated.” He laughed, shyly.

“I’ve never, not once,” Starsky said, “wondered if you was a homo, but if you’re going to get ‘stimulated’ around me, I best start watching my back.”

“I don’t want you to do that,” Hutch begged him. “Don’t be afraid of what I just did.”

Starsky watched Hutch’s blue eyes, the light that sparkled in them, and how genuinely he wanted Starsky to believe him. He returned the honesty.

“We love each other,” Starsky said, when he finally found the right words, “and we trust each other. We’ve been through a lot together, more in one event than some people ever have their whole lives. We might fight and fuck it up sometimes and wish we could go our separate ways, have normal lives and all that, but we’ll never mess with Us because Us is something bigger than you and me. Us is who we are. Nothing can come between Us—not even something like that if something like that was possible. It’s hard to explain,” he said on second thought.

“I get it,” Hutch replied. “We’ve had our down times, times that would have been deal-breakers between anyone else, but none of it has been enough to destroy who we are together.”

“Exactly—except I’d have to watch my back if you was queer,” Starsky said again with a laugh.

“Did it scare the shit out of you?”

“I figured you were scared enough for the both of us.”

“At first. Did it make you sick? Turn you off?”

Starsky couldn’t answer right away because he couldn’t not laugh about what he planned to say, especially knowing how Hutch would react, that he would find it hilarious, too, but he eventually got out the words. “It gave me a raging hard-on.”

It wasn’t true that it had been raging; maybe it had only been as ‘stimulated’ as Hutch, which reprieved Starsky from having felt aroused at all, but the two of them laughed until they couldn’t, just from the idea of it all.

“You bastard,” Hutch affectionately chided him. “Now I’m going to have to watch my back.”

* * *

“You didn’t repeat that experience until recently?” Jade asked the both of them. “What you’re doing now isn’t in context of what you did then?”

“I don’t think we even thought about what we did then, once it was done, I mean, that kiss three years ago,” Hutch imagined, “let alone did it since, at least not until recently Still, it’s not the same.”

“How not?”

“It’s not like I sucked his dick,” Hutch explained, annoyed that Jade couldn’t see the difference, maybe even embarrassed, and hiding behind his sarcasm to explain it to him. “I didn’t even French him that first time.”

Jade noticed Starsky’s disgruntled expression and asked him, “What about what he just said offended you?”

“Nobody’s asking him to suck my dick, but he’s French-ing me now, so who gives a fuck whether what we did then was different than what we do these days?”

“Different from,” Hutch corrected him.

“Fuck you,” Starsky said.

They looked at Jade again.

Sadly amused, but hiding it, Jade explained himself. “I simply wanted to know how kissing each other in the air duct was ‘different from’ how you’re kissing each other now. But, through your annoyance with each other, and possibly with me, I see that the differ­ence is in degree, not necessarily in kind.”

“That sounds like something Hutch would say,” Starsky dryly noted. “‘Degree, not kind’ bullshit.”

“I didn’t mean to set either of you off.”

“You didn’t,” Hutch surrendered. “I could have explained it just like that: The kissing we did in the air conditioning shaft was purely an exploration on my part, a one-time knock-off. The kissing we’ve done in the past month or so—as a matter of routine—has gone further into deeper kisses and has been much more out of the enjoyment for it.”

Starsky looked away to avoid his embarrassment that time, and Jade noticed it. “Okay,” Jade said. “Another difference might be that you,” meaning Hutch, “initiated the kissing in the shaft, whereas you,” meaning Star­sky, “initiated it recently.”

“So you’re blaming me for the ‘degree’?” Starsky asked, defen­sive­ly. “You think I’m the one who took this into French-ing?”

Jade looked at him, firmly, to elicit the answer he thought brewed, but not before he said, “I’m not ‘blaming’ anyone for this.”

Still, Starsky wouldn’t take full responsibility. “I started it,” he conceded, “but he pushed me into what we’re doing now. He couldn’t leave well enough alone. He’s the one who took it up a notch.”

* * *

Starsky glanced across the meadow toward the house and its long, tree-lined driveway, to make certain no one had seen them. Birds still sang. The sky was as blue, the quiet as peaceful. And the reprieve brought him back to his reality. “Shit,” he said. “What the hell did I just do?”

“I’ll tell you what you didn’t do that you know you wanted to do,” Hutch said. He didn’t wait for Starsky to ask him; he grabbed Starsky by the back of his neck and pulled Starsky into another kiss with him—except, that time, Hutch made it sensual. He did it for Starsky, but he also relished the effort. He tried to get Starsky to open his mouth and engage him, first with a few painless bites along Starsky’s bottom lip to relax him enough to reply, then he wet his own lips and kissed Star­sky’s to encourage Starsky to respond in kind with the idea that the moist sensation would stir Starsky to action. When that failed, Hutch tried a diff­erent tact al­to­gether; he pushed his tongue between Starsky’s lips against Starsky’s clenched teeth, tast­ed Starsky as he did, and grunt­ed, as if sound alone, or coupled with a tighter grip, that time his fingers entangled in Starsky’s soft wavy hair, would drive Starsky into obliga­tion—but none of it succeeded.

Still, Hutch was determined. He knew Starsky and he was certain he knew where Starsky wanted to take them. Hutch wouldn’t relent until he got him there.

Starsky pushed against the ground to pull out of Hutch’s unyielding grip, but Hutch returned the muscle; he grabbed Starsky’s shirt, and inadvertently some of the hair on Starsky’s chest at the same time, and painfully stalled him. Starsky tried to loosen Hutch’s hand from his shirt, but he only hurt himself further in the attempt. When he still couldn’t get free, he refused the forceful invita­tion with a more tightly clenched jaw to block Hutch’s tongue from penetrating his mouth. Starsky was phy­sically impas­sive in every way pos­s­ible; he tensed every muscle in his body to send the mess­age that he wouldn’t return that kind of kiss and Hutch should abandon his attempt.

But, when that failed—because Hutch simply wouldn’t let him go—Starsky surrendered.

Completely.

He seized Hutch’s face, roughly grabbed his chin, opened his mouth, and boldly sucked on Hutch’s warm, wet tongue. The moist, fo­r­bidden, primal sensation of their erotic kiss was power­fully famil­iar; Starsky had bedded more women than he could count—or may­be even remember—and his overall response to Hutch then was as unreserved because of it. Starsky’s heart pounded, his palms sweat, his respiration was audible and raced, and he closely pressed his length to Hutch’s to reassure his sudden and emerging erection.

The only one who would judge him in a way that could hurt him was Ken Hutchinson—and Hutch never judged him. In that instance, Hutch had actually encouraged him. Starsky had been afraid of him­self moments earlier when he realized he was capable of taking the kiss further, and Hutch had sensed it, knew it, and then wouldn’t let Starsky dismiss it. They would push the boundary together, take it to the limit, maybe even cross the line, because they trusted each other that much; Starsky followed Hutch because they had never, not once, stood in judg­ment of the other.

Hutch was as surprised by Starsky’s surrender as he was indulgent; he expected Starsky to punch him, to at least avoid that kind of contact with another man, not give in to it. Despite his suspicion that their contact had sexually aroused Starsky, Hutch was mostly emotionally excited by it. He had broken Starsky’s resolve, pushed him over the edge, and given him free reign to explore the depth of his gratitude and devotion. Hutch had always relished driving Starsky into new terri­tory—mentally, spiritually, and now intimately—and then was no diff­erent.

It turned him on to turn Starsky on—in every way possible.

Starsky’s familiar smell, his skin and his sweat, and Starsky’s determination and labored, deep breaths between kisses, his experienced lips and his tongue in perfect, seemingly practiced harmony with Hutch’s, filled Hutch with an inexplicable thrill and a heart-pounding dazzle. He didn’t withdraw from receiving Starsky, either, from inhaling him as roughly, as enthusiastically, as he sucked on Starsky’s lips and his ton­gue, and he did so purely from his soul.

Together, they broke the barrier. Neither had kissed a woman with the same passionate aggression that they kissed each other, not even in play. Perhaps it was because they were both men and that gave them per­­­mis­sion to fully abandon tenderness. Perhaps it was because such wet lips and warm tongues, their spurring fierce breath­ing and un­kind grips on each other, were so taboo with another man, they were compelled to follow it through, maybe even desper­ately, as if they’d never get that chance again if they didn’t take it then. Or perhaps it was simply because they cared that much about each other, highly respected and immeas­urably admired each other, implicitly trusted and uncondition­ally loved each other, felt a great unexpressed gratitude for each other, put their lives on the line for the other—and had for more than a decade. The intimate exchange between them that late spring morn­ing was just one more piece of themselves along the journey they’d taken and still traveled.

Whatever it was, once it began, neither retreated. It was not inappropriate, not for them, nor was it repulsive or obscene. They had already, long ago, transcended gender bias and cultural expect­a­tions. In fact, right in the middle of the rather unex­pected pleasurable and sexual con­tact he made with Hutch there in the un-minding grass, Starsky was abruptly aware that their disregard for what was socially and sexually expected of them was the reason he’d been ab­ducted and assaulted as vilely as he had been in the first place.

The jarring memory made him release his firm grip on Hutch’s face. He pushed against him, pulled himself away again, and that time Hutch released Starsky’s mouth, Starsky’s neck, and even his shirt, with­out hesi­tation, and let Starsky go completely.

They’d broken a visible sweat and were as bewildered and electri­fied by what they’d done as they’d been immersed in each other. They panted. The sounds of nature, of the meadow, and the vastness of the sky overhead devoured them again with their collective timelessness. Hutch tried a friendly smile between breaths to get the look of alarm off Starsky’s face.

But Starsky harmlessly punched Hutch in the ribs instead. “You bastard,” he cussed him.

The punch may or may not have been as strong as Starsky intend­ed, but it did hurt. Hutch rubbed his side to ease the pain. “I’m the ass­hole?”

Starsky stared at him, the hostility palpable in his eyes. “Well, shit, man, you shouldn’t have made me do that.”

Hutch wiped his brow on his sleeve and stared at the sky to avoid eye contact, lest he get punched again. “I was setting you free, buddy boy,” he argued. “That was a liberation.”

Starsky didn’t know what to think. He finally arrested his breath, though his mind still reeled. “Well, it was a little too free for me.”

“Apparently it wasn’t,” Hutch noted dryly.

Starsky hit Hutch’s arm and then dropped to his back in the grass beside him. He realized only then that his erection had begun to retreat. He cussed under his breath for having summoned one at all and punched Hutch’s leg. “Fuck you,” he said.

Hutch winced and told him, “I draw the line there.”

Starsky hit him again, that time with a blow to Hutch’s belly. “You have no lines.”

“Will you stop hitting me?” Hutch warned. “Hit me again and I’m going to hit you back.” He continued to assuage the pain in his ribs. Starsky had poked and struck him from the minute they ended up in the grass.

“You had it coming,” Starsky said. “That was queer, man.”

Hutch turned his head against the ground and looked over at Starsky, to Starsky’s profile, to his thick eyelashes and his no smile. He could tell Starsky was as troubled after the kiss as he’d been before it. “How’s that queer if we’re not gay?” he asked.

Starsky stared at the blue overhead. He couldn’t believe Hutch’s question. “How was that possible if we aren’t?”

“A homosexual act doesn’t make you a homosexual.”

“Says you.”

“It is what it is,” Hutch said. “Stop analyzing every damn thing to death.”

Starsky covered his face with his hands. “Jesus,” he swore. “Do you get this at all? I just Frenched you.”

Hutch licked his lips and fondly remembered those minutes of shar­ing saliva with him. He wasn’t sorry. “And I did you back,” he reminded Starsky. “And—if I’m not mistaken, and I don’t believe I am—we liked it. I mean, really, what’s a little French kiss between friends anyway?”

“What is it? It’s queer!”

“I didn’t think it was all that odd. It felt pretty natural to me.”

Starsky dropped his hands to the grass and gripped it to contain his anger. “This isn’t funny,” he growled.

“Agreed. But, then, I wasn’t going for humor.”

* * *

Hutch defensively shrugged at Jade and confessed. “Okay, so I pushed him into it. I did it because I knew it’s where he wanted to go. If he didn’t get it out of his system then, he was going to try it another time anyway.”

“It appears it’s still not out of his system,” Jade noted.

“Neither one of you is funny,” Starsky snapped.

Jade and Hutch looked at him. They hadn’t meant to be funny, but it was apparent Starsky felt ridiculed.

“My point,” Jade said, “is that Hutch ended up pushing you into something that out­lived his experiment, so he could certainly have waited for you to find your own way.”

Starsky accepted the explanation. “He was fucking with me.”

“You want to believe that,” Hutch said, “because it gets you off the hook for liking it.”

Starsky glanced away and heavily exhaled.

“Okay,” Jade agreed. “Hutch was the one to take it up the notch. But you did surrender and you enjoyed the experi­ence all the way to an erection,” he reminded him. “But let’s say we bypass how you felt then, and what Hutch’s role was in it, and instead concentrate on why it bothers you that you liked what you did. You’ve liked it enough, in fact, you’ve been doing it ever since.”

Starsky huffed. He felt further injured by Jade’s perception. He hated the words almost as much as he hated the behavior.

Jade realized he’d pushed Starsky deeper into his guilt. “No one is judging you, but you. Hutch isn’t judging you, is he?” When Starsky simply shook his head and spoke a barely audible, “I don’t think so,” Jade asked, “Did­n’t he have a similar reflex to the experience, even that first time, the time in the air conditioning shaft? And hasn’t he volun­tarily been in this thing with you from the beginning?”

“Well,” Starsky admitted, braving his words, only because Jade had made him feel safe, “you and he would say his hard-on was a matter of degree. He didn’t feel that first time what I felt to the degree I felt it. He didn’t see it in the bigger picture to the degree I saw it—and he still doesn’t. He isn’t bugged by this at all, not even that first time—as if it’s perfectly natural for him.”

“Do you think it’s because he’s gay?”

“No, but it bugs me because it makes him un­able to understand what I’m going through with this. It’s more com­plicated than either of you seem to realize.”

Jade heard Hutch exhale then and looked at him—to see him shrug again and find him speech­less. He looked back at Starsky. “Let’s leave Hutch out of it right now. Instead, you explain it to me. Tell me how you assimilated it that first time.”

“Assimilated it?”

“Tell me how you guys … analyzed it for yourselves.”

* * *

Starsky felt the grass-covered ground beneath him and closed his eyes to absorb its strength. Still, he didn’t think he could explain his anxiety, but he tried. “It’s because of what those guys did to me,” he decided. He didn’t want to remember the details of the attack, but he was afraid its long-term effect had come to pass; in fact, he was terri­fied it had.

“C’mon, you know better than that,” Hutch argued. He pushed himself onto his side and set his temple in his palm, so it was his turn to be snug against his partner. “What happened here between us had noth­ing to do with them.”

Starsky continued to stare into space. He appreciated Hutch’s close­ness because it reassured him that his action, his reaction, and his arousal, hadn’t offended or driven Hutch away, yet he didn’t under­stand Hutch’s perspective. “But funny how in ten years we never had a want to do that until now,” he said.

Hutch studied Starsky’s timidness, reexamined the more-than-usual physical abuse Starsky had used to express his frustration, anger, and fear, and looked for a way to explain it, even though he wished Starsky would just accept the way they were, even in its newness. Or especially. “We’re closer now is all,” Hutch said.

“Because of them,” Starsky argued.

“Because we were tested,” Hutch corrected him. “The test streng­th­ened us, not the attack.”

“The attack was the test.”

Maybe Starsky was right. “Okay, but the attack didn’t make you gay. A person isn’t made gay; you’re either born that way or you’re not.”

Starsky turned his head to brave looking Hutch in the eye. He did it because he was that angry at him; otherwise, he’d have still been too embar­rassed to make intimate contact. He didn’t like Hutch’s attempt to dilute the ob­vious. “We just had sex,” Starsky informed him.

“That wasn’t sex.”

“You wouldn’t have done that with some other guy, would you? I mean, you wouldn’t do it with Wade Davis.”

“I don’t know,” Hutch joked. “He is a good-looking dude. Besides, Internal Affairs Agents have always turned me on.”

“C’mon, man. Don’t fuck with me. I’m serious.”

“Okay,” Hutch surrendered. “It would depend on the person. I’d do it with Emma, after all.” He pretended to think. “In fact, I’ve done it with Emma. I’ve Frenched her and she’s still my friend.”

Starsky growled at him. “You know what I’m saying.”

“Yeah, that I wouldn’t French my mother, so therefore French-ing isn’t a friend thing, it’s a sex thing. But that still didn’t make what we did sex. Now, if you fucked me…”

Starsky was about to hit Hutch again, but he caught himself in time when he remembered Hutch’s warning about retaliation. “Well, if that wasn’t sex,” Starsky asked, “what would you call it?”

“I’d call it as physically close as we’re ever going to get.”

“And you know that because?”

“Because I won’t let us go further,” Hutch said with heart­felt cer­tainty.

Out of pure provocation, and because he was frustrated with Hutch’s answers, Starsky asked, “Suppose I want us to go further? Suppose I want you to fuck me?”

Hutch lightly laughed, caught off-guard. Had Starsky actually want­ed sex with him? Had the attacks, after all, warped Starsky’s self-iden­tity?

“We said we’d do anything for each other,” Starsky reminded him.

Hutch didn’t want to play games. He needed a direct answer. “Are you asking me to fuck you?”

“Suppose I did?”

“I’m asking you if that’s what you’re asking me.”

“And I’m asking you if you would if I asked.”

Hutch backed down, not out of disgust, but out of frustration and some hurt, too, that Starsky wouldn’t directly answer him. He gave him a straight-from-the-heart reply. “I guess it isn’t true that we’d do any­thing for each other … because I won’t fuck you,” he said.

“You’re that sure of it?”

“As sure as I am that I wouldn’t rape anybody for you, either.” His voice was heavy with his annoyance. “When we said we’d do any­­­­­­­­­­thing for each other, we meant things within sanity, not things against our nature.”

Starsky pressed him. “So it’s your nature to kill then,” he noted, “because you’re prepared to kill for me.”

“You’re right. Killing isn’t against my nature; I’ll do it if I have to. But fucking men, rap­ing women, mo­lest­ing children, boiling animals alive—”

“Jesus. You compare fucking men to boiling animals alive and you think I’m the one who’s—”

“I wasn’t equating them; I was giving you examples of the things that go against my nature.”

“Okay, I get it,” Starsky said. He should have known better than to push Hutch. Hutch always pushed back; that was also his nature. “But what about me?”

“What about you?” Hutch asked.

Starsky crossed his arms over his chest to protect himself as he relinquished his anger and braved his confession. “I got a hard-on a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah? Well, it just proves how much you love me. So what?”

“Did you get one?”

Hutch thought for a minute. “I felt something,” he admitted. Was it an erection? He wasn’t sure. He answered honestly. “I was turned on, but in emotional ways, I think; still, I probably could have muster­ed up a boner if that had gone any longer.”

“So, doesn’t that make you wonder about yourself now? about your nature?”

“It doesn’t make me wonder if I’m gay,” Hutch explained, “if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Starsky looked into Hutch’s blue eyes. “I’m wondering about your nature. I’m wondering if you know what your nature is. Tell me. What did that kissing mean to you?”

Hutch thought for a second. “It means I really liked doing that with you. It doesn’t mean I want to do that with some other guy. You just said so yourself. We wouldn’t have done that with any of our other friends. Nor did it mean I want to fuck you—or have you fuck me—which is why I’m going to ask you again: Is that what you want? do you want us to fuck each other?”

Starsky didn’t have to think about it. “That’s not what I want; it’s what I’m afraid I’ll want.”

“And there’s the difference in us. You worry shit to death. I say I like having my mouth on yours. I say it turned me on to some degree. I say it’s just the way it is. You worry it means something else entirely—and, further, that there’d be something wrong with that even if it did.”

Starsky held steady eye contact with Hutch. He’d give anything to have Hutch’s confidence. “Then you tell me what it means to me, since you’re so smart.”

Hutch squeezed and held Starsky’s arm. “We’ve spent a decade breaking the rules,” he said. “It’s what we do. And there’s a price for every­­thing. You paid the brunt of it—the vic­tim of a hate crime. We came out the other side stronger because of it. Now here we are, lying in this meadow, having just talked about build­­ing your house on this very spot, and you got to feeling over­whelmed.”

It never ceased to amaze Starsky how well Hutch knew him.

“You followed an impulse spurred by an emotion—or a barrel of them—right up to the edge,” Hutch continued, “and then I pushed you over—because that’s what I do.” He tried a playful smirk, but Starsky was too serious to appreciate it. “We surrendered to the honesty of what we did—and that turned us on.”

Starsky wasn’t so certain. “I think the act turned me on, too.”

“Yeah, but so what? Take your head out of it. It is what it is.”

“You’re so mean to me.”

“Because I won’t indulge your deepest, darkest fears?”

“Yeah, because of that,” Starsky said, dryly.

“Stop worrying about it. It’s not like we’re going to pass this way again. I heard you,” he added, “loud and clear. You won’t have to tell me again. And you’re welcome. In fact, I thank you back.” He smiled then, out of the warmth of their friendship, to let Starsky know his intention to convey his gratitude had succeeded.

Starsky laughed with relief, a small laugh, and shifted his eyes to the blue above them. He hugged himself and felt Hutch’s hand still affec­tionately attached to his arm. “Maybe you’re right.” But as he re­played the kiss in his mind, and all the messages it could have sent beyond the one he intended, including a hidden and re­pressed desire of his own, he said, “and maybe you’re not right, you know? Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re as wrong as wrong can be.”

“What are the chances?” Hutch said with a laugh. He tried a differ­ent ap­proach when Starsky didn’t laugh with him. “There are three things I won’t do,” he said. His comment made Starsky look at him and wait to hear about those things. “One is,” Hutch told him, “that I won’t let you hurt yourself.”

Hutch was his partner and their brotherhood comforted Starsky yet again.

“If you start to think that those men turned you into something you’re not,” Hutch explained, “and you begin to feel some unpre­ce­dent­ed need to explore what that is by experimenting with gay sex—with any­­­body—then you can bet your sweet ass I’m going to do every­­thing in my power to stop you.”

“Why do you give a shit who I fuck or who fucks me?”

“Because you’re not gay.”

“That doesn’t explain that gay act I just did.”

“I’m explaining it,” Hutch said. “You did it with me because you love me, but you’re in love with Grace. That’s who you are. Those guys—who, I remind you, weren’t gay, either—didn’t change you; they may have awakened you to the idea of romantic love because they jarred your reality, but here you are in the middle of true love with a beautiful woman and I’m not going to let you screw that up.”

Starsky was reminded of Grace’s beautiful face, her long dark hair and sparkling green eyes, her sexiness and her affection for him, her youth and her dreams, and their own erotic lovemaking. If he was afraid of anything—other than losing Hutch—it was losing her—so he appreciated that Hutch would keep him from making a terminal mistake.

“The second thing I won’t do,” Hutch said, “is anything that hurts Us. That kiss? Hell, that was nuthin’. Our tests have been far greater than that—and you know it. What we did today was a momentary cross­­ing of the line, a rule-breaking experience, a small piece of who we are. But to go further, to be what we’re not? Buddy boy, I’m not doing that with you. You can’t make me.”

Starsky was certain at that minute that he couldn’t make Hutch do anything. He was relieved by it, too. Ken Hutchinson was formidable. Any fear Starsky had that he might sink into a corrupted intimacy with him was abolished in an instant. There was no entertaining the idea because Hutch would not be entertained.

“And the last thing I won’t do is hurt myself,” Hutch said. He squeezed Starsky’s arm again to drive home his final point. “I fuck with you—or fuck you, for that matter—and I run the risk of losing you and destroying Us—because that kind of a relationship would fuck us both up. Kiss you, yes. French kiss you, apparently. But not fuck you. You can’t budge me on this, pal. I’m too self-preserving when it comes to you. Don’t even try me.”

“You’re saying I sucked face with you just because I love you.”

“Simple as that.”

If only Starsky could embrace it so simply. He didn’t have any an­swers, so maybe he’d accept Hutch’s. It was certainly easier.

Hutch was satisfied that he’d soothed Starsky’s concerns. He could see it in the contemplative expression on his partner’s face, in the new softness in Starsky’s warm blue eyes, and in the exhale of the apprehension in Starsky’s breath. He gave Starsky a nod, got back part of a friend­ly smile, and then rolled off Starsky to lie on his back in the grass. He closed his eyes. “Oh,” he said on added thought, “and for the record, the Grand Can­yon once gave me a hard-on, too.”

Starsky heartily laughed; it made Hutch laugh.

“So, you see,” Hutch said, “sometimes it’s just the nature of things that turn us on.”

Starsky could see that. “And nice to know I’m in good company.” He stared at the sky, its vastness and depth of its blue. He heard a bird song. It made him inhale a deep breath of fresh air. He remem­bered that Hutch didn’t believe in a traditional God; Hutch believed in mountains and rivers, oceans and skies, the inani­mate and the anima around them, and in the simple way things were. For a while, Starsky basked in the peacefulness of Hutch’s gods.

But then his concern that he wanted more from Hutch than he’d ever knew he wanted tugged at him. He rose onto his elbow beside Hutch and stared across the meadow as he recalled their kisses there in the grass that morning, and that he’d liked them, and that he’d been aroused by them. Hutch may not ever sexu­ally indulge him beyond such a kiss, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean Starsky didn’t want Hutch to indulge him—and that frightened him.

Hutch opened his eyes when he heard move­ment and looked at Star­sky. “Stop worrying about it,” he repeated, to read Starsky’s mind. “It was Us—just playing around. You’ll see.”

Starsky lowered his eyes and looked into Hutch’s. They seemed so certain.

“You don’t believe me,” Hutch noted. To convince him, he offered his hand. “Let’s make a deal then. We never do that again. A solemn prom­ise between us.”

Starsky stared at Hutch’s hand. All he had to do was take it and it would be so. Then he looked again into Hutch’s eyes, right down through them and into Hutch’s heart and soul, and was reminded that he had something extraordinarily special with the man he called his hero. Hutch was right: They were who they were. Unafraid of each other. Unprecedented and forever bonded. And what they had was with­out boundaries. And unbreak­able.

Starsky smiled into those blue eyes, huffed to let Hutch know he thought his proposal was a stupid one, summoned the gratitude he’d felt and would forever feel for his partner, imagined a life with no more sexually intimate kisses between them, realized he wasn’t pre­pared to abandon them, and then knocked Hutch’s hand away.

* * *

“How did you finish that day?” Jade asked. He looked from one to the other in search of his answer, but when neither man spoke—perhaps because they didn’t quite understand the question—he asked it differently. “Were you able to look each other in the eye?”

“It was strange,” Starsky said. “I mean, you know, it was there in the back of my head the rest of that day—and for some days after. I had these flashes on what I’d done, on what we did, and I’d think how weird it was.”

“But not so weird you apparently didn’t do it again.”

“I should have stayed with the word ‘strange,’” Starsky corrected himself. “It was a strange thing, not in a bad way; an unusual thing, you know? Not something we did every day—at least not until then.”

“So, when you think about it, that’s when you feel bad about it.”

“I feel turned on when I think about it,” Starsky admitted, “not just when I do it. And I think I shouldn’t feel that way, that I shouldn’t feel turned on, so I stop thinking about it. But then it creeps in again. Yeah, so—for the record—I feel bad about it when I think about it because I shouldn’t be turned on by it, let alone do it.”

Jade waited for his other client to share his experience. But Hutch didn’t say a word. He looked back at Jade as if to tell him he had nothing to add.

“You don’t want to be here,” Jade noted. “This isn’t what you want to talk about.”

“I want to help him,” Hutch said with a shrug. “So I’ll tell you what­ever you want to know. Have I felt ‘uncom­fort­able’ about what we’ve done? No. Do I think it’s strange or weird or some­thing I should­n’t do? No. It feels sexy,” he said on second thought. Jade’s inquiry made Hutch look more deeply into his kissing Starsky. “It is sexy what we do,” he added quietly. “I’m sorry it troubles him so much.”

“Sexy enough to turn you on? Is it possible that your uncertain arou­sals are actually erections?”

Hutch hadn’t even hinted to the degree of his physical reactions to Starsky. He was concerned about the confession, that it might only serve to confuse Starsky further, but truth was the order of the day, so truth he of­fer­ed. “Yeah, I’d call them hard-ons. I mean, how can I not? Sexy is sexy. It is what it is.”

Starsky looked over at Hutch. The disclosure surprised him, though Hutch did hint to ‘boners’ on their drive to Jade’s office that morning. But it hadn’t occurred to Starsky that Hutch actually had bonafide erections because Hutch hadn’t completely copped to them before that day—and he seemed rather content to limit their intimacy to kisses. He thought Hutch just felt ‘aroused’ or ‘stimulated,’ to use Hutch’s non-committal words, but not to the point of a body-changing reaction. But there was nothing to say to what he’d learned; it was a debate they’d had more than once and they had gone nowhere. And he didn’t get the eye contact he sought, so he looked back at Jade and pressed his lips.

Jade kept his attention on Hutch. “Let’s talk about this for Starsky’s sake. Tell me why kissing him turns you on.”

Hutch slouched comfortably in his chair and searched his mind. He was glad Starsky hadn’t overreacted to his confession, so he was readily open about his other thoughts. “Well, first there’s the physical pleasure of it. Kissing feels good, wouldn’t you agree? It’s a warm, wet, sensual, bonding act of closeness.” He dropped his line of sight to the back of Jade’s desk to focus on a further reason. “Add to that the mess­age I get when he kisses me: He likes me. He trusts me. He might even desire me. Those things feel good to know, too.” He heard a gentle silence in the room and lifted his eyes to Jade’s again. “And then there’s that little matter of how I feel about him.”

“That middle reason interests me,” Jade said. “You don’t feel threa­t­ened by the possibility that he desires you?”

Hutch lightly laughed. “It’s not like he’s going to tie me down and forcibly sodomize me.”

Jade glanced at Starsky in time to see Starsky look away out of dis­gust.

Hutch, too, caught Starsky’s reaction at his sarcasm. In the context of what had transpired those past couple months, particularly the brutal attacks on Starsky, Hutch felt he should apologize, but he knew he didn’t have per­mission to explain his inappropriate comment. “I’m just say­in’,” he said instead, “that I don’t feel threatened by Starsky, no.”

“Sometimes a threat isn’t physical,” Jade noted.

Jade’s observation intrigued Hutch. He thought about it. “Maybe I might feel threatened,” he said on second thought, “if things were actu­ally sexual between us—by my definition of sex—but right now, I don’t feel like I’m in any emotional danger, either.”

“Did you know Hutch gets turned on when you kiss each other?” Jade asked Starsky. “Can’t you feel his erections between you guys?”

“Not until now,” Starsky answered. “I mean, not to where, you know, he cops to it. I’ve had a feeling he gets boners, because I sense them, like you say, ‘between’ us, but to know it just makes things weirder.”

“How so?”

“Well, I guess because I don’t understand how he can feel that way and not want to do anything about it.”

“‘Anything’—meaning take your physical relations further than French kissing?”

Starsky was a bit perplexed. “I don’t even have to go that far to think it’s weird. I mean, how can he kiss me and get hard-ons by it and then sit here and say what we’ve been doing is only ‘sexy,’ but not sex?”

“He has a different definition of sex.”

“Yeah? Well, that’s what pisses me off sometimes. This whole thing pisses me off sometimes.”

* * *

They had accomplished a lot in a short period of time. First the build­ing permit, which went without a hitch—as Hutch suspected it would, given his previous, but failed, attempt to get Starsky on the prop­erty; Starsky didn’t want to live so far out from the city then. But things were different now.

Next came the hiring of a general contractor to actually construct the house—which was to start immediately with its foundation. Grace already had a floor plan in mind, a quaint cottage-like house, one whose features blended nicely with the landscape that already existed on the ten acres, with its aging shade trees, open fields, newly planted fruit and nut orchards, and garden areas. Though she hadn’t made a commit­ment to live with Starsky, he had coaxed her into helping him decide what to build—just in case she did move in with him. Or marry him along the way, too.

It was the perfect set-up; Starsky lived with Hutch after his release from the hospital—because he needed a nursemaid and Hutch was the perfect substitute—so Starsky was already a resident on the prop­erty when they broke ground on his new house. All he had to do—other than organize the building process with the help of his general con­tractor—was walk across the driveway from Hutch’s house to meet the various laborers: The cement mixers, lumber deliveries, bull­dozers, inspec­tors. And, all the while, he was hopeful the new house would soften Grace into living with him—if, for no other reason, than because she fell in love with the place.

“She’s in love with you,” Hutch said, “not a two-story building.”

But none of it seemed real until the structure got framed. It was only then that it took a material shape and not just criss-crossing lines on a blueprint. The framed-out house also nicely blocked the un­sightly crop warehouse across the street from Hutch’s porch view—so even he was pleased.

He followed Starsky up the staircase one afternoon, late into the fram­ing, and stood with him on the master bedroom balcony—which over­looked his own yard and house. “You really are spying on me,” he noted.

“I told you I’d keep an eye on you.”

“That, you did,” Hutch said under his breath. He liked all of it: The dimensions and style of the house itself, that Starsky would live nearby, and that they had direct lines of sight to each other’s residences. All of it was perfect. It was a perfect day that day, too, the day they stood together on the ply­wood balcony and over­looked their property. The days were warmer, the trees fully leafed, the air a crisper frag­rance. The sun cast long shadows over the land­scape. Hutch stood a while, leaned on the bal­cony rail, and envi­sioned it finished someday, a day they could finally call home.

“Are you excited about this?” he asked.

“I’ll be excited when it’s done,” Starsky said. He stood near Hutch and admired the view with him. “Building a house is a pain in the ass—even if you like what you’re doing.”

“But well worth the effort, I imagine.”

“I imagine,” Starsky echoed.

“So what’s next?”

“I have no idea. I think a bunch of guys show up over the next few weeks and it starts to look like a house; they make the walls and doorways. That kind of thing.”

Hutch also thought that would be the next step. Then he pushed off the rail and followed Starsky into the framed-out bedroom after Starsky left him alone too long on the balcony.

They talked about what would soon be the master bathroom, where the toilet and the sinks and the cabinets would go; about the closets and where additional win­dows would be installed. It would be a sunny room, for sure, and promised new life in it, too, if Starsky had his way.

It was obvious to Hutch that Starsky knew the house quite well be­cause he himself couldn’t tell one row of two-by-four beams from another.

Starsky showed him the other bedrooms, the smaller ones, a guest room and adjacent bathroom, the other a child’s room; “hint, hint,” he said.

Hutch tapped Starsky’s elbow. “Shouldn’t you marry her first?”

“It’s headed in that direction.”

Hutch was pleased about that, too. He liked the idea of Starsky settling down on the property, Starsky and Grace, and that he’d get to watch Starsky’s kids grow up in a rural neighborhood, right there in his own back­yard. He turned to leave the upstairs when they reached the stairwell, but just as they were about to go down, Starsky grabbed Hutch’s arm and spun him around to face him.

They made firm eye contact when Starsky hesitated.

Hutch hesitated, too, because he thought Starsky was about tell him more about his hopes to marry Grace, and that the house he was building was merely bait for her, but it seemed Starsky had gotten in­ex­plicably sidetracked. Hutch waited. And it was the stall that told him what to expect next. He’d seen that look before—on more than one occasion since Starsky and he lay in the grass together, right there where that house was being built, and Starsky kissed him the first time.

Starsky was about to do it again. His desire was all over his face, in his inviting eyes, his halting action, his firm grip still on Hutch’s arm.

Hutch didn’t know what to think. Had he time, perhaps he would have remembered how upset with himself Starsky got after they kissed, or even how physically reprimanding Starsky was afterward, pain­fully punch­ing and poking Hutch out of frus­tration for having done such a thing with him—and then he could stop Starsky from making another mistake. But Hutch didn’t have time to think; he was only given enough time to react, and he didn’t ignore his gut—which was to let the scene play out.

The dialogue was unspoken and it was fast. They both knew what had overcome them: First Starsky’s impulse, then Hutch’s compliance. Silently, and together, they agreed to engage it, see where it led them again, explore how it felt, enjoy the doing, even if it meant hating the outcome.

Starsky pushed Hutch against two wooden beams at his back. It was an unconscious act: If he pinned Hutch, he could quickly get the kiss he wanted—without resistance, as if there’d be any—satisfy his sud­den desire, and decide—in an instant, perhaps—whether it was appropriate. Lay it to rest, as if it were unfinished finished business. Or it would give him the additional answers he needed to decipher the urges he repeatedly had.

Their lips affectionately met. They had already laid the timidness behind them; at least, Starsky had. It was the forward motion that inter­ested him, not the driving force. He didn’t test the waters; he simply dived in. Hutch’s mouth was as soft and warm as he remembered, com­pliant and responsive; it met each of Starsky’s kisses with kisses. Hutch’s tongue seamlessly responded to Starsky’s tongue, too. They closed their eyes, focused purely on the sensual and the sexy, the physical and the action, kissed lips, sucked tongues, breathed heavily, and pushed each kiss into a more pass­ionate one from the last.

The unexpected lip lock was a thrill for Hutch. He didn’t know whether Starsky simply continued to explore a journey he’d taken and would regret it again afterward—because it didn’t show itself in Star­sky’s confident and determined touches—or if Starsky’s impulse came from a deep, personal, genuine place—where it would forever stay with­out regret. It didn’t matter. Their kisses were fear­less, wet, warm, smelled fresh and familiar, were spurred by their fierce breathing and the quiet, yet consuming, sounds of their lips smacking, the rub of their clothes against each other, the occasional grunt or moan, that inde­fin­able arousal deep within them.

But nearly as quickly as it started, the engagement ended. Starsky caught himself and pulled away, though he didn’t loosen his grip on Hutch, the one that held his partner to the wood-beamed wall. Perhaps it was a bird song close by or a car passing on the roadway some thou­sand feet away; whatever it was, Starsky realized the room wasn’t priv­ate, which meant it wasn’t safe—even though it would have been difficult for anyone to see them up there behind all those rows of two-by-fours. But his sense of self-preservation overcame his sexual desire.

He made firm eye contact with Hutch. “Tell me you didn’t like that,” he demanded.

“I can’t tell you that,” Hutch admitted, his heart still pounding. He wasn’t as consciously aware of his own erection, but he knew he felt electrified.

Starsky was disappointed. He believed if Hutch hadn’t enjoyed it, then it wasn’t to be enjoyed—and he, Starsky, should reconsider his urges, maybe even seek professional help for them. He released Hutch from his hands and stepped back, panting. It wasn’t the answer he wanted. The urge wasn’t something he could explain. And the sexual stimulation it caused him demoralized his sense of self.

He slapped Hutch’s cheek—harder than he realized—to force Hutch to move off the wall. “C’mon, cowboy, let’s go,” he said, de­scend­ing the stairs. “This house is cursed.”

* * *

Jade looked at Starsky and found his next question. “Is that some­thing you do often? Poke and punch and slap your part­ner?” he asked.

Starsky snorted. “No,” he said emphatically. “I mean, not as a rule, no.” He thought further when he felt Hutch’s pressing presence beside him on the sofa. Hutch would probably disagree. Was it a dis­agreeable answer? Maybe. He tried another. “Well, I mean, it seems I do that to him more now than I used to.”

“Because you’re regularly kissing him now?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Are you punishing him?”

“For what?”

“For going along with your desire.”

Starsky was dismayed by the notion. He looked over at Hutch to get a reply from him, but all Hutch did was shrug at him and convey, by way of his passive expression, that there might be some truth behind Jade’s questions regarding Starsky’s retalia­tions each time he and Hutch enjoyed a round of kisses.

“I don’t know,” Starsky said. He really did try to decipher it. “I don’t think I feel really pissed at him, you know? I don’t think I’m mad at him about anything. I think it’s more that I’m mad at myself.”

“And taking it out on him.”

Starsky didn’t like that idea, either.

It did explain the reprimands, though, Hutch silently thought. Looking back, he couldn’t remember a single kiss they shared where he didn’t somehow get smacked for it afterward. But how could Starsky slap himself? It was easier to slap Hutch.

“Jesus, I’m pathetic,” Starsky lamented.

“Well,” Jade said, to ease his client’s dismay, “maybe if we can de­ter­mine that your abusive behavior is self-directed, you can find another outlet for it besides inflicting pain on the guy you’re enjoy­ing.”

Starsky glared at Jade. Something in that suggestion didn’t sit well with him—and he wasn’t sure which part. That the doctor thought he was abusive? Or that the doctor thought he enjoyed kissing a man? He was offended by both those analyses.

“He likes what we do as much as I do,” Starsky defended himself.

“He likes getting punched and slapped?” Jade asked, not seri­ously. He knew Starsky had trouble admitting to his sexual desire for Hutch, and that’s exactly where Jade wanted to push him.

Starsky didn’t want to clarify himself, but not doing so painted a picture of Hutch he didn’t appreciate, either. “He likes kissing me as much as I like kissing him,” Starsky corrected himself. There, he said it.

“Good,” Jade replied, rewarding him. “But the part you don’t like is having done it, having enjoyed it.”

“Like that,” Starsky said.

Jade pondered the conversation, then asked something completely off the topic. “Why do you call him cowboy?”

Starsky couldn’t recall the reason for a moment. Then he remembered. “Because he owns a ranch.”

“It’s not a ranch,” Hutch debated him. “It’s a farm.”

“He owns a farm,” Starsky reworded himself, purely to placate Hutch, but knew he’d made his point with Jade.

“Do you have cows?” Jade jokingly asked Hutch.

“Not a one,” Hutch said.

“You won’t even find dead ones on his property,” Starsky added. “He’s gone all the way off the deep end: He’s become a vegetarian.”

Jade then turned his complete attention to Hutch that morn­ing. The ‘vegetarian’ reference brought him back to their earlier dialogue; something about the man’s passive nature in that regard intrigued him. “So, how many kisses end in reprimands?” he asked Hutch.

“All of them,” Hutch replied after he realized it was probably his turn to be interrogated.

“How many, would you say?”

“Geez, I don’t know. Dozens, by now, I suppose.”

Starsky shifted his eyes to the floor. He was ashamed to admit to that much kissing, let alone that many physical retaliations for some­thing he himself instigated in the first place.

“And you just take it,” Jade assumed, about Hutch. His eye con­tact was firm with that blond, blue-eyed client of his; though their reason for coming to his office each week was to explore Starsky’s self-identity, it didn’t explain Hutch’s. “Dozens of times later, the guy punches and pokes and slaps and hits you, and you just take it. Am I hearing that right?”

Hutch shifted uneasily in his chair. He knew he could outmuscle Starsky, so why did he let the man abuse him so much? He didn’t know.

Jade explored it with him. “Do you feel you deserve punish­ment?”

“Because I kiss him?”

“Because you kiss him, because you enjoy kissing him. Do you figure the punishment forgives your behavior and paves the way for the next kiss?”

Jade’s questions were hard ones to answer. Hutch liked the doc­tor. He just wished he was better prepared for his suppositions. “I haven’t felt bad about what we do; immoral, I mean, but I feel bad for him. I think it’s clear he likes kissing me, but hates himself for it after­ward. So maybe I could be the friend I believe I am and stop him. I don’t have to go along with it, but I do. Maybe I figure his punishment forgives that, but not that it forgives me for some terrible thing I’m doing in the kissing itself. Make sense?”

Jade nodded. “Are the punishments growing in intensity?”

“They were,” Hutch remembered, pleased to have discovered his salvation. “But, then, on one of the last times he went to hit me, I defended myself—and I pretty much still do.”

Jade was pleased to learn that. “Did you punch him back?”

“No,” Hutch said quickly. He would never have hurt Starsky, let alone for an innocent journey they took. “But I’m able to stop him. I finally expected to get hit or slapped, that it had become part of the kiss, if you know what I mean, so I learned when to inter­cept his frustration. It’s now a matter of timing.”

“I’m an asshole,” Starsky said under his breath, feeling self-conscious. He hadn’t realized he’d been so aggressive toward Hutch after each kiss; he knew he had been, but not to the degree that he did it every time they kissed or that Hutch felt a growing need to defend himself. That fact shamed him.

“Maybe it’s asshole behavior,” Jade said, trying to push Starsky off his self-disdain, “but it doesn’t make you an asshole. We’re trying to figure out the whys, remember? No one’s judging this—or you. Hutch isn’t judging, is he? Or else he’d have put a complete stop to it long ago.”

Starsky didn’t think it excused him.

“Tell me about the first time you defended yourself,” Jade asked Hutch. “I’m curious to know what Starsky’s reaction was to that.”

“He didn’t have time to react,” Hutch remembered. “On that par­ti­cular occasion, the incident ended badly for another reason.”

* * *

Though Hutch wasn’t much of a carpenter, he was pretty good at constructing the occasional bench or end table. So it was only natural that Starsky coerced him into helping him construct a built-in bookcase in one of Starsky’s guest bedrooms—the one Grace had playfully told him would be her library when the house was complete.

“Ask me to help you plant a garden,” Hutch said. “That’s something I know how to do.” He struggled momentarily with a two-by-twelve lumber board, of which Starsky held the other end, and together they mount­ed it over a couple of saw horses that Starsky had set up in the middle of the otherwise empty room. Hutch watched him measure the length he wanted and then mark it with a pencil.

Starsky straightened and looked at him. “You’re a grown boy now,” he said. “It’s time you learned how to hold the other end of something. Besides,” he added, “it’s good practice for that greenhouse you plan to build someday.”

Hutch didn’t argue. He waited while Starsky cut the wood at his mark with a power saw and then, again together, they held the board against the wall so Starsky could screw the shelf into the studs they’d already bolt­ed into place.

“Where did you learn carpentry?” Hutch asked.

“This is just your basic Woodshop 101,” Starsky said. “I couldn’t build furniture, like that out­door bench you did. That turned out really nice, don’t you think?”

Hutch was proud of that accomplishment. It had been a chal­lenge, but he enjoyed it. “That bench was also your basic Woodshop 101,” he decided. He looked forward to his future endeavors instead. “How about I invite you over with your power saw to help me build the green­house? And what say we put it between your place and mine to make it a joint effort? Grace would like that, wouldn’t she?”

It went without saying.

Using a power drill, Starsky screwed the board into the studs, and neither of them spoke until it was done and the noise ended.

“You’re not going to want me to paint this thing with you, are you?” Hutch asked. “I hate painting.”

“Who doesn’t?” Starsky replied. His focus was on his task when he added, without thinking, “I don’t want you to paint this thing with me, but you’re going to.”

“How does that make sense?”

Starsky riveted the last screw in place, briefly stood back to admire their work, dangled the drill to his side, and finally looked at Hutch. He realized only then what he’d said. “Just plan on painting it with me,” he ordered. “I won’t like it any more than you will, but Grace is the only one with a real office job around here and she hasn’t got the time.”

Hutch mocked an expression of indignant insult to let Starsky know he’d been reprimanded—which made Starsky feel guilty for his bossi­ness. He began to turn away from Hutch, but then quickly faced him—to apologize. His sudden move startled Hutch, enough that Hutch gently hit the corner wall at his back, and he laughed at himself. “Must be the power tool,” Hutch said to explain his reaction.

But his un­expect­ed passive­ness—his blue eyes and blond hair, his height and his weight, his build and his muscle, his clothes and his sweat, his loyalty and his devotion—aroused Starsky, though neither of them were con­scious of it.

But, consciously, Starsky leaned in for a kiss.

One of the many things Hutch loved about Starsky’s sensuality was its unpredictability. There was no rhyme or reason to Starsky’s urges, or there didn’t appear to be. And he would have them at the most interesting of times. Maybe that’s what drove them. Awkward moments lent them­selves to needy behavior. Whatever it was, Hutch didn’t care. He enjoyed kissing Starsky. He wasn’t interested in analyzing it, but that time, he would at least be ready for the inevitable punishment. Maybe this kiss would be the best ever because it wouldn’t end in pain. Maybe by preventing the kickback, he could thwart Starsky’s frustration for him, too. They could both come away from the kiss feeling purely good.

But Starsky never made contact. At the last second, right before their lips would have met, he pulled back, out of shame. “Psyche,” he said, to explain himself. He then re­turned to his end of the saw horse and searched the floor for the next board to tackle. When he realized the obvious silence in the room, he looked over at Hutch.

Hutch still pressed his back to the wall—and his eye contact with Starsky wasn’t friendly.

“What?” Starsky asked, innocently.

“If you’re going to kiss me, kiss me,” Hutch said. “Don’t fuck with me.” His lowered voice conveyed his seriousness.

“You were disappointed?”

“Yeah. One thing I was … was disappointed.”

Starsky straightened. “You’re not supposed to want that,” he said.

“Want what?”

“Me to kiss you.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not normal.”

“By whose measure?”

Starsky exhaled, frustrated. “It’s not natural,” he corrected himself. “It’s not natural for men to kiss men and it’s not natural for us.”

“If that’s what you believe, then believe it,” Hutch replied. “But don’t play around with it, okay? Don’t fuck with me over it anymore.”

“Sorry,” Starsky said guiltily. He understood. He also stood straight. Silently. In retrospective thought. “It’s not natural for us,” he said again, as if to convince Hutch, or at least to convince himself.

“So be it,” Hutch answered him. “End of story.”

“But you were disappointed,” Starsky noted.

“You’re fucking with me again.”

Starsky set the drill on the saw horse and huffed out the last of his frustration. “I was disappointed, too,” he confessed.

“Then why didn’t you follow through?”

“Because it’s not natural.”

“Neither is painting.”

Starsky didn’t smile. He wanted to be understood, not analyzed or debated. “Think about it,” he implored Hutch. “We going to do that until our dying days? Go at each other like a couple of horn toads whenever we get the chance?”

Hutch never appreciated Starsky’s messages when he couched them in stupid comments. He rolled his eyes. “We’re a lot more com­plex than any amphibian species,” he said. “You like it? Do it. I like it? I’ll do it. Are we hurting anybody?”

They paused at his question because they realized they hurt Grace. What would she think or do if she knew her boyfriend engaged in periodic French kisses with his male partner—behind her back, no less?

Hutch clarified himself. “I meant, are we hurting each other by doing it? If your argument is that it’s not natural, even for us, then we’re talking about each other here. So, who’s hurt? you or me or neither of us?”

“I don’t know,” Starsky admitted. He said it in a soft voice because he was ashamed of that, too, of not knowing.

Hutch studied Starsky’s defeated posture, his expression of un­certainty, the dark in his blue eyes, that handsome face, and Starsky’s melan­cholic tone of voice didn’t go unnoticed, either. “Just don’t play around with it any­more,” Hutch said, to push away his own desire purely from the look of the man—and from his apparent weakness, one which Hutch wished he had the courage to exploit. “It bothers you too much afterward. And it apparently bothers you before you do it, so leave it lie. But don’t ‘psyche’ me again, okay? You’re not being fair to me.”

Starsky repeated his apology and added, “But it’s not fair to me, either.”

“How do you figure?”

“I want you to be as confused as I am about this. I want you to be as fucked up over it, you know? So you can better help me with this.”

“I can’t,” Hutch said sorrily. “It’s not something I’m confused or conflicted over. I don’t see the unnaturalness of it. We ap­par­ently feel it. I’m not interested in the reason, so if the urge is there, how can it be unnatural?”

Starsky stepped closer to Hutch. He wanted to be as direct in his body language as he was in his words. “So if I have the urge to kill some­body, you’d say that’s natural because I have the urge?”

“Wouldn’t it be? Isn’t killing natural? Unethical, maybe, under most circumstances. But unnatural? Or haven’t you studied human his­tory or read the latest headlines?”

Starsky stepped closer still. He noticed that Hutch was against the wall, that he was relaxed there, his weight holding him to it, com­fortable even with the conversation, it seemed. “Okay,” Starsky agreed about kill­ing. “So may­be it’s natural what we’ve done, this kissing thing, but it’s not right.”

“That’s a different argument. You’re welcome to it. If it goes against your morality, then it goes against your morality, Starsk. Leave it lie.”

“But what you’re saying,” Starsky argued, “is that it’s just a differ­ence between what I feel and what I think.”

“In a sense, yes.”

“The trick then is to get what I feel and what I think to agree with each other.”

“If you can,” Hutch said. He noticed that Starsky had come closer, that Starsky was deeper in thought. He didn’t want to talk Starsky into a kiss, but he didn’t want to talk him out of one, either. He tread lightly.

“But first I’d have to figure out which one I want to win the argu­ment,” Starsky concluded. “Do I want to go with what I feel or what I think?”

“Only you can decide that.”

Annoyed because Hutch didn’t help him, Starsky said, “Well, if killing is natural, but not right, I’ll take the right route. That’s what any good person would do, isn’t it? Therefore,” he added with a growl, “I’ll take the right route about kissing a guy—and that’s to not kiss him.”

Hutch was disappointed for the second time that day, but on that occasion, he didn’t let it show. “So it’s settled,” he said.

“Except killing somebody,” Starsky countered him, “is hurting some­body. And, like you said, what we’ve done hasn’t hurt anybody, me or you, I mean. Has it?”

“I’m not going to make up your mind for you.”

His comment only angered Starsky further. “I’m asking you to help me, goddammit. Jesus, you French kiss me. You can’t help me figure this?”

“I thought I was helping you … by getting you to think out loud and hear yourself better.”

Starsky stepped close enough to be in Hutch’s reach. Or for Hutch to be in his. “That’s it?” he asked. “You get me to think out loud so I can just hear my confusion? That’s what you call helping me?”

Hutch knew Starsky was close enough to kiss him, touch him, any­way, ease some concern, but the fire in Starsky’s eyes didn’t lend itself to affection. “I don’t know how to do anything else,” Hutch explained. “I have a personal, biased interest in it. I was disappointed that you didn’t kiss me. I’ve liked it when we’ve done it and thought it would be nice to do again. I like how it feels. We’ve had this conver­sation before—or something like it—so maybe I can’t help you. Maybe you should talk to somebody else about this. In the meantime, all I’m asking you to do is stop jerking me around over it. Either kiss me or don’t kiss me. And I’m sorry I can’t give you more than that.”

They stood silently for a minute—making eye contact, and not realizing how much they were drawn to the look of the other, to their physical appearances, their faces, blue eyes, familiar hands, distinguishing hair, muscled build, as much as they were drawn to the bond between them. But neither, in the end, knew how to handle this particular situation. That much was clear to Starsky. He’d been wrong to think Hutch had the answers. Their intimacy was new to both of them; how did either of them know what to do?

“Okay,” Starsky said, surrendering. “Either kiss you or don’t kiss you. In the meantime, I try to figure out why I ever wanted to—and I don’t play games with you about it. That’s what we should do?”

Hutch suddenly didn’t like how close they were to each other. Star­sky was near enough for that kiss he had thought was forthcoming. It magnified Starsky’s presence, his heat and his scent. It was too close to the memory of how it felt to indulge that primalness with each other. But the wall was at his back. He didn’t have any place to retreat. He sim­ply wished Starsky would take a step away from him—or come all the way forward. He resented the hesitancy.

Starsky had a similar awareness: Of Hutch’s presence, of his heat and his scent, and the memory of those kisses, too, but his was a dif­ferent wish. “Maybe doing it,” he said quietly, “will help me to figure out better why I’m doing it than if I don’t do it.” He realized his com­ment might make Hutch think he toyed with him still, so he cut the perceived thought off with a lean into Hutch. When he heard Hutch draw a breath and not say a word, he followed through on the invite and touched his lips to Hutch’s.

It was a quiet kiss, accepting and sensual, affectionate and warm, as quiet as his tone of voice had been. Starsky enjoyed another kiss and then another and could tell, by Hutch’s generous physical reply, that Hutch enjoyed the kisses, too. Who did they hurt? Where was the pain? Where did it feel unnatural?

Starsky couldn’t answer the questions; he was completely im­mersed in the feel of their lips, moist at first, tender and tandem, their willingness and welcomed arousal. He opened his eyes briefly and noticed Hutch’s were closed, which only fueled Starsky’s desire. He pressed himself to Hutch, his body to Hutch’s body, felt Hutch’s chest to his chest, his hips to Hutch’s hips, how much larger Hutch was than Grace, than any woman, but how passive Hutch was, too, like every woman.

The length of Starsky’s body pressed to Hutch’s was a new sen­s­a­tion, more primal than the one in the grass that morning because Starsky had more control over his weight. He set the brunt of it against Hutch and pinned him to the wall while they kissed. Starsky’s permitted dominance ratcheted up his desire for sexier kisses, tongued kisses, deeper kisses, the ones Hutch wanted to share with him, too.

They held each other’s faces, breathed in each other’s breaths, relished each other’s warmth and willingness, kissed lips and mouths, one direction then another, then back again. And with those intimate touches, they felt sexually aroused; erections brewed, initially noticed only by their owners, despite how closely joined they were at the hips. The awareness of their own stimulation made it easier to indulge the dura­tion and the depth of their passion.

It wasn’t until Starsky became aware of Hutch’s hard­ening penis, pressed as it was to his own groin through their clothes, that he realized he liked it and he didn’t. Perhaps that nagging in the back of his mind, the one that wouldn’t reprieve him from his ‘un­natural, unethical’ behavior, confused and conflicted him all over again, only that time it over­whelmed him and buried his desire. He let go of Hutch with one hand to push off him, using the wall, while Hutch grabbed Starsky’s other hand just in time to prevent a slap. His determined muscle suc­ceeded and intercepted Starsky’s impulse.

They looked deeply into each other’s eyes and panted off their exertion. Starsky was palpably frustrated. He was aroused and he was angry at himself for it, but he was also angry at Hutch for being like­wise. In the same instant, Starsky was aware, for the first time, that his response to that arousal and that anger was to strike Hutch. He was aware of it because Hutch had stop­ped him in mid-strike, held him there in it long enough that Starsky couldn’t but notice it. And its realization shamed him.

“It’s okay,” Hutch said. He meant about all of it: The conversation, the kissing, Starsky’s retaliation, his visible sorry and shame. But Hutch didn’t get to clarify his sentiment beyond ‘It’s okay,’ because they both heard a noise in the room at that instant and turned their heads in tandem to investigate it.

Grace stood in the doorway—with a look of utter shock on her face. She had seen more than just an interrupted physical altercation between the men she knew, loved, and respected most. She had seen what had led up to it.

* * *

Starsky stared at the floor. He imagined Jade thought he was an ass­hole, an undeserving prick, and couldn’t look the doctor in the eye because of it. That his session with Jade was private only made matters worse; Starsky didn’t have Hutch to watch his back. But Starsky was the one who wanted to meet alone with the doctor; he thought it would help him to better hear himself, which seemed to be the only advice Hutch had for him.

Jade’s voice didn’t sound judgmental when he spoke. “Did she give you an ultimatum?”

Starsky lifted his eyes and made contact with Jade’s. He was re­lieved to hear the invitation into the dialogue. He should have known better than to think the doctor would abuse him. If Jade passed judg­ment, he would have surely done it for Starsky’s behavior with Hutch, not Starsky’s behavior with Grace.

“No,” Starsky said, “no ultimatums. But, of course, we talked about it for days.”

“What did you tell her?”

“What I knew. What you know. The truth. That I’d been kissing Hutch for a while and that I don’t know why I have the urge to suck on his face—and how I feel about it and all that.” He’d been as helpless explaining it to Grace as he did anybody.

“How did she handle learning about your deeper feelings for him?”

“A bit … speechless, I guess. At first, anyway. Or maybe mostly confused. Like I am—for different reasons.”

“Is she going to leave you?”

“I don’t know,” came Starsky’s honest answer. Or maybe it was his honest fear. “After things settled down, she said she was more hurt by my hiding it from her than from my actually doing it.”

“Do you believe her?”

Starsky thought for a while. He mentally replayed the conver­sa­tions he’d had with Grace. Her tears. Her hurt. Her sorry. Her sincerity. “I believe her,” he said quietly. “I think she would have been less shocked if I’d told her about it before I did it, or even that I’ve been doing it, rather than her find­ing out the way she did.”

“But she’s not going to leave you?” Jade pushed him.

“She says she’s not, but who knows about the future, right?”

“She must want you to stop kissing Hutch,” Jade surmised. He wasn’t sure his client could do that, hence why Starsky feared the future. But Jade didn’t expect the answer.

“She said she just doesn’t want me to hide this other life from her,” he said. He looked at Jade, as stunned by Grace’s request then as he was when Grace made it. He laughed when he remembered her reason­ing, too. “She said he has seniority. She’s known me all of two years as a friend and less than a year as a lover, and he’s known me for a dec­ade.”

Jade didn’t smile, but he was impressed by Grace’s forgiveness. She was a young woman, late twenties, he recalled, but she seemed to have the maturity of a sage.

“She said she’s well aware that Hutch and me have taken bullets for each other,” Starsky continued, “and that we still would, and that she can only wish she had someone like that in her life.”

“And you told her that she did have someone in like that in her life, that you’d take a bullet for her.”

“Because I would,” Starsky explained. “But I also told her he would, too, because he would. I know him.”

Jade would never argue that point. “She’s accepted your behavior with Hutch,” he noted.

“Get this,” Starsky said, blown away by it himself, “but she said when you really love someone, you’ll give them what they need; if you really love somebody, you do what they need you to do, even if it’s sacrifice, and what I need her to do, she said, is let me play this out, to give me permission to follow it through and figure it out.”

“The way Hutch has done for you,” Jade said.

Starsky mulled Jade’s observation. “Wow,” he said under his breath. “Yeah, like Hutch. So, what you’re saying is that there are two people in my life who’ll go along with my nasty behavior.”

“Nasty is your definition; it’s apparently not theirs. Or mine.”

“But, you see,” Starsky complained, peeved with himself, “I couldn’t do that for her. I couldn’t let her play out some need she had to kiss some guy—and especially knowing she got turned on doing it.”

“What if she had a need to kiss a woman and get turned on doing it?”

“Well, that’s not fair,” Starsky said with a laugh. “Two women…” He imagined even Jade appreciated that one.

Jade smiled to prove he did. “But how is that different from her acceptance of two men? Maybe she’d have an ultimatum for you if you were playing around with another woman. Have you asked her about that?”

Starsky had had lengthy talks with Grace, but the topic of him and another woman wasn’t among their discussions. Still, he couldn’t imagine anyone accepting two men kissing. “Women don’t get off on two guys playing around like guys get off on two women.”

“Oh, but they do,” Jade corrected him. “A lot of gay male porn is watched by women.”

“Seriously?”

“Women write about homosexual male relationships, too. Volumes of it. In explicit detail. You’re asking the wrong person—me, a straight guy—to explain it to you, but I imagine it’s the same reasons we have for enjoying sex between women. Two men having sex is as much a turn-on for some women as two women having sex is for some men. I sup­pose there’s a certain sensuality or primalness or liberation there they enjoy.”

Starsky thought about it. Grace hadn’t seemed thrilled to learn about his kissing Hutch, nor did she solicit other details from him, such as his deeper wants or desires on the man, but she was forgiving and she was accepting and she was serious about those things. “She said she knows I love him more than I love anybody else,” he replied in a softened voice, “and she included herself on that list. But she said she would rather have me in her life with him in mine the way it is than not have me in her life at all. She figures that keeping me from doing what I need to do with him would risk her losing me.”

Jade had never met Grace, but he knew he liked her. And he could tell his client felt undeserving of her, too. Starsky’s dismay was evident in his voice. “And all she wants you to do is be honest with her about it,” Jade remem­bered.

Starsky looked at him to answer with his eyes just how trusting Grace was. “She said she doesn’t want me to pretend I’m not doing what I’m doing. She said honesty makes us closer. In fact, all that rela­tionship talk made her decide to move into the house with me next weekend.”

“To keep an eye on you and Hutch?”

“Her moving in was my plan all along—but, you’re right: Keeping an eye on my budding boy romance will be easier for her there.”

“So, why did you need to see me today?”

“Because I don’t have this wrapped up.” He pushed his foot out in front of him to settle further into his chair. “I still don’t know why I want to fuck Hutch.”

They looked abruptly at each other at that moment, and blankly. Star­sky realized what he said and Jade was surprised to hear it.

“I mean to say,” Starsky corrected himself, “that I still don’t know why I want to fuck around with Hutch.”

“Is that what you mean to say?” Jade asked.

Starsky reanalyzed himself. “Okay,” he admitted, “it’s somewhere in between that and that.”

“Between what and what?”

“Between kissing him and fucking him.”

“What’s between those things?”

“I don’t know. Handjobs, maybe, you know, like I’d like to see where our hard-ons take us.”

“And from there to blowjobs?”

“I don’t know,” Starsky said, honestly. Maybe his lengthy conver­sa­tions with Grace, those open and honest conversations with her, enabled him to be as honest with Jade’s questions, too. Or, rather, to be as honest with himself.

“Have you fantasized about exchanging handjobs and blowjobs with him?” Jade asked.

Starsky didn’t like those words in reference to Hutch, even though he’d been the one to use them, so he couldn’t look at Jade when he answered. “I think about it … I think about me doing him sometimes, not the other way around.”

“Why not receive?”

“Well, as much as I might like that idea, I can’t picture him doing perverted things like that.”

Jade ignored Starsky’s characterization of mutual sex play in pur­suit of the deeper question. “Why not?”

“Because he’s a better person than I am,” Starsky said snidely, frustrated. He didn’t mean the self-deprecating remark and he realized it was a cop-out answer, too, so he added, “Because I can’t see him wanting to jerk a guy off, let alone blow one.”

“But why not? If you have that desire, why couldn’t he?”

“I don’t have that desire,” Starsky argued. “I said I have thoughts about it.”

“What kinds of thoughts?”

Embarrassed, Starsky carefully said, “You know … thoughts about how far this might go … this kissing, this French kissing … I think thoughts like … ‘Suppose I could just come right now?’ ‘Suppose he’d help me come?’ ‘Suppose we end up blowing each other?’ But I don’t actually have vivid mental pictures of his dick in my mouth.”

“But you said you want to know where your hard-ons will lead you when you kiss him.”

That, Starsky had said. There was no taking it back. Because it was the truth, too. “I get so horny. We’re kissing like we’re going to fuck. We get these raging boners. I do, anyway. Well, so does he, but I’m mea­suring my own, you know? I’m the hornier one, I think. So there we are, all jacked up and nowhere to go with it.”

“Maybe he wants a release, too,” Jade suggested.

“I think he’d act more like he wants one if he wanted one,” Starsky decided. “I think he’d try to follow it through.”

“Do you try to follow it through?”

“I can only go as far as he’ll let me. If I start a kiss and he gets hard, then his is the next move.”

“Says who?”

“Says me,” Starsky said. He rubbed his forehead. The dialogue made his head hurt.

“You start the kiss,” Jade noted, “so why don’t you start the hand­job? Maybe he’s waiting for you to lead the way. Wouldn’t you do that if you were bedding a woman? take the lead?”

“Yeah,” Starsky said with a laugh, “but I’m sure if I got his pants down, I wouldn’t find any woman parts.”

“I’m not trying to talk you into it,” Jade quickly said, to be under­stood. “I’m simply proposing that you ask him about sharing handjobs with him to figure out if that’s what you want.”

“Even if I wanted it,” Starsky said, “it would be a mis­take to mention it to him. He’s said, more than once, that he’d never want to.” It was also an absurd and dangerous idea, Starsky thought. “I’d only get hurt over something like that.”

“How so?”

“Because asking him for a … release like that … would be so offensive to him that it’d be suicide by cop for me.”

* * *

SALVAGED

It wasn’t anything they said, but it was apparent to Jade that not all was well between Hutch and Starsky when they next entered his office. Or at least he thought not all was well. When he gave them their respec­tive refreshments, he did notice that they sat beside each other on the sofa. They sat as closely. They had dressed as nicely, too: Long-sleeved shirts tucked inside belted jeans. They were groomed. Maybe he mis­read them, but there was a somber mood at play, he sensed. He attempt­ed to flush it. “You guys all right?”

They answered that they were fine, but offered no other comment.

“C’mon, boys, what’s the matter?”

Hutch shrugged.

Starsky finally replied, “We had an accident.”

“On purpose,” Hutch said.

Jade raised an eyebrow at them. “Are you going to tell me about it or do you want to talk about the weather instead?”

Starsky looked at Hutch.

Hutch felt the attention and didn’t budge for half a minute. Then he shook his head at Starsky. “We’re back to that, are we?” he asked. “I have to be the one to tell him how you feel or what you did?”

“You do it so well,” Starsky coaxed him.

Jade leaned forward and tapped the coffee table. “The clock’s tick­ing,” he reminded them. “Why don’t one of you throw me a line and I’ll do what I do best with it.”

Jade’s light sarcasm broke Hutch’s resolve. “It started when you gave Starsky a private session last week.”

Jade remembered what the session entailed; he’d walked Starsky through a number of role-playing fantasies to help him identify his sexual desires. Had it damaged his clients’ friendship some­how? not com­pletely, as was evident by the fact that they were both there and seemingly friendly enough with each other, but perhaps it had strained it. “I thought Starsky had significant breakthroughs that day,” Jade said. He didn’t defend himself, but he wanted Hutch to know he’d meant no harm.

Starsky cut to the sarcasm. “Breakthroughs, yeah, for sure,” he said. “So much that I made a pass at him that next morning, even after telling you I thought it would be dangerous.”

Jade could tell right away, from Starsky’s sheep­­ish grin, that he was actually serious. Jade didn’t laugh. “How’d it turn out?”

“Not as I’d hoped.”

“I suggested you ask him,” Jade reminded Starsky, “not solicit him without asking.”

“I forgot that part.”

“But you apparently lived.”

“Barely.”

* * *

Hutch didn’t acknowledge Starsky even when Starsky stood next to him for more than a couple of minutes. Even after Starsky nudged Hutch’s thigh with his knee, the man still ignored him. Hutch happened to sit on the coffee table that morning and faced the sofa, his back to the front door. He had a magazine open on the couch cushions. He heard Starsky enter the house behind him, heard him lock the door, heard his footsteps cross the hardwood floor toward him, felt his presence beside him, was aware Starsky stood silently and waited for his attention, and he most certainly felt Starsky nudge him. But he was so engrossed in what he read that he simply didn’t give Starsky any visible notice.

Starsky waited as long as he could. He’d anticipated an inti­mate encounter with Hutch since the day before. He’d slept restlessly as he played out how and when and where he’d get the chance and/or the courage to solicit from Hutch something he hadn’t consciously thought about in his entire lifetime—until just a few weeks earlier, and then again when he talked to Jade about it. He remembered telling the doctor that any attempt to ask for a ‘manual release’ from Hutch could prove to be fatal, but Starsky felt compelled to dismiss it or follow it through; the not knowing if he could do it, or if it would help to absolve him, nearly killed him, too.

Grace had gone to work, and he and Hutch were, themselves, sup­posed to work on office organization. Hutch was at least supposed to notice Starsky’s exist­ence. He goaded Hutch again, but all he got back was an expletive.

“What can be more important than paying attention to your best buddy?” Starsky asked.

Hutch didn’t even answer that. He hoped Starsky would give him one more minute to finish the article. The man could be such a kid sometimes.

But Starsky could wait no longer. He grabbed a handful of Hutch’s blond hair and pulled his head up and back until they inevitably locked eyes. “If you’re not careful,” he playfully warned Hutch, “the next thing you’re going to read is your obit.”

Hutch flashed him a smile. “I’ll be dead,” he reminded him. “You’ll have to read it to me.”

Starsky kept Hutch’s face pinned toward his. “You don’t want to fuck with me right now, pal,” he growled.

“Don’t I?”

“I’ll kick your ass into next month.”

Hutch’s eyes twinkled at him. “What makes you so tough this morn­­ing?”

“I’ve come for a piece of your hide.”

“Which piece?”

Hutch knew then that Starsky would kiss him, but their kisses had never been planned, never been anticipated, not like that. Yet he couldn’t help but think, given Starsky’s unrelenting grip on his hair, Starsky’s somewhat annoyed, somewhat playful tone of voice, and the fuming look in his eyes, that Starsky had kissing on his mind at least since he’d walked through the front door.

Hutch finally got the kiss he expected, but it felt diff­erently from others. It was just as passion-driven, as heartfelt and as sensual as their kisses had ever been, but it hinted to a forcefulness he hadn’t experi­enced before, at least not that early on. In fact, when Hutch didn’t kiss him back with the same degree of assertive pressure, Starsky roughly pulled Hutch’s hair with such a jerk, he actu­ally hurt him. It caused Hutch to grunt from the pain and to deliver what Starsky wanted in order to avoid a repeated reprimand. It was as if Starsky had reached the peak of their kiss right as it began and it already boiled with his un­repressed resentment for the thing—which told Hutch that Starsky had that kiss on his mind long before he even got to the house.

He clasped Starsky’s fingers, the ones that firmly held his chin, and tried to ease Starsky’s grip by voicing a few words he managed to get past the tonguing. “Hey,” he said, between pants, “do that like you like me.”

Starsky checked himself. He hadn’t realized until then that he’d come on so strong, so aggressively, and that, if he wanted Hutch’s help, he needed to be kinder. Shove Ken Hutchinson and Ken Hutchinson would always shove back—eventually, but always. Why did Starsky feel so entitled any­way? Hutch was his partner, his hero, in fact, not someone who owed him anything. He let Hutch go, pushed the magazine out of the way, and sat on the sofa cushions in front of him, his knee between Hutch’s knees. He was ashamed of himself. “I hate me sometimes,” he said, making eye contact.

“You keep saying that,” Hutch noted, “but, really, you hate what we’re doing. You don’t hate yourself.”

“God hates me. I’m going to burn in hell for this.”

“Your God sounds evil.”

Starsky bent down, crossed his arms over Hutch’s knee, and buried his face in them. He heavily sighed. “I don’t hate what we’re doing,” he corrected Hutch. “I hate the need I have to do it.”

Hutch scratched Starsky’s back—and felt sorry for him. “Maybe it’s a want you have, not a need.” He himself enjoyed the unplanned phy­sical affection that morning, and relished Starsky’s muscle beneath his fingers.

“It doesn’t feel like a choice,” Starsky said. He did like the way Hutch scratched him, so he surrendered to the feel of Hutch’s nails while he confessed to the kiss. “I’m driven to do it.”

“By want.”

“By something,” Starsky said. He nourished the pleasure Hutch gave him by shifting his position such that Hutch’s hand indulged an area of his back he wanted further satisfied; the boy sure did have a way of consoling him.

“You were anticipating that kiss, weren’t you?” Hutch guessed, “and it didn’t go the way you planned it.”

“It would have—if you’d met me halfway. Besides, I was going for more than a kiss.”

Of course Hutch misunderstood him. He couldn’t know that Star­sky hoped his partner would sexually discharge him at some point in the kiss. Hutch assumed Starsky meant he was “going for” something more related to the heart. “Why has it been on your mind?” he asked. “Seems things go better when we do them impulsively.”

“I just want to get this thing over with.”

It wasn’t the answer Hutch expected; he didn’t want their kisses to end, not ever, though he imagined they probably would someday—when Starsky tired of his experiment. Or Grace asked him to. “Then let’s stop it,” he said. “Here and now.”

Starsky sat up; he had to sacrifice the back scratch to do it, but he wanted to look at Hutch, to clear up the misunderstanding that he himself had caused. Those damn blue eyes; they always forgave him. “I mean I want to follow this further and see where else it takes me,” he said. “I want to get that part over with, not end this thing. I’m not ready to end this thing. Maybe I never will be.” He sus­pected Hutch didn’t want to see it end, either. “So I got a little anx­ious this morning. Sorry about that.”

Hutch didn’t think Starsky needed to apologize for anything; so what if Starsky got excited or impatient and pulled his hair harder than he should have? It wasn’t a big deal. Starsky had done worse to him. “Follow your impulse,” he encouraged Starsky. “Who’s stopping you?”

“You.”

Hutch opened his arms and offered himself.

How far would Hutch go? How far would he let Starsky go? The invi­tation was there and Starsky took it. He rose from the sofa, leaned into Hutch, pressed his mouth to Hutch’s lips in another spurring kiss, and forced Hutch onto his back on the coffee table. Hutch willingly went with him; he liked Starsky’s assertiveness, his direction, his seem­ingly un­stoppable desire, because it excused him from resisting it. The kiss was also sexier because of the place Starsky chose to be impulsive: On a piece of furniture. He was snug against Hutch, too, some­what on top of him, but enough off him to keep his weight from crushing Hutch against the hard wood of the table.

Starsky held Hutch’s chin, kissed him at length and with pure want and desire, grew quickly excited by the feel of their wet lips and warm tongues, by the sucking and the little kisses, too, and he felt his erec­tion press for attention inside his jeans. The question was no longer a quiet thought; it became an action. How far would Hutch go for him?

He reached between them to release the button on his own jeans. Then he lowered the zipper. It was difficult to do in the posi­tion they were in, as tightly as they were against each other, but he eventu­ally man­aged, though it did make him momentarily frus­trated that it took so long. His annoyance reflected in the kiss and stalled him just enough that Hutch noticed.

Though Starsky’s hand was between them at their groins, Hutch didn’t think Starsky tried to fondle him, but he did know Starsky was up to something. It had been no secret that their kisses aroused them. The visits with Jade had brought that to light. But did Starsky want to experiment further? Was that what Starsky meant when he said he was “going for more than a kiss”?

What happened next happened so quickly, neither of them had time to mentally digest it. Starsky lifted his hips off Hutch, enough to lower his unzipped jeans to mid-thigh, which was not as far as he hoped to lower them, not as much as he needed to, but enough to free his penis from his clothes. Hutch’s imme­diate impres­sion was that Starsky would masturbate himself while they kissed. That idea by itself startled Hutch. He turned his head away to abort a kiss so he could focus his atten­tion on Starsky’s intent—and stop him before he did anything else.

Starsky forced Hutch’s hand to his groin. “C’mon,” he coaxed him when he sensed Hutch’s resistance. “Help your partner out, will ya?”

Hutch realized Starsky wanted him to masturbate him, not that Star­sky would masturbate himself—and that idea was even more alarm­­­ing. He jerked his hand free of Starsky’s grip before Starsky could make contact with his penis. Then he shoved Starsky’s shoulder, force­fully and with malice. “Watch where you’re going, Starsky,” he shar­p­ly warned him.

Starsky was at first disappointed and, next, quite embarrassed. “You said I could follow my gut,” he defended himself. “I was think­ing since yesterday that—”

“Get the fuck off me,” Hutch ordered him. He shoved Starsky again, harder that time. “I can’t do that for you.”

“You can French kiss me,” Starsky said. “What’s a fondle?” He leaned back on his elbow, off Hutch entirely, and pulled up his jeans, but he was too embar­rassed to zip them in front of him. It would bring more attention to his intent than he wanted then.

“Kissing you doesn’t go against my religion,” Hutch fumed.

“You don’t have a religion.”

“Then my DNA. Don’t fuck with me.”

Hutch was obviously angry, indignant, and offended—reactions Starsky had initially imagined Hutch would have, but misunderstood his invite that morning. “I just thought, you know, that you said…”

Hutch sat up, shoved Starsky’s knee away from his, and then comb­ed his own hair with trembl­ing fingers. “Jesus.” He felt suddenly dis­hev­eled and violated somehow. “I told you we aren’t going to play like that.”

“They were just words,” Starsky reminded him. “And wouldn’t you be the first to say things are the way they are?”

“They were just words?” Hutch asked incredulously. He got angrily to his feet. “Then I guess you’ve never believed a single thing I’ve told you.” He was definitely pissed, maybe even more than he himself thought he should be. It didn’t matter. He needed to shake the feeling. He left Starsky on the coffee table, went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and heard Starsky talk to him from the living room.

“Really, man, how far a stretch is it to go from French-ing me to a handjob anyway?” Starsky’s anger was born from his hurt and his dis­appointment in himself, and then for the stupid question he just asked. Or maybe that was the answer. It wasn’t a stretch; therefore, if the man­u­ally-induced ejaculation was unacceptable, then so was the kiss. As Hutch might say, it was only a matter of degree, not kind. Starsky should never have let things get that far. There should never have been that first kiss, let alone every one that had since followed. He rolled onto his back on the table, completely tucked his nearly flaccid penis into his jeans, and zipped them.

“You’re right, Hutch,” he said. “It was too much.” He heard Hutch fill a glass of water at the sink, but Hutch didn’t reply, so he added, “And your gut was right, too. Let’s stop this bullshit. I’m fucked up. I got fucked up when I got fucked over. It’ll be my prob­lem from here on out. You’re off the hook. For all of it. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but let’s be done with it. If we don’t kiss, I won’t get this hard-on, and you won’t have to worry again that I’m going to want a hand.”

Hutch heard every word Starsky told him. He couldn’t assimilate Starsky’s wounded pride and self-abuse with his own anger and dismay. He stayed stalled in the kitchen for a few minutes. When the house finally grew quiet, when Starsky no longer spoke to him, he thought he should go back into the room and try to make sense of it with him, but he was still too offended and shaken to discuss it right then. So he walked the short hall to the back patio, slammed the screened door on his way out, and slumped into a lawn chair to drink water—and to think.

Starsky stared at the ceiling and silently cussed himself. That Hutch wouldn’t come back into the room made him feel helpless about how to rectify the situation. He looked toward the window, out into the blue sky, and imagined Hutch on his deck, boiling with rage.

He could talk to Hutch, but he was first afraid—and then certain—that he’d only com­plicate matters further. The solution was to leave it lie, to walk away, to stop what he already proposed they stop, though that idea made his stomach hurt and his heart burn. He didn’t want to give up the inti­macy he had with Hutch, yet he didn’t know how to have it then, either, so he got off the table and went to the telephone.

When Hutch heard Starsky’s voice again, it took him a few seconds to realize Starsky didn’t speak to him, but to someone else, by phone. From inside the house, he heard Starsky say, “Hey, it’s David Starsky.” By those words alone, Hutch knew Starsky hadn’t called Grace. “I need to talk to some­­­one,” he heard Starsky explain. “Have you got some time for me today? I wouldn’t ask, but it’s urgent.” A momentary silence settled before Starsky added in a low voice, “I fucked up. Big time. I need some­body to un­fuck me.”

Hutch could only think of two people—other than himself—that Starsky would want to tell his deepest thoughts and feelings to; well, three people, but it was the weekend and the doctor was off-duty, so it had to be either Adam Love, Starsky’s close personal—and gay—friend, or Em­ma, their mutual friend and Hutch’s ex-girlfriend.

Hutch didn’t like it either way. He’d rather see Starsky damage his relationship with Grace by using him than get coerced or coaxed into an affair on any level with Emma. It struck him that Grace would be more forgiving of Starsky’s weak moments if he had them with Hutch than if Starsky had them with another woman—that, and Hutch wasn’t certain he wouldn’t be jealous of a personal relationship between Star­sky and Emma, despite that they were all friends. That left Adam, of course, and Adam, no doubt—given that he liked Starsky to begin with, felt close to and respected him, and the fact that he was gay—would be more than happy to help Starsky “unfuck” himself.

That made Hutch feel something he couldn’t even describe, but it was raging, whatever it was. He was suddenly consumed by that feel­ing; it made his heart pound and his palms sweat. When he heard Star­sky tell the person he spoke to that he would “be there in a couple of hours,” Hutch got out of his chair and went back into the house to inter­cept him. But he was too late. Starsky had already reached the front door. Hutch threw a strong “hey” at him and got his attention.

Starsky faced him and locked eyes. But it was the pause that killed them. Hutch didn’t know what to say next; all he could do was feel that overwhelm­ing emotion he couldn’t describe. And Starsky had some­place to go; he’d said and done enough damage already. All he had left for Hutch was a shy smile, and, “I’ll see you around.” And then he open­ed the door and walked out of the house.

* * *

“Have you ever had a man hit on you before?” Jade asked.

“Never,” Hutch said. “Well, I mean, not that overtly. Or like that. But, then, I’ve never been that intimately involved with a man, either, the way I am with him, so there’s never been an opportunity.”

Jade imagined not. “You were quite angry at him.”

“Livid.”

“Was it the action that offended you or that he assumed he could take such liberties?”

Hutch felt Starsky’s patience with him as they sat beside each other on the sofa in Jade’s office that morning. Then Hutch said, “I believed he knew I didn’t want to play around with him like that and he hadn’t taken me seriously. You have to under­stand: Taking liberties with each other is something we do—but we always have a green light to do it. He ran the red that time—on pur­pose—and that pissed me off.”

Starsky understood what he had done. “I figured he didn’t mean what he said when he said he wouldn’t go further than play­ing around, especially in the heat of the moment. Maybe that’s the man/woman thing I used, hm? that she doesn’t really mean what she says or, better, that she doesn’t want to mean what she says. Keep push­ing and eventually she’ll say yes. In this case, he will. After all, you know, he’d been kissing me in a way he never thought he would.”

“But instead he pushed back,” Jade noted. He thought Starsky had gotten off lucky. “I simply suggested you ask him. Don’t you think his reaction was justified? Wouldn’t any other guy have severed your head from your body over a pass like that?”

“A straight guy, probably.”

“Isn’t Hutch straight?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Starsky asked. “He French kisses me—and I’m a guy. Don’t that make him gay?”

“But he won’t masturbate you like he is.”

Starsky realized that, too. “Yeah, well, okay, so, for whatever reason, he didn’t ‘sever’ my head from my body.”

Jade looked at Hutch. “Did you feel like punching him?”

“If I’d felt like punching him, I’da punched him,” Hutch said. “It was more like … disgusted anger. How could he think for a second I’d want to jerk his dick?” He remem­bered how short-lived those feelings were, too. “Then I pan­icked. I wanted to stop him from making a bigger mistake. I thought he was headed to Emma’s or, worse yet, to Adam’s, his gay pal. So I traded anger for an inter­cep­tion.”

Jade was surprised to learn Starsky had a gay friend. “How do you know Adam?”

“Adam Lovwell,” Hutch said. “He—”

“He goes by Adam Love,” Starsky corrected Hutch with a playful snarl. “Just because you’re against guys like that doesn’t mean you can’t honor his stage name.”

“Guys like that?” Hutch asked.

“Gay guys.”

“Oh, so now you call them ‘gay guys’—when before it was ‘fags’. And it’s not me who’s been against guys like that.”

“He’s a radio dee­jay we met on a case this past spring,” Starsky explained to Jade to get Hutch off his back. He remembered their reason for meet­ing Adam, which made him not want to talk about him. “But, anyway, I didn’t even think to see him to unfuck myself, so let’s move on.”

Jade inadvertently hit his next nerve then. “Okay. Who’s Emma?” When he noticed the abruptness in both men, he asked it again, hoping one of them would answer.

Hutch finally did. “My ex-girlfriend.”

“Why would Starsky go to your ex-girlfriend for comfort?”

“Because she’s still a friend of ours—and the only woman I can think of that he still feels that close to, outside of Grace.”

Jade couldn’t tell, through any expression or gesture on Starsky’s part, just how ‘close’ Hutch implied Starsky was to Emma. “So what if he went to her?” Jade asked Hutch. “Where’s the harm in that if she’s his friend, too?”

“But I didn’t think to see Emma, either,” Starsky said, exchanging a knowing glance with Jade. “So why are we talking about her?”

“We’re talking about Hutch’s feelings,” Jade explained, “not your actions.”

Starsky settled for that answer.

“Oh, you know,” Hutch said, to answer Jade’s questions, “he’d cry on her shoulder, tell her what he’d done to me, what we’d been doing that led to it, and she’d console him the way she’s good at consoling a man.”

“She’d have bedded him out of pity,” Jade assumed. He was surprised to think Emma would ‘console a man’ who was her ex-boyfriend’s best friend, but relationships were, at the very least, complicated matters. “Did you want to stop him from an affair with Emma be­cause you were jealous?”

“Not just because I’d have been jealous, but I really did want to stop him from making a mis­take.”

“So, you were saving Starsky from hurting Grace by keep­ing him from the arms of another woman.”

“More from his hurting himself by hurting Grace.”

It never ceased to amaze Jade how protective Hutch was of Starsky and how genuine that line of defense was. “And from Adam? Were you saving Starsky from hurting himself there, too?”

“That’s more complicated,” Hutch recalled. “I sup­pose if I didn’t have a vested interest, I’d have tried to intercept him from Adam for the same reasons I wanted to intercept him from Emma, but the truth is … I felt personally threatened by Adam in a way I’m not by Emma.”

Hutch’s jealous weak­ness was news to Starsky. “No shit?”

Hutch embarrassedly smiled at him. He felt sheep­ish and stupid. “No shit, I guess.”

“Adam is more threatening because Adam’s male,” Jade further assumed, “and because he’s gay.”

“Yeah.”

“You figured he’d give Starsky what he wanted.”

“In a heartbeat.”

“But you’ve never been jealous of women who’ve given Starsky hand­jobs—and more.”

“Like I said, it’s complicated.”

Which only served to intrigue Jade further. He flushed it with suppositions. “So Adam gives Starsky a handjob. So, what?”

Hutch shifted uneasily from the idea. He didn’t know why it both­ered him as much as it did, but he blurted what he thought. “Starsky isn’t gay.”

“Says you,” Starsky argued—to no use.

“But, so what?” Jade persisted, focusing on Hutch. “Why would that threaten you if he got a handjob from a gay guy? A gay guy gives a straight guy a hand­job.”

“Assuming I’m straight,” Starsky injected—again, to no avail.

Jade repeated his supposition to Hutch. “Adam gives Starsky a hand­job. What’s the problem?”

Hutch understood what Jade wanted him to do. “He likes it,” he said, to play along, so he could flesh his own feelings and assimilate them.

“Starsky likes the handjob?” Jade asked, doing likewise.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t he?”

“So he likes it. Maybe he likes it a lot.”

“He wants more of them,” Hutch imagined.

“So he gets handjobs from Adam on a regular basis and likes getting them.”

“The next step is blowjobs.”

“Is it? Okay, let’s assume so. Now Adam is giving Starsky blow­jobs. Maybe they take all the steps. He and Adam have sex: Handjobs, blowjobs, anal sex. What’s left?”

Hutch swallowed the discomfort those ideas caused him, but he purposed his thoughts. “Seems he’d want to hang out with Adam more than he’d want to hang out with me then.”

“Women have given him handjobs, I’m assuming. Blowjobs. Sex. You don’t feel threatened. I imagine when Starsky’s dating a woman he prefers to hang out with her more than he does you, doesn’t he?”

Hutch thought back to the times Starsky chased women in earnest. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“They didn’t threaten you.”

“No.”

“You never felt jealous of their time with him.”

“No.”

“So what’s Adam giving him that you’re not?”

“Something I can’t give him.”

“As women have given him something you can’t give him. As Grace gives him what you can’t give him.”

Hutch shifted again to ease his discomfort and spoke impul­sively. “But in this case I wasn’t giving him something he wanted from me.”

Jade thought it went further than what met the surface. “Okay. But is that all there is to your friendship with Starsky that a hand­job from Adam could under­mine it?”

“No.”

“Then so what if Starsky had sex with Adam? Gets you off the hook. You’re not going to lose Starsky anymore than you’d lose him to a woman. Your friendship is engraved in granite, isn’t it?”

Hutch didn’t reply.

Jade pushed him. “Or is it that you wish you were able to give Star­sky what he wants in order to keep some other guy from giving it to him and there­by threatening your brotherhood?”

Hutch glared at Jade, then surrendered to his gut. “Maybe. But it’s not the kind of threat you might think,” he explained, feeling his way along. “It’s not that I fear Adam is going to take Starsky from me. It runs deeper than that. It’s that Adam is going to do harm to him—it’s that sex of any kind between them will do Starsky harm, I mean, and not on purpose or with ill-will, but just from the nature of it—and that threat­ens my brotherhood with Starsky. He’ll just get more fucked up, in other words. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I do. But what can you do about it anyway? If Starsky needs Adam, and Adam is willing, Starsky is probably going to get Adam.”

“Yeah, I thought of that,” Hutch said, “so I intercepted him.”

* * *

Starsky saw Hutch at nearly the last second, braked the car to a stop, rolled down his window, and prepared to be punished for his earlier recklessness. He deserved it, after all. “Hey,” he quietly said, making serious eye contact. He noticed the concern and con­­fusion in Hutch’s blue eyes.

Hutch leaned in the car door window. He still didn’t know what to say—or what to do, really. He just didn’t want Starsky to leave. “I’d rather you stayed and worked this out with me,” he said, returning the sincere eye lock. “Can you do that?” He felt helpless. All Starsky had to do was step on the accelerator and he’d be gone in a second, out of Hutch’s reach.

Starsky figured Hutch wanted to hit him, not ‘work it out’ with him, so he was relieved. Enormously. “Get in,” he said. “Let’s get some ice cream.”

They didn’t talk about the strain between them until after they’d driv­en into town, stopped first at a payphone so Starsky could cancel the rendezvous he’d made that afternoon with someone else, and then bought ice cream—well, Starsky bought ice cream and Hutch got a bottle of juice—before they drove to a city park to consume their treats. And then a couple of teenage boys approached and interrupted them to ask about the car. Hutch was entertained by their excitement, as well as Starsky’s, when he dis­cussed horsepower and wind dynamics with the youngsters, but Starsky disappointed them when he turned down their request to give them a ride in it; instead, he lectured them about their unwise choice to get into a vehicle with men they didn’t know. When they left, he turned in his seat, faced Hutch. “I guess none of us always get what we want, hm?” He strove for light conversation, but Hutch wasn’t as playful.

“We do what we have to do,” Hutch said, reflectively. He noticed how comfort­able Starsky sat with his forearm draped over the steering wheel, casually lean­ing against the car door, and looked back at him. He wished he could feel as confident as Starsky appeared.

“I met with Jade yesterday for that private session you and me talked about,” Starsky explained.

“‘You and I’.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Right.”

Starsky sneered at him when he realized he’d been grammatically corrected. But he didn’t want to make Hutch wait any longer for a resolution to the discord between them, so he dismissed the veiled insult; he didn’t want to wait, either. “We did a bunch of role-playing … all these schemes—”

“Scenarios,” Hutch offered.

“—scenarios to see what I thought about them, what turned me off, what turned me on. It was kind of embarrassing, but I learned a lot.” He sensed that Hutch was still anxious, so he quickly said, “The truth is I’m not sure what I want with you.”

Hutch was relieved and uncomfortable at once. “So you thought you’d physically try to find out what you want with me—instead of ask me first?”

“I didn’t ask first when I went to kiss you.”

“You didn’t know the rules then.”

“Okay. But I wondered if all these bad feelings I have when we play around comes from feeling sort of pent up by the stimulation I get from it. Jade and I played it out and we figured there was something to that.”

Hutch realized all over again that it was the assumption that offended him most. “So just use me for the experiment without my consent or even my knowledge that you’re going to solicit me, especially after I told you I never wanted to play like that?”

“All that thinking about it, over and over, and from this way and that,” Starsky said, “made me think it was possible, I guess—as possible as it felt … necessary. I’m sorry, man.” He couldn’t have been more remorseful if he tried. “I wasn’t thinking. I also want you to know I won’t do it again. I don’t want you to be afraid of me like that. I’ll fig­ure this out on my own—and with Jade.”

Starsky’s apology consoled Hutch. He finally settled into his seat, exhaled his anxiety and his anger, and mulled Starsky’s words in his mind.

“Can you forgive me?” Starsky asked.

Hutch couldn’t not forgive Starsky. When silence overtook them, Hutch broke it by saying, “For anything and everything you’ve ever done that you think has wronged me, you’re for­given.”

“Wow. I didn’t see that coming.”

“I’m serious.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Sure you do—and for all the reasons you know you do. You even deserve better.”

“What could be better?”

“Adam Love.”

Starsky didn’t understand. “What makes him so special?”

“He’ll give you more than forgiveness; he’ll give you what you’re looking for, what you need.”

“I don’t know what I need. But even if he could, it doesn’t make him better. It just makes him different.”

Different. Adam was a man capable of sex with a man.

Hutch stared through the windshield to the trees on the park’s boun­d­ary across the grassy field. He wasn’t a judgmental person, but he couldn’t appreciate such a desire. It just seemed wrong to him. Not un­natural—because he believed gay men were born homosexuals, design­ed by nature somehow, and not wrong morally, either, because he didn’t pass those kinds of judgments; what consenting adults did with each other, so long as no one was hurt, wasn’t his business or his con­cern. But intimate behavior with a man in those ways was wrong for him, for him personally, something he himself wasn’t born with: The desire to carnally please a man—not even the one he loved as dearly as he loved Starsky. Still, he didn’t want any other man to engage Starsky, even as an experiment, even as a failed experiment.

“Hey.”

Hutch broke from his thoughts to look at Starsky when he heard his voice.

“You’re the one I feel safe with,” Starsky explained, “and I took advantage of that. I won’t do it again.”

The one he felt safe with.

Hutch understood. He shouldn’t feel abused. He should feel hon­ored. He was honored. “I wish I could be there for you.”

“You’re there for me,” Starsky reminded him.

“I mean, that way. I wish I was capable of it,” Hutch said. He couldn’t get past that Adam was capable of it. “Will you see him?”

“See who?”

“Love.”

“See love?”

“Adam Love.”

Starsky didn’t know if he’d see Adam; he hadn’t even thought about it, let alone planned to. And he didn’t think he would, either, but he didn’t know. And he could say that much to Hutch, but it would only fuel Hutch’s annoyance. That, and… “I don’t want you to feel threat­ened,” he said instead, “so what say we just leave it to me to figure that out?”

Hutch heard him: It was none of his business. What was Hutch’s business was Starsky’s attempt to follow his impulses with him. “Are you really that capable of it?”

“Of what?” Starsky asked. “Of seeing him?”

“Getting a handjob,” Hutch said, annoyed that he had to keep ex­plaining himself.

“From Adam?”

When Hutch glared at him, Starsky realized what Hutch intended, and said, “Oh, you mean, from you? I think I could. It’s you, after all. Or, what I’m trying to say is that I think I could have you do it for me, to me, you know? I mean, if you wanted to—but, honestly, when I really think about it, I can’t imagine you ever whacking a guy off.” He didn’t want to argue or even defend himself, least of all over something so indefensible. “C’mon, let’s let it go. I screwed up. I won’t screw up like that again.”

Hutch didn’t understand Starsky’s need, not completely, but he knew Starsky apparently had it. He was also still very much interested in helping him, if he could—somehow. “This role-playing you did with Jade and this thinking you’ve done about it, how explicit did you get? Did you just talk about the idea of it, or did you get right down to the prac­ticality of it?”

Starsky dropped his arm from the steering wheel to his lap and studied Hutch for a second before he admitted, “I don’t know what you mean by the practicality of it.”

That frustrated Hutch further. He faced Starsky more directly. “Did you talk about what I was going to think?”

“I didn’t think about what you might think. I thought about what you might do.”

“And what did you think I might do?”

“Tell me to piss off. Or you’d take care of me.”

“Those were the only choices?”

“What else was there?”

“Kill you?”

“I did think you might kill me,” Starsky mumbled.

“But you did it anyway.”

“Because not following through was already killing me. But, honestly? When I got past the idea of you killing me, I thought, deep down, that you’d go along with it.”

“Why would you think that?” It was incredulous to Hutch that Star­sky could be so blasé about his partner’s sensibilities.

“Because you love me” came the unexpected and jarring reply.

It caught Hutch off-guard. That was also where he differed from Adam Love. Hutch loved Starsky. And more than life itself. So, if he loved Starsky so much, why was it hard to imagine he could ‘go along with’ what Starsky needed from him? Wasn’t that love?

Hutch looked out the passenger window to where a group of child­ren played on swings. He thought about what Starsky said. The words circled over and again in his mind: “Because you love me.” And it finally made him laugh, a small, quiet laugh, one of disbelief and accept­ance of truth. He looked back at Starsky. “And would you give me a hand­job because you love me?”

“If you wanted me to.”

“Where did this come from, Starsk? How’d we go from two straight guys our whole lives to this extreme? and to such an ease you have for it?”

“I don’t have an ease for it,” Starsky complained. He felt suddenly emotion­al. It was as if Hutch had chastised him for something he’d worked hard to understand himself. “I’m in professional therapy; how much more uncomfortable do you want me to be? I got fucked up or maybe I’ve always been fucked up. I’m just trying to fix myself.”

“But you’re only going to get more fucked up. You’re straying from your DNA. You think you need what you need. You think you want what you want. But you’re going to look back and have some mighty heavy regrets if you actually go through with such a thing.”

Starsky couldn’t find the words to justify his compulsion, or that his regrets would come from not fol­lowing through, from not having fig­ured out why he’d strayed in the first place. Hutch wasn’t the one to talk to. He was too dismayed to appreciate the confusion Starsky wrestled. “It won’t happen again,” he reminded Hutch, “so let’s not talk about it any­more.” He straightened in his seat and reached for the key in the igni­tion. “We’re done here.”

“Wait,” Hutch said.

It stopped Starsky.

“I’m just trying to understand how we got to this very con­versa­tion,” Hutch said. “Do you get it? We’re talking about me jerking you off.”

Starsky stared at the dashboard for a second as he searched for a reply. He knew Hutch meant well, but it didn’t feel well. There was nothing to say back to that that he hadn’t already said, so he turned the key and started the car. But when he reached for the gear stick, Hutch stopped him again, that time when he gripped Starsky’s arm.

“I didn’t say that right,” Hutch admitted. “I know it would mean more to you than that.” To prove that he knew it, he added, “Otherwise you’d have solicited someone else by now.”

Starsky dropped his arm to his lap and Hutch released him. He left the car in park, but he didn’t turn off the engine. He waited. What Hutch would say next would help him decide whether he’d go back to the battlefield with him or if he’d close that door on the subject—forever.

“I want to help you,” Hutch promised. “I just don’t know how. That, and I want to be asked, not assumed.”

“I’m—”

“Yeah, I know. You’re sorry. I’m just explaining.”

“Do you think if I’d asked, your answer would have been different? I mean, have you ever wanted a release when we play around?”

“Apparently not as much as you do,” Hutch said quietly. On second thought, he didn’t know what his deeper feelings were, given that his involvements usually ended in punishments he didn’t feel he deserved—Starsky’s pokes, punches, and slaps. How would Hutch feel without those? He was game to explore it. It would at least settle the question for them both. “But try me. Ask the question.”

Starsky turned off the car and they sat for a minute and listened to the birds outside the opened windows, to the laughter of children on the swings, and they felt the passing breeze while they looked at each other, and Starsky formed his thoughts.

Hutch didn’t leave eye contact with him. He was as curious about his own answer as he was about how Starsky would phrase the ques­tion.

“I get so worked up when we play around,” Starsky began. “I feel frustrated and angry.” They both knew he did; the phy­sical reprimands and the expected strikes were proof enough. “It’s not your fault. But I wonder if this hate I feel over this thing is because we shouldn’t carry on kissing like that and yet I do any­way. But, also … maybe I’m frustrated because I just want some kind of resolution I’m not getting while I do it.”

Hutch had assumed all along that Starsky’s frustration was born from the anger that he indulged that kind of intimacy with a man, some­thing that went against the grain of his soul. It had been jarring to him to learn that Starsky actually wanted to ‘finish’—to end their kissing sessions with ejac­ula­tions, though Hutch didn’t know why that sur­prised him. If he got as turned on as Starsky apparently did, in the way Starsky did, for the reasons Starsky did, reasons he still explored—and without the physical reprimands—Hutch would probably have a desire for a resolution, too, wouldn’t he? He didn’t say anything to Starsky; he waited. There was still a question to be asked.

Starsky didn’t think Hutch would be angry at him for the soli­cita­tion; Hutch had invited him to make the pass after all, but he still felt anxious and stupid because he didn’t have the ‘right’ words for it, certainly not the words Hutch would want to hear. He followed his gut. “So … do you think you might be open to seeing me through a release some­time … for the sake of helping me figure it out?”

Hutch could tell, by Starsky’s choice of words, and by his timid tone of voice, that he had struggled with the right thing to say. He hadn’t meant to make it difficult for him, so he helped him along when he remembered what Starsky had done earlier, what he obviously desired when he physically solicited him. “You’re saying you want to come in my hand,” Hutch said.

“At least, use it,” Starsky explained. He realized Hutch didn’t ask for a specific, so he added, “But I could come in mine if that’s easier.”

Hutch didn’t laugh. “What do you do when we’re not together? I mean, do you go home after we’ve played around and jump Grace to finish, or take care of yourself in private; what?”

“None of that. I try not to think about having kissed you after we do it. I figure if I don’t think about it, it didn’t happen.”

“Good thinkin’.”

“C’mon, you know what I mean.” He was defeated and hurt again. “Let’s forget it, okay? I said I was sorry and—”

“I don’t want to forget it,” Hutch decided. “I want to help you, but you’ve got to help me first. Be practical: If I help you come, what am I supposed to do with that?”

“With the idea of it?”

“With the practicality of it: Your cum in my hand.”

Starsky appreciated the concern. “I’ll come in mine then,” he said to rectify the perceived offense.

“And that’s it? Simple as that?”

“Couldn’t it be? I’ll take care of myself while we play around.” It wasn’t anything he’d ever done before, but maybe that was the practical thing to do.

“But, doesn’t that defeat the purpose if you jack your­self?”

“I don’t know,” Starsky said, frustrated. “I’ve never jacked myself, but that’s what I want to find out. Is it just the release I need or am I looking to have you ‘release’ me? Besides,” he added, “it’s not like my cum would actually end up in your hand—unless you let it. You’d just be handl­ing my … shaft, right?”

Hutch tried to picture it, but couldn’t. Or didn’t want to. “So, then, where does it end up?”

“On me,” Starsky explained, as if it should have been obvious.

Starsky still didn’t appreciate the practicality of such behavior, so Hutch tried to help him see it. “And I just get to ‘be there.’ Ignore that you’re coming at my expense or with my involvement, I mean—wher­ever your cum ends up. Your orgasm … in my presence … and then I pretend not to notice and leave the money on the dresser when you go kind of thing?”

Starsky laughed, but it was with annoyance. “I can’t afford you,” he said. He straightened in his seat again. He didn’t want to feel hurt, not a single time more, so he was prepared to leave. “I thought women were a pain in the ass.”

Hutch grabbed Starsky’s arm to keep him from restarting the car. “Don’t give up so easily,” he told him. “If this isn’t worth fighting for, then maybe it’s not that important to you.”

Starsky slumped against his seat and stared at the dashboard. It was extremely important to him, so he took Hutch’s advice. “I admit I haven’t thought about how you’d feel about it, so I don’t have the answers to the practicalness of it like you wish I did. I know this sounds like you’re a means to an end … maybe you are … but I know, in my heart, that it’s you I want to do this with—because I have feelings for you. You have to know that.”

Hutch realized it wasn’t about him, but he was a pawn on the board; his sensibilities had to be considered. He used a backside approach. “Okay,” he said. “What would you do if the tables were turned?”

Starsky looked at him. “You mean, if you came by my hand?” An­other thing he’d given no real thought to. “I don’t know.”

“Well, then, maybe that’s where we begin.”

“So, what are you saying? You’d do this for me if we could work out the practicalness of it?”

“Maybe. I’m open to talking about it anyway. It has to be both of us, though. I’m not going to get you off and not get off myself. I’m going to be greedy that way.”

“That’s fair.”

“But there’s something you need to know first; it might be a deal-breaker. That’s my point: That you can’t just take liberty with me; there are other things at play.”

Starsky steadied their eye contact to remind Hutch he was trustworthy. “Tell me.” He thought he knew all there was to know about Hutch, and couldn’t imagine he’d hear anything that would deter him—short of a sexually transmitted virus that he could easily pass on to Grace. But wouldn’t Hutch have told him about an STD by then, just from all the personal talk they’d had over the years?

Hutch didn’t hesitate. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t tell Star­sky if it needed telling. Then was one of those times. “I was never cut.”

“Cut?”

Hutch wasn’t ashamed of it, but he was embarrassed to admit it. “Circumcised. I’m not circumcised.”

Starsky smiled. He didn’t mean to.

“What’s so funny?”

“That you’d think that’d be a deal-breaker.”

“Well, what would be a deal-breaker?”

“I don’t know. That you had something contagious—like herpes or something—that I could pass to Grace.”

“Hell, maybe I do and don’t know it, but we’re only talking handjobs here, right?”

“Why would you think not being ‘cut’ would be a deal-breaker?”

“It’s gross to some women,” Hutch ruefully explained. “At least my women have acted so, and one even admitted it.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“I wish I was. And I never felt the others were completely comfort­able with it. If they had to touch or suck it … it was like I was defective or diseased or something. I don’t know … maybe I just want more than I’ll ever get.”

“Is Sara the one who feels that way?”

“We haven’t gotten that far.”

“She hasn’t touched or sucked you yet?”

Hutch realized the conversation had taken a turn into a direction he didn’t want to go. “It’s a delicate relationship,” he said to both explain and dismiss it. “We’re taking things slow.”

“It’s been a couple of months,” Starsky said with a frown, but he could tell Hutch didn’t want to talk about it; it was in the way he looked out the window when he answered, not just in his voice. Starsky tried to ease the blow of Hutch’s private truth. “But Emma surely didn’t make you feel that way,” he assumed. “She’s an animal.”

Impulsively, Hutch replied, “I think maybe I’m just too animal for her, too. She’ll do it and I enjoy it, but I wonder if she’s just tolerating it.”

“Nah. She doesn’t strike me as the type who’d care.”

”Maybe. I’m just saying that I’ve never felt a hundred percent sexually involved with anyone because of it.”

“Ever?”

“Ever. That’s what I meant by a hundred percent.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Starsky replied, honestly, sort of sadly, too.

“It’s not like I’ve had as many lovers as you’ve had,” Hutch said. “Maybe if I’d had more women, the odds would have been in my favor that I would have found someone who could have handled it—and I don’t mean physically.”

Starsky didn’t understand those women’s reactions; his was com­pletely dif­ferent. He squinted at Hutch for a moment as he tried to remember if they’d ever had that dialogue in the ten years of their friendship and he’d missed Hutch’s message. He concluded that they hadn’t; it must have been a conversation he’d had years earlier with his biological brother, discussing circumcision in general. “Lucky you,” he reassured Hutch, and to take them away from what had suddenly felt like a fragile conversation. “You’re an all-natural guy in more ways than your diet, then, hm?”

“That’s my thinking, but it isn’t every woman’s thinking.”

“Well, who needs a woman like that anyway?”

Hutch didn’t answer. It was, in the end, the only kind of women he’d had.

“Besides,” Starsky added on additional thought, “I don’t have anything to compare it to—I mean, except my own.”

Hutch was certain Starsky had more than his own to compare; he’d undoubtedly seen porn before. Hutch felt placated then, much the way he’d felt throughout his sexual life, and it depressed and hurt him even then. One thing he’d learned from their dialogue that morning was that Starsky himself was circumcised. There was no way he could know how it felt to be other­wise—and that notion made Hutch feel alone then, too. He didn’t want to be set up and crushed by the one person he most respected. “If this is only going to end up less than a hundred percent rewarding for me, I’d rather not do it.”

“What are you saying?” Starsky asked, dismayed. “You think I’m going to act like you’re ‘defective or diseased or something’?”

Hutch leveled eye contact with him.

“Shit,” Starsky said with a sorry laugh when he got his silent answer. “If I can bring myself to touch your dick at all, I don’t care what it looks like. But answer me this … is it so different I have to han­dle it a special way?”

“Just carefully. But don’t run from it—or you’ll break my heart.”

“I’ll handle it like it’s my own,” Starsky said with a wink, feeling the sweat break under his arms, squeezed there from his nagging arous­al, “all sexy and slick and with a firm grip so it don’t run from me. I’ll treat it like there isn’t anything more beautiful because I’m betting there isn’t.” He got the reluctant laugh he wanted, the relinquish of Hutch’s darker mood, and added, “Nobody—certainly no woman, apparently—knows how truly beautiful you are more than I know it.”

“You flatter me,” Hutch said.

“You never could handle the truth.” He then quickly changed the subject to keep Hutch from feeling further embarrassed. “Okay, so let’s move on. We now know where we stand on that. Any other deep, dark secrets?”

“No,” Hutch said, sighing away his bruised pride.

“So … if we do this, who’d come first then? You?”

“Yeah. Me. I’d come first.”

Starsky thought about it for a second. It seemed like a workable plan, but Hutch didn’t want a release the way he did. Even then Starsky was aroused just by talk of it. “You don’t get that turned on when we play around,” he said, “or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’d have done something about it for both of us by now.”

“Not true,” Hutch confessed. “It just hasn’t been something I felt a need to do anything about.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not something—”

“We should do.”

“I was going to say, because it’s not something I thought we were capable of doing. That, and because you always hit me after we get turned on. Abuse is a turn-off, in case you’re not aware.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Starsky mumbled, not wanting to get sidetracked by the guilt that reminder caused him.

“So, you’re just going to have to work hard at getting me hard enough,” Hutch explained, “or don’t hurt me so I can get hard enough.”

Starsky lightly laughed. He appreciated Hutch’s unspoken forgiveness. “Okay,” he agreed.

Hutch was serious. “I’m not doing this for you until you do it for me first, you understand? I want you to know how it feels to be me before I have to be me doing the thing to you.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Starsky said. “You want me to better under­stand your experience.” He put out his hand. “Deal.”

“Not so fast,” Hutch decided. “A few more ground rules: I don’t want any evidence on my clothes. I don’t want to be reminded of it if it turns out to be a miserable failure, so be careful where you aim. That includes my furniture, too—and my carpets, for that matter.”

“Jesus,” Starsky swore between his teeth. “I’m not an animal.” He lightly laughed at Hutch’s absurdity and then looked Hutch in the eye. “Okay. I’ll keep the evidence between you and me. I’ll make it quick and keep it clean.”

Hutch winked at him. “You don’t have to make it quick.”

“Suppose you’re hating it?”

“Then we stop. If I hate it, we stop. We don’t finish. No questions asked and no hard feelings.”

Starsky understood. “Okay. What else?”

“Absolute dead-on privacy. I don’t have to tell you what that means, but if it isn’t secure, don’t even hint at it with me.”

Hutch didn’t have to tell Starsky what that meant; they’d been under­cover police detectives for a decade. Starsky knew about ‘dead-on privacy.’ They’d broken the law together more times than they would admit—even under court order—and they trusted each other to take those secrets to their graves. “That’s a promise.”

Hutch sat back against his seat, rested his arm in the opened win­dow of the door frame, and stared outside in search of a loose end he may have forgotten. Then he looked at Starsky. “I think that covers it.”

“Just so I understand … you come first.”

“Yeah.”

“By my hand.”

“Yeah,” Hutch said. “Or mine. Whichever you prefer.”

“I myself prefer to come by yours, so it follows you should come by mine. And then, depending on how you feel about it at that point, I’ll come by yours, right?”

“That’s the plan.”

Starsky remembered Hutch’s other conditions. “We stop anytime you want us to.” When he got Hutch’s nod, he added, “And I make sure there’s no mess.”

“There’s your challenge.”

“Easy,” Starsky countered him.

“Easy?”

“You’ll see.” He’d learned to be discreet about such matters with the women he’d romanced over the years. “Leave it to me.”

“I will leave it to you,” Hutch said.

“And secured privacy,” Starsky added. “Did I understand you right?”

“Perfectly.”

Starsky had broken a sweat negotiating that deal, not to mention raised an erection. “And I thought women were a pain in the ass,” he repeated under his breath with a laugh.

“No ass pain,” Hutch playfully corrected him. “We’re just talking handjobs here, remember?”

“I remember,” Starsky said. He hadn’t planned beyond that to begin with. “Any other terms and conditions?”

Hutch thought a moment. “Yeah. One. I want a week to think about it. That’s our deal. Those conditions and one week until we shake on it.”

It would be a long week, Starsky silently lamented. “Can we play in the meantime? I mean, we can still lock lips, right?”

“Play all you like—but don’t hit me anymore.”

“I won’t have to.”

“You never had to,” Hutch corrected him, sternly.

“Yeah, okay. I got it,” Starsky said. “Hands to myself until…” He turned his wrist to check his watch, “a week from today, 12:48 p.m. If you haven’t talked yourself out of it, we shake on it, and then we’re go for launch, right?”

Hutch shook his head at himself. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done, the deal regarding the deal he’d made with Starsky. Not in a million years… “Yeah,” he said, laughing, “if we shake on it then, we’re go for launch. Shit, the things I do to keep you out of trouble.”

Starsky laughed at him. “The things you do—period.”

* * *

“Would you be surprised,” Jade asked, “to learn he placed that call to me that day, that I was the one he wanted to talk to about the pass he’d made at you?”

Hutch blinked at Jade. It had occurred to him, but he’d dis­missed it. “It was a Saturday,” he remembered. “I figured you weren’t work­ing.”

“I wasn’t. But he needed help. He was in a bad way.”

Hutch marveled at the realization. “So I didn’t stop him from seeing anyone that day, I mean, other than you? There wasn’t an Emma or an Adam in the picture anywhere?”

“Not even a glimpse of them,” Starsky said. “And I didn’t know you tried to stop me from seeing anyone. I didn’t even know you knew I’d made that call to Jade.”

“My mistake,” Hutch said. “That’ll teach me to eavesdrop from the back porch.”

“So?” Jade asked, realizing that the deadline for Hutch’s decision to masturbate Starsky had passed. “Did you boys agree to that deal then? Or did you, Hutch, decide to call it off?”

“We agreed,” Hutch said. “But first we had to wait for the perfect time and place to actually do it.”

“And the really strange thing,” Starsky added, “was that he started it. I mean, for a guy who’s said he’s just going with the flow, he was the first to jump into the hand … into the sex … sex, by my definition.”

Hutch shrugged, sheepishly. “I was in the mood,” he said gamesomely.

Jade locked his hands behind his head and kept his eyes on Hutch’s. “Where did you find a secure place?” He hadn’t for­got­ten that Grace had finally moved in with Starsky or that they lived across the driveway from Hutch.

“My house,” Hutch said.

“How did you ‘avoid’ the other resident there?”

“Grace has a new project,” Starsky replied. “An unwed, pregnant friend who needs her help. So she spent the night in the valley. But, honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about doing him then because I had other things on my mind.”

“The timing was right that night,” Hutch said, “and I didn’t know when it would be again.”

“Where was Sara?” Jade wondered.

“Busy with her mother. They’re leaving for Italy in a few days and she wanted the time to pack for her trip.”

“How long will she be gone?”

“About a month.”

Jade smiled. “How convenient.”

“Yeah, well, she doesn’t usually drop in, either, so I wasn’t afraid she might. No point in driving all that way only to find I’m not home.”

“So, the stage is set,” Jade said. “You guys had the farm to your­selves that night. Tell me how it went down.”

* * *

Hutch could tell Starsky was progressively frustrated with every min­ute he spent trying to make sense of the house construction account­ing because his sighs grew more frequent. The math didn’t add up and Starsky had too many papers to weed through. Hutch recommended he organize first and decipher second, but Starsky was too immersed in the project to even hear him. So Hutch lay quietly on the sofa in the soft light of the living room lamps, dressed in sweat pants and a long-sleeved flannel shirt, not read­ing, but nursing a glass of red wine, and listened to Starsky’s annoyance while he tried to silently figure a few things for him based on the occa­sional numbers Starsky verbalized. But Hutch didn’t get enough infor­mation to make sense of it, either, so he tried for something tangibly productive. “What if you turned on a light?” he advised, sipping wine. “Maybe you’re misreading some of the num­bers.” It wasn’t dark in the room, but it was definitely dim; night had fallen and the only light came from two small lamps, certainly not enough to read by, especially the often faded print of a store receipt.

Starsky sat on the off-side of the coffee table on an area rug that cov­ered much of the hardwood floor between the sofa and the fire­place. He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved, untucked shirt, was bare­foot and cross-legged. He could have done the accounting at home, but Grace had gone to stay with her pregnant friend for the night and he didn’t want to be alone while he calculated the house costs. Hutch was the closest company—and always the best companion—so Starsky had got­ten com­fortable there after dinner with him. He kicked off his shoes and spread receipts and other papers around him on the floor, made nota­tions on a couple of writing pads, and worked and reworked a calcu­lator, all to no success, despite Hutch’s input. Besides, he wasn’t interested in Hutch’s ideas; they didn’t really help him add numbers or figure percentages.

When Starsky cussed more than he made headway, Hutch toyed with the idea of playing the piano for him, a piece to soothe Starsky’s discontent. But then he decided to put an end to Starsky’s frustration by giving him something com­pletely different to think about, something that was sure to pacify the man. He rose from the sofa, opened the end table drawer, removed a one-ounce squeeze bottle of oil he’d stored there since his romance with Emma, and pocketed it. Then, along with his wine glass, and his heart noticeably beating, he crossed the room to where Starsky was seat­ed.

With­out a word or any con­cern for the small piles of papers Starsky had created, he carefully sat before him. His arrival caused Starsky to lift his head from his calcu­lating and make eye contact. Hutch handed him the wine glass. “Relax already,” he said with a wink.

Irate and frustrated, but certain Hutch had the right idea, Star­sky accepted the glass—and drank a long swallow from it. He handed it back. “Maybe whiskey would be better,” he joked, given how maddened he’d been.

Hutch set the glass on the hardwood floor at the edge of the area rug, away from them. “Maybe this would be better,” he said as he leaned forward and kissed Starsky full on the mouth. He knew, given the pact they’d recently made, that that time, the kiss had more mean­ing—which made Hutch’s heart pound harder.

For Starsky, the unexpected kiss was so forceful and demanding of his complete attention that he couldn’t ignore it, even if he wanted to—and he didn’t want to. But he did try at first to keep his balance when Hutch leaned into him, then soon realized Hutch intended to push him off his seat. Starsky dropped his pencil and his writing pad and willingly fell to his back against the carpet behind him. The kiss was deter­mined and that aroused him; he didn’t have time to think about its purpose, but he tightly held Hutch’s face and sucked on Hutch’s mouth as his erection plea­santly formed.

Hutch normally would have held Starsky’s face, too; the grips spurred them, gave them permission to pursue a kiss to its natural end, but Hutch had to prop himself over Starsky that time, so he set his hands against the floor instead. It left him powerless to end or lengthen their contact, but it didn’t stop him from indulging it. They had stolen kisses from each other over recent days, un-reprimanded ones, but they didn’t have either the time or the place to go beyond them, making their contact that evening more desper­ate because of the newly found privacy. The deep cadence of their breathing was evidence of their mutual desire for it, and the feel of Starsky’s respon­sive lips and tongue, his warmth and his wet­ness, his mus­ky smell and his familiar taste, were a treasured homecoming.

Hutch couldn’t get enough, so he hoped the kiss would last a while and, at the same ­time, serve to direct him. In strad­dling Starsky, how­ever, with each knee on either side of Starsky, he soon realized his vulnerability. Starsky was free to take him in hand if he wanted; Hutch was ready for it mentally, but he was suddenly anxious about its physical reality. When Starsky paused them to take a breath, Hutch asked, “Want to … consummate our deal?”

The daring expression on Hutch’s face begged Starsky’s question. “You mean … you want to … let me … pleasure you?” he asked. “Now?”

“Yeah. If you’re up to it.”

They laughed at his play on words. And then Starsky released Hutch’s face to run his hands along Hutch’s sides to his groin. He felt for Hutch’s penis through his sweat pants and briefly took a healthy hand­ful, but dis­covered that Hutch was relatively soft. Large and soft. It hadn’t oc­cur­­red to Starsky until that second that Hutch’s nervous excite­ment about handl­ing each other might interfere with his ability to fully enjoy himself.

Hutch inhaled an abrupt breath when he felt Starsky squeeze him through his clothes; it wasn’t the contact that unsettled him; it was the reminder of the unknown into which they’d entered. He knew Starsky teasingly fondled him through his clothes to get him past the initial touch and there­fore relax him, but the unexpected sensation was still scarily unfamiliar because he’d never had a man’s hand on him that way before. Would he live to regret what they did?

Hutch’s obvious concern—his sharp audible breath and his flaccid penis—made Starsky end the contact. The pause made Hutch sit back, so Starsky slightly bent his knees and blocked Hutch’s unintentional retreat. Hutch sat firmly against Starsky’s thighs instead, but he couldn’t move far enough to shift his weight off his hands, so he was still right where Starsky wanted him to be.

They breathed audibly and looked at each other in the golden light.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Starsky asked.

“I’m thinking so,” Hutch said, acknowl­edging the pun with a ner­vous laugh. Maybe he should have had a whiskey, too, at least some­thing else strong enough to relax him more than he’d been that night.

“Then you’ll be all right,” Starsky assured him. He unbuttoned the front of Hutch’s shirt. “You can stop us any time, remember?”

Hutch remembered. He’d played out the experience in his mind a number of times al­ready; each gut-punch he took was overwritten by his memory of a ten-year friendship and the enormous feelings of loyalty and safety he felt for and with Starsky. Still, it was a new and bold experience for them, one neither of them thought they’d ever engage, let alone with each other. But they were consensual, and they were as excited as they were anxious. They would rely on the other for guidance and cour­age; they certainly didn’t lack desire.

“I have something that might help,” Hutch said. He was cognizant of Starsky’s fingers opening his shirt, exposing his hairless chest, some­thing he’d shown off countless times before, but never at Starsky’s will. The action was the first proof Hutch had that they were about to bring each other to orgasm—and that made him momentarily panic. It flashed in his subtle hesitancy. But he noticed then the patience in Starsky’s kind eyes and the warmth on his face, reminding him again that he wasn’t alone, that Starsky could be trusted, and that appeased him, too. “In my right pocket,” he added, about the aid he’d referenced.

Starsky reached into Hutch’s left pocket and groped his still not-­hard penis through the thin cloth of his sweat pants, that time in a pre­tend search.

“The right one,” Hutch corrected him.

Starsky lightly laughed. He was nervous, too, though not enough to prevent his own erection from already forming. “I figured, under the circumstances,“ he said, ”that both those pockets were the right ones.” His comic relief and his anxiety calmed them. He retrieved the small bottle from the correct pocket, held it up to the lamp light, and noted its thick and relatively clear liquid content. “What is it?”

“Something Emma once used on me. Some kind of oil. Some kind of heaven.” Looking back, he assumed she brought it into play to make it easier for herself, to ease or alter the ‘different’ feel of his un­circum­cised penis, and that she was the only woman who’d ever toler­ated his so-called defect—as he imagined she, like others, perceived it—but may­be he was too hard on himself, too sensitive about his own sensi­tivity. When he remembered its pleasing attributes and then anti­cipated Starsky using it on him, his heart raced while his erec­tion finally began to swell, much more than it had while he and Starsky kissed. He didn’t think he could ever summon such a size in relation to Starsky, but he learned more about himself with every eager second that passed. Out of awk­ward­ness, he said, “It’s organic.” As if that would matter to his partner.

“I don’t plan to eat it,” Starsky said.

Hutch laughed, relieved again by his humor.

Starsky had mentally entertained sexually handling Hutch over the past few days more than even he realized he had. He didn’t know how; he’d never done such a thing with any man before, not even as a curious boy with the other boys of his youth, but he did know the only way beyond the awkwardness between them was to go through it. That, and because it was his experiment, he was the one in command. Hutch was the weaker one, the one more vulner­able and anxious, the one less exci­ted due to fear, the one offering himself for the test—for Starsky’s sake, not his own. And in that knowing, Starsky under­stood why he couldn’t treat Hutch as a means to an end. He would bear in mind Hutch’s reservations and his reluctance. He would care about Hutch’s overall experience, about Hutch’s feelings and his fears. He would think beyond the act in his hands to Hutch’s after­thoughts and hind­sight. It had to be a posi­tive—a kind—exchange, not so it would benefit Starsky in return, but because he didn’t want to have damaged Hutch when the experiment ended. He loved the man, after all, and he was mindful not to lose sight of that.

He set the bottle on the floor beside him and remembered the con­ditions Hutch had asked for, that there not be a ‘mess’ to clean up any more than was necessary, that the ‘evidence’ of their ‘exchange’ be as inconspicuous as possible, so Hutch didn’t have to be reminded of the embarrassment should he have second thoughts afterward. Starsky was determined to have Hutch think twice about it, but to think twice about it painlessly, so he removed himself from the equation to con­centrate on Hutch’s pleasure.

Hutch rested his butt against Starsky’s thighs; he was groin to groin with him; he’d mounted him, as it were, each of his palms on either side of Starsky’s shoulders. He didn’t leave eye contact with Starsky, even as ner­vous as he was, because he needed the strength he saw re­turned to him. He was in Starsky’s hands then, figuratively—and soon, he imagined, literally. Given the relaxed look of friendship on Starsky’s face and his own curiosity, it further excited Hutch to antici­pate it. “Do you want me to do something?” he asked. May­be he should lie beside Starsky. Maybe they should go to a bed instead. The amber light in the room was soft enough, but maybe he should still turn off a lamp.

Starsky feared any break in what they did would make Hutch re­treat into his apprehension. “This is good,” he said. He un­buttoned his own shirt and opened it to expose his haired chest and belly. He didn’t want Hutch to feel alone in his nudity, so he bared their skin. “Is the floor making you uncom­fortable?”

“This whole thing is making me uncomfortable,” Hutch said.

Starsky didn’t laugh with him. He didn’t want Hutch to think he was amused. He wasn’t. It was somewhat painful, actually, somewhat em­bar­rassing, and definitely exciting, too, but it wasn’t funny. He un­but­toned the cuff on his left sleeve and rolled it to his elbow. “It’s me here, remember?”

“Yeah. Exactly. That’s the weird part.”

“Do you want to change your mind?”

“No.”

Starsky needed a closer con­tact, an intimate one they’d already shared, to relax Hutch. “How ’bout you kiss me then?”

Hutch thought it a good idea. He lowered himself to his elbows and kissed Starsky’s mouth again, but stayed raised on his knees so Starsky had easy access to him; he was aware then, by his enabling pos­ture, just how much he wanted Starsky to masturbate him after all. The idea tanta­lized him and his erection begged for contact. Starsky was willing, so why shouldn’t he be?

The kiss was purely sensual; Hutch was too nervous to French kiss. Instead, the touch was warm and engaging, soft and affectionate. And then he abandoned it completely out of his inability to con­centrate when he felt Starsky’s hands gently tug on his waist­band. The antici­pation made his heart pound almost audibly and his head feel light. He shifted his weight and lowered to just one elbow, pressed his forehead to the back of his hand against the floor, his cheek to Starsky’s face, and then did his best to pant off his anxiety while he waited.

Starsky pulled Hutch’s sweats down with little effort, just enough to free Hutch’s penis from them so Hutch wouldn’t feel com­pletely exposed, and in the doing, he heard Hutch inhale abruptly and then moan with a laugh.

The moment had arrived. Hutch’s penis was in Starsky’s hands. It was harder and much warmer than Starsky expected, given that Hutch had been relatively soft only minutes earlier. Starsky had only ever handled himself and never to fruition; still, the feel of another man at his fingers, and an erect one at that, was a surreal and amazing sen­sation, but one that didn’t offend him as he once suspected it might—from those fleeting thoughts over the years when he occasionally imag­ined what gay boys did with each other, thoughts he entertained purely out of curiosity and without malice. But at that moment, on that night, he didn’t have a man in his hands, nor a man of any particular persua­sion; he had Hutch.

When he squeezed and fondled Hutch to make him harder still, it had an effect on both their erections—and enough that Starsky silently admitted to himself that, when fully engorged, Hutch was nota­bly big­ger than he was. It didn’t intimid­ate Starsky; Hutch had already told him he was above-average in size. Starsky was simply caught up in learning some­thing new and private about the man he’d called his partner for the past decade. He also couldn’t tell, there in the dim light, during those initial minutes when he most focused on the feel of Hutch’s penis, with just his hands to find his way, that Hutch wasn’t circumcised. He didn’t know what he expect­ed; Hutch had given him such a warning about it, but whatever differ­ence there was, it wasn’t obvious to the touch. If any­thing, Hutch’s skin simply felt softer than his own, but Hutch’s erec­tion was still quite hard.

For Hutch, that first touch had been exceptionally titillating; that was Starsky’s hand that gripped him, after all. He wanted to know if Starsky was disappointed, not by the size of him, but by the very thing they did to­gether, something as taboo as their masturbating each other. But he didn’t dare speak; to do so might disrupt the quietness between them, the delic­acy of the action, and the thrill of the touch. And it wasn’t neces­sary to ask because he got his answer when he felt Starsky pause long enough to open the oil bottle, squeeze a generous amount of the lubri­cant into his palm, and then take Hutch in both his hands—that time oiled and slippery. The strokes were long, sensual, strong, and wet—from the base of Hutch’s penis to its tip and back again. Hutch whis­pered “Jesus” under his accelerated breath, pressed his face tightly to Starsky’s, and laughed one final release of awkwardness. Starsky had finally overcome Hutch’s appre­hension with his firm and pleas­ing hands, and the sensation was head-spinning and exquisitely lust-driven.

“That’s my boy,” Starsky whispered. He could tell, from Hutch’s breath and from his completely tumescent erection, that Hutch had abandoned all his misgivings and his concerns and allowed himself to thor­oughly enjoy the pleasing ache. Starsky was in no hurry, despite that he, too, was fully aroused. The longer he made it last, the more memorable it would be for Hutch—or so he imagined. He slowed the pace of his strokes, lightened his touch, pleasured Hutch in one hand alone, sensually stroked and mass­aged him. He closed his eyes, shut out the light, listened to Hutch’s heavy breathing right there in his ear, a deep and sometimes halting breath caused by him, and took his time to feel Hutch’s penis, its length and its heat, its breadth and its hardness, its shaft, crown, and head, all perfectly proportioned—just like every­thing else about Hutch.

“I love how you feel in my hands,” Starsky said.

Music to Hutch’s ears.

The oil enabled Starsky to see Hutch’s penis with­out his eyes, to know its every inch, to learn how straight it was, how meaty and measurable was its rounded crown, how long its girthy shaft, and to read Hutch’s response and his desire. When he sensed Hutch’s need for a resolution heighten, he slowed it by lightly massag­ing the penis’s head and then resumed the shaft’s arousing stroke when he imag­ined Hutch long­ingly craved for some­thing firmer. Starsky repeated his pausing action more than once, more than twice; the tease made Hutch cuss with disappointment when it stalled and then moan with relief each time Starsky resumed.

It was true Starsky had never pleased a man before, but Hutch couldn’t believe he hadn’t; those hands were skilled and sensual, warm, strong, tender, and slick on him. The tight up-and-down rhythm of the strokes was evenly un­interrupted, slowly building, intensely aching, and more satisfying than Hutch ever dreamed they would feel. He got taken several times to the edge of his arousal and was then mercilessly aban­doned at a critical moment to rebuild it from a stronger place that next time. He felt helpless to fulfill his desire to ejaculate and grateful he couldn’t because he never wanted the pleasures to end. Was that some­thing only a man could appre­ciate for another man? That kind of deep want, that sort of heigh­tened tease, to feel such an orgasmic urge for that long and not be able to completely satisfy it, was unlike any­thing he’d experienced. No woman had extend­ed his pleasure, not that intuitively and not that deeply.

But there he was, straddling Starsky, their shirts unbuttoned and open, Hutch’s pants down around his butt, his erect penis exposed and in a man’s hands, a man who apparently loved him, freely gave to him, remem­bered he was there at all and what his experience was and should be. And—if Hutch wasn’t mistaken, and he wasn’t—this new lover of his was in no hurry to end it for him. The sensation was all about and for Hutch and he hungrily appreciated and desired and coveted it. Star­sky moaned with him a couple of times, because stroking Hutch actually turned him on, too, and that pleased Hutch, made him smile as inwardly as on his face. Mostly, though, he was buried in the darkness behind his closed eyes, his face pressed to Starsky’s, into Starsky’s neck and hair, and he smelled Starsky’s skin, his cologne, and his sweat, and he heard Starsky excitedly breathing, too, and he felt Starsky’s fearless and pleasing hand on his engorg­ed shaft and then on its highly sensitive head, stroking and mass­aging him with such enthusiasm and thorough­ness.

Hutch couldn’t anticipate because he didn’t feel expected to finish. He didn’t have reason to per­form. He didn’t even encourage the rhythm or the pace of his experience; he simply knelt over Starsky with his forehead on the floor, and allowed Starsky to build, stall, and rebuild his heated arousal, slowly and without hesitancy. He knew how it would end; there was but one way. All he had to do was be there—and there was where he was. His entire being was focused on the absolute phys­ical ecstasy Starsky made for him in his hands and the intensifying feel­ings of helpless­ness, lust, and love it evoked in him. Starsky would take him when Starsky was ready to take him; all Hutch could do was un­con­ditionally and power­lessly indulge the pure feel of the ride. He’d surren­dered long ago.

Whatever thoughts either of them had about how it would feel, how long it would last, what they would experience, were absent from both their minds. The engagement had become purely physical, filled with labored and audible breathing, with sweat and arousal, with racing, pound­ing hearts, with telling moans and the heightened pleas­ur­able sensa­tions of the flesh.

Hutch was finally taken; he wasn’t forced, he wasn’t planned, and he wasn’t rushed. He had none of the expected experiences he’d had with women. It simply became more than he could endure—because of the physicalness of it, not because he felt pressured to finish. While Starsky indulged his frenulum, that exquisitely sensitive spot just below his penis’s head, on its underside, slick and fully charged, he cli­maxed, almost as slowly as the shorter strokes them­selves, but with a power­ful intensity, a strong pulse of an ejac­ulation, unlike any he’d had in his lifetime. He tightly gripped Starsky’s upper arm and clenched the carpet in his other fist as he emptied himself by Starsky’s hand—with creamy pulses of semen—onto Starsky’s haired chest and stomach. And he moaned uncon­trollably in the release, though he was unable to feel embar­rassed by it; the electrifying exper­i­ence was as natural for him as it was extra­ordinary.

Starsky held Hutch’s hardened shaft until his spasms ebbed, and then held him even longer just to hold him. He felt the wet warmth of Hutch’s semen in his fingers and on his skin, his belly and his chest, and he listened to Hutch’s strong pant, and he could smell Hutch’s pers­piration and even feel his heart pound inside his chest, and it all thrilled him in return. Starsky had done the once-unthinkable and it hadn’t offended him, hadn’t repulsed him, hadn’t disgusted him. The opposite was true. He felt honored to have pleased Hutch the way he had. He felt he’d paid him back some­how, in some small way, for all his loyalty and love. And pay­back had its own reward. Starsky became aware, only then really—spawned by that first kiss among the receipts and papers of his house accounting—that his own erec­tion had stayed with him the entire time. Turning Hutch on turned him on. He would ask for release, but not right then. For then, for a while, for at least a number of comfort­ing minutes, he let Hutch bask in the aftermath of his exhil­aration.

Hutch’s grip on Starsky’s arm loosened, his breathing slowed and grew quiet, his heartbeat returned to normal and eventually silenced, and he slumped against Starsky. He also felt the wet between them, there at their bellies, from the oil and his semen, but he was too satisfied to care. And he would have laughed at how judicious he’d initially want­ed them to be and then weren’t, but he didn’t have the energy for that, either. Instead, he contentedly dozed.

Starsky quietly stared a while at the ceiling, replayed the inti­macy in his mind over and again, the one they’d just shared—and still peace­fully enjoyed—and then he closed his eyes and drifted with Hutch for some time into a light slumber. But Hutch’s weight finally stirred him. Too much of it too long against the hardwood floor, despite the area rug, eventually woke him. He pulled Hutch’s sweats back to his waist, lowered his own legs to free him, and firmly pushed Hutch’s shoulder. “Get off me,” he good-naturedly said—and Hutch obeyed.

* * *

Jade squinted at Hutch as if it would help him find answers to ques­tions he wouldn’t have to ask. He sat with his arms crossed and didn’t say a word, but his mind busily eliminated irrelevant thoughts as it searched to find the most pressing one that might squash his curiosity.

“Did we shock you, doc?” Starsky asked.

Jade didn’t look at Starsky when he answered; he couldn’t take his eyes off Hutch. “I’m shock-proof.”

“You seem speechless.”

More silence passed. Hutch knew Jade closely examined him and he willingly waited for the analysis, though he had no idea how it would play out.

Jade finally found his question. “How did you go from…” He paused, sat forward, back-paged through his notebook, ran his finger through his notes, pretended to find the citation, and continued. “How’d you go from, in your words, ‘I reserve my man parts for women’ to allow­ing Starsky to masturbate you with such—”

“Do you have to use words like that?” Starsky asked, cutting him off.

Jade looked at him. “Like ‘masturbate’? Would you prefer I said ‘jerk off’? Is slang more appropriate?”

“It’s not. But don’t be so clinical, either.”

“Well, what’s left? If I can’t be clinical and I can’t use slang…?”

“I don’t know,” Starsky said, flustered. “But what we did wasn’t crass and it wasn’t by-the-book. Use something like, say I … um … ‘handled’ him.”

Jade thought it was a fair compromise. He looked at Hutch again and directed his attention there. “I know how you got from your conviction that you’d never let a man touch you like that … to actually letting him ‘handle’ you … because your bond to Starsky is superseded only by your fear of losing him. But my question is … how’d you do it with such certi­tude?”

“What does that mean?” Starsky asked. “Now you’re using words I don’t know.”

Jade sometimes felt sorry for Starsky. “Certitude,” he defined it for him, “… um … purely without doubt,” he explained, “hence without hesi­ta­tion in this instance.” Jade saw Starsky assimilate it, so he turned his attention to Hutch again—and then waited for his answer.

“He made it painless.”

“He made it more than that,” Jade noted. He wasn’t facetious. “But you went quite willingly from the onset.”

“I like him,” Hutch said. He knew it was a flippant, cop-out answer, but it was the only one he had.

“You gave yourself over to him completely. He took you in his hands and you let him walk you to the edge and push you off with­out even a shred of a reservation.”

“I beg to differ. I was against it at first and then scared shitless when it came to pass.”

“But that initial resistance and that subsequent fear didn’t stop you in the end. Still no small feat for a man who’s loved sex with women all his life.”

“I’ve loved him for a quarter of it—the fourth that matters.”

“Is that what it was? Is that how you felt? You made love with him?”

“No. But, to use your earlier phrase, I never felt like he jerk­ed me off, either. Maybe I’d have felt differently if he’d simply been bent on making me come.”

“But instead he took his time,” Jade noted.

“He took his time. He used a low gear and a slow speed.”

“And it felt so good, all you could do was enjoy the ride?”

“Pretty much.”

“Were you ashamed of yourself afterward?”

“No. And I’m not now, but Starsky says it was wrong of us.”

Jade looked at Starsky. “Wrong for what reason?”

“It’s morally wrong,” Starsky replied. “Sex between men is wrong. And it’s not natural, so that makes it doubly wrong. Then add to that, it’s sexually useless in the scheme of things. It doesn’t make babies.”

“You don’t make babies every time you have sex with women, do you?”

“It’s com­plicated. I can’t explain this. In the end, I just think it was wrong and he doesn’t.”

“So you won’t be doing it again.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Are you saying you will do it again?”

“I want to and I hope to,” Starsky said, “but that doesn’t make it right.”

“And yet it appeared, from your relay of the experience, that it was quite natural for you to do.”

Starsky thought about what Jade said as he replayed that evening in his mind. Then he settled on the part he knew to be true. “It was natural for me to give something beautiful to a friend of mine—to my best friend. To my hero.”

“Despite that he’s a guy?”

“He’s my best friend—and he’s my best friend because he’s a guy. But he’s my hero because of who he is, not what he is. It was all wrap­ped up in that: My friend, my partner, the big brother I never had. All those things. And because he’s that person, it was a natural thing for me to give him what I did. I’d do anything for him.”

Hutch was silently moved by what he heard, so neither Starsky nor Jade noticed his emotional reaction.

Jade was bent on helping Starsky find his way. “But this wasn’t pure­ly about him, was it?”

“That’s not what you asked me,” Starsky said. “You asked me why it felt natural for me to give him sexual pleasure and I explained why.”

Jade sensed Starsky’s annoyance in his last answer, so he accepted what he was told and moved on to his next questions, not realizing they would be more difficult for Starsky than the previous ones. “Were you aroused giving him sexual pleasure because sex is arousing or simply because it was him you gave it to?”

“Probably both.”

“So, you did get something out of it, something for you.”

Starsky stared at the coffee table and wondered how the doctor’s ques­tions would help him find the settling answers to his nagging ques­tions about his sexual self-identity. Or did Jade just want more of the graphic details for his own amusement? He looked up at him. “Does this con­versation turn you on, doc?”

“No. You?”

It was Starsky’s turn to sense Jade’s annoyance. “I just don’t under­stand why know­ing how we ‘feel’ about it helps you figure out whether we’re gay. I mean, doesn’t that act alone prove we are?”

“How would defining yourself as gay explain your lust and love for women?”

“Okay. Maybe it means I’m bisexual.”

“Maybe.”

“Can’t you confirm or deny it?”

“What was your sex life like, say, before Grace?”

“How do you mean?”

“You said you bedded more women than you can count—”

“Or remember,” Hutch injected.

“So, would we call you a confused or repressed homosexual,” Jade asked Starsky, “a bisexual, or a womanizer?”

“Well, up until my roll in the grass with Detective Ken Hutchinson, I wouldn’t have called myself any of those things, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t—apparently—have some secret fetish all that time.”

“So your roll in the grass with Hutch was perverse then? Is that how you see homosexual behavior? As a fetish, a perversion?”

“I should have known talking to a shrink would be like talking to Hutch. Mincing words.”

“But isn’t that what you prefer I do? Do you really want me to just blanket you with a label?”

“If it fits.”

“Fine. You’re bisexual.”

Starsky scowled at Jade. He also noticed Hutch didn’t help him with the debate, either. He thought back to the line of questions Jade had last suggested they explore. “I’ve had a few women,” he admitted, un­der­playing the number, but conveying the gist with his tone. “And I’ve enjoyed every one of them to one degree or another. I’ve even had some girlfriends—”

“Why did your relationships break up?”

“For one reason or another. Bad choices, I guess. One died.” He paused to fondly, but sadly remember Terry, then avoided even men­tion­ing Kira. Maybe she wasn’t technically a girlfriend, anyway. It wasn’t long after, though, that he simply gave up on relationships. Why had he done that? He wasn’t sure, so he spoke impulsively. “I didn’t want to get tied down to any particular one for any length of time for the sole reason that I liked having more than one woman. Or twenty, for that matter.”

“But you don’t want the label of a womanizer.”

“I didn’t lust after them. I didn’t chase them crassly.”

“Tell me and take me back: You meet a woman at the grocery store, for exam­ple, in the checkout line. She’s attrac­tive; you’re drawn to her. She’s not wearing a wedding ring.”

“It wouldn’t matter if she was.”

“So, do you make frequent visits to the market and make certain to get in her aisle so you can regularly talk to her or do you ask her out then and there?”

Starsky imagined. “I’d ask her out then and there,” he said. “My motto was: The more women I hit on, the more likely I’d score—but not the way you think I meant that. I mean score as in successful in get­ting a date, not as in laid.”

“But that would work, too, wouldn’t it?”

Starsky wouldn’t answer. He felt patronized.

“So you’d ask her right there. To dinner? A movie? Or straight to your bedroom?”

He laughed at the notion of Jade’s last item. “To dinner usually.”

“Then to the bedroom?”

“Not before a few dates, no. I didn’t just meet women and talk them into bed. I had to at least like her, too, and that meant getting to know her. I sometimes dated the same woman for months at a time.”

Hutch stared at the floor and listened. Nothing Starsky told Jade was news to him, and nothing about it was untruthful, either.

“And what did you have to like about her?” Jade asked Starsky.

“Her face, her body, her brain, her personality.”

“In that order?”

“Usually. Does that make me a womanizer?” he asked. “Or am I just a heal­thy American man?”

“Let’s talk about her body. You a breast man? A leg man?”

Starsky didn’t know where Jade led him, but he followed just the same; it was a lively dialogue and he thought it might spawn new clues. “I’m into all the parts,” he said, “but if I had to choose one, I’d say I’m an ass man.”

It was an answer Jade could only have hoped for, given the direc­tion he wanted the conversation to go. “And what about their asses?” he asked. “An anal sex attraction?”

“No,” Starsky said, almost emphatically. Then, as equally embar­rassed, he added, “but definitely a from-behind sex attraction.”

“Vaginal sex from behind her, you mean.”

“Yeah, doc, that’s what I meant. Would you like me to draw you a picture?”

“And what about that position turned you on? The visual? The physical? Or did it make you feel like the one in control?”

“All of the above. And, for the record, that position still turns me on.”

Hutch almost laughed at Starsky’s cracks, but he imagined Jade steered him into a brick wall—and probably one Starsky needed to hit—so Hutch didn’t outwardly express his amusement. Jade noticed Hutch’s attempt to repress himself and gave him a quick glance and a wink. Then he further pursued Starsky.

“When you have sex with Grace, then,” he supposed to him, “you have and enjoy sex from behind her?”

Starsky didn’t comment. It was too personal.

“You can tell me how you ‘handled’ Hutch,” Jade asked, “but not about your sex with Grace?”

“Because I don’t see how my sex with Grace is relevant.”

“It lends itself to your bisexual tendencies.”

“I love sex with Grace. I love it more than I’ve loved sex with any­one else.”

“More than how much you love what you did with Hutch?”

“It’s different than what I did with him. It’s more complete with Grace, you know, all out; I get to be inside her. It’s sexier and it’s private and it’s not lacking in any­thing for me. If you want to talk about my sex before Grace, I’ll give you all those gory details, but I don’t want to talk about my sex with Grace. She means something to me and I want her sex life to be private—for her.”

“Have you ever talked to Hutch about your sex with Grace?”

“Not in explicit detail.”

“Because it’s too personal to tell him? Or because you’re afraid he’ll be jealous?”

“That first part. It’s personal—and because Grace deserves better from me after all I’ve been putting her through. I want to show her respect.”

Jade was satisfied with the answer. He wouldn’t ask about Grace again. He chose a different target. “You meet a man in the checkout line at the grocery store. He’s attractive and you’re drawn to him. Do you—”

Starsky interrupted the pro­posed scenario. “I’ve never felt drawn to a man, let alone to make a date with one.”

“This buddy of yours then…” Jade pointed at Hutch. “Do you think he’s a good-looking guy?”

“And I’ve told him that over the years,” Starsky said. “Anyone who doesn’t think he’s good-looking isn’t looking at him. To quote him, it’s just the way it is: He’s good-lookin’. In fact, he’s beautiful. That I know that doesn’t make me gay. That I’ve handled him is another story, though, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. What about his ass?”

Starsky laughed. The question struck him absurd. “I’ve never given thought to his ass.”

“Ever seen it? Locker room, maybe? At pool side somewhere?”

“If I did, I never gave it a second look. It wasn’t memorable.” He quickly added, “No offense, cow­boy.”

“None taken,” Hutch replied.

“So you’ve never walked behind him,” Jade continued, “and no­ticed his ass and thought you might like to take him from behind, too?”

“No.”

“What about his front? Do you notice his crotch and—”

Starsky laughed again. It had hit him. “I get what you’re doing. You’re saying, because I’m an ass-man—and if I was homo or bi­sex­ual—I’d have noticed his ass.”

“Wouldn’t you have? Especially on a guy you’ve handled?”

“Well, if the question is, Did I ever look at his ass like that before our playing around, the answer is no. Isn’t that what you asked me? But I’ve had thoughts about it since I’ve handled him,” he ashamedly mumbled.

Hutch was just as surprised as Jade to hear Starsky confess to that, but Jade beat Hutch to the question. “What kinds of thoughts?”

“Just that I notice it,” Starsky said. “And, yeah, for the record, I notice his crotch now, too. I’ve taken a different look at him is all. I’m not think­ing anything; just seeing him different, you know? I’m doing some­thing different with him, so it figures I see him different, doesn’t it?” It still didn’t explain his sexual acts with Hutch in the first place. “But the question I need answered is, Why did I like handling him at all? And why would I have let him handle me—and wanted him to—if I wasn’t queer—at least queer enough to want him to?”

Jade realized what Starsky said. “Did you let him handle you?”

“Well, yeah. That was the plan: He’d handle me—but not before I handled him. Remember? He wanted me to know how it felt to do the hand­ling, so I’d make it easy for him to do me by not being an idiot about it.”

Jade wasn’t shocked that time, either, to learn that Hutch had mas­tur­bated Starsky, but he was curious about the details and how they might enlighten them. “When did Hutch handle you?”

“That same night,” Starsky replied. “We never left the floor. I let him sleep for a while, but then my curiosity and my need got the better of me. I couldn’t help myself. I’d been thinking about it for a week, you know?”

* * *

Hutch rolled off Starsky and onto his back on the carpet. He then pulled his sweats the rest of the way over his fading erection, bent his arm over his eyes, dropped his other arm against Starsky’s hip, and drifted into a sleepy con­scious­ness.

But Starsky was aroused again. Or maybe it was still. No amount of doz­ing, no stall in time, no second thought, relieved his pang. He was as want­ing then as he’d been for weeks, maybe more so. Bring­­­­­ing Hutch to orgasm was one of the sex­iest things he’d ever done. And maybe that was the answer to the ques­tion that had dogged him since that first kiss two months earlier; he no longer needed to ask Hutch to repay him. He knew he wanted sex with Hutch, at least that kind of sex with him. Maybe it wasn’t neces­sary to phy­sically grat­ify his craving. Maybe the knowing was enough. Maybe the doing would only complicate matters. He didn’t know, and he could try to answer all those questions then, but he was con­sumed by his need to resolve his arousal to orgasm. The analysis would have to wait. He wanted what he wanted and it was a powerful hunger.

He felt a pull on his belly hair and rubbed it to assuage the pinch; some of Hutch’s semen was caked there. No doubt Hutch felt the move­ment, so Starsky turned his head and found that Hutch had since low­ered his arm from his face and watched him back. Those blue eyes sparkled in the low light and they didn’t hesitate in the return contact.

Starsky didn’t dare break the quiet with words. He would ask by way of means. Hutch would let him know if he still wanted to reci­p­rocate. But how to ask, even without words? He shifted his eyes to the ceiling to give it thought, lightly stretched, and acci­dentally knocked over the small bottle of oil. Its content couldn’t spill from the closed container, but it did remind him of it. He looked again at Hutch.

Hutch hadn’t moved. He readily gazed back into Starsky’s eyes with a silent and contented patience. His passiveness enabled Starsky to pull Hutch’s hand over onto his belly. The action brought Hutch back to lying on his side, snug against Starsky. As Starsky stared un­seeing again above him, he felt around for the button and then released it from Hutch’s shirt cuff; he was conscious of the muscle strength in Hutch’s arm as he rolled the sleeve halfway to his elbow. Hutch had the power to stop him, but he didn’t use it.

Amused was too wrong a word for Hutch’s reaction to Starsky’s prep­aration. He could tell Starsky was careful with him. He meti­cu­lously pro­gressed toward his desired destination and gave Hutch ample time to intercept him, so Hutch appre­ciated the effort on his behalf. Such a thing had been necessary only an hour earlier, but Starsky had since broken Hutch’s appre­hen­sions and awkwardness—when he so skillfully made him power­fully ejacu­late as help­lessly as he had. Hutch no longer harbored any reser­vations. Granted, it would be a completely new and delicate task to return the favor, but Hutch couldn’t not do it. And he didn’t want to not do it, either. It mat­tered to them both.

Afraid he’d be rejected if he made too close a contact too soon, Star­sky didn’t look at Hutch when he braved the ungraceful feat of un­zip­ping and low­er­ing his jeans—to just his knees, enough to free his penis from them—but he succeeded despite his bashfulness because the relief of releasing himself from his clothes liberated him. His erec­tion was fully engorged and had been for some time—there was no miss­­ing it. But Hutch didn’t move a muscle; he didn’t make any attempt to end or encour­age Starsky’s private mission, not even by aiding him in it. Hutch’s apparent willing­ness and the anti­ci­pation it un­intentionally caused Starsky made Starsky hun­grier for Hutch’s hand. Still, he wanted to be mindful. He groped the floor until he found the small bottle. Then he squeezed a few drops of its con­tent on his penis and slowly coated its head and stiff shaft with the cool lubri­cant.

It felt good. Hutch was right: ‘Some kind of heaven,’ indeed.

Starsky was also certain by then that Hutch was fully aware his part­ner was erect, that he mass­ag­ed himself, and that he expected an ejaculation at some point, too. If Hutch didn’t visually see it, he must have heard it in Starsky’s newly audible breath­ing and the pleasurable tension the self-touch caused him; they did, after all, lie quite snugly against each other. How could Hutch miss it? He turned his head again and glanced into Hutch’s eyes to get a read on his reaction. The look he got back was fear­less. “You like me,” Starsky quietly noted.

“An understatement if ever there was one,” Hutch said.

Starsky hadn’t seen him do it, but Hutch had watched his every move. Hutch was curious mostly, and not so much about the visual of Starsky’s penis, its shape or size, which he briefly examined purely by default and without conscious opinion, but because he’d begun to won­der if Starsky had plan­ned to masturbate himself instead—and that he just wanted Hutch there for inspiration or moti­vation. But it didn’t explain why Starsky had rolled Hutch’s sleeve; he must have wanted Hutch to be involved, didn’t he? That idea alone sparked Hutch’s new arousal.

Starsky lifted Hutch’s hand and squeezed some of the oil onto it—a generous amount. He closed and then abandoned the bottle to the floor again. Then he massaged the oil into Hutch’s hand, into the front and the back of it, along each of and between his fingers, one and then another. It was a sensual joining, by touch alone, height­en­ed by the slick feel of the emollient, and it had a soothing effect on both of them. Hutch lowered his head to his folded arm and his face to Starsky’s shoulder to watch Starsky’s actions more closely.

Amber light glis­ten­ed off their hands; Hutch’s was passive and relaxed, Starsky’s directive and firm. He gripped and interlocked their warm fingers, and used his thumb to rub the salve into Hutch’s palm in a circular motion. His intention wasn’t so much to soften Hutch, to make his hand agree­able, but to relax him, to ease him into the sen­sation of oiled skin on oiled skin. After a quiet minute, he lowered Hutch’s hand to his haired chest, mas­saged oil onto Hutch’s fore­arm, and felt Hutch’s muscle again, noting how relaxed it was that time.

Their breathing was audible—even Hutch’s. Despite hav­ing been physically de­pleted, he was still sexually aroused by the touch and the anticipa­tion of pleasing Starsky—which, from Starsky’s obvious hard-on, seemed inevitable. And that, by itself—Hutch’s interest in Starsky’s sat­isfac­tion—pleased Starsky. He grasped Hutch’s hand and gently slid it through the dusting of hair on his belly to his groin. Hutch went willingly, with­out hesita­tion, feel­ing Starsky’s haired skin along the way and not fright­ened by the destination. Starsky aided him in the initial contact; they embraced Starsky’s rigid penis in both their hands, mostly in Hutch’s, but together just the same.

Starsky drew the first short breath, caused by the sensation of the touch. And Hutch drew a similar one from the strange and won­der­ful, un­rivaled feel of an erect penis in his gentle grip, one that wasn’t his, but one that was decidedly warm, quite firm, and excit­edly alive with an apparent desire. Starsky guided him in the action. “Tighter,” he said, and he moaned his approval when Hutch accommodated him.

The strokes were short ones; Starsky didn’t want Hutch to have to feel the length of him too soon; he didn’t want to seem as if he ‘fucked’ Hutch’s hand, or simply used Hutch as a means to an end, so Starsky was initially guarded. They held hands, embraced Starsky’s hardened penis together, and nourished Starsky’s arousal with their sensual and slippery embrace. Hutch didn’t seem to mind; he didn’t pull away, after all, but Starsky wanted more than his own perception. “How does that feel?” he finally asked. He didn’t expect the answer.

“Awesome,” Hutch whispered.

It was all Starsky needed to abandon his con­cern for Hutch and to treat himself to the sexual pleasure in their hands. He let go of Hutch and allowed Hutch to feel him at whim.

Hutch was spellbound by his partner’s notice­ably heaving belly and his haired groin, by the sounds of their breathing and the skin-to-skin contact, by the warm touch itself, by the feel of some­thing as fam­iliarly foreign in his hand as Starsky’s penis. He lengthened the oiled stroke and felt every inch of it. It was hard and it was wet and it gleamed in the amber light, too. He rose to his elbow to have a closer look at the aesthetic visual of his glistening fingers as they slid up and down the thick shaft, consuming its head in his hollowed fist, only to appear again in the downstroke.

Though Starsky hadn’t done it to him, Hutch broadened his exploration; he cupped Starsky’s entire scrotum, gently mass­aged its delicate fleshiness for a min­ute as he watched Starsky’s face—until he got a noti­ceable reac­tion from him, one that told him Starsky enjoyed a dif­ferent sensa­tion at his sac from the more direct orgasmic-building one of his penis, and by the way Starsky sleepily closed his eyes as if the unexpected fondle about put him over the emo­tional edge—and then Hutch resumed the lengthy and sensual stroke of Starsky’s penis. His delib­erate action caused Star­sky to cuss a barely audible “fuck” beneath his breath, and when Hutch did it to him a second time, Starsky used the word “Jesus.”

“I want you to come as hard as I did,” Hutch explained.

Starsky locked eyes with him and actually whimpered with anticipation; he didn’t want to wait. “Make me come now.”

“Not now,” Hutch said. He prevented Starsky from indulging that want by fondl­ing Starsky’s testes a third time, first one and then the other, at length, to allow Starsky’s lust to ebb, but long enough to make him beg for more.

“Let me fuck your hand,” Starsky beseeched him in a hushed voice.

“Not now,” Hutch said again. “Slow down. Don’t be in a hurry.”

“But it feels so good.”

“Yeah,” Hutch agreed. He enjoyed the physical feel of Starsky in his hand, Starsky’s oiled-smooth length, his heat and his flesh, his desire. “It does feel good”—even to him. That was love, wasn’t it? Hutch watched how the sensual handling made Starsky’s stom­ach heave and his breathing grow deeper and more rapid. He looked at Star­sky’s face once and was glad to see his closed eyes and that look of absolute abandon, of sheer focus and surrender, in Starsky’s expres­sion. And he looked at him another time, expecting to see the same, but instead found Starsky watch­ed him watch him back. When they made eye contact, Starsky moaned from the un­fulfilled ache and firmly told Hutch, “Take me.”

“Not now,” Hutch warned him. He released Starsky completely to make certain he wouldn’t climax, and instead massaged oil on Starsky’s haired chest and over his nipples.

Starsky wanted something to satisfy him. “Then kiss me,” he said. After all, the kiss had been the main ingredient, the missing touch, the intimacy that had spawned their more sexual encounter. He grabbed the back of Hutch’s head, pulled him to his face, and locked lips with him—and he didn’t let go.

Their bared chests joined where their shirts opened. Despite their fusing, Hutch was able to reach between them and take Starsky again, to allow him to desperately thrust in his slick hand while he kissed Star­sky’s mouth. The room was quiet, save the sound of their heavy breath­ing and the fric­tion of their bodies, those things, and the sounds of their lips touching, the sounds of kisses. Then moans, whim­pering kinds of moans, because Starsky wanted so badly to climax and was so close, and Hutch didn’t seem to want to help him. But they were as passionate in their kisses as they’d ever been and that satisfied Starsky in its own way.

He rolled his hips to encour­age more pressure and speed as he thrust in and out of Hutch’s hollowed and wet fist. That’s what he want­ed: To ejaculate by Hutch’s hand, because he knew he could, he knew by then that Hutch wouldn’t mind. So when Hutch kissed him with a longing that belied his earlier release, Starsky used Hutch’s pas­sion to fuel his escape into self-indulgence.

Their sweat mingled where their skin met, and their mouths were as lubricious as was Starsky’s erection, its oiled shaft and head, in Hutch’s tightly stroking and slickly consenting hand. Their lips, ton­gues, hands, bellies, Hutch’s lubri­cated hold between them and Star­sky’s grip on Hutch’s face, their pounding hearts and labored breath­­ing, the sheer ecstasy in Starsky’s roused penis, were all too much for his stamina. The acts together, the dual sensations, one the sensual and inti­mate kiss he’d grown to love and expect, and the other, the un­rivaled sexual manipu­lation of his en­larged and satiated penis—further, that it was gratified by the man, the hero, in his life—overwhelmed him.

He eagerly sucked Hutch’s tongue and was recip­rocated. There was an inherent pleasure in the exchange, one fami­liar and titil­lating, a passion that crested the orgasmic surge in his groin. He had to climax then; he couldn’t wait. Hutch thought Starsky might, too, and tried one more time to stall him, to make it last, but Starsky didn’t have Hutch’s endurance.

“Damn you,” he whispered with a frus­trated laugh after he broke from the kiss, “I have to come.” He gripped Hutch’s fingers, then his wrist and his forearm, to force Hutch’s earlier rhythm and pressure, but he was gone before Hutch could get up to speed. Hutch at least held him tightly, pumped him at length and with enough genuine enthusiasm, that Starsky ejac­u­lated onto his own haired belly and chest with sheer relief and wordless gratitude—so fer­vent­ly that he could barely breathe.

Hutch’s own satisfaction was emotional and written on his face and in his eyes. He devoured the blissful look of Starsky’s ec­stasy as he squeezed him to the very end of his orgasm—and every physical second of it was precious and appre­ciated, evidenced by Star­sky’s reactive shudders and his further moans of enjoyment. Hutch’s hand remained sandwiched between their bared bellies and he didn’t release the gentle pres­sure until Starsky had com­pletely emptied him­self and laughed in a sort of playful whimper. His heart beat power­fully in his chest. Even Hutch could feel it. What they’d done to each other that night was mem­or­able.

Hutch kissed Starsky’s cheek then—a loving, sweet kiss, so oppo­site from the primal release he’d enabled—to let Starsky know how special he thought he was and how erotic, sexy, raw, and extra­ordinary the inti­macy between them had become.

* * *

Jade was relieved for the counseling he’d done in the past with gay men. He could have been many things had he been anyone else, but offended wasn’t one of them. He was, however, genuinely intrigued and moved beyond words. The men who sat on his sofa that after­noon were men he knew loved women. And yet they seemed per­fectly com­fortable pleasing each other, too—once they got past their initial anx­iety. Still, Jade didn’t know what to think. It was easy to tag them bi­sexuals, but their inti­macy had appeared in their lives three months near the end of a ten-year friendship—and they weren’t drawn to men; just to each other. On the other hand, many people didn’t come to terms with their sexuality until late or later in life, so perhaps these two had done that together.

But despite all of his musings, Jade was still nagged by the notion that some tangible event had trans­pired that had pushed them into the direction they’d taken. He simply couldn’t figure out what it was, no matter how many deeply per­sonal questions he threw at them. He sat with his arms crossed and stared at them for even the slightest or hidden clue that would give him a new direction as he exam­ined what they’d just told him.

“There you have it,” Starsky said. “Have we been homo sexuals all these years? Doesn’t what we did prove we’re gay?”

Jade knew Starsky wanted so badly to have the question answered for him, but Jade didn’t have any definitive answers, nor did he think label­ing Starsky was a good idea, either. “It proves you feel safe with each other,” he concluded. “It proves you care about each other. It proves you’re comfortable with each other. It proves you can enjoy each other sexu­ally to some degree. But I don’t see how it proves you’re gay.”

Starsky laughed at that notion. “Well, what would prove it? Do I have to butt-fuck him?”

Jade wasn’t fazed, but he appreciated Starsky’s frustration. “If you were attracted to men and wanted sex with them, I’d say you’re gay. But Hutch is the only man you’re interested in having sexual relations with—that, and you love women, too. If I’ve heard you right, you’re in love with one right now as well.”

Starsky didn’t answer; he didn’t know how he felt anymore. What did it mean to be in love? Was it what he felt for Grace? What specifically did he feel for Hutch? Was he in love with both of them, one of them, neither?

Jade wanted to test the degree of their convictions. “Sup­pose you had to go the rest of your lives without sex with women?”

“And just have Hutch?” Starsky asked.

“Have him or don’t have him, but don’t have women.”

“Couldn’t be done.”

“Suppose Hutch asked you to give up women for him?”

“He wouldn’t ask me.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

Starsky thought it was obvious, but he answered regardless. “Be­cause he knows that’d be like asking me to cut off my dick.”

“And I wouldn’t ask him to do that, not now,” Hutch said.

“C’mon, boys, be serious. If you had ultimatums to—”

“But we don’t have ultimatums,” Hutch politely debated him. “We have women and we have each other.”

“Do you?”

They realized Jade’s intention. How could they possibly have rela­tionships with women if they engaged each other? What woman would condone such a thing? It was one thing for Grace to accept their kissing, but would she tolerate their bringing each other to orgasm?

Right on cue, Jade pressed them. “What would your women do if they found out you’d handled each other?”

Starsky spoke first. “When Grace found out I’d been kissing him, she did ask me if I wanted to take things further with him.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I didn’t know—because, at that time, I didn’t know.”

“Did it seem to you that she’d be willing to allow you to take it further?”

“She made it clear she wanted what I wanted and that to ask me for less than I wanted would be to love me less. But we didn’t get into the details of what might happen between me and Hutch—just that, what­ever it was, she’d be behind it. Maybe she didn’t know what she was saying or maybe she misunderstood my … confusion.”

“Sara will never find out,” Hutch hoped. “And I’d deny it even if she did.”

“Would you?”

Hutch knew he wouldn’t; dishonesty wasn’t his nature and playing behind her back had already been dishonest. “Okay, I get it,” he said. “She’d leave me if she knew. But that would just mean I’d have to find me another woman.”

“And never handle Starsky again?”

“Never’s a big word.”

“So you’d get yourself another woman and live a more earnest life of deceit,” Jade sarcastically noted.

“Girls who like boys who like boys aren’t rare,” Hutch maintained. “My last girlfriend was one of those. If she knew I’d handled Star­sky, she’d encourage me to do it again and hope she could watch.”

Starsky snickered. It was the second time he’d heard about such women.

“Why’d you break up with her then?” Jade asked.

Hutch didn’t want to talk about Emma; it was off the subject and too painful an experience to revisit. “We’re still friends,” he said in­stead.

“Right,” Jade commented. “But that didn’t answer my question. Why’d you break up?”

Starsky answered for him. “She was in love with someone else at the time.”

Jade looked at Starsky when he spoke and, in the strained silence that followed, he knew there was more to that story than either man let on. “Was it you?” he asked Starsky. “Was she in love with you while she was in a relationship with him?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“What I meant to say,” Starsky explained more truthfully, “is that she was in love with both of us at the same time—but he’s the one who had deeper feelings for her. We kind of had the same situation some years ago—in reverse, with our friend, Kira—and it fucked us up for a while, so we decided never to let that kind of thing happen again.”

“I see.” Jade glanced at Hutch, decided his client wasn’t offended or put-off, and playfully noted, “You wanted your man more than you wanted your woman.”

“Yeah, I guess you could put it that way,” Hutch said. “But so did Starsky want his man more than he wanted his woman. So crucify us.”

Jade ignored Hutch’s sarcasm because he was pleased to have laid the Emma mystery to rest. “You chose each other in the past,” he said to both of them, refocusing. “Why wouldn’t you choose each other over women again?”

“You’re asking us to choose women or each other for sex,” Starsky replied. “So, in that case, I choose women to have sex with—if you’re giving me an ultimatum.”

“And you?” Jade asked Hutch.

“I choose women, too. But right now, I don’t have to.”

“The sex you boys had together was unprecedented in your lives,” Jade said, “because you’re both men and because you had it with each other. So, am I hearing you right? Is that intensity with each other some­thing you’d give up to have sex with only women?”

“Was that sex we had with each other?” Starsky dryly asked. He thought so, but he wanted to hear Jade confirm it so Hutch would have to believe it, too.

“I think even Hutch would call it sex,” Jade said. He looked at Hutch. “You’d agree, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe it was masturbation,” Hutch replied. “Is that the same as sex?”

“I may beat a thing to death,” Starsky said, annoyed with Hutch, “but you dissect it. I’m not sure which is worse.”

“Beating something to death is worse than dissection,” Hutch noted, matter-of-factly and knowing full well it wouldn’t be appre­ciated. “Dissection means it’s already dead.”

“Fuck you,” Starsky retaliated, on cue.

“Whatever it was, it was passionate, right?” Jade said. “More than with women?”

Together, they said, “Yeah.”

“Enough of a pleasure that you’d do it again?”

Together, “Yeah.”

“Will you? Have you already talked about that, planned for it, or are you just hoping it’ll happen again on its own volition, the way your kiss­ing has?”

“We talked about that right after we did it,” Starsky recalled. “And I think we left that door wide open.”

* * *

Hutch pressed his forehead to Starsky’s for a while, and then ten­derly kissed his lips before he rose back to his elbow. He hadn’t for­got­ten that his weight had earlier awakened Starsky, but Starsky caught his arm and kept him from his departure.

“Tell me,” Starsky said. He made inquiring eye contact with Hutch.

“What do you need to know?”

“How that was for you.”

“In one word or less?”

Starsky didn’t want to play, but he indulged Hutch. “One word or less.”

Hutch smiled at him—and then moaned.

Starsky laughed. “Okay, how about one word then.”

“Wild.”

“Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? Are we just get­ting warmed up, do you think?”

“I think.”

“That’s scary. I always thought it’d be a woman to kill me.”

“I won’t kill you,” Hutch assured him.

“No, of course not,” Starsky joked. “You’ll just take me to the edge of death and leave me hanging.”

“Over and over again, baby boy.”

Starsky held Hutch’s hand steady, retrieved his own shirttail, and wiped the oil and residual sweat from Hutch’s palm and fingers with it, meti­cu­lously and with tenderness. “I wouldn’t want you to have any reason not to do this again,” he explained.

Hutch sure did love Starsky—even that little bath he gave him. Or maybe because of it. “I couldn’t possibly have a one,” Hutch said. He watched Starsky clean him with determination and thought­fulness. Then he asked the begging question. “I take it you’re okay with what we did?”

Starsky shifted his eyes to Hutch’s. “I feel a little sick,” he admitted.

It wasn’t the answer Hutch expected, especially in light of their obvious and unprecedented sexual gratification in each other’s hands. “How so?”

“It makes me sick to think that, for the last ten years, we could have been doing this to each other all along.”

Hutch laughed and lightly hit Starsky’s arm. “Leave it to you to find the dark cloud, butthead.”

* * *

“That first day,” Jade reminded Starsky, “or, rather, you know, that first kiss you gave him—when the two of you lay in the grass together; what was the real reason you felt compelled to do that?”

Starsky shifted uneasily in his seat because he didn’t like to think there was more to his reasoning than he believed there’d been. He sensed Hutch’s atten­tion, too, but ignored it so he could better explain himself. In the end, his answer was still as useless as it was short. “Because he was there.”

“Uh-huh.” Jade didn’t appreciate Starsky’s elusiveness. He glanced at Hutch, but Hutch stared at the floor and waited for the con­versation to play out before he’d join it. Jade glanced back at Starsky. “So, your desire to plant your mouth on him that day occurred simply because he was there. Nothing motivated you other than that.”

“He motivated me,” Starsky replied. He kicked himself for being so vague, but he didn’t want to talk about it, either. He was afraid of his reason, despite that those therapy sessions were designed to uncover it.

“He motivated you,” Jade pondered, “because he was there.”

“Because I felt grateful.”

“For his buying you a house.”

“For his being there.”

“Oh, I see.” Jade had misunderstood. He thought Starsky had meant because Hutch had been in his presence, not because Hutch had been in his life. “You were grateful for Hutch being there with you at that moment in time.”

“Yeah,” Starsky replied matter-of-factly.

“Why so grateful, Starsky?” Jade asked.

Starsky glanced at Hutch, saw that Hutch stared at the floor, and then he shrugged again at Jade. “He could have left and he didn’t.”

“He could have left the … grass?”

“No. He could have left left.”

“He could have left the friendship, you mean?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Why would he leave the friendship; for what reason, especially given all you have with each other?”

“I fucked up. I let some guys in my house, you know? I was stupid.”

“Because you got beat up? Hutch would leave the friendship over that?”

“He could have,” Starsky explained.

Jade was puzzled. “Is that some code of dishonor among cops? Your partner gets beat up, so hell with him?”

“It could happen that way.”

Jade looked at Hutch, but still couldn’t make eye contact—with either of them. So he knew there was something neither man told him; it made him determined to find out what it was. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he said to Starsky, somewhat dryly, “but your part­ner has proven quite recently how he feels about you, hasn’t he? You see how far he’ll go.”

Starsky didn’t answer; they all knew that fact.

“That kind of love,” Jade said, “or whatever you want to call it—that’s not some­thing you get overnight.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“That’s also a bond that you’ve known for years has been rather serious, right?”

“Okay. So?”

“So why would you fear he’d leave the friendship because you got beat up?”

Starsky gave Jade a partial truth. “Because I could have prevented the attack. Because I could have handled it different. Maybe I could have escaped them sooner.”

“Escaped them?”

Hutch leaned forward in his seat and looked over at Starsky. He want­ed him to know he was there for him—again—if he needed him. Jade cor­ner­ed Starsky, and Hutch thought the confrontation was heal­thy, but he also knew Starsky didn’t want to get caught then, either. “I’ve got your back,” Hutch said in a low voice.

Starsky acknowledged Hutch’s promise with a tuck of his chin and a nod. Then he addressed Jade. “They kidnapped me right out of my house,” he said, “and held me for three nights.”

Jade pushed back in his chair. He was sorry to have learned what he did, sorry for Starsky. But he also realized that the attack had been graver than he earlier believed, that Starsky had endured their brutality for so long. “You said there were three of them.”

“Yeah. Three.”

“How could you have prevented three guys from kidnapping you?”

Starsky couldn’t look at Jade; he was still ashamed of himself. “I could have … not opened the door,” he said.

“How many victims in your line of work have you known who’ve opened a door and—?”

“Yeah, I know. Innocent mistake. But not for a cop. I should have known better.”

“And so it follows Hutch believes you should have known bet­ter?”

Starsky finally exchanged a glance with Hutch. He’d never forget what Hutch thought because to believe Hutch was easier than to believe himself and he needed what Hutch believed. “He says it was an inno­cent mistake, too,” Starsky said to Jade.

“But maybe he could have thought differently, is what you’re say­ing,” Jade figured. “Maybe he could have thought you were stupid. And if you were stupid, then what? You couldn’t be trusted? And, in your line of work, you need to depend on each other.” He could tell by the look on Starsky’s face that Starsky appreciated Hutch’s friendship all over again. And he saw Hutch acknowl­edge the gratitude with a very small, sincere smile.

Starsky made eye contact with Jade. He was glad the doctor ex­plained it so he didn’t have to. “He would have been right to have thought less of me,” he said. “It was a fear I had that he would. Maybe it was wrong, okay, but I was afraid of it just the same.”

“And all the more glad that Hutch not only didn’t think less of you,” Jade said, “but he continues to be your best friend—and now, even, your lover.”

“Is that what he is?” Starsky asked, flippantly.

“Isn’t he? You boys recently handled each other, after all.”

“Well, yeah.”

“So wouldn’t you call yourselves lovers then?”

Starsky waited for Hutch to come up with the right word, but Hutch didn’t speak a single one. In fact, upon reflection, Starsky realized Hutch hadn’t said much of anything during that session. He’d left the disclo­sures in Starsky’s hands—and Starsky was anxious because of it. He still didn’t trust his own judgment. “If Hutch doesn’t think what we’ve done is sex,” he said, “then maybe it technically isn’t.”

Jade pushed him. “Then, would you prefer I say he’s just a guy you hand­led?”

Starsky knew it was more than that, too. He smirked at Jade. “I don’t know. If I end up making love to him, I’ll call him my lover then.”

“Is that what you want?”

“To call him my lover?”

“To make love to him.”

Starsky snorted. “To quote him, define ‘make love.’”

“You define it.”

Starsky searched his mind for the definition. “Okay. If I ever have sex sex with him, I’ll call him my lover then.”

“And by sex sex, what do you mean?”

“You know … the nasty.”

“Anal sex?”

“Yeah, like that,” Starsky said with a laugh. “Apparently you think anal sex is nasty, too.”

“I don’t think that. I was merely fleshing you.”

“Well, okay, if I ever have anal sex with him, I’ll refer to him as my lover, but this other stuff—”

“Just everyday boy behavior?”

Starsky scowled.

“What about blowjobs?” Jade asked. “Are blowjobs sex?”

“We haven’t had blowjobs with each other.”

“I’m just trying to define what’s sex and what isn’t.”

“You’re asking me? I’d say all of it is: French kissing, handjobs, blowjobs, anal sex. It’s all sex. But he doesn’t think it is, so, if we want to agree on what’s sex, then I’d say, okay, in this instance, let’s just call anal sex sex, and the rest of it is, I don’t know … everyday boy beha­v­ior. E.B.B., for short, if you like.” He was irritated.

“Do you want anal sex with him?” Jade bluntly asked.

Starsky swore under his breath and looked off for half a minute out of embarrassment and helplessness. Neither Jade nor Hutch said a word. They waited on his answer. But he didn’t know himself. And he wasn’t about to confess to any­thing he wasn’t certain about. He braved a look at Jade and laughed quietly.

“You didn’t say no,” Jade observed when his client didn’t speak.

Starsky flushed. “I didn’t say yes, either. It’s a useless question.”

“Did those men molest you, Starsky?” Jade abruptly asked.

Starsky sneered. ‘Molest’ was such a benign word in a broad scheme of behaviors. “Molest me? No,” he said.

“Did they rape you?”

Starsky’s heart pounded. “No.”

Jade looked at Hutch to get a read of Starsky’s truthfulness, but he couldn’t tell what Hutch knew or thought. Hutch didn’t show any signs of, well, anything—at all that morning. Jade looked back at Starsky. To get around Starsky’s possible word games, he posed his last question differently. “Did they force you to have sex with them?”

“No,” Starsky replied, feeling cornered, “I didn’t have sex with them—forced or otherwise.” Was Jade trying to make a connection between what those men may have done to him and his desire for Hutch? Starsky didn’t like the implica­tion. “So, in order to have the hots for my buddy,” he said, “somebody had to have done me wrong?”

“Did somebody do you wrong?”

“Yeah, doc. They kidnapped me and then beat the living shit out of me. More than once. Broke bones. Starved me and left me for dead. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“Why are you uncomfortable with my questions about whether those guys sexually assaulted you?”

“Because I was trying to figure out what you’re really saying,” Star­sky said, frustrated. “‘Sexual’ means permission, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?”

“Yeah, it does. My girl­friend is a rape crisis counselor. I know the difference between sex and rape—one is with permission; the other is without it.”

“Two things then. One: Grace is a rape crisis counselor?” He may have already known that fact, but he wanted it confirmed, given the conversation. When Starsky nodded, he asked, “And you and she were friends for a couple of years before you were attacked, right?”

“Yeah; we worked together on rape cases when I was on the Force.” He said it heatedly, as if he needed Jade to hear the answers to earlier questions.

“And two,” Jade said. “You didn’t have sex with them.”

“Hell, no. Jesus. No. Aren’t you hearing me?”

“And they didn’t molest or rape you, either.”

“No—and that’s the last time I’m answering that.”

“They beat you up pretty badly; bruised your skin and broke your bones, didn’t feed you and left you for dead. And for that reason, you thought Hutch might think less of you? Because you could have fought off three men—three men, mind you, who were apparently bent on do­ing you serious harm?”

“That’s it in a nutshell, doc, because I shouldn’t have opened that door in the first place.”

“Why did you open it?”

“I thought it was him,” Starsky said, nodding at Hutch. “And I thought it was him because, when I asked who it was who’d knocked, a voice said, ‘Ken.’ But, see, Hutch doesn’t call himself Ken. Not to me. I should have known better than to open that door without looking first. Or ask­ing more questions.”

Jade thought for a minute. The room was painfully quiet. He looked at Starsky and got back a defiant stare. He looked at Hutch, but Hutch stared at the floor—and waited. For what? The end of their session? To be there, to have Starsky’s ‘back,’ as it were, should Starsky need him? Why would Starsky need him? Jade went over it again. “So there you are, lying in the grass, enjoying the beau­tiful day, and you’re feeling grate­ful—and you kiss him.”

“Seem strange?” Starsky sarcastically wondered.

“Seems strange that you’d go from that to getting off in each other’s hands a couple months later—after ten years of not relating to each other sexually and, stranger yet, that you would deny or repress sexual thoughts or feelings for each other all that time.” He got both men’s attentions then, abrupt and firm. At least they communicated with him, even if it was only in body language. “What was your relationship like with your father?” he asked Starsky.

“Short.”

“Because?”

“He got killed when I was a kid.”

Another tragic, life-altering moment in his client’s life. “How?”

“Line of duty.”

“Oh, I see. Your father was also a police officer.”

“And he didn’t molest me, either,” Starsky added dryly, “in case that’s where you’re going with this.”

“I wasn’t. Not specifically.”

“Can’t I just be horny for this guy?” Starsky asked him, plaintively. “Does there have to be some underlying voodoo in my past that—?”

“I can’t help but feel something happened,” Jade admitted. “There’s a catalyst out there somewhere. You don’t go ten years working closely with a partner and never make an innuendo, let alone a flat-out pass at him, until now—for no reason.”

“I felt free that day. I kissed him. He kissed me back. Maybe you should be analyzing him.”

Jade didn’t laugh. He didn’t even look to see Hutch’s reaction. He was on Starsky’s trail and he didn’t want to rest until he made a break­through. “I know why Hutch kissed you back,” he said, “and so do you.”

Starsky was about to say something snide, but decided against it. It would only leave him feeling further humiliated. In the end, Hutch kissed him back because Hutch loved him. No, that wasn’t it, either. It went deeper than that. Hutch would do anything for him. That’s why he kissed Starsky. He’d do anything for Starsky—to keep from losing him. “That just makes Hutch sound pathetic,” Starsky noted as he com­mented on his own silent analysis. “Can’t he have kissed me because I’m … charming?”

“Have you ever kissed a woman the same way you kiss him?”

“Different.”

“How?”

“Like I’ve told you. I feel different for him, you know? And I can be more myself with him. I don’t have to make a play. I don’t have to per­form for him, or make sure that kiss is good enough to get me an­other one, know what I mean? It’s all more real and honest, I guess.”

“Okay. Fine,” Jade said, trying not to sound annoyed; the end of their session had arrived and he didn’t feel they’d made any headway. “Maybe that’s all it is. The catalyst was the opportunity to engage your­self as yourself—and nothing more.” He closed his notepad and sat back to let them go. “I stand corrected.”

* * *

“You know he doesn’t believe you,” Hutch said.

Starsky rolled down the car window to adjust the sideview mirror. “Yeah. I know,” he confessed, feeling stupid. “And why should he? He’s right. I mean, he’s right that there’s more to it than I’m telling him. And he’s smart—”

“And he’s liable to think you’re playing him for a fool.”

Starsky set his eyes to the traffic in front of him. His voice was low. “He’s no fool.”

“So why not tell him?” Hutch put forward.

“Because I don’t see the connection between what they did to me and handl­ing you.”

Hutch wasn’t so sure. Or maybe he could be if he gave it more re­flec­tion. Those weren’t the thoughts he’d had, though. His mind had been preoccupied with his and Starsky’s intimate play. It was dis­ap­pointing to then suppose their new relationship was built on something sinister. He, like Starsky, believed they enjoyed each other intimately because they enjoyed each other intimately, and not because it was related to some under­lying, degrading event in their lives. But, then, so what if it were?

Those also weren’t the kinds of thoughts he wanted in his head, so he drank in the sun­shine of the beautiful summer day and then tried to imagine, before Starsky told him, where they were head­ed after they exited the freeway long before they got home. Had he guessed a bet, he’d be a rich man.

Starsky buried his distraction from thinking about Jade’s haunting ques­tions at an ice cream parlor. He further abandoned his brew­ing melancholy as he sat with Hutch at a small round table outside the doors of the shop, near a water fountain, and ate fudge-covered ban­ana nut ice cream while Hutch slowly devour­ed a scoop of lemon sor­bet. They watched passersby and listened to city sounds and relished the cooling shade of the umbrella.

“So, what of that?” Starsky asked after a while. His mind had drift­ed to the reason he’d sought Jade’s professional help in the first place.

Hutch looked at him. Starsky could be annoyingly vague some­times. “So what of what?”

Starsky finished his bite before he said more. “That kiss. That first kiss. Why’d you do it? Why’d you kiss me?”

“Because you kissed me,” Hutch explained. He thought it went with­out saying; maybe Starsky just needed the ego stroke and wanted explicit details about what drove Hutch to it.

“No, no,” Starsky corrected him, swallowing a mouthful of fudge and ice cream, “not that kiss, not the one we did in the grass—when it was me who kissed you. I mean that very first one, you know, way back, three years ago, the one in the air conditioning shaft.”

“Oh, that one,” Hutch remembered. He waited until a young couple passed their table before he spoke again. “I was testing myself,” he reminded Starsky. “I wanted to know how deep my attach­ment to you went.”

“Or in what ways the attachment, um, attached itself?”

Hutch rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, probably more like that. The breadth, not the depth, of it.”

“Well, I mean, you already knew how bonded you were to me by then, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You made your point. I wanted to know the ways I had a hard-on for you.”

Starsky laughed at him. “Well, you must have had enough of a hard-on for me that you tested it.”

Hutch glared, mockingly annoyed, at him. They both knew their bond to each other was great. “What are you getting at?” he asked.

“I was just wondering why you did it, why you kissed me.”

“I told you. I told you then and I told you just now. What aren’t you hearing?”

Starsky pretended to flick a gob of fudge at Hutch from the tip of his plastic spoon. “What I’m not hearing,” he said in a low voice as he abandoned his threat, and then paused to wait for a few people to walk out of earshot, “is that you didn’t have a bonafide hard-on for me when you kissed me back then.”

“The test was productive, what can I say? It proved I wasn’t sexu­ally attracted to you.”

“But look at you now.”

“That’s all your doing.”

“I wasn’t blaming you,” Starsky said. “What I mean is … you kissed me then and didn’t get much of a hard-on. You kiss me now and you do. How did you get sexually attracted to me?”

Hutch ate the last bite of his sorbet and sat back against his chair. He looked at Starsky, into his deep blue eyes, studied his face, watched his sheepish expres­sion, and gave thought to the question, aware that Starsky had a tugging effect on him even then. “You seduced me,” he con­cluded.

“There had to be something in there to seduce—or would you give any guy a handjob if he asked you under the right circum­stances?”

Hutch smirked at him. “I already had an emotional hard-on for you,” he said.

“So that’s it? You feel something for me, so—under the right circumstances—you give me a handjob?”

“Don’t forget I got one, too,” Hutch said with a wink. “But you still haven’t made your point. What are you going for here? The obvious? Some­thing you want to hear me say because you like hear­ing it? Fine. I love you, baby—to the moon and back.”

Starsky knew Hutch loved him. They both knew it. And they knew it was mutual, too. And deeply sincere. But that wasn’t what Starsky had hoped to learn. He tried again. “That day in the grass you kissed me because you were doing something for me, right?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Hutch agreed.

“I mean, you’d already done the one for you, years ago.”

“Right.”

“At some point, though, especially lately, I mean, you’re kiss­ing me for yourself, too?”

Hutch admitted it. “Absolutely.”

“And that handjob you gave me, that was for me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Because you wanted one.”

“And the one I gave you, you did for me—to help me out, I mean. But now you’d take one for you, too, wouldn’t you? You’d enjoy­ it purely for yourself, not for me, right?”

Hutch didn’t have to think about it. “Well, not purely for myself—I’d be doing it with you, after all—but, yeah, I hear you.” He tossed his empty sorbet cup into a nearby trash can from where he sat.

Starsky was impressed by Hutch’s aim and flashed pride in his eyes at him. “So somewhere in there, see,” he con­tinued, returning to the conversation, “you got sexu­ally attracted to me.”

Hutch realized what Starsky wanted to know. “Yeah. When you’re phy­s­ic­ally close to me now, I get turned on. Before that, it felt more emo­tion­ally good to be physical with you.”

“So why do you think you’re turned on by me now? I mean, how did you get sexually attracted?”

Hutch fully understood then. “You think there had to be this homo­sexual desire for you in me all along,” he said, “one that, under the right circum­stances, was unleashed. How can I argue with that? But if that’s so, then it follows you’ve had an under­lying homosexual desire for me, too, all these years.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Let’s say it does. So what?”

“Then, for all these years—and all the years before them—I’ve been capable of homosexual acts.”

“Who isn’t?”

“Well, if everybody is, then why would there be a difference be­tween straight and gay in the first place?”

Hutch paused while shoppers passed their table, waiting until they were completely out of earshot before he spoke. “Religion,” he finally said.

“Religion is the reason we have straights and gays?” Starsky asked.

“Isn’t it? You don’t see animals giving a shit about sexual behavior. And when you realize what the taboo is, that to be gay is to have strayed from one’s morality, and is therefore punishable by God, then you tell me where the problem comes from. Shit, folks still get mighty worked up just thinking about sex between a man and a woman out of wedlock.”

Starsky chewed on the end of his plastic spoon and studied Hutch’s observation. Maybe Hutch was right. On second thought, he was. “No wonder you don’t believe in God,” he mumbled.

“Not your God,” Hutch said, gladly. “Your God would have us in hell by now. Yet, who have we hurt?”

“Grace.”

“Betrayal hurts Grace,” Hutch corrected him. “That’s the wrong done to her, not our handjobs.”

Starsky kicked the leg of Hutch’s chair. “How do you figure that?”

“Because, if she gave you permission to give me that handjob, she wouldn’t be hurt if we did it. It’s not what we did that will hurt her; it’s that we did it—or rather, that you did it—behind her back. If we had her blessing, who did we hurt? No one. Yet your God would still send us to hell for doing it.”

Starsky understood. He squinted at Hutch for a minute. “I think my defin­ition of God has changed since we started this,” he said on second thought.

“Oh? So maybe you’re beginning to see that a natural force created life and sexuality and affection and love and pleasure, and designed it to be just that: Enjoyed.”

“But for what purpose?”

“That is its purpose. Who’d do it if it didn’t feel good?”

“But we do it because it feels good in order to make babies.”

Hutch smiled at him. He knew he had Starsky cornered, but he couldn’t help himself. “How many times in the years of your sex life,” he asked, “do you imagine you’ve come in a woman’s mouth?”

Starsky didn’t think before he spoke. “Not as many times as I want­ed to,” he said with a laugh.

“But you have done it. So, what was the purpose of those ejacs, buddy boy? Were you going to find some new biological way to create life?”

Starsky tossed his plastic spoon at Hutch and hit him in the cheek. “Smart ­ass. Can’t I be right sometimes?”

“Simply put, we pollute ourselves with relig­ion and culture and our definition of morality, but nature bats last. And try as you might and do as you wish and believe what you will, she’s the one in control. We’re sexual animals. End of story. Live with it.”

“Okay. So … because of a set of circumstances, you and I have over­­­come our upbringings … our religious … and our morals, maybe even our DNA, and found our animal nature?” He was proud of himself for a well-composed question.

“Have you got a problem with that?” Hutch asked.

“So what’s to keep us from bypassing the hand­jobs and actually fucking each other then?”

“My fist.”

“But why? If we’re the animals you say we are…”

“I can give you the universal facts,” Hutch said, “but it doesn’t mean I can always live up to them. I’m as flawed as the next person, as warped, brain­washed, and fucked over as anybody else. What it comes down to is the drawing of lines.”

“Yeah?”

“Some people draw them over here,” Hutch explained, outlining his argument with an imaginary grid on the table, “some over there, and some never cross the ones laid down for them.”

“So your line is left of center. You’ll go as far as giving and receiv­ing handjobs, but no further.”

“Not even that far,” Hutch reminded him. “I’ll go as far as giving and receiving hand­jobs—with and for you. Only.”

“And no further with me?”

“Are you asking me to?”

“No,” Starsky said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

At least he didn’t think he ever would.

* * *

HURTING HUTCH

Starsky took his usual seat on the sofa, but Hutch decided on a chair. The split between the two was as obvious on their faces as it was physically evident, and Hutch seemed the most put off.

Jade didn’t wait to inquire about it. He hadn’t seen them since the previous week’s session—and it had been a lively one. “He mad at you?” he asked Starsky.

“No.”

“You mad at him?”

“No.”

Hutch gave the doctor a wishful look, that he’d stop with the irrele­vant ques­tions, but he also knew Jade well enough by then to know it wouldn’t work. And it didn’t.

“Can you explain why you’re not sitting next to him?” Jade asked Hutch.

“I’m here today because I promised I’d be here,” Hutch said. “I’d rather be home.”

“Are you feeling sick?”

“No.”

“Would you prefer to postpone this?”

Hutch didn’t answer, so Jade looked at Starsky. Neither of them answered. Jade sat in his chair on the opposite side of the coffee table and watched them stare at nothing. “Can I get you guys something to drink then?” Neither wanted anything. And because Starsky was the only one to make eye contact with him, Jade directed his questions there. “If Hutch isn’t mad and he’s not sick,” he asked, “why don’t you tell me what he is and we can go from there?”

“He’s hurt,” Starsky said factly.

“Did you hurt him?”

“I made a decision a couple of days after we were here last. He be­lieves it was the right thing, but it hurt him anyway.”

Hutch didn’t comment, but he did look at Jade as if to say, “There you have it.”

“What hurtful decision did you make, Starsky?” Jade asked him.

“To end our playing around.”

Jade was surprised, more than he thought he would have been to learn such a thing, and he could almost feel Hutch’s pain from that decision. “You mean no more kiss­ing, no more ‘handling’—or you simply ended the latter?”

“The latter?”

“You ended the handling, not the kissing.”

“I ended all of it.”

Jade looked at Hutch until Hutch looked at him in return. He could see the depth of Hutch’s pain there in those blue eyes and it was deep—even days later. He imagined Hutch was disappointed, but the hurt in his eyes, on his face, throughout his body posture itself, hinted at some­­thing graver. Jade addressed Starsky. “What brought you to that deci­sion?”

“Grace,” Starsky said.

“She found out about you masturbating Hutch or you told her you had and she asked you to choose between her and him—and you chose her?”

Starsky hadn’t expected to talk about the events surrounding his deci­sion; he didn’t know Hutch wouldn’t sit beside him on the sofa and indirectly send a message to Jade. He already felt guilty about hurt­ing Hutch and having to explain himself only com­pounded it.

When he stalled, Jade tried again. “We know she blessed your kiss­ing him,” he said, “but did the handjobs go too far?”

“It wasn’t anything she learned or any­thing she said,” Starsky re­plied, wringing his hands.

“She doesn’t know about the handjobs?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call them that.”

Jade reworded himself. “She doesn’t know you and Hutch handled each other?”

“Not yet,” Starsky said, guiltily.

“Why do you feel you have to tell her after the fact?”

“Because I promised I would. The right thing to do now is come clean, especially because she started jumping me—more often than usual, I mean—and she deserves to know the truth.”

“Jumping you?”

“Having sex with me.”

“And what did that tell you?”

“Given her new interest in me, it told me that she was competing with him.”

“Because her sexual needs increased in frequency?”

“Since she found out we were kissing each other, he and me, that’s when she started wanting it more. I’ve never turned the woman down. When he and I hand­led each other, well, you know, she was at her girlfriend’s that night, and she kept trying to find reasons not to go, but her friend really needed her. Anyway, the next day, as soon as she got home, she jumped me. I didn’t think anything of it, but then there started to be a pattern over the last couple of weeks. ‘I’m going to see Hutch,’ I’d say, and she’d make her move. And if she couldn’t get me before, she’d jump me after­—every night of last week. I got to where I was afraid if I didn’t deliver, she’d think some­thing was up—and not for her.”

Jade didn’t smile at Starsky’s pun; Hutch’s pain was too heavy on his mind. “But you could have sex with both of them in the same day, couldn’t you? and she’d never be the wiser, no?”

“I feel shitty and guilty—because I am guilty; I’m having an affair with him, aren’t I? I mean, after she caught us kissing, and she said she understood and gave me permis­sion, I told her that I’d tell her if he and I did anything else. But I didn’t tell her about us getting each other off because I was afraid she’d stop me—and I didn’t want to be stopped. I didn’t even tell her we had talked about handling each other before we did it, for the same reason.”

“So you broke a promise?”

“Yeah. I’m guilty on two counts: I broke a promise and had an affair.”

“And now you think she might have figured out on her own that you and Hutch masturbated each other?”

Starsky huffed. He didn’t like those words to describe what he and Hutch had done, but he bypassed them to get to a more pressing issue. “She was going to spend last Saturday with that preg­nant ­friend of hers. But when I told her that Hutch and I were going to decide on some cases—because it’s way past time for us to get back to business—I guess she thought working on a Saturday was strange or whatever, because she started questioning me about it. My boy and me are toge­ther just about every day doing something—and she already knew that.”

“And she didn’t seem to mind that until recently?”

“Right. But, when she couldn’t talk me out of working with him this past weekend, she offered me ‘one for the road.’ I told her it was a short road since Hutch lives across the drive­way, so she said she’d make it fast.”

“And this was strange because?”

“Because she’d had sex with me already the night before.”

“And that’s not Grace’s way, to have or want sex that often.”

“Right. And maybe I was just paranoid, but then she called me twice that morning, too. I didn’t answer the first time because I was over at his house talking to him about all this, and when she called the second time, I told her I wouldn’t be working with him that day after all because he wasn’t feeling well—which, by then, he wasn’t.”

Jade glanced at Hutch and saw him lift an eyebrow as if to say Starsky’s explanation was accurate and precise and he couldn’t argue with it. Hutch then looked at Starsky, to let him know he didn’t appre­ciate the condescending commentary—as he perceived it—but looked away, by acci­dent, before Starsky finally returned the contact. Jade was relieved to know that Hutch at least acknowledged his partner; he couldn’t help but think, though, that there was more to Hutch’s heart­break besides dis­appoint­ment. “So you think she tried to ‘disarm’ you?” Jade asked Starsky. “Do you think she thought you’re having sex—inter­course—with him and she’ll be able to pre­vent you from having that kind of sex with him if she gets to you first?”

“I think she’s afraid I will have sex with him,” Starsky said, “but I think if she’d thought I’d actually done that with him already, she’d con­front me. But, yeah, I think she figured she can at least prevent it. And, then, if I can’t deliver, she’ll know why, in her mind.”

“Because she doesn’t know you’re able to have sex more than once a day?”

“She and I never have, so I don’t think she’s ever thought about that.”

“Have you handled Hutch, or he you, since that first time?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“One of the rules was ‘absolute dead-on privacy’—and we didn’t get any safe enough before my decision.”

“And you ended it because you felt Grace was competing with him, not because, secretly or shamedly, you thought you should end it?”

“I haven’t been shy about my feelings that what he and I have been doing is wrong—morally, sexually, or even biology—but I don’t regret any of it. Grace was afraid, and I don’t want a relationship with her based on fear, on her fear, least of all. I want something honest with a woman, for a change. I want some­thing that’ll last.”

“It’s a little late for that, though, isn’t it? After all, technically speak­ing, you already had an affair with Hutch behind her back. Where was the hon­esty then?”

Starsky glared at him.

“Okay, so that’s another issue,” Jade said. “What you’re also saying with­out saying it is that you prefer to have a long-lasting, honest rela­tion­ship with a woman more than you want sex—by any definition—with Hutch.”

“That’s a whole can of worms I don’t think we should open.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to talk about what maybe I can’t have.”

“Let’s not talk about it, but at least tell me what it is you think you can’t have.”

Starsky didn’t know the answer to that ultimate question, about what he truly wanted with Grace and Hutch, and especially with Hutch. But he also knew exploring it could only lead to some negative, hurtful place, or so he sensed that. He settled for an on-the-surface answer. “I want both of them—her and him. I don’t mean together; I mean, I want both of them in life. But if I just take what he gives me, I lose her. On the other hand, if I make her happy, I can keep her—and I know I’ve always got him. In my life, I mean. He won’t leave me if I’m having sex with someone else. She probably would.”

“Okay. Then let’s get back to your decision to stop handling him.” He looked at Hutch until his client sensed his attention and looked back at him. “Do you believe he made a sound decision?” he asked Hutch.

“I do,” Hutch said.

“But you’re also disappointed.”

“It’s just the way it is.”

Jade wasn’t certain. “Why don’t you boys tell me how it went down, this end to your playing around and handling each other?”

* * *

Hutch ate a light breakfast on the porch under the leafing shade trees, then played his piano for a while, after which he relaxed, stretched on the his sofa. He and Starsky would research pedophile cases; they wanted to find one they could tackle without help from the police depart­ment. They might even get to tackle each other that morning because Hutch had learned that Grace would spend the day with her girlfriend, and Hutch’s girlfriend, Sara, was in Italy with her mother. The idea of handling Starsky again gave him an erection as he lay there. He and Starsky weren’t bothered with tele­phone calls or even case analysis on such lazy weekends. It freed his mind and helped him organize his notes and his thoughts, decipher the clues, and to research data, but, on that particular week­end, he was distracted by what he hoped to do personally with Starsky.

Though Starsky was late, Hutch enjoyed the undisturbed doze. He also hadn’t given much thought to his and Starsky’s last session with Dr. Jade. A solu­tion to Starsky’s decision about whether to tell Grace about his sexual feelings for Hutch hadn’t yet been found; may­be if Hutch was an unbiased detective, he’d have solved the confusion for Star­sky, but there was some­thing quite primal and taboo about having mastur­bated each other, not to mention how physically good it felt, and he didn’t want to see their play end any time soon. Up until his floor exper­ience with Starsky, and despite the efforts of well-intentioned women, Hutch thought he was the only one capable of man­ually bring­ing him­self to orgasm.

Hutch was also aware he was extra happy to be around Starsky those days, too. That they had handled each other and that they wanted to again made it seem possible they would—and it might even be more erotic and fulfilling that next time because they would no longer be anxious about it; they’d be purely excited instead.

Starsky finally arrived and opened the door without knocking—but Hutch noticed that he didn’t lock it when he closed it. Grace must have decided to stay home, Hutch thought, and that disappointed him, but it didn’t damper his excitement to see Starsky. Hutch also noticed that Starsky’s smile wasn’t as generous as he expected, though Hutch’s was quite apparent.

“Are you waiting for me?” Starsky joked as he approached. “I thought if I got here late enough, you’d have the case solved by now.”

“Dream on,” Hutch said. He stretched and then pressed his length along the back of the sofa to give Starsky room.

Starsky accepted the silent invitation and sat up against him, but it pained him to see Hutch’s fond expression because he was about to break Hutch’s heart.

“You didn’t lock the door,” Hutch noted, reaching over Starsky’s thigh to grope his groin.

“Because I can’t deliver,” Starsky said. Despite his inability to ejac­ul­ate again so soon that morning, he did enjoy being fondled just then. Or maybe it was Hutch’s want to fondle him that he enjoyed.

“Were you tackled by someone else this morning?” Hutch cheerfully asked.

“It was more like … intercepted.”

Hutch continued to fondle Starsky’s bulge through the thick fabric of his jeans—because the thought alone of masturbating Starsky, not just the act itself, turned him on. “Well, we said there’d be days like this.”

“I can take care of you, though,” Starsky said.

Hutch raised an eyebrow at him to encourage him, but it wasn’t sin­cere. He didn’t want to play if Starsky couldn’t. “I’ll take a rain check,” he said. “Maybe later today? I’m sure the wait will be worth it.”

“Did you ever think we’d jerk each other off?”

“You maybe,” Hutch joked, not liking Starsky’s choice of words; he’d reduced their actions to pure action, devoid of the enor­mous emotional investment, but he played along. “Not me.”

Since Starsky had made up his mind to end their intimacy, he was keenly aware of how badly they both wanted it. He could see the anti­cipation on Hutch’s face, his hope and his excitement, even though, for then, as far as Hutch knew, handling each other had simply been de­layed. But, Starsky, too, was disappointed. And though he could man­age his own feelings, he certainly didn’t like hurting Hutch’s. In fact, he hated it. And he hated it so much, he thought he might cry.

So he kissed Hutch instead.

Hutch licked Starsky’s lips and probed Starsky’s mouth with his tongue, but Starsky didn’t return the wet kisses; he was bent on some­thing more sensual and affectionate. He fin­ally convinced Hutch to relate his way and Hutch kissed him back with the same warmth and tender­ness. Maybe it was a drained Starsky Hutch experi­enced. Maybe Starsky just felt sorry for him because Starsky’d had sex that morning and now Hutch wouldn’t get to. Whatever it was, the kiss had never been as kind as it was then. Still, it aroused Hutch. Maybe it even aroused Starsky. He seemed to take his time and enjoy their moist lips with­out all that suck­ing and impatience.

Starsky held Hutch’s head in his arms, much the way he did when Hutch was pinned under that car some years ago, and tightly closed his eyes to keep tears from appearing in them while he experienced what he told himself was the last kiss he and Hutch would have together. He would save his grief for private.

Hutch so perfect­ly respond­ed, as if he knew, too. Except he didn’t.

When the kiss naturally ended, Starsky cradled Hutch’s head in his hands, gazed into the blue eyes that expectantly looked back at him, and felt Hutch gently rub the inside of his leg near his penis. Then he said what he needed to say. “That was the last one.”

“The last one?” Hutch asked.

“Our last kiss.”

Hutch’s expression sobered. He didn’t understand, so he made light of it. “Getting you a little hot right now, after all, is it? Making you re­think your ability, but you don’t want to risk it in case you can’t?”

“I can’t—even if I could.”

Hutch searched Starsky’s blue, bedroom eyes for more than he had told him. “What are you saying?”

“Grace milked me on purpose this morning. I think she’s afraid you and I are going to fuck each other and she’s doing her best to put off what she thinks is about to happen.”

Hutch wasn’t facetious when he said, “And you told her we’ll never fuck each other because I won’t let us, right?”

“Well, in a way, we did fuck each other; I mean, we made each other come, after all.”

“There’s a big difference between fucking and what we did.”

“You say that, but I don’t see it—and neither will she. Besides, I don’t want a relationship with her based on fear. You under­stand that, right? I can’t have her worrying about me like that. I can’t have her competing with you.”

“I don’t want those things, either,” Hutch said. He didn’t.

“I have to tell her what I’ve done,” Starsky decided. “I have to come clean. I told her I’d tell her what I was doing with you and I didn’t tell her. If she and I are meant to be together, I have to be honest with her, and we’ll be the stronger for it. I’ll tell her what you and I did and that it’s over—and that it won’t happen again.”

Hutch eyed him carefully. He wasn’t certain at first if Starsky was serious about what he just said, about ‘coming clean’ with Grace. Hutch wasn’t sure it was a good idea, either, but the underlying point Starsky made pressed him more. He stopped fondling Starsky’s groin and instead toyed with the seam on his jeans. “When you say it’s over, you mean this thing between us … this intimate stuff. All of it, right? Even the kissing?”

“Yeah. All of it. It has to end and I’m ending it.”

Hutch let go of Starsky’s jeans when he understood what Starsky had just ended, but Starsky caught his hand and held it to his leg.

“Don’t leave,” Starsky begged him. “We were in this together and we’re sorry together.”

“I just wish you’d told me before you kissed me.”

“I wanted that last one to be painless.”

Hutch squinted at him. “Never mind what I wanted.” His hurt choked him. He would have put everything he had into a last kiss. That he missed that chance brought tears into his eyes.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Starsky said.

“And you offered to take care of me, too,” Hutch remembered, “know­­ing you were end­ing this—without thinking what I wanted in that case, either. Would it have been a mercy jerk?”

“C’mon, Hutch,” Starsky debated him. “I didn’t mean it like that.” The last thing he thought he’d see were Hutch’s tears; he truly hadn’t intend­ed to hurt him that much.

Hutch looked at Starsky, into those sorry blue eyes of his. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that Starsky would never do anything to intention­ally hurt him. But it didn’t lessen the pain—for some reason. “That’s it?” he asked. “Just like that, it’s over? A serious progres­sion into our unique way of relating, gone in an instant? Don’t talk to me about it? Just decide it for us?”

“You want another kiss, your way?”

It wasn’t the answer Hutch hoped for. He pulled his hand free from Starsky’s grip. “No,” he said. “You ended it so let’s leave it there.”

“Do you think I shouldn’t end it?”

“You made the right decision.”

“But you’re mad at me just the same.”

“I’m not mad.” He wasn’t. He was hurt and he was disappointed and he sure felt patronized, but he wasn’t angry. “Besides, I hear that some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

“You don’t believe in God,” Starsky said.

“I believe in unanswered prayers. This couldn’t go anywhere good in the long run anyway.”

Starsky straightened, but didn’t leave eye con­tact with him. “I don’t know what else to do. You said we could stop kissing any time you thought we should—and no hard feelings. So why are you upset?”

“If you don’t see why, I can’t explain it. But you did the right thing. I mean that.” He lifted his arm and wiped his eyes on his sleeve, feeling rather stupid for not being able to deflect the burn he felt. “I don’t want Grace to live with that fear of us, either,” he added. “Or to do this kind of shit behind her back.”

“So it’s done, then.”

“Yeah,” Hutch said, matter-of-factly, as if he was also finished with the pain. “It’s done. Fun while it lasted and all that.” He couldn’t help but feel the enormous loss, though. It had been more than ‘fun.’ It had been intimate, courageous, orgasmically gratifying, and bonding in a way he’d never dreamed they’d be. In the blink of an eye it was over almost as soon as it had begun.

Starsky noticed Hutch’s sarcasm. “Do you want to talk about this?”

“Why would I want to do that now—after the fact?” Hutch asked incredulously, “so I can feel stupider than I already feel?”

“Because you’re upset.”

Hutch wanted to talk about the last kiss before it ended, not after. “I’ll get over it. We still have Us.”

Starsky was disappointed for a different reason—because he could see Hutch’s grief had intercepted his intent. “Let’s have another kiss,” he said, “because now you’re not going to remember that last one the way I will.”

“You should have considered that before you did it without telling me.”

“So, now what?”

“Pity me.”

“I wouldn’t mind a retake, you know, to make it better for you.”

“You wouldn’t mind?” Hutch said angrily. “Don’t patronize me more than you already have.”

Hutch was definitely upset, maybe even finally angry, even though he said he wasn’t, and Starsky felt he only made matters worse. He nudged Hutch. “C’mon. Kiss me again.”

“Try it and I’ll put a fist in your face,” Hutch warned him.

Starsky didn’t test him. “Maybe I didn’t handle this well. Maybe I’m not practiced at this kind of thing. My intentions are good.”

“So good for you.”

There was definitely no talking to Hutch. Not then, anyway. “Shall we get to work instead?” Starsky urged him.

Hutch drew an empowering breath so he could answer without breaking down. “I’m going to pass on work today,” he said, “but you help your­self. The files are on that black cabinet inside the office door.”

Starsky thought, by stalling, that he might find a way beyond Hutch’s hurt to reach an understand­ing, but he also knew if he said another word, he’d get just as shot down. So he stood, noticed that Hutch didn’t try to stop him, and then went down the hall to their office instead.

The second he disappeared, Hutch covered his face with his hands and cried for the half minute Starsky was gone. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand the depth of his pain; it made no sense. In the back of his mind, his playing around with Starsky was short-lived any­way, so what difference did it make if it ended then or later? But why did he feel so demoralized? When he heard Starsky’s footsteps return, he arrested his emotion, held tightly to it, and waited for Starsky to pass through the room and leave.

Instead, Starsky sat in the armchair near him. He craved Hutch’s companionship, even though it was strained.

“Would you mind doing that at your house?” Hutch asked. He need­ed time to himself.

Starsky looked blankly at him. “Are you telling me to go?”

“I’m not telling you,” Hutch explained. “I’m asking.”

Starsky gathered the files, rose to his feet, and walked to the door, stopped when he reached it, and turned around to face Hutch. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” he promised, “to give you com­pany.”

“Don’t bother,” Hutch said. “I prefer my own.”

* * *

“Are you really not mad at him then?” Jade asked Hutch.

“I’m really not mad at him,” Hutch said. “He did the right thing end­­ing it. Grace deserves better than what we’ve done behind her back.”

“But you’re more than disappointed. You’re seriously hurt.”

Hutch had to briefly look away to hide the discomposure Jade caused him. “I don’t see the point in talking about this,” he said. “It’s over and it’s done and whatever I felt or feel about it will get processed in time. I’m not leaving him. It’d take my death to do that. I’m not okay—for now—but he and I are okay and that’s what matters in the end.”

Jade studied Hutch for a minute. If he thought it had just been a flesh wound, he might have ignored it. But he was sure the cut went much deeper; Hutch was subdued and reticent. He glanced at Starsky who also looked at Hutch, except Starsky’s face was full of absolute sorry and helplessness. Starsky sensed, too, from Hutch’s reserve, that there was more to Hutch’s hurt than the dis­ap­pointment of not being able to play with his partner.

“Are you jealous of Grace?” Jade asked Hutch.

“Not even a little.”

“You just don’t care for the way Starsky handled the end of handl­ing you.”

“I didn’t care for it, no.”

“How else was he supposed to handle it?”

“He could have talked to me first,” Hutch said. “He could have…” He stop­ped explaining. It was useless. “Let’s not belabor this. It’s in the past.”

“Except that you’re still hurt,” Jade reminded him. “And you don’t pay me to avoid questions you don’t want to answer. You can decide not to answer, but I’m going to ask.”

Hutch glanced at him only long enough to send the message that he probably wouldn’t answer and Jade wasted their time.

But Jade was an expert interrogator—almost as good as the two de­tectives he counseled. “You’re a grown man,” he said. “You went in­to this with your eyes open, didn’t you?”

Jade’s question was benign, so Hutch replied. “Wide open.”

“You knew the risks and the consequences of your actions.”

“I did.”

“And you went in anyway.”

“I was willing to suffer the consequences; yeah, and I get it: This is a conse­quence. It didn’t mean it wouldn’t be a let down when it came to a screeching halt.”

“You’re more than ‘let down’.”

“You keep saying that, but I don’t see it.”

“You don’t see it? It’s been almost a week now. You’re still with­drawn and reserved, serious and sarcastic. What you lost was enormous, don’t you think?”

“No more than what he lost,” Hutch said about Starsky, “but I don’t see you on his case.”

And that’s when Jade knew what the problem was. He could have told his patients what he had just discovered, but he wanted them to learn it on their own—even though the journey might be difficult for them. It was time for Jade to stop being a sounding board and to effec­tively do his job. “The difference between what you lost and what Star­sky lost lies in what he gained,” he told Hutch. “He got an honest relation­ship with the woman he loves out of it. What did you get?”

“It’s not about what I got out of it.”

“Exactly. You went into it for him. You gave yourself up and got back nothing in the end.”

“I think I got a good time out of it.”

“That’s not the kind of gain I’m talking about,” Jade said sternly. He knew Hutch knew better. “I think you feel as if he took you into the back room, unintentionally used a kind of emotional blackmail to co­erce you into giving up a very private part of your­self for him—which you did, regard­less of how sexually gratifying it was for you—and then, when it was done, he walked out of the room without so much as a thank you or a goodbye.”

Hutch set the back of his head against the chair cushion and looked across the room to the bookcases to avoid both men’s eyes. He didn’t want them to see the tears that shimmered in his own, though there was no place far enough to hide them.

Starsky didn’t appreciate Jade’s implied accusation. “That makes it sound like he was just a tool for me,” he protested, “and he wasn’t. I did my best to make certain he was comfortable doing what we did. He took a week before our handling to decide whether he even wanted to do it—and he was the one to start the deed, too. I wouldn’t have gone through with it had I thought for a second that—”

“I didn’t say you used him,” Jade interrupted him. “I sug­gested that Hutch feels as if that’s what happened, that you walked right over the top of him.”

“It feels that way,” Hutch agreed, then said, “but when I think about it, I don’t believe he used me.” He wiped his tears on his sleeve, embarrassed by his uncontrollable reaction, and continued to avoid Jade’s eyes. “He didn’t corrupt me. He didn’t coerce me. And I don’t think he emotion­ally blackmailed me, either. He was in trouble and I offered to help.”

“By giving up a personal part of yourself for him.”

“That’s what friends do, but so what?”

“And then he told you it was time to get out of the pool because he was done playing in the water. It was over, but not before he got in one more kiss—and maybe even a handjob for you if you’d let him.”

Hutch finally made eye contact. He could tell, just from the look of seriousness on Jade’s face, that the doctor wasn’t about to let it go. All of it hurt. Hutch realized then that he didn’t know why or which hurt more or what any of it meant, so he gave himself over to the expert. “Okay,” he admitted. “He dropped a bombshell and then said we could get to work.”

“I asked you a couple of times if you wanted to talk about it,” Starsky reminded Hutch. “You didn’t. I offered a retake, but you didn’t want to do that, either. I came back a couple of hours later to see how you were and you still wanted to be alone.”

“I was alone,” Hutch told him.

Which was exactly what Jade suspected. He knew how to get them out of their predicament. He just needed to help them find the exit. “And you were alone,” Jade said, “because Starsky had made up his mind—even before he got there that morning—that it was over between the two of you, but here’s this last kiss without your knowledge, and here’s your handjob if you want one, or a retake if you feel you must and, fail­ing that, let’s get to work. No thank you and no goodbye. Couldn’t he have, at least, been grateful for what you did for him?”

Hutch sat forward in the chair and dropped his face into his hands to shield his eyes. He didn’t audibly cry, but he was so devastated and so deeply affected by the truth of Jade’s words that he couldn’t contain him­self. Maybe that’s all he needed: To have one big purge and then let it go.

Starsky was beside himself. If he could have felt guiltier than he already did, he’d be devastated by it. “That’s not the way I meant any of it,” he said in a dejected voice, as if the words were useless in the first place, but he couldn’t not say them. He stared at Hutch, too emotional him­self to move, and felt terrified by what he’d done, though he couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out how he could have been so misread.

Jade noticed the sheer sorrow and concern in Starsky’s eyes as Star­sky stared at Hutch. Starsky was helpless—and it showed: A visible swallow tried to push back his emotions, and then his jaw dropped. Weakened was also right where Jade wanted him. “Tell me again why you haven’t told Grace about your handjobs with Hutch.”

“It hasn’t been the right time.”

“When is the right time?”

“I don’t know, man,” Starsky said, annoyed. He felt pressured to do what he didn’t want to do. “It’s not every day con­ver­sation, you know?”

“It’s been nearly a week. How do you think she’s going to react when you do tell her?”

Starsky was terrified of the possibilities. Perhaps that’s why he hadn’t yet told her, and he didn’t understand his own cowardice. “I hope she for­gives me,” he said. “I hope she’s able to see why it happened, how it came to pass, and she for­gives me for it and for not telling her sooner—like I promised I’d do.”

“Suppose she goes further than that? Suppose she understands and she forgives you, but she also encourages you to keep playing with your buddy because she knows how important he is to you—and to do it with her blessing?”

“That won’t happen,” Starsky said without a doubt. “The reason I stop­ped play­­ing with him in the first place was because she’s para­noid.”

“Okay, but would you go back to playing with him, to handl­ing him, if—by some miracle of miracles—it truly didn’t bother her?”

Hutch cut him off with a comment Jade could only have prayed for. “This is pointless,” he said, “because Starsky’s not welcome to play with me again. I’m done with it.”

It wasn’t just what Hutch said that dismayed Starsky; it was also the way he said it, with such contempt and resolution. But more than that: Hutch’s voice was heavy, firm, and tinged with pain—as if Hutch even regretted their intimacy. The idea that Hutch wished Starsky had never touched him at all deeply hurt him. Had he injured Hutch that much?

“We’re supposing,” Jade explained to Hutch. He elicited the emo­tions he expected from the men, but he had to tread lightly, too. He didn’t want things to go in the wrong direction; he needed a revelation, not a reprimand. “I’m wondering about Starsky’s frame of mind, that’s all.”

“Wonder all you like,” Hutch said. “I’m just say­ing: I’m not play­ing.” He got to his feet. “In fact, pretend I’m not here. That should be easy enough.” He walked to the back of the room to get away from the line of questions Jade had set in motion and then half-studied the titles of the shelved book­s near the window instead.

Jade exchanged a glance with Starsky, who’d keenly felt Hutch’s jab. He asked his question again. “If Grace approved of your personal rela­tion­ship with Hutch, would you want to have it back?”

Starsky wasn’t certain he should answer.

“I need all the honesty you can manage if you want to salvage this thing,” Jade warned him. “I’m asking you to ‘don’t mind him’ and to trust me. I know it’s asking a lot…”

Hutch didn’t help him, so Starsky chose to let Jade do it. “Yeah, I’d still want it with him,” he replied. “I’ve said that all along. But Grace isn’t going to give her blessing, not for that kind of thing. Her paranoia proves it.”

“You said she said she loved you so much, she’d not stand in the way of anything you want with him—and that you both had discussed your deep­er feelings for him.”

“I’m not sure she was thinking about his actual cum in my hands when I told her I didn’t know how far I wanted to go with him; she was probably thinking more about feelings—love, and all that.”

“But you don’t know that for certain.”

“No,” Starsky said, reflectively.

“So let’s also suppose she leaves you. That’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

“She says she won’t—at least not because of me kissing him.”

“But it’s still a possibility, right? When she finds out after the fact that you gave him a handjob and he you—especially after you promised her you’d tell her what else you hoped to do with him and then didn’t tell her—she might leave you for that reason, no?”

“Definitely,” Starsky said. He glanced briefly at Hutch who had his back to them. “I suppose that’s why I haven’t told her—because I’m afraid that’s what’s going to happen.”

“But what about your desire to have an honest relationship with a woman?”

“Maybe I should just walk away. Do her a favor. I can’t seem to be the man I thought I was—or the man I want to be with her.”

“Okay … so imagine now you’re without a woman. Or maybe you’re with twenty of them again, like old times. Would you play with Hutch then?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Starsky saw Hutch move and looked to see. Hutch had turned around and leaned against the book­case; he crossed his arms and looked back at Starsky. Starsky wasn’t sure he read him correctly, but it was obvious Hutch was serious; palpable rage was still evident in the angry stare that fired across the room at them. Did Hutch wait for an honest reply, too? Or would he prefer Starsky kept his mouth shut?

Starsky found the safest answer he could. “If I was without a woman; I mean, if I was without Grace, I’d want to play with him if he wanted to play, but he said he’s done.”

“Is he?” Jade asked. “Are you convinced of that?” When Starsky didn’t answer, Jade had to tap the coffee table to get Starsky’s full atten­tion. “You’re on a stakeout somewhere in a Las Vegas hotel,” he hypo­th­esized. “You’ve been gam­bl­ing, made yourself a little money; you’re feeling good. You boys have been drink­ing. You’re already physically close, you have a history of mutual sex play in your experience, and you find your­selves on one of the two beds in the room in a laughing jag. Hutch has a weak moment.”

“I’d probably be the one to have the weak moment,” Starsky sup­posed.

“You have it then. You make a pass. Are you convinced he’d turn you down, despite what he said here today?”

Starsky lowered his eyes to the floor. Maybe time would, indeed, ease Hutch’s conviction. “I’m not convinced he’d turn me down, no,” Starsky said, solemnly. “Besides, maybe I could charm him into it again.”

“So, either Grace gives you her blessing to proceed or she leaves you. Either way, it opens the door for more playing with Hutch, right? Of course, regardless of what she does or doesn’t do, she might be hurt when you tell her—which is why you’re still not prepared to do so, but you had a different sort of weak moment that morning, didn’t you? when you felt Grace’s fear and you knew something was broken and you were the one who’d caused the damage. So you came up with a fix: March across the driveway and tell Hutch it was over. No more playing around, no more handling each other. You were going to tell Grace. You were going to come clean. Problem solved.”

Starsky lifted his eyes then to Jade’s. “It was right thing to do.”

“In the heat of that weak moment, I’m sure it was.”

Hutch settled into his posture at the bookcase. He was interested in the point Jade made, but he was no less angry about the con­versation itself. He could be home planting trees.

Jade held his connection with Starsky’s eyes. “You don’t like dis­ap­pointing Hutch any more than you like hurting Grace.”

“How can I? I love them both.”

“So if you just put an end to that situation, life all around could return to normal. But there’s always that possibility, isn’t there, Starsky? that Grace will forgive you? that she might give her blessing? that you boys might have a ‘weak’ moment some­where down that road and share another kiss—or maybe a flat-out return to where you left off? There’s still some possibility that you might get to play with Hutch again; hence why—to some degree, especially where it concerns Grace—you’re still in limbo with this thing. You haven’t ruled out kissing him again perman­ently, have you?”

The doctor was a better judge of human nature than Starsky had given him credit in the past. “That pretty much sums it up,” he agreed, “but what’s the point of this?”

“To get to the heart of your wants. It’s not as if you were done with Hutch because you wanted to be done with him, because your self-identity questions had been answered, because you felt ashamed of your­self or guilty or decided you didn’t like handling a man after all, was it? You ended it because you didn’t want to hurt Grace any longer.”

“Right. And it was still the right thing to do.”

“We all agree. But deep down, in your heart of hearts, I mean, you still want to play with him. You’d still like to handle him again, wouldn’t you, I mean, if you could? if the powers-that-be allowed it?”

“What other way do you want me to say what I feel than the way I did?”

“I just want to be clear—because we’re still in search of the answer to your original question when you walked in here the first time,” Jade lied. He then pressed Starsky harder to provoke Hutch, which was his true intention. “You might even entertain more sex with him,” he sug­gested. “Oral sex, maybe. Have you ever fantasized about blowing him?”

Starsky wouldn’t say.

“You can’t say no?” Jade asked. “Shall we deduce from that—like any good detective would—that it’s crossed your mind?”

The question seemed fair enough; it wasn’t about what he had done with Hutch. It was about what he fantasized about doing, and that lent itself to Starsky’s propensities. “Not before we handled each other,” he mumbled.

“You never thought about blowing him before you handled him, but since you’ve handled him, you’ve had oral sex fantasies of him?”

Starsky flushed and his heart pounded when he answered. “Some.”

“Giving? Taking? Both?”

“Enough of this shit,” Hutch interrupted them. He pushed off the bookcase and approached them, quite pissed by the exchange between Jade and Starsky, and unknowingly walked right into Jade’s trap. “You’re both forgetting one thing,” he said, heatedly. “I’m not playing with him anymore—or again, for that matter—with or with­out Grace’s bless­ing. It doesn’t matter if he has a weak moment. I had my weak moment already and I know exactly where it got me and I’m not going there again. His weak moments are his problem from here on out.”

Starsky looked up at Hutch and finally made eye contact, but it wasn’t the kind he wanted.

Hutch was furious—an anger spurred by raw emotion and hurt. He pointed a warning finger at Starsky and told him what he should have told him an hour earlier. “You continue with this con­versation in my presence and I’m out of here. Maybe that’s what you want. Have what you want. I don’t give a shit. I’m just telling you the facts: Keep this up and I’ll meet you back at the farm.”

Starsky felt his own adrenalin and anxiety, but he desperately wanted Hutch to stay, and he deeply wanted to make amends with him, and he so didn’t want to leave the contact they’d finally made, even as heated as it was. So he didn’t dare breathe a word. He waited.

It was Jade who broke into their emotionally charged stares. “Star­sky came to me a month ago with a question he wanted answ­ered,” he reminded Hutch, “an answer you were willing to help him find. Our suppo­sitions are simply a means to that end.”

Jade wasn’t sincere for a second. His questions did exactly what he wanted them to do: They forced Hutch to confront Starsky.

“You play your little mind games without me,” Hutch angrily advised his partner. “You got something still to figure out? Do it with some­one else. Fantasize about sucking off your pal Adam and leave me out of your head. You don’t have my per­mission to use me any­­more.”

Starsky felt punched in the gut; its pain was palpable. Not once did he think he had used Hutch, but it was apparent Hutch thought he had. The fire in Hutch’s eyes was as tangible, too. Hutch meant business. Starsky had known him long enough to know how serious he was. Hurt­ing Hutch had been the last thing he wanted. Offending him was a distant second. But he felt misread and misunderstood and quite alone sud­denly as he took the brunt of Hutch’s anger.

Starsky’s visible shock didn’t end Hutch’s rage. “This is over for me,” Hutch further purged. “I’m done with it. You and the good doc can analyze it until you’re blue in the face, but I’m out the door if you don’t change the subject away from me. I don’t feel ashamed about what I did, but I sure as hell have my regrets, so you’re welcome for noth­ing. As far as I’m concerned, what hap­pened between us never hap­pened. I’m done talking about it. I’m done doing it. I’m done analyzing it. I gave you all I’m giving. And you are never wel­come there again. Am I making my­self clear, boy?”

Beautiful. Jade couldn’t have asked for a better script if he’d writ­ten it himself.

The pain in Starsky’s stomach ravaged his heart, too. It burned. That he’d offended Hutch that much, hurt him that deeply, that Hutch would dis­miss what they’d done as if it had never happened, that Star­sky had inad­ver­t­ently but perman­ently ended their sexual intimacy, was just about more than he could bear. Even if he knew which words to use in reply, he couldn’t have physically managed them. He couldn’t even look at Hutch—or have Hutch look at him. He shifted his eyes to stare at the floor as they rim­med with visible tears. Maybe Hutch didn’t feel ashamed, but Starsky sure did—and not for what he’d done with Hutch, but for what he’d done to him. He hid his face behind his hand. Only a brief con­vulsing shoulder was evidence of his crying, but he managed to con­trol that, too, though not before it had been seen.

Hutch straightened. His anger dissipated in an instant and was replaced with empathy, deep and powerful, though he didn’t try to con­sole Starsky. They’d had argu­ments in the past; they’d said much worse things to each other, hadn’t they? They’d even come to physical blows in years gone by. But he’d never made Starsky cry. Oh, he’d seen him cry, especially and a lot in recent months, but not as a direct result of some­thing Hutch said. He looked helplessly at Jade. “I don’t under­stand,” he confessed. “He wanted it over. It’s over.”

Jade acknowledged Starsky’s anguish with a nod. “But, isn’t that what you need­ed to see?” he asked. “Isn’t that what was missing from the equation when he ended it?”

“I want to be out of this,” Hutch explained—and then protested. “I lost my temper just now, but I didn’t want to see him hurt. Haven’t I said that all along?”

“Oh, I beg to differ,” Jade replied. “When I told you you’d lost some­thing enormous when Starsky ended his playing around with you, you said ‘no more than he lost.’ And then it struck me: It was what you didn’t see that hurt you so much. What you didn’t see was his hurt for losing what you both lost. You read that to mean he didn’t care about what he’d lost, or about what you’d lost, or what you’d lost together, but I read it that he didn’t hurt because he wasn’t convinced his private rela­tionship with you was over. He wasn’t sincere with you; not inten­tion­ally. He simply wasn’t honest with himself. When pressed, as I pressed him here, we learned that he still imagined a possibility, even remote­ly, that he hadn’t forever given up the sexual intimacy you’ve had with each other—until you made it clear he had. You no longer want to be part of something you held sacred and he seemed to not give a damn about, so you’re the one who ended it. Just now. And that’s why, just now, he finally hurts.”

Hutch broke a sweat. He was relieved and he was spent and he was sorry. He didn’t know what to do next, so he spun once at the edge of the coffee table. He knew one thing. “This is some compli­cated mess.”

His tempered voice made Starsky drop his hand from his face and look at him. Hutch didn’t sound angry. When their eyes unexpectedly met, Hutch didn’t appear angry, either. Just sorry. As sorry as Starsky felt.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Hutch told him.

Starsky wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve. He was relieved and ashamed, but he chose to return the affection rather than apologize; he knew the former carried more weight. “Takes one to know one.”

“Lucky us,” Hutch mumbled. He slumped in the chair between Star­­sky and Jade—and completely abandoned his personal pain. He’d never been as angry at Starsky as he’d been that after­noon, nor as viciously crass, so he didn’t feel he deserved to sit any closer. But he looked at Starsky as if he could pass on the message that he’d only said those things because he was as hurt as he’d hurt him.

Jade interrupted them. It was his turn to be angry. “Why don’t you boys stop bullshitting me?” he said. “Maybe we don’t have anything else to say to each other, but if we do, you’d best come clean with me—or I’m re­signing from this case.”

They looked at the doctor, too stunned to say any­thing.

“You know and I know something hap­pened,” Jade explained, dir­ect­­ing his comments at Hutch, “something that ‘turned’ this boy, some­thing beyond gratitude, that made him kiss you that first time, and put him on this self-exploration of his sexual identity. Three years ago, when you kissed him in the air conditioning shaft, you did it because you were trapped and the situ­ation lent itself to your curiosity. That was your catalyst.” Then to Starsky, he said, “but what was yours? A grassy field? A new house? That your partner—who also happens to be your ‘brother’, for crissakes—didn’t leave you simply because you got the shit beat out of you? Why don’t you cough up what really started all this and stop wasting our time?”

Starsky felt the blood leave his head. He stared at Jade.

Jade looked at Hutch. “One of you say something.”

Neither men did.

“You go ten years without a sexual exchange,” Jade said, “save that kiss you had in the air conditioning shaft three years ago—and then, just like that”—he snapped his fingers—“a couple of months back, you confess to a sexual desire for each other? You spent more than a decade practically living on top of the other. You’ve been phys­ic­ally close since the day you met. If this impulse was there then, it’d have surfaced; that, or you’ve been lying to me about no such contact all that time, or you’re each repressing it. Because I’d bet anything that there were numerous times and reasons over the past decade that Starsky has been grateful to and for you. But, out of the blue just some countable months ago, you’re both em­broiled in this ‘com­plicated mess’ simply because he felt grateful for your friendship on a particu­larly arbitrary day? Are you play­ing me for a fool?”

Hutch looked at Starsky. It was Starsky’s decision to make.

But Starsky passively averted his eyes. His heart had begun to pound and his palms to sweat. He’d never spoken of it to a professional therapist because he feared an expert could dig deeper into his psyche and injure him in ways his ordeal yet hadn’t.

“Jade’s right,” Hutch told Starsky. “It’s long overdue. I’ll make sure he treads lightly. So, unless you say not to, I’m going to tell him.”

Starsky didn’t say a word.

Hutch looked firmly at Jade. “The guys who grabbed him and beat him to shit did so because they thought he’s gay. They thought both of us are.”

“What had you done to warrant that distinction?”

“Nothing. Nothing we hadn’t been doing for ten years—in front of everybody.”

“Which was?”

“You know, being physically close. Affectionately close, I guess.”

“How affectionately close? Closer than what you’ve already told me?”

“No. Just too close for other people’s comfort, apparently—close like we were when we first walked in here and you noticed us sitting on the sofa up against each other.”

“Subtly sexual?” Jade asked.

“Were we subtly sexual then?”

“There just seemed to be an obvious relaxation to you both—for each other—that implied a certain intimacy.”

“That we simply like each other?”

“Closer than like.”

Hutch didn’t know. He’d never analyzed it. He spoke to what he believed. “When he got attacked, we were just two men as close as two women can be—except that kind of closeness is really only acceptable for those with female body parts. By the time you met us, though, we’d begun kissing each other, but only in private.”

“Only ever in private,” Starsky said.

“So, no butt or crotch grabs in front of your peers?” Jade asked.

“Never,” Hutch said for them. “Not even in private. Not then anyway.”

Starsky didn’t understand why it would be relevant even if he and Hutch had behaved that way. Nothing warranted the punishment he got for it.

“No sexual innuendo, verbally or otherwise, in front of the boys on the Force?” Jade asked.

“None,” Hutch affirmed. “But that’s all irrelevant to the ques­tion you asked. You want to know what happened, not why, right?” He had Jade’s full attention then, and Starsky’s passive permission, so he ex­plained. “They held him for two days and three nights without food or water—and with barely the shirt on his back. Then they filmed what they did to him each night and they sent me the video each morning.”

Dr. Steven Jade was about to be shocked.

* * *

When Hutch turned onto Starsky’s street, he noticed right away that Starsky’s apple red and white-striped Ford Gran Torino was parked in the tree-covered driveway, just as it usually was when he pulled up to the residence.

The landscaping at the new house was as peaceful as was the day’s weather; cloudless blue skies harmonized with the sweet voices of singing birds. He and Starsky had gone the extra mile and bought full-grown trees for the yard and already it was home to sparrows and finches; they welcomed Hutch’s arrival. If only they—and the beauty of the yard itself, with its freshly mown lawn and brilliantly colored flowers—could have killed Hutch’s apprehension.

He anxiously knocked, but didn’t wait long enough for Starsky to answer before he used his own key. Only a peaceful house welcomed him with its bright, light colors and textures, tiled floors and clean, beige carpets, and its somewhat new and comfortable furniture. “Starsk?” He searched the house then with every expectation that he’d find the man somewhere in it, even if Starsky hid from him on purpose.

But there was no reply.

And no Starsky.

Hutch checked every room in the house, going as far as to look in several closets, too. “Hey, c’mon, buddy boy,” he finally coaxed him. “Show your ugly mug. Let’s put this thing on the table and work it through one more time.” He didn’t like confrontation, but it was better than any long-term awkwardness between them.

Then he froze and listened hard.

Not a sound. Not a rustle. Not even a grunt.

The house was eerily empty.

His heart sank, so he looked for Starsky’s pistol and holster, simply because he was already in the bedroom, which was right where he hoped it wouldn’t be: On the shelf inside the walk-in closet. He emptied the handgun of its bullets, draped the holster over his shoulder, and pocketed the ammunition.

If Starsky had been dating anyone, Hutch imagined she’d have picked him up in her car, which would explain why the Torino was still in the driveway—and he’d have another number to call to reach Starsky. But there wasn’t anyone in Starsky’s life at that time, at least not as of that Sunday afternoon. Not anyone Hutch knew about, anyway—which, in the end, didn’t mean much, given that Starsky had become somewhat of a player in the past few years, having sworn off relationships in general since his last failed one.

Still, Starsky wouldn’t have left his keys and wallet behind, which Hutch found on the foyer table, containing less than forty dollars in cash—and Starsky’s badge—in that large ceramic bowl Emma had given him for his birthday the year prior, right where Starsky always dropped his wallet and keys upon his arrival. Hutch exhaled his discomfort as he pushed away Emma’s memory—or, more specifically, the memory of her intimacy with Starsky—and refocused his search.

He shoved Starsky’s wallet into his back jeans pocket and dropped the car keys into a front one. Then he searched his mind for a missing item, reexamined the details of the most recent cases they’d closed, and tried to figure out what lead Starsky may have taken—without his car, his badge, or his handgun—or what clues he may have followed—on foot. On foot and without his keys or his wallet.

And without his partner.

Hutch then realized he had to stop taking Starsky’s absence personally. It couldn’t be related to him and he knew that because, underneath all his concern and worry, he’d held onto the items he’d found, as if, deep down, he suspected Starsky wouldn’t come back for them and, by holding onto them, he held onto Starsky. By proxy.

After hearing the message recorded by Starsky’s answering machine, of his own that morning in search of his partner, Hutch examined the front door for signs of a break-in. There were none. He went back through the house to check windows and test door locks. All were as they should have been, which left him puzzled. He cussed himself for entering the house without first trying the door handle; perhaps the front door had been unlocked. Starsky had innocently taken off for something to eat or to fetch a newspaper and left his keys behind because he wouldn’t have needed them upon his return—if he’d left the door unlocked. But that didn’t explain why he’d gone off without his wallet or his cash, unless he simply grabbed a couple of bills and took off with those. Hutch would never know whether the front door had been locked or unlocked when he arrived—and that irritated him.

But it also wasn’t like Starsky to leave a house unlocked with a loaded pistol in it.

Hutch went back to his midnight blue truck to take a spin around the neighborhood, to drive past the local strip mall with its diners, newspaper stands, and coffee shops, but when he climbed into the cab, he discovered a small, handwritten note on the driver’s seat—which read: “weve got ur bum buddy. Thot u mite like 2 c the fun hes having. Turn on his video playr. njoy.” Hutch had nothing but bad feelings all morning and, in those isolated moments as he stared at the ominous message, he felt them more keenly—that time, apparently, for sound reason.

With a pounding heart, he quickly left his truck to look both ways up the street in search of anything out of the ordinary, only to find it somewhat abandoned. He then raced back into the house, next into the living room, and frantically searched, momentarily frustrated, for the TV’s power button before he pushed it. A black-and-white Cary Grant movie sprang to the screen until he anxiously punched the player’s display panel and, accidentally, but with intent, activated it. The machine loaded the tape cassette it housed and interrupted the light-hearted romp with one of Hollywood’s most charismatic actors by full-color, out-of-focus and indecipherable images of god-knew-what as the camera sought its target. But, even despite the confusing video, the audio was clear. And chilling.

He unmistakably heard Starsky—out of breath and exhausted—plead with someone not to touch him, followed by the sound of a sharp, skin-to-skin slap. A male voice angrily reprimanded him. “I’ll do as I please, Starsky,” it said, “or haven’t you figured that out by now?”

The desperate tone in Starsky’s voice caused Hutch to bend over and hold his knees to keep from dropping to them. For all he knew, he was about to watch a snuff film—the videotaped murder of the single most important person in the world to him—and he had to be ready for it. As if it were possible to prepare for such a thing.

He lifted his head to look at the television screen when he heard more of Starsky’s genuine begging—and was distracted from his own physical sick reaction by his effort to decipher the startling images he then witnessed.

And they computed.

Bound by thick rope, Starsky was tied to something off-camera and overhead, stretched in such a way that, if he were to lose his ability to stand, he’d hang from the ceiling by his bloody wrists. He appeared to have been beaten—bruised and lacerated—about his face and neck; his lip and nose bled. He was tightly blindfolded by a nondescript black rag and was mostly nude; he’d been stripped of his clothing, with the exception of his shirt, which had been torn open and exposed what was private from his dark-haired chest to his groin.

The image was shocking, alarming, enraging, and frightening all at once. Hutch was numbed at first—and violated, though it would take months for him to understand how.

Two masked and darkly clothed men circled and taunted Starsky. They punched him in the stomach, repeatedly slapped his face, and otherwise kept him guessing about where and how they would next hurt him with each strike. The heavier of the two men spoke. “I’d tape your fucking mouth shut again,” he told Starsky, “but I’m enjoying your little girl whimpering too much to make the effort.”

Hutch cussed under his breath, what little of it he could catch. In all the years he’d known Starsky, and all they’d been through together at and in the hands of the bad guys, he’d never seen his partner so vulnerable and helpless as he was then—not even when he rescued him in the nick of time from being tied inside that remnant of an old zoo cage, about to die at the hands and sharpened knives of those kidnapping cultists. All Starsky could do to protect himself now, as then, was to verbally protest—and it had gone, no doubt, from his self-defensive macho sarcasm to his then desperate, plaintive, almost crying sort of pleas, which—coupled with Starsky’s appearance—confirmed that his captors had tormented him long before they’d turned on the camera.

The high-ceilinged room in which they filmed their attack appeared to be inside an empty warehouse, dressed in chipped and worn green paint, with a row of non-see-through glassed windows along the rear wall; it was dark outside, nighttime still, the night before, no doubt, or very early that Monday morning. There were blurred city lights beyond the windows and one pane of glass, in particular, was cracked. The room was dirty and artificially lit, as if the power to the building itself had been disconnected and the captors had brought their own lighting.

Hutch briefly focused on the warehouse room because he was unable to endure the degree of desperation to which they’d driven Starsky, or to manage the boiling rage and fear that watching the video caused him. But he’d be damned not to watch, to not witness that for which he otherwise had not the stomach or the heart to lay eyes on, for he couldn’t abandon Starsky to such a fate alone.

Wordlessly, one of the men drew a hunting knife and, for a split second, and in what felt like an eternity, Hutch thought he would cut or stab Starsky with it, but instead he severed the rope that bound Starsky to the ceiling. Starsky fell helplessly to his knees. The video followed his action—which told Hutch there was yet another person in the room.

Then the two men on camera wrestled their victim to the cold cement floor, brutalized his naked skin against its unyielding rock-hard surface, forced him onto his belly, despite his frantic resistance, his pleading with them, his kicking and his panicked struggle, and his then pitiful protests of “please, please don’t, please don’t, don’t do this.”

Starsky fought as hard as he could, with every ounce of muscle he had, but he was no match for the two of his attackers, from an ordeal he’d already suffered, and because they were, together, much stronger than he was. “Let me go,” he managed to say between desperate pants. “I haven’t seen you. You could let me go and that’s the end of it.” And, then, despite how vain it was, he added, “Please.”

Hutch braced himself. He hadn’t forgotten the men were armed with a serrated knife.

But the heavier-set assailant—the one who’d pinned Starsky’s naked legs between his own there on the floor, no doubt scraping Starsky’s knees against it, the one who’d verbally assaulted Starsky already—drew a different weapon. As his co-conspirator mounted Starsky’s shoulders to pin him tightly to the floor, the other forcefully slapped Starsky’s bared backside; the sound of it echoed in the otherwise empty room. “Take it like a man,” he ordered, and he cussed when his prisoner helplessly struggled under a repeated blow. The assailant unzipped his jeans and tugged his erection from the fly. “Your asshole ain’t your partner’s anymore,” he growled, “or have you forgotten that already?”

“Oh, he remembers,” the other said with a laugh. “He ain’t never gonna forget tonight.” From his pants pocket, he removed a small paste or gel tube and pulled off the cap with his teeth. He, too, cussed when Starsky struggled under them and nearly knocked them off his back. They worked quickly in retaliation; the fat one gripped Starsky’s buttocks, one cheek in each of his hands, and exposed Starsky’s anus so his comrade could squeeze some of the tube’s contents directly onto their target.

“Be glad we’re makin’ this easy for you,” he snarled.

The reality was they made it easier for themselves.

Hutch audibly cussed. He broke a sweat and visibly shook. It was apparent then, from Starsky’s desperate struggle and his verbally broken esteem, by the way he’d been bound and stripped, by the words he’d vainly used to stop them, from the way they had tackled him to the floor, restrained and prepared him, that they had forcibly sodomized him once already—and they were about to do it again, that time on camera.

Starsky fought the sensation and the impending action with all the muscle he had in him. He fought physically and he fought verbally, though he didn’t use a single word; the noise he filled the room with were guttural sounds that would chill any spine—and his whines, coupled with his failed resistance, simply made his attackers laugh at him when they subdued him again.

Hutch watched every frame. He heard every cry, every painful groan, followed by the unmistakable sounds of gratification from both masked men as the one anally penetrated and repeatedly thrust into his partner with his large, hardened penis, into Hutch’s best friend, into his brother by fate, into the single most important person in the world to him, while Starsky—blindfolded and bound—cried loudly in serious pain, and continued to struggle and beg his attackers, to no avail, to relent and release him.

“Oh, yeah, baby,” the one told the other, “fuck that fag good.”

The minutes were eternities. Hutch was riveted by the horror played out before him; he had to know what happened to his partner, despite how gut-wrenching it was to witness—for no other reason than he’d be damned if Starsky had undergone that attack completely alone. And he watched with the unparalleled hope that some clue, some piece of evidence, some sign might emerge to help him find Starsky and put an end to the violence he’d already sustained and maybe still endured.

The abuser slammed his hips against Starsky’s buttocks one final time and ejaculated deeply inside him, forcefully and with malice. He moaned with pleasure and laughed as he drove home the inexplicable hate and sheer disgust he felt for his victim with every nuance he could manage.

Starsky cried a painful, agonized utterance of a sound as he helplessly succumbed to the violent attack, a wretched cry unlike anything Hutch had heard before, one he wished he hadn’t heard, and one he would never forget.

The attacker withdrew at the last second—perhaps to show off the evidence of his success—and allowed his remaining semen to pulse onto Starsky’s lower back. “Take that, you goddamned piece of shit,” he said, belying his words with moans of distinct pleasure.

Hutch seethed with rage, with rage and with unspeakable grief. He dropped to his knees before the television and gripped its stand to keep from collapsing further. He didn’t avert his eyes as much as he desperately wanted to. He couldn’t not look. He couldn’t not absorb every visual and sound to its end, every paint chip in that room, every camera angle, every shaft of light, every depraved action, in the absolute determination to find some lead that would tell him what was to happen next—and where to find Starsky in the meantime.

The men released their prisoner and got to their feet. The one who’d sodomized Starsky slapped his backside again, that time the way a horseman might smack his mount, to convey that he had been pleased with the ride.

Starsky’s respiration was hard and heavy; his belly heaved with every rapid and deep breath he took. Though bound, he dropped his hands over the back of his neck to shield his face behind his arms, as if the blindfold was not enough to hide him from the reality of his painful and humiliating ordeal.

The attacker zipped his pants and then kicked Starsky’s thigh. “You cocksucker,” he said, heatedly. He punched him again with his booted foot, hard enough to force Starsky onto his side and to draw into himself as much as he could, his knees to his chest. “There’s a price to pay for resisting arrest,” the assailant warned him. “Let that be a lesson to you and your fucking buddy, you arrogant shit.”

Hutch couldn’t help but think Starsky’s attackers were cops, but that intuition was the insult to injury he couldn’t accept at that moment, lest it completely annihilate him.

“That’s funny,” the cameraman said; the voice identified him as male—and he sounded louder than the others, given that he was closer to the microphone. “His ‘fucking buddy.’ Get it? His fucking buddy and the buddy he fucks—all in the same guy.”

“That’s how I meant it, you moron,” his cohort replied. He approached the camera, got as close to it with his masked face as he could, and then said—to Hutch, no doubt, “Is that how it’s done, asshole? Is that how you treat your little friend when you’re off-duty? Are you having fun with us yet?” He laughed. “We’re just getting warmed up, copper, so stay tuned for more.”

The video ended and the television screen blackened.

Stunned, Hutch climbed weakly to his feet and visibly trembled as he rose. His legs buckled, but he caught himself at the last second and miraculously stood. Then he managed to reach the bathroom, lift the toilet seat in the nick of time, and get sick to his stomach.

* * *

Tears rimmed Jade’s eyes—and he couldn’t take them off Starsky.

“Don’t you dare feel sorry for me,” Starsky warned him. He had to look away because he was afraid he’d be emotionally damaged by Jade’s reaction. “It was almost four months ago.”

Jade had to clear his throat before he could speak. “And will last a lifetime,” he solemnly noted in a low, pain-filled voice. He felt heavy in his chair, physically and heart-heavy, as if he’d just been poleaxed. Had the men told him the details of the attack at their very first session, he probably wouldn’t have had the emotional reac­tion he did, but he’d gotten to know them over the past couple of months, quite explicit­ly, and he felt something for them, much more deep­ly than he knew until that minute. Maybe his client was a bit sarcastic, certainly immature in some ways, too, and he was confused and he was self-abusing, troub­led and searching, but who wouldn’t be after what he’d been through?

Not feel sorry for him? How could Jade not? To not feel for the man would make him heartless. Still, he didn’t want to patronize Star­sky, either. He wiped his eyes with his hands to at least outwardly honor Starsky’s request. He would keep his emotions to himself, like the profes­sional he was. “And you wit­nessed what happened to him,” he said to Hutch, and then voiced the obvious. “You’re both victims.”

Hutch was touched by Jade’s emotional reaction to Starsky’s trauma. He already believed the doctor was an empathetic man because he so readily accepted his and Starsky’s relationship without judg­ment—and from the probing questions he’d asked during their many sessions with him. Jade’s insight enabled him to see two victims of the same crime and that impressed Hutch, too. “But Starsky took the worst of it,” he quali­fied.

“Do you feel guilty about that?” Jade asked.

“I did at first, but he asked me not to; said it would only make him feel pathetic, so I gave up the guilt trip early on.”

Jade wiped the last of the tears from his eyes. Starsky had asked him not to feel sorry for him, too, so he followed Hutch’s lead. He didn’t want Starsky to feel further patronized and diminished more than he’d been. “And, you?” he asked Starsky, getting the man to finally look him in the eye. “Is your own guilt more than about you opening the door that night?”

“How do you mean?”

Jade waited. He didn’t want to put words in Starsky’s mouth—or suggest he have feelings he didn’t have. If something more was there, Starsky would find it. And find it, Starsky did.

“Well, yeah,” he said with a tone of voice that implied it should be obvious. “My mistake put him through hell, too.” The him in question being Hutch. “I knew he was looking for me—and I even figured he wouldn’t find me until after it was too late.” His voice cracked when he spoke. “What I didn’t know at the time was that he’d watched what they’d done, so not only did he have the fear of not finding me, he … he was a witness to something he should never have had to see—”

“I told you then,” Hutch interrupted him, his soft voice firm, “as I’ll tell you now: I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat—and never look back—to spare you a second of what you went through—”

“You know I’m sorry,” Starsky told him—again. He made un­waver­ing eye contact with Hutch, the kind that continued to beg for exon­eration, but even before the words left his mouth, he saw the reprieve he sought in Hutch’s blue eyes. The man so did love him.

Jade cut into their silent conversation. “You told him on the morning you lay in the grass together,” he said, “that first-kiss morning, that you were sorry about what Hutch had endured. But now I understand why you said it to him, and why it sincerely mattered.”

“He’s still too easy on me,” Starsky said to Jade.

“You feel that way only because you haven’t forgiven yourself,” Jade suspected. He then addressed another important distinction. “When I asked you a while back if they’d raped you, you said they hadn’t.”

“The legal definition of rape requires a vagina,” Star­sky explained, appreciating the empathy in Jade’s concerned eyes, despite his direct comments. “Technically, they didn’t rape me.”

“You mean, legally they didn’t rape you. Technically, they did.”

To hear a professional, a licensed psychologist, tell him he’d been raped, made Starsky speechless. He and Hutch had always described Starsky’s ordeal as rape; Grace had, too, but Starsky figured they did so because they were family. He fought back his own emotional reaction by lower­ing his eyes to the floor for a minute; it helped him to better absorb the pro­foundness of Jade’s comment.

“That was just the first night of attacks,” Hutch added. He got Jade’s full attention then and explained further. “They held him for three nights, remember? They took turns raping him that first night. The second night they did likewise—until they literally ripped him open. Then they tried to force him to blow one of them. ‘Forcible oral copulation’ it’s called under the law.”

Jade nodded that he was aware of that legal definition.

“When Starsky refused, the guy came on his face instead.”

Jade glanced at Starsky, but Starsky didn’t look back.

“On that third night,” Hutch continued, “they succeeded in forc­ing him to ‘orally copulate’ them—one and then another and then another—on the promise they’d let him go afterward—which they sort of did; after they broke his arm and chained him to a wall, they pissed all over him and left him for dead.”

Jade held tighter to his own emotions and found the strength to ask another question. “And they videotaped all of it?”

“Yeah,” Hutch said quietly, “though I only saw two of the tapes. I.A. saw them all.”

“I.A.?”

“Internal Affairs.”

Jade looked again at Starsky and was pleased to see him meet his eyes in return, but he could tell Starsky still braced against having been exposed. Jade thought it best to avoid the details at that moment. He focused instead on the overall crime itself. “You arrested two of the assailants, I recall. The other killed himself when you closed in on him. Now I understand the gravity of the situation and why that third ended his own life. The two pled guilty, did they?”

“They had no choice, really,” Hutch believed. “They never thought we’d share the video with anyone, particularly other officers—and we didn’t have any plans to give it over to a police investigation until Starsky traded it to keep me from going to jail on charges of tampering with evidence and obstructing justice.”

“Were they valid charges?”

“I hid the video and what I knew, what I’d seen, to protect Starsky’s privacy. I figured the rapists would go up for life on the kidnapping-a-police-officer charge alone since it’s a manda­tory life sentence. But the DNA evidence made Internal Affairs sus­picious of additional crimes and they weren’t about to let these guys walk away from those.”

“Why would your peers press charges against you? I thought there was a blue wall of silence among cops.” He wasn’t facetious.

“It only applies to crimes committed by cops,” Starsky mumbled, not proudly, “not crimes committed against cops.”

“I.A. wanted to force Starsky to make a statement against his at­tackers,” Hutch said, “so they could arrest them. The De­partment knew he’d come clean if it meant I didn’t have to go to jail. It worked. But not before I was given full im­munity from prose­cu­tion on the case.”

“Yeah,” Starsky laughed, interrupting the dialogue with a fond memory, despite how sorry it made him feel, too, “and Hutch’s immunity gave him the personal excuse to beat one of the fuckers nearly to death before the scumbag was officially arrested.”

“It wasn’t that bad a beating.”

“Well, he wished he was dead,” Starsky recalled. “You completely destroyed one of his balls with a crowbar and nearly severed his dick.”

“Yeah, okay,” Hutch then agreed on second thought. “He prob­ably wished he was dead. In fact, I’ll do a little dance on the thought that he still wishes he was dead.” He noticed Jade’s startled expression, that Jade was surprised to learn Hutch could be that violent. To defend his actions, Hutch explained, “Hey … the moral of the story is: I can take a lot, but don’t fuck my friends. That will put me over the edge. And I’d have done likewise to the other two, but the cops caught the second one before I could get my hands on him and—”

“To keep you from getting your hands on him,” Starsky remembered.

“Did the police know what you’d done to the one?” Jade asked Hutch.

“The I.A. agent who handed over the ringleader so we could kick his ass knew,” Hutch confessed. “The others suspected, but they never pursued it. And the third guy, like I said, fatal­ly shot himself when we sur­rounded his house to make the arrest. I couldn’t have hurt him, despite how much I wanted to, because we were escorted to the place by a couple of other officers. But I figure hurting one out of three ain’t bad.”

A lot had happened in his patients’ lives. Jade was stunned and he was emotional and he was overwhelmed and he was sorry. But he was also impressed by the loyalty between Hutch and Starsky, by their love and their bond, and by the journey they’d taken since. It all made sense to him then, of course. He’d racked his brain to find the catalyst for these men’s sexual relationship with each other after ten years of celi­b­acy between them, and he now had it. It was a lot to take in.

“And all of that is why you felt grateful,” he said to Starsky, “be­cause in any other circumstance, with a lesser loyalty than the one you have with Hutch, any other male friend of yours may have walked away from you as damaged goods for stupid behavior. He wouldn’t be able to depend on you in a tight jam.”

“Yeah,” Starsky admitted. “I was afraid Hutch would turn on me.”

“But he didn’t.”

“Yeah, so he didn’t. And there we were that morning, talking about building me a house on his property, across the driveway from his, and we got to laying in the grass, up next to each other…”

“And you’d already been physically close, as friends, I mean, which is why these men targeted you in the first place,” Jade noted.

“Right. It wasn’t unfamiliar for us to be that close. Next thing I knew, though, I kissed him.”

“And you loved every second of it,” Hutch said with a cheerful ring to his voice. If Starsky wanted a way out, Hutch just gave him one.

But Starsky was in pursuit of other prey. “So now you think that’s why I kissed him, right?” he asked Jade. “But, you see, I didn’t want to tell you about the attacks because I didn’t want them to color your pic­ture of me. ‘They fucked me and now I’m so fucked up, I kissed Hutch.’ Sim­ple as that, right?”

“Not that simple. And you know it isn’t, or you wouldn’t need me to tell you something that obvious.”

“Then, what?”

“You were grateful because Hutch was still there for you after the mistake you made—and what those men did to you,” Jade decided. “You felt responsible for their actions because you opened the door. You felt responsible for the fear you put Hutch through because of those actions, yours and theirs. You’re seeking healing. For­giveness. Not just from yourself, but from Hutch, too. So, I stand cor­rected: The catalyst for kissing him that morning was multi-fold.”

“Okay. I get that. But it doesn’t explain why I kept on kissing him. Or exchanged handling him. Or still want to.”

Jade thought for a minute. It seemed they had back-pedaled, gone nowhere, really. Perhaps an examination of solutions was in order.

“What about this idea?” he offered. “How ’bout you follow your heart? Tell Grace how you feel about Hutch; not what you’ve done with him, but how you feel. If she gives you her blessing to follow your feel­ings for him, move forward—if Hutch wants to also, that is.”

“Hutch wants to,” Hutch said.

“But I still wouldn’t tell her about handling him,” Jade continued to advise him. “Let the past be the past. If she doesn’t give her bless­ing to follow your feelings for him, then you and Hutch accept things as they are and keep your hands to yourselves—but don’t come clean, Starsky. It serves no purpose in the long run of your lives, except to lessen your guilt. Don’t make her pay the price for it.”

“Well, there you have it,” Starsky said, accepting Jade’s guidance.

“Yep,” Hutch echoed. “There you have it.”

* * *

Hutch heard Starsky’s footsteps long before he was fully conscious of his approach. Maybe it was because he’d been daydreaming about Starsky and the man was right up front on his mind. Or maybe because Starsky was always in his thoughts, consciously and not, at any given time of any given day. Or maybe because he hoped Starsky would show up and make his otherwise nearly perfect day perfect.

Whatever it was, Hutch slowly became aware of Starsky’s arrival; he heard Starsky’s shoes crunch the gravel from as far away as the end of the fence near Starsky’s driveway. Hutch was flat on his back in the grass at the edge of the property, close to his vegetable garden, where he’d preened and pruned for a couple of hours. He was proud of his sum­mer squash and tomatoes, the lettuce and the cucumbers. He was pleased to see all the melons, carrots, and potatoes. Even the arti­chokes were vibrantly healthy. Next year he would have to plant sweet corn.

He especially relished sharing the garden with Starsky and Grace, though Starsky sometimes balked at eating what he actually saw grow out of the ground. Both Grace and Hutch would chastise him for his poor nutrition choices, so she was usually the only one to visit every morn­ing, to help maintain the soil, monitor the watering, participate in the organic, natural pest control, and take Hutch the occasional gath­ering of produce on her way back to her house. It was sometimes the only time Hutch saw her; he saw Starsky every day, often more than once a day, and for extended periods of time. Their daily togetherness was the way it had been for more than a decade—and how it would be for decades to come if he had any control over the future.

But on that particular late morning, Hutch didn’t expect to see Star­sky any time soon; they didn’t have plans. Not that they needed plans to see each other, but Grace was a new resident on the property, and Hutch assumed Starsky enjoyed an altered routine. Hutch simply hoped he’d get a visit from his partner later in the day. He lay in the grass under a shade tree, one that had been on the property long before he’d pur­chased it, and lightly dozed. He listened to songbirds, to the occa­sional buzz of an insect, to the sound of a tractor till soil or mow weeds some­where in the rural neigh­borhood. He gave him­self up to the earth god, felt terra firma at his back, the blanket of the blue sky overhead, and bathed in the notion that time stood still.

It was then, in the not too distant quiet, that he heard Starsky’s foot­steps as they, as lazily, closed in. There would be no going back to sleep, and not because Starsky had interrupted him, but because all of Hutch’s senses were finely tuned to Starsky then.

When Starsky stopped beside him, Hutch kept his face hidden behind the bend of his elbow. To move at all would destroy the peace­fulness of his moment. But he did speak to let Starsky know he knew he was there. “Hey,” he said.

“So you’re alive?” Starsky pretended to deduct. He sat in the grass beside Hutch, cross-legged, and waited for Hutch to acknowl­edge him with more notice.

“This is living,” Hutch replied, referencing his blissful escape, “or I’ve died and gone to Heaven. Not sure which.”

“You don’t believe in Heaven.”

Irritated, Hutch lowered his arm, opened his eyes, turned his head, and looked at Starsky—only to be immediately attracted to Starsky’s appear­ance, to Starsky’s well-groomed hair and shaved face, to his relaxed clothes and demeanor, to the soft look in his warm eyes. But Hutch also wanted to appease the discontent Starsky had just caused him. “Why do you insist on reminding me of what I do and don’t be­lieve?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t want you to get ahead of your own bullshit,” Starsky said.

“They’re just figures of speech. Besides, Heaven is a place on Earth—and I’ve been there a number of times already.”

“Whatever,” Starsky mumbled, not certain Hutch had just refer­enced their previous handjobs. He took a minute to study Hutch’s re­laxed posture, that Hutch was dressed in jeans and a tucked, green tee-shirt, his ankles crossed, one hand on his belly. And then there was that perfect face and those blue eyes he noticed—before his vision lingered on Hutch’s jeans zipper and the hint of a bulge that it covered. He then glanced across the driveway to Hutch’s house, to where a sexual rendezvous with him would be private, but it was just a whim, and not one he could indulge at that time.

“I talked to Grace,” he said.

Hutch squinted at him. “About?”

“Us.”

“You-and-me us or she-and-you us?”

“You-and-me us, you know, like the plan. I told her how I felt.”

“And?”

Starsky didn’t even know where to begin; it had been such a spir­ited and profound discussion he’d had with her the night before. He began at its end. “And she loves me,” he said.

“That, she does.”

“A lot, I mean.”

“She’s not alone.”

Starsky smiled a small smile at Hutch. He loved Hutch’s affection; it’s what he’d waited for. “I told her how I feel about you and what we want to do … about handjobs.”

Starsky didn’t appear troubled. “She’s not leaving you,” Hutch then assumed. “That’s how you know she loves you—a lot.”

“Right,” Starsky said, his eyes excited by that knowledge. “But, I mean, she loves me more than that, even. I told her everything I could think to tell her about how I feel and about what I want—with her and with you. And I know we decided I wouldn’t tell her that we’d already handled each other—you and me—but she asked me point-blank if we’d jerked each other off—not in those words—or if we’d actually had sex-sex, anal sex, so I ended up telling her the truth.”

“No shit.”

“Now, get this: She said the reason she was jumping me more was because she started picturing you and me getting each other off and the idea of it turned her on.”

“No shit,” Hutch repeated, that time with a laugh. Then he laughed a second time as he said, “The idea of you and me getting each other off turns me on, too.”

“No shit,” Starsky echoed. He sobered when he added, “I also told her I didn’t want to choose between you guys.”

“And she said?”

“She said she knew I’d choose you.”

“Ouch,” Hutch whispered. He felt sorry for Grace just then, even if her instinct was wrong.

Starsky picked a blade of grass and twirled it in his fingers. He kept his eye contact with Hutch when he said, “It doesn’t mean I don’t love her, because I do, and I love her a lot. It just means … my feel­ings for you are a lot deeper is all.”

They had history.

Starsky looked off across the field to the trees at its edge while he wound her words through his head, disbelieving them even then, and then told Hutch, “She said again that she’d rather have me in her life playing around with you than not have me in her life at all.”

In light of how they hoped to play, Hutch was speechless.

“Yeah,” Starsky said, empathizing with Hutch’s reaction. “She’s a better person than either of us.” He tossed the blade of grass at Hutch, but it was too light in the unnotice­able breeze to ever hit him. “She said I have her blessing to follow my heart,” he added, “so long as I don’t do anything that could hurt her. I’m not going to pretend I’m not making sex with you, so—if we’re going to do this—you can’t pre­tend, either, okay? There’ll be nothing we’re doing that we can’t tell Grace about if she wants to know.”

It was a generous offer. Hutch was humb­led by Grace’s gift—and excited by it, too. He noticed Starsky’s atten­tion again, that glance at his slightly bulging zipper. “So, on that note,” Hutch asked, “are you look­ing for some after­noon delight?”

Starsky made lingering eye contact with him; he wasn’t embarras­sed to have been caught. “It’s not noon yet,” he reminded Hutch. “What about some morning magic instead?”

“Take me.”

They both knew they couldn’t, not under those circumstances, not out in the open like that, but it was nice to imagine it just the same.

“I don’t know that I deserve that woman,” Starsky finally said.

“Do you think you can change her mind? The heart wants what the heart wants. Hers wants you. Yours wants both of us—her-and-you-us, and you-and-me-us.”

“What does your heart want?”

“To sneak off to the office for a per­son­al lesson on the use of stap­lers and paper clips,” Hutch said playfully. He’d sacrifice anything—including his blissful relaxation there in the shade—to get another handjob from Starsky, especially knowing how much they’d both enjoy it, given that they no longer had a first-time anxiety about it—or would do it behind Grace’s back.

Starsky then lay on his side in the cushioning grass and stretched along Hutch’s length, but didn’t touch him. “I can’t,” he ex­plained. “Grace has a few of her friends over for breakfast. They’re all on the porch as we speak; then they’re going to the mall in a while. I’ll have to say good­bye to her when she calls over.”

Hutch understood. But what Starsky basically told him was that they’d get to play after the women left the premises. He already looked for­ward to it. “So what brings you here now? Feeling out­num­bered at your house by the fairer sex?”

“I was going to wait until the girls left to tell you I talked to Grace, but then, when I saw you from my driveway, flat on your back like this, I thought maybe you got knocked down by a blue jay or something. I couldn’t not check it out.”

Hutch appreciated Starsky’s concern, even as light as it was. It made life on the farm not so isolating. It was possible to get injured in the out-of-doors and have no means to contact medical support; having Grace and Starsky around served an added purpose. And vice versa.

Starsky rolled onto his stomach and propped himself on his elbows with his hands clasped in front of him. He stared unseeing at the ground. “You having fun?” he asked.

“Lying here under—”

“With me? Are you having fun with me?”

Hutch deciphered. “I did. And it looks like I will again—in ways I never thought poss­ible.” He didn’t know why Starsky would have to ask; it seemed appar­ent to him that they had enjoyed themselves and each other. “It’s not like I faked a good time.” Or maybe Starsky won­dered about the overall scheme of things, not their isolated exchange of pleasure.

“But don’t you remember how we used to do shit like this?” Star­sky wondered. “Hang out together on the steps or the porch, on a sofa, on the floor, in the grass, like this, and just enjoy that for itself?”

“Are you missing those days?”

“Well, it seems … when we’re like this now, we’re think­ing about that other thing.”

“That other thing?”

“You know what other thing,” Starsky scowled. “Don’t jerk me around.”

“I thought you liked it when I jerked you—”

“C’mon. Have a serious talk with me.”

Hutch laughed. “What are you getting at?”

“Just that it was kind of nice before, don’t you think? We could be with each other and not feel that sexual tension, know what I mean?”

Hutch studied Starsky’s expression. His tone of voice, too, con­veyed his seriousness. Did Starsky have second thoughts, despite Grace’s bless­ing? Did he feel sexu­ally tense? Did Hutch feel it? He had to examine his desire at that moment. And, sure, he could have indulged Starsky inti­mately right then-and-there even, the way they already had in each other’s hands, or he could follow Starsky into the house to do it in private.

Was he sorry he had that feeling? Was Starsky? “You’re missing the way we were?” Hutch wondered.

“I’m just asking,” Starsky explained. He made brief eye contact with Hutch, and then reflected to their past, six months earlier. “We didn’t have to figure out when we could be alone, you know? I didn’t have to plan my life—when it came to you—around some­one else’s life. We’d just … hang. Nothing to do sometimes, but hang.”

“I remember,” Hutch said. Their physicalness had been unprece­dented. They weren’t afraid of each other, nor did they care what any­one else thought about their behavior or actions when it came to the other—which was why Starsky had been targeted by rapists in the first place, granted—but it had been a relatively free and affec­tionate friendship up until then. “You miss it,” Hutch surmised.

“Don’t you?” Starsky asked. He looked Hutch squarely in those blue eyes. “Don’t you sometimes wish we could put this behind us—or never have crossed that line—and go back to being buddies the way we were? You and me, here in the grass, not thinking about staplers and paper clips?”

Hutch hadn’t wished that, if he was honest with himself—or with Starsky, for that matter. He loved, rather cherished, the satisfying inti­macy they’d discovered and was glad to have it back. Did Starsky look for an­other way to end it—without hurt­ing Hutch that time—by finding the reward behind the cessation? If so, why did he bother to tell Hutch that he’d talked to Grace at all? He could have just left it lie, but honesty was something they trea­sured even more than their hands on each other. “If it was up to me,” he said, “I wouldn’t go back to the way things were before we ‘crossed the line,’ as good as that was. I like the close­ness and the pleasure of what we have—and I hope to have it again and again.”

Starsky smiled, a sort of mischievous, knowing, rather pleased kind of grin. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Me, too.”

Hutch laughed, relieved and riled at the same time. “Fuck you,” he affectionately growled. It had been a set up all along and he’d com­pletely fallen for it. It was his own fault.

Starsky pretended to be insulted. “Fuck me?” On second thought, he said, “Well, that brings up a question I have for you.”

“To fuck you?” Hutch joked.

“Yeah.”

Hutch sobered. “Okay. So what’s the ques­tion?”

“That, that’s the question.”

“I don’t follow.”

Starsky braved it. He didn’t think he’d get punched, nor that he’d offend Hutch, because he was, after all, asking for a favor, not assum­ing it, not manipulating it, not staging it. “I’m wondering … if maybe you might, um, consider … fucking me. I know you’ve said you won’t, but maybe now that Grace is okay with things and you and me are getting closer…”

Hutch still didn’t appreciate Starsky’s supposition. He thought he heard Starsky ask him to consider having anal intercourse with him, but that couldn’t have been what Starsky meant. Starsky didn’t want to take things that far, did he? Hutch needed clarification. He hand-shield­ed his eyes from the blue light to see Starsky more clearly, to better read him. “Did you just ask me to fuck you?”

“To at least consider it,” Starsky said. He felt his heart pound. Some­­how he didn’t think he would be placated. Hutch seemed too dis­mayed to accom­modate him.

“Consider fucking you?” Hutch asked, incredulously.

“Well, call it whatever makes you feel better to call it, how’s that? Let’s say … maybe you’d consider … ‘anal sex’-ing me.”

Hutch laughed, first because Starsky’s choice of words amused him, and then, secondly, because Starsky’s request was absurd. What man in his right mind would want a penis in his anus? Another man’s penis in his hand was one thing. “You can’t be serious,” he said.

Starsky had his answer. It was all he needed to know. He’d been re­jected. It didn’t surprise him, yet he couldn’t help but take some of it personally. Hutch had had anal sex before; he just didn’t want it with Starsky. And, at the same time, Starsky knew the difference and appre­ciated it. He gave Hutch a slight nod, pursed his lips, and found the words he thought would put an end to the dialogue. “Yeah. I guess I’m not serious.”

Hutch then knew otherwise. Starsky simply back-pedaled. “Starsky…” He didn’t know what else to say; he thought if he used Starsky’s name, it might lighten the weight of the conversation.

Starsky shrugged at him and swallowed his pride. “Never hurts to ask, right?”

“You don’t really want me to fuck you, do you? I mean, that’s not a real life desire you have, is it?”

Starsky tried to ease his own tension and salvage himself from embar­rassment by being glib. “Not anymore.”

“But you did?”

“For a minute there,” he admitted. He wouldn’t look at Hutch. He needed to end the conversation; at least change it to something else. “But I don’t want what you don’t want, so I no longer have the urge. I just thought I’d ask.”

“And if I’d said yes?”

Starsky could tell, by Hutch’s pained blue eyes, that he strug­gled to understand him. He didn’t understand it himself and he felt con­fused and self-irritated all over again. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“When will you ever think through to the practicalities of your whims before you solicit me?”

“Maybe never,” Starsky said in a low voice. He feared he was head­ed for another chastising. “Let’s forget it. I asked. You answered. Case closed.”

But Hutch was still rattled. His peaceful day had ended. He didn’t under­stand Starsky’s sexual neediness sometimes and, yet, he couldn’t avoid the fact that Starsky was troubled—and had been, and why—and that it took courage to ask such a question. He made an effort to ease the sting of his reaction so Starsky wouldn’t feel so chagrined. “I can’t do that for you, buddy boy. It’s nothing personal.”

“You’ve had anal sex before,” Starsky reminded him. He wanted Hutch to understand why he thought it a safe question in the first place.

“With a woman,” Hutch emphasized.

“An asshole is an asshole.”

“But now we’re talking about yours.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s forget it. You just said it’s nothing personal and we can leave it at that. Besides, it’s not like I asked if I could fuck you, right?” He strove for humor, but his partner wasn’t entertained.

“Was that the next question?” Hutch asked, “if you could fuck me?”

Starsky didn’t want to speak a single other word about the subject. He pushed off the ground, lightly hit Hutch’s knee, sat back on his heels, and said, “Don’t flatter yourself, cowboy.”

“Are you off to sulk now?”

“I have to say goodbye to Grace,” Starsky explained with an obvious hostility in his voice. He didn’t have to leave just then, but he surely wanted to.

Hutch searched Starsky’s eyes and his expression and his body pos­ture, and he reflected over the past six months, and he factored in their kisses and their sexual play, and he really did want to understand. “Where does this end, Starsk? If we fuck each other, then what next?”

“It wasn’t an ‘each other’ question,” Starsky pointed out. “I don’t want to be talked down to. Why do you have to do that? I asked. You answered. It’s over. Don’t make me sorry I asked. Isn’t that what we do? Aren’t we com­pletely honest with each other?”

“Yeah, we are—hence why my reaction is honest with you.”

“You made your point.”

“Help me then. Tell me why you’d even want an experience like that in the first place.”

Starsky laughed a disbelieving laugh. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be in therapy, now, would I?”

“Is it that kissing leads to a hard-on, and it to an orgasm, and that to wanting a dick in your ass, and from there…?”

Starsky knew one thing then. Nothing he’d say would make a dif­fer­ence. It would only fuel Hutch’s dismay. He gave him an apologetic smile as he committed himself to silence. And then he stood. “I’m going to go see the girls,” he said. He felt shaken then, though he didn’t under­stand why. And he felt embarrassed and chastised and mis­under­stood and rejected and sorry. And, like all those other times he felt such things, he didn’t know what to do about them—but walk away from them. “I’ll see you around.”

Hutch called his name, but it didn’t stop Starsky’s departure. He sat up and called Starsky’s name another time, more firmly, as if tone alone would intercept him, but it didn’t work, either. So he fought for Starsky’s attention with his anger. “You drop a bombshell on me and walk away. Is that how you want this thing to have gone down?”

Starsky kept walking, but he did turn around, stepping backwards, and gave Hutch a forced smile before he faced his own house again. He definitely wasn’t a good judge of any­thing anymore. He thought he knew Hutch better. Or may­be it was that he hoped for something Hutch could simply never give him. What­ever it was, he learned one thing: To never again sexually solicit Ken Hutchinson. He simply couldn’t handle the fallout.

* * *

“It took a lot of guts to ask your buddy to have anal sex with you,” Jade kindly noted, “especially after he’d already made his views known.” He appreciated that Starsky had told him what he’d done, even despite the way it turned out; Starsky had admitted to failure, after all. “Hoping for a major step forward in your relations like that took courage,” he con­cluded, glancing briefly at Hutch, but not seeing a reaction.

“Not as brave as you think, doc,” Starsky explained. “I mean, it’s not like, you know, my urge came out of the blue, right? We’d handled each other, after all. I guess the difference is that I see it as the same shit. Sucking, fucking, French kissing. Same shit. But he has it divided up. I won’t make that mistake again. I know his mind better now.”

“But why did you walk away instead of stand your ground?”

“There was nothing to settle. He’d made his point.”

“Which was?”

“He doesn’t want to fuck me. He can suck face with me and let me handle him—or handle me, for that matter, too—but he draws his line in the sand at doing anything else.”

“He’s drawn lines before and crossed them.”

“Yeah, but I’m done getting shot down.”

Jade looked at Hutch. “Is that where you still stand?”

“He’s right,” Hutch said. “To him it’s part-and-parcel of the same thing. But for me … I can masturbate him until the cows come home. I can’t fuck him. Two different things.”

“Would you feel that way if he were a woman?”

“How do you mean?”

“Would you compartmentalize your sex with a woman? Do you have intercourse with a woman and another time masturbate or orally please her and consider those acts separate things; one is sex, the others aren’t?”

“What difference does it make?” Hutch asked, mildly perturbed by the ques­tion. “He’s not a woman, so what’s the point?”

“I’m curious to know how much of your position is based on the fact that he’s male.”

“All of it, I’m sure. Can’t it work like that? Do we have to be poli­tic­ally correct in everything?”

“Says a liberal,” Starsky griped.

Hutch smirked at him.

“Are you a conservative?” Jade asked Starsky.

Starsky had to retract his snide comment to Hutch. “Neither one of us are one way or the other; depends on the issue.”

Jade put his feet on his desk, crossed at the ankles, settled into his inter­rogation, and addressed Hutch instead. “If Starsky were a woman, or rather, if a woman asked you to have anal sex with her, would you hesitate?”

“Why does this matter?”

“We’re exploring unchartered territory between you and Starsky, to better understand you, to better understand him, and to further appre­ciate the boundaries of your relationship.”

Hutch almost laughed at Jade’s reply; he’d given Hutch a serious answer to a rhetorical, flippant question. Hutch surrendered then. “I wouldn’t hesitate if a woman asked me to have anal sex with her.”

“Because?”

He tried to figure it out and spoke impulsively. “Because it would be primal sex. Or maybe taboo sex. Or simply ‘tighter’ sex. I don’t know. But whatever sex it is, it’s with a woman.”

“Would it make you feel differently yourself as a man? Or would it be purely for the pleasure of it that you’d do it?”

“Differently as a man? Meaning, would I feel like a stud if I could anally sex a woman?” He used Starsky’s phrase and thought it com­patible in that instance. “Maybe. But I’m not into demeaning women, if that’s what you’re wondering. I wouldn’t do it as a put down or some ego trip. It’d feel good because it is—and has been—off-limits and therefore would be a rare, but erotic experience.”

“But not with Starsky.”

“Not with him, how?”

“It wouldn’t apparently be ‘off-limits’ with him. He wants it, obvi­ously, or he wouldn’t have asked you for it.”

“You’re right: Apparently, it wouldn’t be off-limits with him. But it would be unnatural.”

“Because he’s a man?”

“Because … I don’t know why because. Maybe I didn’t mean ‘un­natural.’ Maybe I meant to say, ‘demeaning.’ With him, it would be a degrading act of sex.”

“Demeaning for him or you?”

“Him.”

“Why?”

Hutch knew why and didn’t want to say—because he didn’t want to bring up the subject of the rapes again. “It’s a man thing,” was all he could manage instead. “Don’t you get that?”

“A man fucking another man would be a demeaning act, a power trip by one over the other,” Jade assumed. “Is that what you mean to say?”

“Pretty much.”

“So you can’t imagine a man feeling love or affection or desire for another man and wanting anal sex with him; you see it only as a degrad­ing act.”

“Well, I guess not, no. Not in all cases. I think gay guys do it out of love, too.”

“But in the case with Starsky: You can’t have anal sex with Starsky because with Starsky, for some reason—perhaps because you simply don’t love him ‘that way’—it would be an act of power.”

Hutch had to break his resolve to avoid the topic of the rapes. “Because I’d be hinting at what happened to him.”

Starsky didn’t wait for a further explanation of Hutch’s sensibilities. “How could it be demeaning to me if I want it?” Before Hutch could answer, though, Starsky raised his hand to stop the conversation in its tracks. “Doc, let’s not do this. It doesn’t matter why he won’t; it matters only that he can’t and I don’t want to psychoanalyze him over it. I put it on the table. He refused it. I removed it from the table.” He tried a smile. “Then I threw it in the trash and that’s where it will stay—until the garbage truck picks it up.”

Jade looked at Hutch; if Hutch still didn’t want to discuss it, Jade wouldn’t flesh it any further. He waited. Both men just looked at him, and he had his answer. “Fine.” He turned his attention to Starsky. “Were there any bad feelings between you guys after you made that pass?”

“We thought there were.”

* * *

Hutch couldn’t wait any longer. He didn’t understand why Starsky didn’t come for him after the girls left the premises. Or maybe they hadn’t left. Or maybe he did know why Starsky hadn’t come for him. Some­times he just didn’t handle Starsky’s blunt, honest behavior all that well; he reacted impulsively with his own blunt behavior, and his own dismay and insensitive sarcasm never failed to hurt Starsky’s feelings. Not that Starsky was easily offended, or maybe he was, but that Starsky trusted Hutch not to hurt him. So he decided to ease what­ever strain he’d caused, and walked to Starsky’s house.

He unexpectedly found Starsky alone on the covered porch; Starsky sat on the end of a cushioned patio bench, one foot rested on a neigh­­boring chair, and he nursed a can of beer. When he saw Hutch, he didn’t smile, but he did say, “Hey.”

Starsky’s tone of voice didn’t tell of his mood, so Hutch sat care­fully near him in a patio chair. He thought he might apol­ogize for the awk­ward conversation they’d had earlier, but maybe Starsky didn’t want to talk about it—like he’d said. Hutch instead asked about the women. “Did they finally run you out of the house?”

“They went to the mall,” Starsky explained. He studied Hutch’s post­ure and expression, and could tell his partner was reserved. He should never have solicited him. There were some things one should never mention. Anal sex with a buddy was one of them. “They’ll be back Sun­­day,” he added. “Some slumber party in the valley or some­thing after­­ward…”

Hutch locked eyes with him. It was what Starsky didn’t say that grip­ped him. “When did they leave?”

Starsky glanced at his watch. “About an hour ago, maybe?”

That Starsky hadn’t taken advantage of their time alone on the farm meant Starsky had no interest in playing with him that day, after all—and because Hutch had hurt him. “I see,” he said, disappointed.

“No, you don’t see,” Starsky countered him. “It’s not what you think. It’s that I’m too lazy to get off my butt right now to do anything.”

Hutch was mindful of Starsky’s sexual appetite, if only for mastur­ba­tion. “Not for that, either, huh?”

Hutch was right. Starsky was never too lazy to indulge sexual act­ivity. He explained himself more truthfully. “I just need to think through some shit … like, how far am I willing to go? You asked me why I wanted to do something like that, and I couldn’t answer it, even for myself. So that’s what I was doing here: Thinking through shit like that.”

Hutch understood. Just because he’d rejected Starsky didn’t mean Starsky automatically abandoned his need for it. “I wish I could be there for you ‘like that’,” he honestly told him. “I at least wish it.”

Starsky broke eye contact with him to stare into his beer can. “Yeah, well … I don’t expect you to be there for me that way, if that helps, but I figured it never hurt to ask. I suppose I figured wrong.”

“You didn’t. I could have handled my reaction better.”

And that was the end of their apologies. The slate was wiped clean, once again. They sat quietly for a few minutes and listened to songbirds, to insects, to tractors in the distance, to the silence that settled over them there on the porch that early afternoon. But the tran­quil­ity of that sum­mer day would have been more appreciated were it not for the context of their lives in those minutes—the reason they were at that crossroads togeth­er in the first place: A brutal gang rape, Starsky’s confusion and shame, Hutch’s helplessness and sorry. They were as aware of the con­text as they were of each other.

But neither of them made an overture to the other.

At least not right then. They ordered pizza delivery, ate and drank beer, and watched a movie together—at Hutch’s house on his bigger-screen TV. Eventually, they ended up on Hutch’s bed again—in each other’s hands. But somewhere in the night, unbeknownst to either of them, they accidentally stumbled into a miscommunication that would grievously alter the course of their un­breakable bond. It would be weeks before they would realize the dam­age. For Starsky’s part in the misread between them, he would go forward into a mistake from which there was no return. For Hutch’s part, he would deprive them both, and himself, in particular, of the love that held them together.

* * *

SORRY, STARSK

Hutch woke from his restless doze, bolted off the sofa, and hurried to the front window to lay eyes on what he not only expected to see, but what he’d waited all night to see: Starsky’s return.

The Torino’s headlights cut through the black as it came slowly down the private road. Then they turned into Starsky’s driveway and reflected off the closed door of the garage. The brake lights even­tually went off. May­be Hutch would see something in Starsky’s demeanor, in the way he would walk up the porch steps and into his house, and Hutch would be able to pick up some subtle clue, some telltale sign that would help him know whether Starsky had gone through with his inten­tions. Or maybe Starsky would actually come to Hutch’s house after he noticed that the lights were still on there and tell Hutch what hap­pened and the story would be that Starsky had decided against the experiment.

But when Starsky got out of the car, he didn’t look back, and he gave no physical indication—no bowed head, no awkward posture, no appar­ent pace that reflected his mood—about how his plans had transpired. He walked up the porch steps and disappeared through the front door. The lights temporarily came on in the house and stillness returned to the farm. After a couple of min­utes, and when the phone didn’t ring, Hutch went back to his sofa. He didn’t feel like sleeping. And he felt a lot less like it when he noticed that it was four-thirty in the morning. Star­sky had been gone for nearly eleven hours, four of which he’d spent behind the wheel of his car. That left about six-and-a-half hours—plenty of time to have worked up his nerve or gotten drunk enough or talked into what Hutch had tried so hard earlier to prevent him from.

Grace had spent Friday night at her pregnant friend’s house and wouldn’t return until Sunday afternoon, so—naturally—Starsky joined Hutch at Hutch’s house for the weekend. They spent Friday night to­gether, in each other’s company and for each other’s orgasmic pleasure. A couple of times. There was even an attempt for a third handling, but it got aborted—by a silent mis­under­standing. In the wee hours of Satur­day morning, when Hutch returned to bed after a visit to the bathroom, Starsky made a bid for that third exchange, but he hesi­tated at the last second because it seemed to him that Hutch would take the lead, a rare solici­tation that excited Starsky. Starsky’s hesitation, however, made Hutch hesitate; he didn’t want to be rejected.

Hutch’s pause then made them both stall, first the one, and then the other, not realizing they each had un­necessar­ily surrendered.

Hutch thought Starsky had fallen back to sleep.

Starsky thought Hutch had second thoughts.

Hutch then lay in the dark—filled with an indescribable joy just to lie in bed with Starsky, to physically touch him, to be alive with him; so moved was he by that presence, he cried.

And Starsky misread his tears—without letting Hutch know he’d shed them.

After waking that morning, Hutch played the piano to stir Starsky out of bed. They then made pancakes; well, Hutch made pancakes, but they both ate them. By late-morn­ing, they repaired a sec­tion of fence along the driveway, organized office files, and, by after­noon, they had, to­gether, mowed both house lawns, as well as planted one tree between their yards—and positioned a picnic table in its shade.

When Hutch thought Starsky returned to his own house for clean clothes, he looked for­ward to a similar evening of orgasmic enjoy­ment in his part­ner’s hands. Except Starsky never materialized that evening.

Perhaps Starsky napped; they’d worn each other out the night before, after all. Hutch imagined they would make a meal together, sit on the porch, drink wine or beer, and just hang out if they were too tired for much else. But when Starsky didn’t answer his phone and he didn’t return Hutch’s answering machine messages to “come on over and let’s have a bite together,” Hutch got wor­ried enough to walk across the driveway and hunt Starsky down in person. When he opened the front door and called into the house, he got a welcom­ed, “Yeah, come in!” from Star­sky, but then walked into what he felt was a brick wall.

Starsky sounded friendly enough. He was even dressed in a crisp, clean blue shirt tucked into his belted black corduroy slacks, and he looked as if he’d showered, shaved, blow-dried and styled his hair. When he got close enough, Hutch could smell cologne on him, too.

Starsky picked up his jacket from a living room chair and felt around in its pockets until he found his car keys. He glanced at Hutch. “Hey, you,” he said when he noticed Hutch eyed him. “I’ve been mean­ing to call you back,” he defended himself, “but I’ve been busy trying to get outta here. I’m late as it is.” It wasn’t a lie. He planned to call Hutch, but he also wanted to avoid physical contact with him, too. He hoped to get out of the house and then, while on a freeway far away, call him to explain where he’d gone. But he should have known better than to think Hutch would wait that long to hear from him.

“Where are you off to?” Hutch asked.

“Someplace,” Starsky said, hoping to shut down the conversation before it could begin.

Two things struck Hutch. One was that Starsky had made plans and hadn’t told him about them. Not that Starsky was supposed to share every detail of his private life with him, but given that Hutch had left a few phone messages to do something together later, he thought Starsky would have at least called to explain why he couldn’t. The second thing was, wherever Starsky was going and whatever he had planned, it was a big enough deal to have dressed nicely for it. Hutch was aware that Starsky’s plans weren’t his business—at least that’s the vibe he was getting, and therefore he couldn’t come right out and ask him about them—so he joked with him in an effort to solicit even the smallest clue. “You and Grace decided to spend tonight together instead? Meeting her someplace romantic?”

Starsky didn’t answer while he got into his jacket.

His reluctance spurred Hutch’s next question. “Got a hot date with someone else, then?”

Starsky was anxious about his plans. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation—nor would he lie to Hutch—but still he couldn’t help himself when he replied, “That remains to be seen.” He flashed Hutch a gleaming toothy, but insincere smile, hoped his cryptic reply would send the message that he didn’t want to talk about it, that it wasn’t to be Hutch’s concern, and walked to the front door. “You coming? Or shall I lock you in?” As if that was possible.

Hutch left with him. He stood on the porch while Starsky secured the house, and then waited for an opportunity to pump him for more infor­m­ation. When Starsky began to walk past him without saying a word, Hutch caught him by the elbow and forced him to stop and make eye contact. “Hey, c’mon,” he said. “Give a detective a hint at least. Other­wise, I’m going to be bored all night.”

Starsky looked deep into Hutch’s eyes. He knew Hutch wanted the whole truth, but he wasn’t prepared to give him even a fraction of it. “I don’t want to talk to you about this,” he said instead.

“Tell me why. Tell me that much.”

Starsky didn’t even want to do that. He pulled out of Hutch’s grip and descended the porch steps.

Hutch stopped him with a question. “If you don’t have a hot date with Grace, why would you make one with someone else and jeopard­ize what you have with her, especially after everything you’ve promised her about your ‘other’ life?”

Starsky abruptly turned and took a step toward him. “Are you threatening me?” he growled.

“Threatening you?”

“If I don’t tell you where I’m going, you’ll ask Grace?”

“That’s not what I said,” Hutch defended himself. He came to the edge of the porch. “But, I mean, c’mon, you’re acting suspicious.”

“I’m acting like something isn’t your business. That’s the price we pay for living across the driveway from each other. Not everything about my life is yours to know.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Starsky turned toward his car, so Hutch jumped off the steps and came alongside him. “Can you tell me when you’ll be back? May I plan to share a drink with you later?” He still fished.

Starsky was riled and anxious and he didn’t like it. “Do me a favor and don’t wait up.”

Hutch got in front of Starsky and stopped him again. “So it’s none of my busi­ness,” he agreed. “But if I were a guessing man, or a priv­ate detective—which, incidentally, I happen to be—I’d already have some con­clusions based on the few clues you’ve given.”

“I haven’t given you anything,” Starsky disputed him. “I’m just trying to get out of town. I was going to call you from the road.”

“Small favors.”

Starsky couldn’t miss the concerned look in Hutch’s blue eyes. He felt sorry for him, so he finally gave him an honest answer. “I’m going to see a friend of mine.”

“I figured that part out already.”

“Then you’ve figured out which friend, too.”

“Actually, I haven’t. There are two places I can think of that you’d go that aren’t my business. One is to Emma’s and—”

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Starsky said, “and you know it—which leads me to believe you’re baiting me.”

“I wasn’t. You’re going to see Adam Love then.”

Starsky pushed past Hutch toward his car. “And you’re going to make it into the Private Dick Hall of Fame after all,” he said.

Hutch kept up with him all the way to the vehicle. “Then let’s talk about this before you make the biggest mistake of your life.”

Starsky turned to him when he reached the car. “I’ve already made the biggest mistake of my life,” he reminded Hutch, “when I opened the door to those assholes and got into this trouble in the first place—and the mistake I made just now was not getting out of the house ten min­utes sooner.” He affec­tion­ately squeezed Hutch’s neck. “Hutch, baby, I know you mean well. I know you want what’s best for me. I know you believe I’ll live to regret this, but—”

“Baby?” Hutch noted. “Hutch, baby?”

Starsky dropped his affectionate grip and pursed his lips. “I’m just trying to ease the blow.”

“Of what?”

“That what I’m doing is none of your business. It’s my life, my mis­take to make. Weren’t you the one who said I’m human like every­body else and therefore I’m allowed to make mis­takes?”

“Maybe you just haven’t thought it through,” Hutch said. The con­ver­sation had already confirmed Hutch’s worst fear: Starsky was on his way to Adam Love’s house—to get from him, or at least hope to get from him, what he couldn’t get from Hutch. “Maybe you haven’t tried hard enough to talk me into sex with you,” he said. He didn’t want to have sex with Starsky, not that way, not that completely, but he’d rather be the one to have it with him than Adam. He was willing to make the trade.

Hutch’s gesture didn’t go unappreciated. It calmed Starsky some­what, made him realize in that instant that he had a choice. He gave Hutch a small and kind smile as he looked firmly into those blue eyes again. “You’re a buddy, you know that?” He squeezed Hutch’s arm. “But Adam won’t have to go against his nature,” he said. “If he does this with me, it’ll have been because he wanted to, not because he felt he had to. What kind of a friend would I be if I let you do some­thing that goes against who you are?”

“You’d be my friend.”

Starsky couldn’t explain it, not in the time he had left. And feeling sorry for Hutch was the last thing he wanted that evening. He grasped the door handle and opened the car. “I am your friend,” he said. “Be mine and don’t wait up.” He got into the car.

Hutch leaned on his hands in the opened window. “Does he know why you’re driving all that way to see him?”

“He’ll know soon enough,” Starsky said, turning the ignition. He shifted the gear stick into reverse and slowly, carefully, backed out of the drive­way, stopping only when he heard Hutch’s comment.

“You’re not gay, Starsk.”

“Maybe I am.”

Hutch didn’t think an argument would stop Starsky from leaving. He needed something more. “How are you going to feel about not telling Grace beforehand?”

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

“You’re going over there while she’s not home. Seems a bit sneaky to me.”

Starsky shifted into neutral. “She knows what I’ve been feeling,” he answered. “She’ll under­stand. Besides, she isn’t hold­ing me to information before the fact anymore.”

“Everything you just said applies to fucking around with me. You tell me it doesn’t and I’ll back off.”

Starsky couldn’t tell him such a thing. He didn’t want to explain, either.

Hutch tried everything in his power to stop him, but he could feel his influence slip away. He gripped Starsky’s forearm while Starsky held the steering wheel, and said, “Okay … how ’bout you give it another twenty-four hours then? We’ll see what we can work out.”

“How ’bout you let me go?”

“You know I don’t want to.”

“I do know.”

“Then you have to know how helpless this makes me feel.”

“That’s why I tried to keep you out of it.”

Hutch gripped Starsky tighter. “You can’t even give me an hour?”

“For what, man? I have to do this. No one has tried harder to talk me out of it than I have.”

“You know I have the better mind between us.”

Starsky appreciated Hutch’s effort as much as he felt sorry for it. “Let me find out what I need to find out,” he said. “Maybe I’ll turn around at the end of the driveway. Maybe no amount of alcohol is going to get me to go through with it. Maybe I call it off in the middle of the thing and end up in a fist fight with him. May­be I do everything there is to do with another man in the same bed and it answers my ques­tions once and for all and I can get on with my life. I don’t know, Hutch. I just know I have to go in that direction as far as I’m able to go.”

“Then if you have to go there, give me the chance to go there with you.”

It pained Starsky to see such desperation in his partner’s eyes, but Starsky was angry at him, too. “I gave you that chance,” he said. “When I made that first pass at you for a handjob, you were pissed as hell, said if I’d asked and hadn’t assumed, maybe you’da had a different answer. So I asked—and you did. And we hand­le each other and we like it. When I went for that next step, to consider fucking me, I didn’t assume. I asked—and you gave me back an honest answer: ‘I can’t do that for you,’ you said. And now I’m giv­ing you back an honest answer: I can’t let you do what you can’t do.”

“I have the right to change my mind.”

“It’s for the wrong reasons.”

“I didn’t think I could jerk you off, either,” Hutch reminded him, “but that changed.”

Starsky looked through the windshield and stared to the trees beyond it. He would prefer to experiment with Hutch; that had been his pref­erence all along. He’d walked him­self through every conceiv­able path in his journey and came to the same place in the road. But things had gone too far. He knew Hutch didn’t know he was awake the night before—listening to Hutch cry.

Hutch had been a good liar all along. He succumbed to the kisses and the handjobs because that’s what Starsky wanted, not what Hutch, deep down, in his heart of hearts, wanted. At least that’s what Hutch’s crying had told him. It tore Starsky’s heart out to even remem­ber Hutch’s break­down.

He looked back at him. “I choose to fuck up my life with Adam—someone I happen to like a lot—not with you, some­one I already love a lot, someone I’d sell my soul and give up my life for. When the dust settles and the smoke clears, I’m going to need you—and I’d rather you’re not as fucked up by then as I might be, least of all because of me. I’ve done enough damage.”

“I guess that’s supposed to make me feel better, is it?” Hutch said. He didn’t appreciate Starsky’s conclusions. “You could have all that with the same person: Let’s not sell our souls, but we can fuck up our lives with each other and then put the pieces back. Together. We’ve done it before.”

“Not when things were this bad.”

“So it’s a matter of degree.”

They ran in circles. Starsky gave Hutch that hint of a kind smile. “Let go of my arm,” he firmly told him, “and step away from the car.”

They stared at each other.

There was a light breeze and birds sang and the car engine idled. And mixed and hurtful emotions boiled in them both. And there seemed to be no backing down on either side.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me. Let go of me and step away from the car,” Starsky repeated. “Don’t make me tell you again.”

Hutch’s hurt—born from rejection, jealousy, helplessness, and love—kept him from heeding Starsky’s request. “Don’t do this thing you’re going to do. Not with him.”

Starsky shifted the gear into drive—and then he accelerated. Hutch had no choice except to release Starsky’s arm. But as he drove for­ward, Starsky heard Hutch loudly and forcefully punch the top of the Ford’s trunk with his fist. It was as if Hutch had punched him. He stomped on the brake, threw the gear into park, and heatedly got out of the vehicle. “Did you just hit my car?” he asked. He was ready to hit Hutch in return.

“It was either it or you,” Hutch retaliated. He came forward, spur­red by his anger and his pain and his desperation. He’d at least got­ten Starsky out of the car. “Do you want to punch me back?”

Starsky approached him at the rear of the vehicle. “Did you fucking hit my car?” he asked again. He briefly examined it to assess damage and found none. “You think you can treat my car as you please?”

“The car wasn’t what I was going after.”

“You want to hit me?” Starsky angrily questioned him. He got close enough to Hutch so Hutch could hit him. “Will that make you feel bet­ter, cow­boy? Go ahead. Hit me.” He jutted out his jaw to take the punch. “But you’ll have no right doing it. It was me who took the blows for Us. It was our friendship that made those assholes butt-fuck me nearly to death. And now you’ve got no right standing in the way of my trying to make sense of all this shit—even if it’s the wrong thing, even if it’s the second biggest mistake of my life. You’ve got no right. I’m going to do this my way—and my way doesn’t need your help any­more. Got that? You still want handjobs from me? All you have to do is ask and they’re yours—anytime, anywhere.”

Starsky didn’t think Hutch would ever ask; Hutch would never initiate that kind of intimacy again. That first time, there on the living room floor when Starsky did his house accounting, was a freak experience, obvious­ly fueled by Hutch’s deep moral sense of obligation and loyalty, but the further Hutch indulged sexual relations with Starsky, the more he apparently wanted out of them. That had, unfor­tun­ately—and inaccur­ately—become Starsky’s perception. He believed Hutch had failed to fol­low through with a third handjob the night before because, deep down, in his heart of hearts, Hutch didn’t want to engage a man sexually—not even his own best friend—but he didn’t have the courage to admit that truth, lest he hurt Starsky.

In fact, further, Hutch had wept over how help­less and used he felt—without knowing Starsky heard him. And it was that failure and the message it sent that had brought them to that very moment outside the car. Maybe it was a good thing that emo­tions had come to near blows. They enabled Starsky to seemingly leave the door open for Hutch, as he just did, but still give Hutch the escape he needed. In his mind, as tough as it was, Starsky had just freed him.

What could Hutch possibly say to Starsky’s reasoning to visit Adam, at least to the reasons he was aware of? He couldn’t know Star­sky misread his motives the night before, or that Starsky’s con­viction was sound based on that misread. Hutch had taken emotional blows by way of the attacks on Starsky, but he didn’t suffer the physical ones. It was not his place to judge. Or inter­fere. His place was to be there when Starsky needed him—and what hurt him the most was the knowledge that he’d been given a chance to be there for Starsky and he couldn’t morally or physically do it for him. There was, in the end, something greater at play than his loyalty to David Starsky, and that offend­ed him because—up until then, up until Starsky chose a different direc­tion—Hutch was certain nothing stood in its way.

He couldn’t even be angry at Starsky for not giving him that second chance he so desperately wanted—hurt, injured, perhaps mortally, but not angry. Starsky was justified. “Okay,” he finally said, and he said it solemnly and with remorse, not able to argue with Starsky’s defense, and especially not with those fiercely angry, dark blue eyes. “I won’t wait up.”

He had even been certain about that—until about four-thirty in the morn­ing when Starsky finally arrived back from Adam’s.

* * *

“Easy money, boys,” Jade cracked. He sat behind his desk and watched Hutch, then Starsky. Neither of them had said more than the customary greeting and asked for their respective refreshments. They didn’t appear hostile or angry, the way they had during their last visit, but there was definitely a soberness to their overall demeanor. In fact, Hutch looked tired and Starsky looked … hung-over.

Jade had walked to his work space from the lounge area to get his writing pad and the men had fol­lowed. They sat in the two chairs on the off-side of his desk, a place they hadn’t sat before, and not close to each other. “I get paid whether you talk to me or not,” he remind­ed them.

Hutch spoke first. “Starsky spent most of Saturday night with Adam. I tried to stop him from going there, but he wouldn’t listen to reason.”

Bewildered, Starsky scowled at Hutch. He didn’t expect Hutch to begin the conversation with his visit to Adam’s because he thought he’d made it clear that that little-known fact wasn’t Hutch’s business in the first place. “I suppose you’ll also tell the good doc what I did while I was there,” Starsky said snidely.

“I don’t know what you did,” Hutch replied, not returning eye con­tact. They hadn’t spoken about it; Starsky had slept late that Sunday morning, came to Hutch’s house that afternoon for half a sandwich and simply to check in, and then spent the rest of that day and that night at home with Grace. He hadn’t breathed a word to Hutch about what he’d done with Adam, and Hutch didn’t try to get him to, either. It was his own pain that Hutch wanted to talk to Jade about. “I didn’t sleep but a few min­utes that night,” he said. “I lay awake imagining that he was making a huge mistake and I was help­­less to stop it—short of driving over there and turning a hose on him.”

Jade didn’t smile, but he saw Starsky express his displeasure at Hutch with a roll of his eyes. “You were jealous?” Jade asked Hutch.

“I’m still jealous. And pissed. And sorry. You name it, I’m it. And then Starsky came over for a short visit this afternoon and still didn’t say a fucking word about it.”

“Like it didn’t matter to him that it matters to you.”

“It doesn’t matter to him that it matters to me—or he wouldn’t have done it.”

“What did he say when you asked him about it?”

“I didn’t ask. He made it clear before he left that it was none of my business.”

“Then why are you talking about it now?” Starsky demanded to know.

“Because how I feel about it is my business,” was the just as heat­ed reply.

Jade asked Starsky, “Shall we discuss it now? Do you want to?”

“Not particularly.”

“Not particularly because you don’t want Hutch to know about it, or not particularly because you don’t want to talk about it, period?”

“Trick question,” Starsky replied. He rubbed his head to ease his head­ache. “I do want to talk about it, but I don’t want to talk about it if it’s only going to create more jealousy and more resentment and more … ‘sorry.’”

Jade then addressed Hutch. “Sounds like it’s up to you. Can you manage it?”

Hutch looked over at Starsky. “How about this? if I can’t handle it, I’ll let you know.” He toyed with the lace on his shoe, the one that dressed the foot he rested on his knee, trying his best to appear casual, and his best to answer honestly. “But I can’t not have a feeling about it.”

Starsky only caught a second of Hutch’s glance. He wouldn’t look at him for long. He knew Hutch couldn’t not feel something about his private visit with another man—especially for sex. He and Hutch had been through so much together, and a lot in recent months, too. It wasn’t fair to expect Hutch to care less than Hutch did. “I’ll tell you what hap­pened,” Starsky said, “on the condition you don’t kill me for talking about it, let alone for what I did or didn’t do while I was there.”

Jade waited.

Hutch dropped his foot to the floor and exhaled. Then he made Star­sky a promise. “I won’t kill you,” he said. “You know me better than that. You know I can forgive you for any­­thing.”

“Yeah,” Starsky said, “after you’ve beaten the shit out of me first.”

“I see,” Hutch replied, trying to lighten the moment, “so not only do you not want me to kill you, you also don’t want me to beat you to within an inch of your life, either.”

“That’d be nice,” Starsky said with an attempt at a laugh. He air-kissed Hutch, got that rolled-eye response he expected, and then told Jade, “I went over to Adam’s Saturday night.”

“That’s your gay friend, right?”

“Yeah, but more than that, too. He’d been attacked by the guys who attacked me—and in the same way. That’s the case we were working on when I told you a while back that I knew Adam from an invest­igation.”

“Oh.” Jade was momentarily taken aback by that fact, but then the connection made sense. Hutch and Starsky personally knew this gay man from their criminal investigation during the prosecution of the assail­ants. “Both you guys became friends with Adam then, I assume?”

“Adam said, if he had gone through with his complaints against those guys, they’d have been locked up and never got the chance to attack me. So, to help Adam make amends—his words, not mine—we hold these sup­port workshops once a month for other male rape victims. Adam and me have had this ‘thing’—a likeness, I guess you might say—because of this violent crime against us. Hutch has just been along for the ride.”

Jade glanced at Hutch to get a read of his reaction to Starsky’s friend­ship with Adam, but he didn’t see any noticeable response. Hutch wasn’t jealous of Adam over his empathetic connection with Starsky, he assumed. It was the mix of sex in the equation that troubled Hutch. “So it wasn’t unusual that you went to Adam’s house,” Jade said to Starsky.

“It was unusual because I’d only ever been there with Hutch.”

“Did Adam think it was odd, you wanting to come over by your­self?”

“Not at first. When I got there, we ordered a pizza and hung out like a couple of pals—because we are pals.”

“How old is Adam?”

“Late-forties, I think.”

“Older than you by…?”

“Eight to nine years.”

“Good looking guy?”

That was the first question that made Starsky hesitate. He didn’t want to offend or have his answer mean more than it did. “I guess so.”

“Better looking than Hutch?”

“No. But, then, who is?”

“Fat? Good build? What? Give me a picture.”

“I’d say he’s fairly attractive and looks as if he works out, too. He’s a radio deejay and kind of a celebrity, so he stays fit.”

“A single guy?”

“When we met him, he was in a relationship, but his boyfriend coul­dn’t handle the rape thing after Adam finally told him about it—which was what I was afraid Hutch would do, remember? not handle it and walk away—so they broke up not long after.”

Hutch didn’t know that fact; Starsky and Adam had a closer friend­ship than he realized. That didn’t surprise him, though. Adam and Star­sky worked together for male rape victims. Adam’s breakup with Kyle was simply a detail Hutch hadn’t known.

“When did you get around to telling him why you were there?” Jade asked.

“We ate pizza and drank beer and watched some TV first, and then he finally asked me what was up.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said I’d been feeling con­fused about my sexual thoughts and urges since the attacks, and that I thought he might shed some light, given that he was … gay, and that he’d been through what I had.”

“Were you comfortable telling him that?”

“I was as nervous as a virgin in a whorehouse.”

Jade didn’t laugh. Neither did Hutch. And Starsky realized he was anxiously flippant. “I’m nervous now,” he admit­ted. “Cut me some slack.”

“It’s all right,” Jade assured him. “What were you nervous about with Adam?”

“You know …” Maybe Jade didn’t know.

“The penetration?” Jade asked.

“More than that. I was afraid he would ridi­cule me. I was afraid he’d…”

“He’d, what?”

“I was afraid he wouldn’t understand—and that was going to leave me more fucked up than I already was.”

“Did he understand?”

“More than I did.”

Starsky remembered how intently Adam listened to him while he con­­fessed his confusion and his personal torment those past four months. They sat on the sofa in the living room, drank beer, and talked about some­­thing as personal as one’s sexual iden­tity—and the rapes that had sealed their fate with each other.

“Did you tell him what you’ve been doing with Hutch?” Jade asked.

“Not a word.”

It struck Jade that loyalty was still breathing between David Starsky and Ken Hutchinson. Or maybe it was the secrecy of shame.

Even Hutch noticed it. It relaxed him, made him feel less jealous and resentful. Starsky and Adam weren’t as close as Starsky was to Hutch, no matter Starsky’s reasons for not disclosing his and Starsky’s private intimacies to Adam.

“So?” Jade asked. “Where did it go from there?”

“I told him I wanted to experiment with sex with him.”

“Is that how you worded it?”

“Pretty much.” Starsky had been so nervous and felt so stupid. He remem­bered that he blurted it to Adam, to get it in the open. “No sense dragging it out longer than I already had.”

“And what was his reaction?”

Hutch could only guess. He rested his elbow on the chair arm and propped his chin in his hand and stared at the back of Jade’s desk while he waited for the inevitable answer.

“He said that having sex with me would be two fantasies coming true at the same time. One was ‘doing a straight guy’ and the other was doing me.”

“Adam has fantasized about sex with you?” Jade asked.

“Apparently.”

“Did that alarm you?”

“Maybe it would have before I was attacked, or before I knew him, but it didn’t.”

“So lucky him that the straight guy he’d get to ‘do’ would be you.”

“Yeah, like that. Assuming I was straight,” he mumbled.

“So he was eager to have sex with you, then.”

“He was and he wasn’t.” Upon reflection, Starsky understood all over again why he considered Adam his friend. “He said, as much as he wanted to fulfill his ‘most treasured fantasy,’ he couldn’t take ad­vant­age of a situation, especially that one, the one that came from those rapes.”

Hutch was relieved to hear what he just had; maybe it meant that Starsky never went through with the sex.

“So I told him he should try to talk me out of it,” Starsky explained, “and if he couldn’t, then he wouldn’t have to feel like a vulture.”

“Did he make a concerted effort?”

“Concerted?”

“A determined effort?”

“He did. He said that I was probably going to fuck up my life by having sex with him, with a man, I mean. I’m straight, he said, about me, but I told him I was already fucked up. He said we might feel different about each other after­ward, and me not so good about him, and that our friendship was more important than a roll on his bed.”

“But you assured him it wouldn’t get in the way, even if you felt badly about the sex afterward, even if you had terrible regrets about it.”

“Yeah, I convinced him of that—somehow. Maybe he wanted con­vincing.”

“Did he wonder why you didn’t solicit your partner instead?”

“He did—but Hutch isn’t gay.”

“Did he think Hutch is?”

“He just needed the reminder. When we first met Adam, I went to the door to talk to him about the attacks and Hutch stayed in the car. Adam asked me then if Hutch was my boy­friend and I told him Hutch isn’t gay.”

“But, neither are you.”

“Yeah, that’s what you say. But let me tell you what happened. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

Hutch held his breath.

“We talked about my need for man sex,” Starsky con­tin­ued, “and we talked about it for a long time, actually, from every angle you can think of, right down to the specifics of what I expected from him and what I didn’t.”

“And what were those?”

“That I didn’t want to do more than had been done to me.”

Jade had to think back to Starsky’s experience in the hands of his attackers. They’d forcibly sodomized him and then forced him to ‘orally copulate’ them. But he didn’t want to guess. “If I’m hearing you right, you were willing to be anally penetrated and to perform fellatio, but not to reciprocate those things; in other words, you didn’t plan to let Adam fellate you or for you to anally pene­trate him?”

“Fellate me?”

“Give you a blowjob.”

“Well, actually, it was less than that even,” Starsky said. He defin­itely felt awkward having to explain it, but he made the effort despite his embarrassment. “I was willing to be ‘anally penetrated’ and that was all. No giving head—by either of us.”

Hutch slowly exhaled as inaudibly as he could. He had some relief, as little as it was.

“Why not?” Jade asked. “You fellated your attackers.”

“I was forced into it,” Starsky defended himself. “Jesus.”

“But you didn’t willingly allow those men to penetrate you, either.”

“Yeah, but, I mean, oral sex is a really personal thing.”

“So is anal sex.”

“Not as personal as taking a dick in your mouth,” Starsky argued. “You’re going to have to trust me on this.”

“Why not let Adam fellate you?”

“Because if he did me, I’d feel … like I should return the favor.”

“You’d feel obligated.”

“And I didn’t want to feel that way … no matter what we did.”

“Okay. But why limit yourself to the most brutal thing they’d done to you? Why not be willing to penetrate Adam? He you and you him?”

“I don’t know why. Isn’t that why I’m here? To figure all this shit out? Maybe because it was a ‘familiar’ thing? I’d ‘been through it’ before, so to speak. I really don’t know. It’s what I wanted from Hutch, too, remember? I didn’t ask him if I could fuck him. I guess I just wanted some limits and that’s the one I chose.”

“Did Adam have reservations about that, about limiting the encounter to one-sided anal sex?”

“He said he thought I was trying to replay the rapes, but with a different outcome: Out of choice, not from force. Or maybe, he said, I was, deep down, somehow turned on by what they’d done to me and I wanted to relive it, that time for pleasure. Or maybe I hoped the whole experience with Adam would be a lot like what they’d done to me—vicious and nasty—so I could purge myself of it out of ‘will,’ he said.”

“But there was only one way to know which and what,” Jade sur­mised, “and that was to do it. So he couldn’t talk you out of it.”

“I told him he probably could talk me out of it, especially when he said that anal sex, especially that first time, willing or not, might hurt. But I knew that I’d wake up the next morning and be right where I was before I got there if I didn’t at least try it once: I’d still be fucked up and confused and in search of an answer if I didn’t carry through with it—pain be damned.”

“Do you remember the pain of the rapes?”

“I’ll never forget it.”

“But you still wanted to have that experience, of being pene­trated again, even though you knew how badly it could hurt.”

“I knew it could hurt, and probably would, but I didn’t think it could hurt as bad as what they’d done to me. I fought that whole thing, you understand? There were three of them and they repeatedly attacked me— until they literally ruptured my ass. So I imag­ined it wouldn’t be as bad with Adam, since I was willing in his case.”

“Instead of him talking you out of it, you talked him into it.”

Starsky hadn’t looked at it like that before, but maybe Jade was right. He shifted in his chair and felt a little easier; he’d been more in com­mand of his experience than he realized he’d been. “I left the lead to him, though.” He glanced at Hutch to read Hutch’s de­meanor after he realized Hutch had been quiet for a while. It seemed to him that Hutch endured the disclosures: Hutch sat, stone-faced, and stared at the back of Jade’s desk.

Jade took Starsky’s attention again. “What happened next?”

“He had me go into his room and get naked, to get comfortable and relax, so I wouldn’t feel weird taking off my clothes in front of him. Then he said he’d ‘be there in a min­ute.’”

“What did he have to do first?”

“He arrived with a bottle of wine and two glasses.”

Hutch and Starsky always shared the same glass, so Hutch liked that Starsky and Adam weren’t intimate enough to have done like­wise. Still, he hoped Starsky would tell them how he backed out of anal sex at the last second.

“You were undressed,” Jade assumed, “when Adam came into the room.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you feel awkward? Exposed?”

“That, and I felt stupid, too, but he poured wine and he got un­dressed, and we sat on the bed for a while, up against the headboard, and drank and talked about my feeling stupid. I wasn’t sure which was worse: Waiting to get to it, or feeling stupid, but the wine—and the talk—helped. I felt as if he was going to remember I was there.”

“That he’d remember he was with David Starsky, his friend, the victim of a brutal gang rape,” Jade clarified for himself, “a straight guy who was quite confused about his sexual propensities, perhaps because of the rapes, and that he felt awkward and exposed and stupid.”

“Yeah, that guy—except, maybe, for the ‘straight’ part, right?”

“Other than feeling awkward and exposed, did you ever feel com­fortable being nude with him, with a man?”

“We weren’t checking each other out. Well, I didn’t check him out, anyway. I couldn’t even tell you now what he looks like … there. And he wasn’t looking to check me out … until things started to heat up.” He paused to think back over that evening, to recall if he’d felt ‘naked’ in a more explicit way than just awkward and exposed, but couldn’t remember such a feeling.

“Continue,” Jade said.

“I’d had a few beers when we ate pizza and then that glass of wine, and he asked me if I was sure I wanted to go through with it and I said I was, that I hadn’t driven all that way and gotten drunk for nuthin’. So he got off the bed, I remember, and turned the lights down lower to make it more relaxing. Then he put on some music and showed himself off … dancing and swinging his … dick. Well, we got to laughing about all of it, and that it was like we were on a date, and how much it had come back to bite me in the ass that I used those same techniques to bait women, right down to swinging … Well, it struck us funny, me mostly. Then, when he came back to the bed, he said that, though he was a guy, he was also human and I needed to remember that. So he got to kissing me right away—and that broke the ice.”

Hutch briefly closed his eyes to absorb the punch of the image. He no longer felt special to Starsky. Not that way. When he opened them to the silence, he noticed Jade had shifted his eyes to his. He couldn’t hide his hurt, so he shrugged at the doctor to admit to him, without words, that he’d been wounded.

“Starsky kissing a man was reserved for you,” Jade said, as he read Hutch’s mind.

Hutch cleared his throat. “I guess it wasn’t.”

“Do you want us to stop here?”

Hutch lowered his sight to the floor and wrung his hands for half a minute. Emotionally, he wanted to stop; intellectually, he wanted to know what Starsky had done and to hear about it would be the only way to learn it. But Starsky broke into the dialogue and intercepted his answer.

“It wasn’t like kissing Hutch,” he told Jade.

“How not?”

“It didn’t turn me on. I was still scared shitless, may­be. It was a way to get things going, but it didn’t turn me on—not like it does with Hutch.”

“Did you therefore not enjoy it?”

“It served its purpose. But, I mean, when I kiss Hutch, it’s a good kind of burn—and quite a turn-on, and feels natural when I’m doing it, and very … satisfying—in itself.”

“I noticed you used the phrase ‘kiss Hutch.’”

Starsky hadn’t realized he had.

“You didn’t say ‘playing around.’”

Starsky found that interesting, as interesting as Hutch and Jade found it, but he didn’t know what it meant any more than they did. He fol­lowed his instinct. “That was the difference, maybe. When I kiss Hutch, it’s for the sake of the kiss—with him.”

“And then?”

“Then Adam asked if he could handle me,” Starsky said.

“Was that the word he used?”

“I think he said ‘touch’; he asked if he could touch me, fondle my dick, I mean. He said he remembered that I only wanted to do that one thing, but he said if he could touch me, it might help relax me more and enjoy better what he was going to do.” He remembered something else. “I know it seems like I should have dived in—it’s just sex after all, but … fact is … I was sure I wanted to do it, in my mind; not so much in my head.”

“Did you eventually agree to it?”

“He was the experienced one, the teacher. I decided to do what he thought best, so, yeah, I agreed.”

“I take it he handled you right away to help you relax and turn you on? How were you on the bed? Lying next to each other?”

“We were back up against the headboard.”

“Was the handling pleasurable for you?”

“Yeah, but not like it is with Hutch. Maybe because I was still nervous. It wasn’t as hot. I didn’t feel a need to come the way I do when … well … anyway … like the kissing, it served its pur­pose to get me in the mood. And Adam talked to me the whole time, too; he said things to me … like how good I looked and what a ‘good boy’ I was and how sexy I was. I know it sounds cheap and corny, but it helped to make things easier. Maybe that’s why I’ve said such things to women; I think I’m turning them on, but really it’s about relaxing them so they can be turned on.”

Hutch glanced across the room for a few seconds to distract himself from the mental picture Starsky drew. Nothing he heard sound­ed like Starsky had second thoughts. He didn’t know how long he’d be able to listen, but he tried.

“Did you ‘touch’ Adam in return?” Jade asked.

Starsky had to think back over the details of that night before he found his answer. “No. Not really. Nothing I remember. He had me get on my stom­ach after he’d gotten me turned on and he gave me a back rub. It was probably the most relaxing thing we did. I almost fell asleep at one point; he was that good and he took his time to do it. I didn’t feel rushed. But it also made me want to do the thing. I mean, to really do it. I believed I could. That, and I hoped it would make a difference for me.”

Hutch rubbed the fingernails of his one hand against the thumb of his other as the only means he had to expel his apprehension. He stared at the floor while he listened to Starsky recount the night he’d spent with Adam. Though the events progressively un­folded, Hutch con­tin­ued to pray that Starsky had stopped them before he and Adam con­summated the act. That was Hutch’s wish, but his heart sank when he told himself he prob­ably wouldn’t see it come true.

“Then what?” Jade asked.

Starsky swallowed his anxiety to recall what happened next. It hadn’t been what he expected and sharing it embarrassed him as much as it made him feel light-headed by its memory. “He told me not to forget to have a good time, so he said I should play with myself while he took care of business.”

“And what business was that?”

Starsky couldn’t believe it himself on reflection. His heart pounded and he looked off toward the window in the office and searched for his courage to reply. He didn’t know how to say it; it embarrassed him to even think of it.

Starsky’s pause made Hutch brace himself for the answer.

Jade had counseled gay men before—and he’d seen enough gay porn to help with that counseling—so he took the lead to make it as easy for Starsky as he could. “I imagine part of that ‘business’ was making sure you were well-lubricated.”

Starsky could only answer with a nod.

“Were you still on your stomach from the back rub?”

“I had gotten up on my hands and knees, if you know what I mean.”

Jade thought he knew. “Did he use a lubricant—or did he do it orally?”

Starsky flushed. “Both, I think,” he said quickly. “It was pretty wet.”

“But you’re not guessing that he orally lubricated you, are you? You were aware that’s what he did, right?”

Starsky surrendered. “Right. I didn’t have to guess that he was, um, lick­ing me there.”

Hutch clenched his jaw when he realized what Starsky had just de­scribed. He was too offended—emotionally—to even see what he stared at, but not enough to bolt for the door like he felt he might. That Starsky had been anally stimulated by a man, let alone from an oral act, made Hutch feel sick to his stomach.

“I kept thinking, ‘he can’t possibly like what he’s doing,’” Starsky said. “But if he didn’t like it, you couldn’t have proved it by me.”

“Did you like it? Was it pleasing to you?”

“It was shocking at first,” Starsky admitted. “I didn’t know what to think or how I should feel or what I was supposed to do with that. But it went on for some time and the longer it went, the less strange it felt and, between it and playing with myself like he said to do, I got to where I found it rather … nice.”

Hutch drew in and let out an audible breath, but he didn’t move a muscle so neither Jade nor Starsky would be distracted by him. If he could just hold onto his emotions until Starsky finished, maybe there’d be some redeeming value to the explicit details, but for then, it took all of his inner emotional strength, what little of it remained, to stay in the room. He didn’t like the mental pictures Starsky’s words con­jured in his mind, but, at the same time, he was grateful he knew what had hap­pened.

“And then?” Jade asked.

“And then he pushed a finger in me.”

“Did it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Not enough to stop?”

“No. And the longer it lasted, the less it hurt.” He thought back over those initial minutes—and there were many of them. “It was like he wouldn’t do the next thing until he was convinced I was comfortable with the thing he was doing. And I got to where I wasn’t scared any­more. It wasn’t going to be a rape. There wouldn’t be any viol­ence. No one was going to break my bones. I didn’t feel degraded. And I knew if I could get past my mind, I might even enjoy myself.”

“Did you succeed?”

“Yeah. By the time he got two fingers in me and I relaxed enough that that pain even­tually eased, I figured I could handle his dick.”

“And could you?”

Starsky laughed, embarrassed. “Not as well as I thought I could.”

“It hurt?”

“A lot.”

Hutch had his answer—and it wasn’t the one he wanted. He had hoped—he’d desperately prayed—that Starsky hadn’t gone through with sex with Adam, but apparently he had. He closed his eyes to steel himself from the mental image and the hurt it caused him. He couldn’t say why he was that disappoint­ed; if Starsky had relayed explicit details of sex with any woman, Hutch probably would have had an erection him­self by then. But there was something more wrong about it than just the visuals, some­thing beyond the jealousy even, some­thing so deep he couldn’t describe it in words. It stabbed him purely as a feeling.

“Was it safe sex?” Jade asked.

“Before he … pushed inside me … there was a pause where noth­ing was happening, and I finally asked him what he was doing. He said he was having a hard time open­­­­ing the condom. I’m such an idiot. I didn’t understand why he’d use one; at first, I thought it was for birth control. We got a good laugh out of that.” He chuckled even then.

Hutch didn’t laugh. He felt sick. And hurt. He stared at the floor and bit down on his pain. He didn’t think he could withstand another min­ute.

“So when he penetrated you, you were on your hands and knees still, yes?” Jade asked.

“Yes.”

“And it hurt—a lot?”

“At first.”

“Did it ever feel all right?”

“Eventually.”

“Did it ever feel pleasurable?”

“After a while I began to think, ‘Shit, I’m actually doing this’ and then ‘this isn’t so bad. What was I so afraid of?’ But it really only got to feeling good after he had me turn over and he came in me while I was on my back. I don’t mean he came came in me; I mean, you know…”

“Entered you.”

“Yeah, like that. After a while in that new position, he actually got to fucking me and that felt … amazing. That made my head spin.”

“You were then in the missionary position,” Jade assumed.

“I guess so. And I felt the stupidest then, too.”

“Why so?”

“Because I felt like a … woman. I don’t mean women are stupid. I mean, in that position, with some guy fucking me, and me lying there with my butt at the edge of the mattress, him standing on the floor between my legs and me holding my knees wide open, well, shit, it just felt stupid. Embarrassing might be a better word. I can’t believe I’m tell­ing you this. Do you think any of it’s useful information?”

“Do you?”

“I guess just the part that I felt like an idiot sometimes. If I was queer would I have felt that stupid? What am I saying? I let a guy fuck me in the ass. It proves I’m queer. It’s embarrassing as hell to tell you this shit.”

“But what you did wasn’t all embarrassing, was it?”

Starsky softly laughed. “Well, not all, no. It was actually very, um, thrill­­ing, really. If you’d told me I would have felt that good get­ting fucked in the ass, I would have thought you crazy—especially after what I’d been through. But it was too good, maybe, because I can’t stop thinking about it now. You ought to try it yourself sometime. Not with me,” he laughed, “but with someone.”

* * *

“Hey, boy, don’t hide from me.”

Starsky didn’t realize he’d covered his face with his hands. Adam pulled them away, but Starsky kept his eyes closed so he didn’t have to look at Adam and see his own reflection in Adam’s intentful eyes.

“C’mon,” Adam playfully coaxed him. “Show me your pretty smile. I know you’ve got one. A gorgeous one. You think if you don’t see me, I can’t see you?”

Starsky shyly laughed. “Can’t it work that way?” he joked. There was no mistaking that he had been penetrated—by someone male. Or that the pene­tra­tion was sexual, that it was consensual, that it was anal, each stroke into and out of him a long, fulfilling, some­times painful, reliev­ing one, and that the fullness and the ache and the tit­illation were plea­surable, too.

“There’s no shame in enjoying this,” Adam told him. He loved Starsky. He wanted liberation for him.

That was it, wasn’t it? Starsky felt ashamed. He shouldn’t allow a man inside him that way. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t morally right. If only he hadn’t drunk so much, he’d have better control over his senses. He would never have agreed to this otherwise, would he have? But he couldn’t escape the com­pelling sensation, either. Or the desire it caused him for more of the same. Adam’s penis in his anus was all-consuming and it was mesmer­izing and it grew desperately necessary with each of Adam’s careful thrusts. Starsky let go of his knee to take himself in hand, to build on the arousal the pene­tration deeply stirred in him, but Adam caught him before he could.

“Not so fast,” he advised him. “I love fuck­ing your ass. I’m going to take my time and make this last.”

The words made Starsky quietly laugh. Not in his entire life­time did he think he’d hear such things. He gripped his knee again when Adam put his hand back on it so Starsky would hold his leg open and Adam could penetrate him deeper still.

Starsky had never experienced the kind of pleasure Adam gave him, despite all those women he’d made love to and had sex with through­­out his lifetime. None of it felt the way he felt then with each of Adam’s deep pushes into him, only to feel Adam withdraw and push harder into him that next time. Starsky didn’t know what he looked for when he arrived at Adam’s door that night, but he had no idea he’d be as re­warded for it as he was then. If the radiating ecstasy from each of Adam’s deeper and progressively aggressive thrusts hadn’t been as overwhelming as it was, it may have scared him. He couldn’t not look at Adam; he had to see what magical power the man possessed to have heightened his delirium to that degree.

Adam devoured Starsky with his eyes: Starsky’s perfect and well-muscled build, his haired chest and olive skin, Starsky’s penis nested against his belly in a patch of black hair, engorged and obviously want­ing. He couldn’t not touch Starsky, but he didn’t want Starsky to climax then, either, so he massaged Starsky’s scrotum instead and heard him moan. “That’s it, honey,” Adam said. “You just do your part: Relax and enjoy yourself.”

Starsky couldn’t help but enjoy it; it was pleasing and arousing and promised to be lustfully satisfying when it ended. He noticed that Adam watched the penetrations; the look on Adam’s face was so intent on what he saw that Starsky felt a throb of pleasure in his own erec­tion just from imagining how it must have appeared to Adam. He noticed Adam’s perspiration, his mesmerized blue eyes, his mussed dark hair, and his athletic build, the mus­cles in his arms, and further imagined the strength in Adam’s thighs and buttocks that drove such a hard sex-muscle in between his own.

“Oh, yeah, you’re a pretty boy,” Adam gushed as he nurtured his own arousal and made himself harder still. He watched his penis dis­appear and then reappear—over and again. The con­dom glis­tened and Adam’s thrusts were determined. “Take it like a man, baby,” he further encouraged him. He pushed deeply into Starsky, as far in as he could physically go, and then watched Starsky’s mouth open, heard his heavy pant, then waited for and consumed Starsky’s moans in his more fervored thrusts. “You like my dick in your ass, don’t you, David?”

On a pant, Starsky managed to say, “yeah.”

“You love it, don’t you, boy?”

Starsky couldn’t think. He moaned instead.

“You had no idea what you’d been missing all your life.”

Starsky closed his eyes and heavily panted, but he quickly opened them when he felt Adam squeeze one of his erect nipples—and then the other. The sen­sation was pleasantly shock­ing. “Fuck,” he whis­pered.

Adam briefly smiled at him. “Oh, yeah, fuck, baby. That’s what we’re doing. I knew you’d love it.” He himself wanted to make the exper­ience last a lifetime, but he was fast overcome by the physical pleasure and the visuals of Starsky beneath him—of Starsky’s muscled arms and his hips, of his haired chest, navel, and belly, of his expres­sions of painful bliss, of his younger and hand­some face and thick-lashed closed eyes, by Starsky’s moans and his anticipatingly erect penis, the size and shape of it alone, and the way Starsky had begun to whim­per, like a help­­­less boy or, rather, like a grown man in the throes of a pain-filled ecstasy—and Adam knew his dream to make it last forever would never mater­ialize.

Still, it was a fantasy come true: To ‘top’ a straight man, and Starsky espe­cially. It would take practice to savor such an experience; it would at least take stamina and willpower, but Adam quickly succumb­ed. He merci­less­ly thrust into Starsky; the slapping sound of their skin as Adam’s hips and groin rammed Starsky’s buttocks from each forceful pene­tration and nearly complete withdrawal was, by itself, spurring and halt­ing at once. Adam didn’t expect to last, just to endure long enough for Starsky to climax first, to give Starsky the richest experience he had to offer. But the finish wasn’t up to Adam.

He urgently pulled out of Starsky with the hope he did it in time to enjoy his orgasm without the condom, but he barely got it removed when he ejaculated by his own hand. He success­fully aimed for Star­sky’s penis and watched the pulse of his semen be delivered there in creamy white spurts. “Fuck,” he whispered—until his climax ended. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” The realization of his fantasy had been as powerful as the dream itself. And he could tell Starsky was turned on by the idea, too, because Starsky grabbed his own penis, slickened with Adam’s cum, and squeezed himself, in return, to force his own ejaculation.

Starsky had never masturbated himself to climax, but he couldn’t wait. He almost succeeded, too, except Adam quickly pried him off himself and masturbated him instead, so Starsky’s pleasure would be all that more erotic and titillating with someone else’s hand. Starsky wailed as he climaxed, completely absorbed in it, so en­gulfed was he that he wasn’t aware of anything else.

Adam watched Starsky’s semen pulse onto Starsky’s stomach, to mix with his own. He fondled Starsky’s scrotum again and felt his un­controllable shudder throughout his body while he listened with delight to Starsky’s full and lengthy moan. “You’re so fucking hot,” he mur­mured as he drank in the look of the man climaxing beneath him. “God, boy, what you do to me.”

“What you do to me,” Starsky eventually said, panting heavily, his eyes still tightly closed as he basked in the aftermath of his release.

For just shy of a minute there, it was only bliss Starsky felt, pure and paralyzing. There had been no rapes. There was no journey of self-examination. He didn’t have sex with a man, but with another human being. He wasn’t confused or ashamed or guilty. He was purely in the moment, at the pinnacle of sexual grati­fication, and the price he’d taken to reach it had been well worth what he paid.

But the world seeped back in a minute later. He was aware that Adam stood between his legs at the edge of the mattress. Adam released the grip on Starsky’s penis and Starsky noticeably exhaled. Drained and spent, he slowly opened his eyes and gazed into the equally exhausted expres­sion on Adam’s face. Starsky was breathless and he was drenched in sweat and semen and he was wasted. He also couldn’t tell, at least not in those minutes, despite the warm eye contact between them, whether the union had salvaged his soul.

Perhaps it hadn’t. Maybe all he accom­plished was an act of anal sex with a man. The ‘experiment’ had failed and the stark reality of what he’d done had come home.

* * *

Hutch stood then. He couldn’t sit another second. He stared at Jade for rescue. But all Jade had for him was a question. “Are you all right?”

“Am I?” Hutch hoarsely asked. He didn’t know what else to say except what he felt. “I think I just got killed.”

Jade could tell, by the serious emotion in Hutch’s voice, by the panic in his eyes, by his tense posture, and by his words, that the man was in deep trouble. “Sit back down,” he ordered him. “Let’s walk through this.”

“I’ll walk all right,” Hutch replied. He didn’t think he could, but he some­how managed to cross the room to the door. He heard Starsky call his name behind him, but he turned the handle anyway and, visibly shaken, he left the room—without another word.

“Jesus,” Starsky swore. “What he feared would happen, had. “He’s disgusted by me.”

“He’s not disgusted,” Jade said. “He’s hurt and he’s sorry. He’s sorry you got raped and it fucked you up. He’s sorry you’ve been con­fused and searching. He’s sorry he couldn’t be there for you. He’s sorry you had sex with a man—and that you enjoyed it, and that that man wasn’t him. He’s sorry he can’t handle it. He’s just sorry, Starsky.”

“Why is he hurt?”

“Because he couldn’t give you what Adam gave you.”

“He can’t,” Starsky explained. “It’s not his nature. So why should he be hurt then?”

“Because he didn’t want you to want something from him he couldn’t give you. And he hoped—if you understood that he couldn’t give it to you—that you wouldn’t want it from anybody else, either.”

“I shouldn’t have let him listen in. I should have just told him I’d gone through with it and left it at that. Now he’s got these mental pictures of me he’ll never get out of his head.”

“It sounds to me like he’s got worse ones ingrained there already. He did witness the rapes, after all. But he’s an experienced man. He knows what sex entails; he’s probably even watched porn, no?—not that what you did was pornographic, but I mean he knew what he might hear. He thought he could handle it. He wants to be able to handle it, but he’s not that strong. He’s not as strong as you think he is, not when it comes to you. I mean, he’s strong for you because that’s expected of him, but he’s not so tough overall. You’re his one weakness.”

It was a truth Starsky could barely handle without overwhelming guilt. “So what do I do now?”

“About Hutch or about Adam?”

“About Hutch.”

“I’m guessing he’ll be back,” Jade imagined. “He probably just needs to blow off steam. Give him time to shake this so it’s manage­able.” On second thought, Jade added, “But if he’s not back in half an hour, go look for him.”

* * *

Hutch heard Starsky come up behind him. Although he leaned against the passenger side of the car in the parking lot with his arms crossed, lost in serious thought, he knew Starsky approached him. They’d been embedded in each other’s lives to such a degree that they instinctively recog­nized the sound of the other’s footsteps, the cadence of a walk, a quiet breath; it was never conscious, but purely a feel. He didn’t have to turn around to have it con­firmed; he didn’t have to see to believe Starsky was behind him, so he didn’t look. Instead, he stared into the alleyway and waited to hear the key in the door lock so he could get into the car.

Only when he heard that sound, followed by the opening of the door, then Starsky getting into the car, the door closing, and the lock on the passenger door being lifted, did Hutch turn around and join him.

Neither of them said a word to each other. They rolled down their windows and left the area.

The men were each in the grip of differing, but powerful emo­tions. Hutch felt mostly dismayed and aggrieved; Starsky was embar­rassed, ashamed, and guilty, feelings that hit him that afternoon after he in­advertently offended Hutch. For the first time in their friendship, he sincerely wished he had never shared the private details of his life with him. And that Hutch didn’t talk to him made the ride home all the more painful.

As they drove that north-bound freeway, the wind whipped through the opened windows, and Starsky reflected to the morning he first kissed Hutch, there in the tall grass while the trees shaded them from above. He had kissed Hutch out of pure emo­tion, a passion born from his gratitude. He remem­bered, even at the moment he man­eu­vered the Torino in heavy traffic with an obvious strain between them, that one of the things he was thank­ful for was the fact that Hutch had never judged him.

Until then. Now it all seemed ironic.

Go back and start over? Starsky actually wished for it. He’d not lie that close to Hutch that morning, so he wouldn’t have been tempt­ed to kiss him. Or maybe he should go further back. If he’d turned down Hutch’s offer to buy him that first house, he wouldn’t have been in it when those men came knocking. He’d trade the new house to have had the foresight to see where it all led before he got there. New rules: Don’t accept gifts from Hutch. Don’t share private details with him. Don’t lie so close.

Hutch couldn’t stand the silence in the car another second. He tore away from focusing on the passing scenery and glanced over at Starsky, to Starsky’s profile, only to be startled by what he saw. If he wasn’t mistaken, and he believed he wasn’t, there were tears streaming from Starsky’s eyes behind his sunglasses.

When Starsky sensed Hutch’s atten­tion, he pretended to briefly need the sideview mirror so he could bury the evidence of his humili­a­tion in the pause.

“Just explain it to me, will ya?” Hutch implored him. “Tell me why you needed to fuck some guy so badly that you actually did it.”

“I didn’t fuck him,” Starsky defended himself. “He fucked me.”

“Word games.”

Feeling patronized, Starsky said, “Says the master word game player. Boy, I’d give anything…”

“To what?”

“To not have told you about it in the first place.”

His wish riled Hutch. “Too late, pal. I know the gory details. Now help me under­stand them.”

Starsky was sorry for more than telling Hutch about his experi­ence with Adam; he actually regretted that first kiss he gave Hutch and for his responsi­bility in everything that had transpired since. “I’m sorry about all of this,” he said. His voice was heavy with his hurt. “If I could give you the house back, I’d do it in a second.” He shifted in his seat, enough to fuel his cour­age. “In fact, given how things are going between Grace and me, it might be best if I actually do that: I’ll sell the house I’ve got rented, the first one, the one they took me from, give you back your money, and move in with her. You can rent out the house on the ranch. Then I won’t owe you anything.”

Hutch was aggrieved on another level. “You don’t owe me any­thing; those were gifts. All that shit’s in your name already, anyway, so why fuck with it? I’m just trying to understand—”

“Then understand this: It’s not your business why I did what I did—or even that I did it. I thought you wanted to know—so you could help me figure it all out.”

Starsky was Hutch’s business. The sexual relations he’d had with Starsky made Starsky’s and Adam’s affair his business. “I beg to differ,” Hutch said, “about what you did not being something I have an actual right to know.”

“Fuck you.”

Hutch’s heart pounded. He knew Starsky was livid, but he was as emotionally charged, too. “So, that’s it? Drag me into this and then exclude me when I’m inconvenient or because I’m not reacting the way you wish I would? C’mon, Starsk. Don’t jerk me around. You’re get­ting way too good at that.”

“I never put a gun to your head,” Starsky argued. He changed lanes, into the far right one, into the slow lane. He felt too rattled to maintain his pre­vious speed. “I’m not going to fight with you while I’m driving.”

“Then don’t fight with me. Talk to me. Help me understand.”

Starsky had to hit the brake to keep from riding the car in front of him. It further pissed him off; his argument with Hutch distracted him and he felt vulnerable behind the wheel. “You said you could handle it, so which part of ‘fuck you’ didn’t you hear just now?”

“Do you remember the day we met Adam?” Hutch retaliated. “You called guys like him ‘queer.’ You’ve used words like ‘unnatural’ and ‘nasty’ to describe homo-sex behavior. Guys like Adam are ‘fags.’ Your words.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

Starsky was incensed that Hutch didn’t seem to have any grasp on his struggle and that he failed to appreciate how confused he’d been, and that Hutch no longer had patience for him. He didn’t respond to the provo­cation. He fumed, made a concerted effort to concen­trate on his driving, and prayed Hutch would leave it lie.

But Hutch was too angry to let go—and he said things he knew he’d regret even as he said them. “Inside of three months, you’ve crossed the line with me, coerced me into reciprocated handjobs, and got your­self purposefully ass-fucked by a bonafide fag. I mean, c’mon, man, you can’t give me any sane reason why this is happening to you? I mean, I get how you got fucked up, but we’re talking sanity now, aren’t we?”

Starsky hit the turn signal and exited the freeway.

“Where are we going?” Hutch demanded to know.

The adrenalin pumped through Starsky’s veins as palpably as it was painful. Somehow he managed to get off the exit ramp, cross two lanes of traffic, and abruptly stop the car in the first opened space at the curb. He braked hard, threw the gear into park, and broke a sweat. “Drive your­self home, you son-of-a-bitch,” he snapped, seething with rage as he got out of the vehicle and slammed the door. He couldn’t remember a time he’d been angrier at Hutch. His emotions were tortur­ous and con­tra­dictory. The person he needed the most, his com­rade and his confi­dant of ten years, was furthest away at that minute—and yet he didn’t want him any closer, either.

At first, Hutch thought Starsky had asked him to take over the driv­ing, but then it dawned on him that Starsky hadn’t gone around the car; instead, he’d actually walked away from it. Hutch got out and called after him. “Hey, c’mon!” he yelled. “Don’t be a four-year-old!”

Starsky raised the finger at him—and kept walking.

* * *

When Hutch pulled into Starsky’s driveway late that afternoon, he noticed a compact car already there, and one he didn’t recog­nize. Per­haps Starsky had actually rented a car to get home. Had he been that pissed off?

Hutch had sat for some time in the Torino, right off that free­way exit ramp, and waited for Starsky to come back on his own volition; when he didn’t, Hutch drove around the neigh­borhood and looked for him instead. After an hour, he reluctantly abandoned the search and returned to the farm—and he arrived there just as angry.

As he exited Starsky’s car, he caught sight of movement at the front of Starsky’s house and quickly confronted it, alarmed and then riled to see Adam Love descend the porch steps and approach him.

“Hey, Hutch,” Adam greeted him. “Where’s Starsky?”

That Hutch didn’t know where Starsky was, and that Starsky was­n’t already home, infuriated Hutch further. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he snapped. He stopped him­self from getting closer when the urge to phy­sically strike Adam nearly got the better of him.

Adam stalled when he heard more in Hutch’s tone than in his words. He stumbled with a reply. “I was … invited … to dinner.”

“Who invited you?”

“Grace.”

Hutch noticed Adam was attractive; he was dressed neatly, well-groomed, and he appear­ed rested. Had he been in the house? Was Grace home? Had she really invited him to dinner? Had Starsky called Adam from a payphone while he walked city streets that afternoon? And was it a ‘get-even’ invi­tation? So what if Adam was innocent? It didn’t excuse him. “You’re tak­ing advantage of a situ­ation and I don’t like it,” Hutch said in a threatening voice.

Adam could tell Hutch didn’t like something. There was a fire in Hutch’s eyes; he was tense, poised for a fight, and appeared as if he might lunge at Adam if Adam said the wrong thing. “I came looking for Starsky,” Adam defended himself. “I haven’t heard from him in a couple of days. When I got here, Grace said I could wait for him and then she invited me to stay for dinner.”

Hutch balled his fists and took another step toward him. “You’re going to sit at her table after what you’ve done with her boyfriend? Or is he now officially your boyfriend?”

Adam glanced away in a silent search for an escape route. His heart pounded with his fear. He’d been attacked by straight men before and they nearly killed him. If Hutch took another step closer, Adam would have to run. He was no fighter. He remembered that Hutch was an ex-cop, and he knew Hutch meant busi­ness. He could see it in the angry lines of Hutch’s face, in his hostile stare, and he could hear it in Hutch’s aggressive tone of voice, not just in his accusatory words.

“You knew better,” Hutch fumed. He wanted to hit Adam; he want­ed to hit somebody, something, to purge himself of his burning dis­ap­pointment and hostile jealousy. But he was also a seasoned police officer and he knew better than to strike someone who wasn’t tech­nic­ally a threat, nor even some­one as angry as Adam made him. “Why would you want to fuck a straight guy anyway?” He said things he didn’t mean. “Is that some mantle or rite of passage into Fairyland for you guys?”

One thing Adam was sure of then: Starsky had told Hutch about the sex he’d had with him. Why would Starsky have shared something that private with Hutch—especially given Hutch’s obvious rage over it? Didn’t Starsky know his partner well enough to know how he’d react? Adam was suddenly the third party and he felt further threat­en­ed be­cause of it. He safeguarded himself. “I meant no harm.”

“You meant no harm?” Hutch said with a laugh of disbelief. “He’s a light­weight in this thing. He doesn’t know which end is up. You’d have to be blind not to see that!”

Adam swallowed his fear long enough to explain himself. “I didn’t go after him. He came to me.”

“He came to me, too,” Hutch replied with audible contempt, “but you don’t see me fucking him.”

Adam didn’t know how to answer that, but he knew it was futile to try. It might even prove dangerous. He stood, helplessly, and waited for Hutch to either attack him or retreat—and he hoped for the latter.

“I don’t care how you do it,” Hutch advised him, “but you make an excuse for why you can’t stay for dinner—or I’ll give you one. Do you hear me? Have I made myself clear?”

“Okay,” Adam promised. He knew an ultimatum when he heard it.

The door to the house opened then and distracted them. Grace step­ped onto the porch and came to the edge of the steps. She was obviously concerned, maybe a little frightened, and made firm eye contact with Hutch, alarmed by the fury on his face and by the pain-filled burn in his eyes. “Are you all right?” she asked.

It was a question Hutch couldn’t answer. But he also felt suddenly sorry. Sorry that he couldn’t tell her why he was angry at Adam. Sorry that she had been played for a fool—and by himself no less, too. He had been as guilty. He once sat at her dinner table after what he’d done with her lover behind her back. There she was: Wearing a fitted sundress and sandals, appearing as purely innocent outwardly as he knew her to be inwardly.

He felt ashamed then and looked at Adam, who stood frozen with fear and returned his stare with a different intensity. Under his breath, and despite how much Grace may have already heard, or what she was about to hear then, Hutch said to him, “Tell the asshole his keys are in the igni­tion—and that you and he can go fuck yourselves again for all I give a shit.”

He turned on his heel and headed for his residence across the drive­way. He may have hurt Grace just then; he may have hurt Starsky by break­ing them up. That wasn’t his intention, but—for the first time in his life—his instinctive loyalty to Starsky was overshadowed by his deep­ening personal pain, the one Starsky had inadvertently caused him when he stood­ fast against Hutch’s plea for a second chance. He blamed Starsky for the hostile situation with Adam. If he was lucky, even Star­sky would come to see it that way.

But once inside the house, Hutch sank to the floor against the front door. He held his head in his hands. “Oh, what have you done?” he chastised himself. He never meant to hurt Starsky—nor Grace. What had he done? He appreciated that he’d overreacted—at least, reacted—to a grievance he felt had been leveled against him. And when he remembered the specifics of that action, he then whispered, “Oh, Starsk, what have you done?”

* * *

It was a moon-lit night. Hutch sat on the top step of his porch, sipped a beer, and gazed down at Starsky, who gazed up at him. The two of them silently looked at each other in the light from the living room window. Neither knew what to say. They weren’t even certain words were needed at all. They both understood the dire situation. They shared a guilt, for different reasons. They shared an unspoken anger, for different reasons. But they also shared a love—for the same reason. Nothing would break it—despite their accidental efforts. Nothing could.

Hutch broke eye contact to sip from his beer. He couldn’t have felt more ashamed than he did—nor as hurt as he’d been. The break enabled Starsky to make the next move. He walked the three steps to sit beside him. They didn’t touch—except loosely through their clothes.

Starsky spoke first. “You’ve said in the past that you could forgive me for anything.” Was that still true in light of the circumstances—specifically what he’d done with Adam? He would understand if a pardon wasn’t forthcoming.

“Forgiven,” Hutch said in a sincere, but hushed voice. There had been no hesitation. “I wonder if that sentiment works in reverse.”

It took Starsky a moment to decipher Hutch’s meaning. “Yeah,” he finally said, and then lightly added, “You’re the love of my life.”

“Because no one else will have you?” Hutch joked.

“She’s going to keep me,” Starsky replied. He looked across the driveway, back to his house, with its lit porch, knowing Grace was then asleep. They’d had another hours-long conversation, with tears and remorse, that time mostly his. It was late now; past midnight. He didn’t expect to find Hutch on the steps, but he certainly had plans to wake the man if need be. He wouldn’t sleep otherwise and he didn’t think Hutch could, either. Obviously, he couldn’t.

“She deserves better than both of us,” Hutch commented. “That woman isn’t human.”

Starsky silently agreed.

And so they sat, as quietly, for some minutes, neither saying a word. They stared into the dark, felt each other’s presence, listened to nighttime insects, mused about what they’d done, both the good and the bad of it.

“I remember when you used to like to kiss me,” Starsky then said. He said it softly, whimsically, with affection, and it was received in kind.

“I still do,” Hutch told him, handing him the beer bottle. “I mean to say, I’m sure I will again.”

“It really wasn’t the same,” Starsky replied, about kissing Adam. He drank some of the beer and then said, “It’s not even the same when I kiss Grace. You’re different. You’ve always been different.”

“In a good way, I hope.”

“What other way is there?”

Hutch laughed quietly. He knew Starsky did his best to make verbal love with him there on that step in the midnight dark, despite that he didn’t think he deserved it. He accepted the beer bottle when it was handed back to him.

They sat again for several minutes, without words. Only beer passed between them. That, and a barely noticeable breeze. It had a way of cooling them, but bonding them again, too.

“You’re my pal, Hutch,” Starsky said. It wasn’t the first time he’d said those words. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“You’re mine, too,” came the affectionate reply, “and ditto.”

“Will you kiss me now and prove it?”

Hutch laughed, more audibly that time, and looked Starsky in the eye. The light from across the driveway shone on Starsky’s face, in his pleading eyes, casting shadows from his brow and nose. One thing Hutch also liked the look of were Starsky’s lips, their thinner shape and apparent invitation. Starsky’s dark hair, that still-visible blue in his eyes, his longer nose, more masculine posture, his scent and his closeness, all tugged at Hutch. “Is it still okay with your keeper?” Hutch asked.

“She told me to come over here and make amends.”

“But she didn’t mean with a kiss,” Hutch imagined.

Starsky studied Hutch’s appearance, his blond hair and blue eyes, his fuller lips and perfect face, his maleness and his closeness, too. “She must have,” he said, to close the gap between them, “because she said she’d see me in the morning.”

* * *

Jade addressed them when he noticed the men sat beside each other again at their next session. “Are you guys back to playing with each other sexually or are you both just playing nice today?”

Together, Hutch and Starsky answered, “No.”

“No, what?” Jade asked.

“No,” Hutch said, “to both questions.” He sipped from his glass water bottle and then parted with a half-truth. “Starsky’s moved on to bigger and bet­ter things, I think—and I’m learn­ing to live with it.”

“Have you, Starsky?” Jade asked him. “Playing with Adam again?”

“No.”

“No Adam?”

“I said no. I meant no.”

Hutch was surprised to hear Starsky hadn’t met with Adam since. That night on the porch, when he and Starsky ‘made amends,’ Starsky solicited him for an overnight stay, but Hutch turned him down. He told Starsky that he himself needed to make amends to Grace, too, and he would do that by giving her man back to her that night, after the terrible afternoon he’d caused her. All along, since then, he thought Starsky found pleasure with Grace and Adam instead.

“Have you talked to him,” Jade asked Starsky, “or did Hutch run him off for good?”

“He and me are okay.”

“Adam and you?”

“Yeah. I see him Thursday night,” Starsky said. “We have our month­ly sup­port group meet­ing.”

“You ‘see’ him see him? or you see him, as in, you run into him there?”

“That last part.”

“Do you think you’ll do anything personal with him Thursday night?”

“We always go out for a beer afterward.”

“You know what I mean.”

Starsky smiled at Jade. “No getting around you, is there? Let’s say I don’t have plans. But even if I did, that’s my business from here on out.” He glanced at Hutch to let Jade know he meant that whatever he did with Adam, he would keep to himself or talk about in a private ses­sion.

Jade understood. “Okay. Are you and Hutch all right?”

“We’ve been through worse. And I figured I had it coming.”

“It, being?”

“His temper. His being pissed off at me. I had it coming. I’ve made a mess of everything. When I got home, I had to deal with Grace, but she’s the one who told me to go talk to him, to make amends, she said. So, I went over there that night and joined him on the step—like we always do.”

“And just like that, it was over?” Jade asked.

“Sort of.” He nudged Hutch. “Tell him what you said after you rejected my pass—”

“Hutch rejected your pass?”

“He thought we should show Grace more respect that night and have me sleep in my own bed.”

Jade was impressed, but didn’t comment.

“Go ahead,” Starsky encouraged Hutch. “Tell him what else you decided.”

Hutch recalled it and then said, “I told him that, as long as what he’d done with Adam—or did with Adam—doesn’t fuck him up, I could live with it.”

“Why the change of heart?” Jade asked him.

“No change. I still don’t like it.” In fact, he hated it. He loathed it. He despised it more than he had words in his vocabulary to measure—a contempt triggered by deeper feelings he decided to keep to himself. He’d done enough damage, despite the wrongs he felt had been done to him. If he gave it a second’s thought, he’d lose his temper even then, so he successfully dismissed it to keep his eyes on the prize, which was Starsky’s mental and emo­tional well-being in the long run. “What he and Adam did together hap­pened,” he explained, matter-of-factly, sip­ping water to cool his re­pressed rage. “I can’t change that fact; it is what it is.”

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed. “That’s the shit he said. ‘It is what it is.’”

“And what they did beyond that first romp on Adam’s bed,” Hutch continued, “assum­ing as I did that they were still at it all this time—isn’t my business, so long as it doesn’t fuck Starsky up.”

“Except I’m not ‘still at it’,” Starsky reiterated. “I only did it the one time.”

“Let’s talk about Grace then,” Jade replied, hiding a smile at Star­sky’s sarcastic tone, “and what she heard Hutch say to Adam.”

“She heard him tell Adam that he and I could go fuck each other again,” he reminded Jade.

“But did she take it literally?”

“How do you mean?”

“She understood that Hutch was being truthful, that you and Adam had actually ‘fucked each other’ once already and not simply as a base­less, figurative threat on Hutch’s part?”

Starsky was ashamed and dismayed by the fallout of that after­­noon. When he sensed Jade’s patience, he realized the doctor want­ed him to explain. “Adam went home; he didn’t stay for dinner. He didn’t even wait for me to get back. I found Grace crying on our bed.”

Hutch was the one to feel shame then. He was the reason for her pain and he hated that thought. “I’m sorry,” he said under his breath.

Starsky heard him, but continued. “She told me what happened and I confessed to it. I’m a weak man around a crying woman. It was another one of those long nights.”

“Did you want to kill him?”

“Adam?”

“Hutch.”

“No,” Starsky said honestly. “He was apparently hurt, too.”

Hutch was about to say it didn’t excuse him, but Starsky cut him off.

“All of this is my fault,” Starsky said. “I might be confused about what I’m doing, but I’m pretty clear on who’s hurting who.”

“And Grace decided to stay with you,” Jade noted, “yet again.”

“Like Hutch said: Grace is inhuman.” He said it with a quiet and disbelieving laugh, and then added, “She was upset because I continue to tell her things after the fact, not because I do those things. I told her I tell her after the fact because I’m afraid she’ll stop me from doing them—and I can’t not do them. She said if I’d had an affair with a woman, she would leave me, but she under­stood why I wanted Hutch that way.”

“Wanted him or want him?”

Starsky didn’t plan to start a different argument, so he ignored the question and hoped the look he gave Jade would make the doctor abandon it. “She said if I’d told her about my plans with Adam, she would have helped me understand he wasn’t the one I want­ed to play with and I would never have gone through with what ended up being a mistake.”

“Did she give you a reason why she thought Adam wasn’t the one?”

“Yeah, some stupid thing,” Starsky replied sarcastically, “like, Adam and I don’t love each other like that.”

“Does she think Hutch loves you like that?”

“She thinks Hutch—”

When he stopped himself, Jade pushed him. “She thinks Hutch, what?”

“You can say it,” Hutch told Starsky. He wanted to know what Grace thought of him, especially after he’d hurt her.

“She thinks Hutch will do anything for me,” Starsky said.

“I guess she doesn’t know him as well as she thinks she does,” Jade observed.

“I guess I don’t know him as well as I think I do, either,” Starsky said flip­pantly, “because I also thought he’d be the one to fuck me.”

“Ouch,” Hutch said in a hushed voice. “But, for the record, I did try to let you let me.”

Neither of them had really wanted to talk about it that after­noon, so neither said another word.

After a moment’s silence, Starsky said with mock cheerfulness, “Well, we’ve all learned some­thing from this, so to answer your question,” he said to Jade, “she stayed with me. And because I can’t seem to tell her something before the fact, she asked me to promise to tell her after the fact, so she didn’t have to hear it from someone else.”

“You can only hurt a woman so many times,” Jade warned him. “They’ll only take so many emotional punches before they shut down.”

“That’s what she said. I know I’m walking on thin ice. I know I have to do right by her from now on.”

“Well, dear client,” Jade replied, “perhaps I can help you do that. I think I may have figured this out for you. I gave it serious thought this past weekend. After Hutch walked out of the office, I put a few pieces together. I could tell you what I believe, but I’d rather you learned it—in case I’m wrong.”

“You mean you have a professional answer for me about my sexual issues?” Starsky asked, excited.

Jade smiled at him. “I think so.”

“But you want me to ‘learn’ it?”

“It’ll help us know the truth of it.”

“Then let’s get going.”

Hutch was also excited by the prospect of Starsky coming to terms with his personal struggle. Maybe it would per­man­ently keep him out of Adam’s bed.

“It’ll require an exercise that may be difficult for you,” Jade told Hutch. “I’m going to ask Starsky to re­play his night with Adam—in detail. Can you both handle that?”

Together, “Yeah.”

“No false bravado,” Jade pressed Hutch.

“None,” Hutch promised. He finished the water in his bottle and allowed it to cool him. If the difficulty would put an end to Starsky’s exploration, especially with another man, he was up to the challenge.

Jade addressed Starsky. “So now you’ve finally had sex-sex with a man. And you’ve had plenty of sex with women. Which do you pre­fer?”

Without hesitation, Starsky said, “Women.”

“The sex you had with Adam sounded fairly … hot.”

“It was.”

“So why women then?”

“I don’t know. They’re softer.” He laughed at his pun. “You know … men are hard—like, as in, hard-ons—and women are … oh, never­ mind.”

Jade shook his head at Starsky and then said to Hutch, “He’s such a kid, isn’t he?”

“And always has been,” Hutch agreed. One of the many reasons Hutch loved him.

“Give me a serious answer,” Jade encouraged Starsky. “What is it about sex with women that you prefer it over sex with men?”

Starsky gave his best answer. “Sex with women has never physic­ally hurt me. But, that aside, it just feels right to have sex with women; there aren’t any bad feelings to it. I never think I shouldn’t be doing this or what’s wrong with me that I like ‘that’? Sex with women is a right thing, a morally natural thing to do.”

“Suppose you could remove that part of your mind, the part that tells you it’s wrong to have sex with men—sort of like you did with Adam when you said you got outside your mind long enough to enjoy yourself—and answer me this: Is the actual pleasure of sex with a man more, less, or equal to the pleasure of sex with women?”

“Less,” Starsky said. Then he thought a second. “Wait.” He did what he needed to do first: Got outside his mind. He thought back to his time with Adam when he was truly in those moments with him, and how it felt, how it felt sexually, not emotionally, and he had another answer. “Sex with a man is an altogether different kind of good,” he de­cided. “There’s the sex act itself, which is as pleasing as any sex act with a woman, I suppose. On the other hand, I did come pretty hard, really intense, but I’ve only had one man to com­pare.”

“Was it more impassioned because it was less emotional perhaps?”

“I don’t know. Sex with Adam, or the pleasure of sex with him, also came from a kind of nasty place, maybe … like, ‘I should­n’t be doing this, but, boy, is it ever good.’ And it’s a freer place. I mean, I didn’t have to prove or explain anything. We’re guys and we like sex, period. That makes it great right there, whereas, with women, the good comes from the actual phys­ical­ness of sex—and that depends on her mood, which can run hot and cold, and decides whether and when. We’re lucky to get it.”

“So you have to be more careful with women.”

“Yeah, lest you blow your chances.”

“Success is easier with a man.”

“Well, once you get past the fear, it is,” Starsky laughed. “I mean, now that we’re talking about it, I think Adam enjoyed himself on the surface, but I don’t think it was an emotional thing, a heart thing, for him. He’d fanta­sized about fucking me and he fucked me. End of story for him. And not that I think he doesn’t care about me, but in those minutes, I can’t imagine he was feeling any­thing but the fuck itself.”

“But not so for you.”

“Right. I had to work to enjoy myself. I had to get past the pain and fear and guilt and shame of it. I finally succeeded—and it was worth the effort—but I still had to work at it. That’s also why I think it’s unnatural. If it was natural, it wouldn’t be such a…” he laughed when he finished his sentence because he realized the pun too late, “such a pain in the ass.”

“What about now? are you still okay with having had sex with Adam?”

Starsky withdrew into his deepest thoughts. It had definitely been a fulfilling sexual experience. “Well … if I had it to do over,” he admitted, “I wouldn’t.”

“Because it was wrong to do?”

“Probably. And because it didn’t help me the way I wanted help. But mostly because it ended up hurting Hutch.”

“Not discrediting them, but putting aside the negatives, between the two, was it more or less difficult to play with Hutch than it was to play with Adam?”

“With Hutch, well, that’s where sex was easiest, where there seemed to be the understanding that what drove us satisfied us both—and that was power­ful. But also, after ten years, we knew very well that what we did came out of caring about each other. And we knew we each knew it. We were there in that place because of how we feel about each other.”

“But you’ve also thought you shouldn’t have done these things with Hutch.”

“Yeah. I was safe there while we did them; I’d get away from it and it would so break me, these bad thoughts I had about myself for doing it, about what we’d done specifically, that I had to live in denial to get through the day.”

“You’re talking about playing with Hutch in past tense,” Jade noted, “as if what you’ve done with him is now over.”

“Well, that door is open if he wants to walk through it,” Starsky said, “but I don’t think he wants to. We haven’t gotten that far into our fence-mending.” That, and Starsky wasn’t certain he should even try to mend that fence. He hadn’t forgotten Hutch’s cry in the middle of the night when Hutch thought Starsky was asleep.

Hutch didn’t comment. He didn’t want to start a different conversation. He was too anxious to get to Jade’s findings instead.

“You’re not living in denial about what you did with Adam, are you?” Jade asked Starsky.

“Well, I do find myself thinking, ‘I can’t believe I did that.’”

“Adam was good to you, though, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he treated me good.” Starsky flashed a raised eyebrow at the doctor. “That’s not what you meant, though, is it?”

“It is what I meant. He treated you kindly. He was a good lover in that sense, wasn’t he? It could have been a disaster, couldn’t it have?”

“Yeah, I see what you mean. He was careful with me.”

“If you’d had intercourse with Hutch, do you think he’d have been as care­ful?” Jade glanced at Hutch before Starsky answered, and asked, “Do you mind?”

Hutch twirled the water bottle by its cap and allowed the motion to relax him. “Permission granted,” he said.

Starsky’s heart raced when he heard Hutch’s words. Without saying it directly, Hutch had just forgiven him that little bit more.

Jade re-asked his question. “If you’d had anal sex with Hutch, would he have been as careful, do you think, given that, comparatively, he’d be in­ex­perienced?”

Starsky had been liberated. He was allowed to think about Hutch again in those terms, even if he couldn’t fulfill his desire physically. He searched his mind to imagine it. “Adam knew it was my first time and he was sure to do it a careful way and hurt me as little as possible. I think Hutch would go beyond that. I think he’d be more tuned into me. He’d be careful by his nature.”

“How so?”

“Because he knows me better. He’d naturally know what scared me, what put me off, why I was anxious, and how to get around it easier. So he’d be careful in a different way. He’d feel what I was feeling—for me. That’s just who he is. I can’t explain it.”

“I think you just did,” Jade said with a smile. Then he dug deeper. “You’ve had sex with Adam and you’ve had sex with Hutch—by your definition. Other than what you already told me, what were the similar­ities and differences between those two experi­ences, I mean, overall, in the way you feel about them?”

“You mean, other than the fact that Adam actually fucked me?” Starsky noticed Jade’s stern expression and defensively asked, “Do you think I’ll ever make you laugh?”

“This is serious stuff.”

“It is and it isn’t. I mean, now that I’ve done it, I think it’s more about fun.”

“Oh?” Jade didn’t believe him. “So, then, we’re finished here. You have your answers. You don’t need my ‘interrogation’ any longer. Sex with men is fun. Not as much fun as with women, maybe, but who knows? Only prac­tice will tell. So what difference does it make if you’re gay or straight? Go enjoy yourself.”

Starsky felt reprimanded. “Well, I mean … of course it was different with Adam. He fucked me, after all. And that was, pardon the repeat here, fucking good—in ways I can’t even tell you and in ways I never expected. With Hutch, it was…” He called on his memories of those nights, not long ago, when he handled Hutch there on the area rug and on Hutch’s bed—and Hutch reciprocated—and just how amaz­ing and beau­tiful and necessary it was, and then he finished his sentence by saying, “it was… better.”

“It was better with Hutch, how?”

“I don’t know. It was more comfortable, maybe?”

“Because you guys have known each other longer?”

“Because … yeah … we’re more … bonded, I guess.”

“Does emotional pleasure outweigh sexual pleasure then?”

“When it’s part of the mix, yeah, it does.”

“But maybe, if you were more experienced having sex with men, you’d say differently; you’d say it’s as emotionally rewarding as it is sex­ually rewarding because you would no longer be burdened by anxiety.”

“Maybe.” Starsky didn’t know. He just knew he had a fond mem­ory of his time with Hutch, one he’d give anything to repeat, and he knew he would rather have limited sexual relations with Hutch than have com­plete ones with anybody else. But only if Hutch wanted that, too.

Jade studied Starsky for a minute. Starsky’s ‘maybe’ wasn’t the answer he sought. He tried another approach. “I want you to close your eyes,” he told him, “because I’m going to ask you to look at two mental pictures and I want you to see them vividly.”

Starsky did as requested. He closed his eyes.

So did Hutch.

“The perspective you have is from the outside looking in,” Jade guided him. “The first picture goes like this: You’re lying on a bed with your butt to the edge of the mattress. Adam is standing on the floor between your legs. You’re in that ‘stupid’ posi­tion, gripping your knees, holding your legs open. Adam is inside you.”

Starsky pictured what Jade wanted him to see.

Hutch saw it, too—and quickly looked away when he felt his jeal­ousy resurface.

“Tell me what Adam is doing,” Jade instructed Starsky.

“He’s … um … fucking me.”

“Is he being careful?”

“We’ve gotten past that,” Starsky noted. He could see Adam’s build, his nude and lean body, the shape of his buttocks and the rhythm of his fearless thrusts, the way the amber light reflected and washed over his lightly haired skin.

“Is he pleasing you?”

“Yes.”

“His penis feels good to you?”

Starsky felt his own budding erection just thinking about it. “Yeah. Good and hard.”

“Is he touching you?”

Starsky had to strain to see the image more closely. “No.”

“Where are his hands?”

Starsky had to look for them, to search his mind, every angle of the picture there. “I don’t know. Sometimes he’s holding my ankles. Some­­times I feel them on my thighs. I don’t know where they are all the time. Once he handled me, but not for long.”

“Is he making any sound?”

That, Starsky knew. “Yeah. He’s not a quiet guy.”

“What do you hear?”

“His breathing. He moans. He talks to me.”

“What does he say?”

“Things like … how sexy I am. He says he likes fuck­­­­ing me. He says it’s a dream come true.”

“Is he happy for you?”

“Is he happy for me? He’s happy,” he decided on serious re­flection, “but I don’t think it’s for me so much.”

“How can you tell he’s happy?”

“By the look on his face.”

Hutch gave up trying to see what Starsky watched; he opened his eyes and listened instead, like he’d turned off the video and just heard the audio. It was the only way he wanted to experience the exercise, as far away from the visual details as he could emotionally get in order to keep his jealously under wraps.

“And how does Adam’s face look?” Jade asked Starsky.

“Like he’s fucking a guy he’s wanted to fuck. Like he’s doing the one thing he ever hoped to do.”

“Is he smiling?”

“He’s just looking like he’s … in ecstasy. You know that look?”

“Can you see his eyes?”

Starsky pictured himself from the point of view of lying below Adam and looking up at him. “Sometimes.”

“What’s he looking at?”

“Sometimes he watches himself fuck me. He’s looking down be­tween us, watching his dick go in and out of me. Sometimes he’s look­ing at my dick, or he’s looking at my chest and my face. He seems to like the way I look, I guess. Some­times he looks in my eyes like he likes me.”

“Can you tell me what you see in that exchange?”

“That he’s enjoying the fuck.”

Jade brought him inside. “And what are you feeling?”

Starsky almost laughed. “His dick in my ass.”

Jade hadn’t been clear. “How do you feel about ‘the fuck?’ Is it what you want?”

“I want it now, yeah. I didn’t want it at first; it was more like I need­ed it, I guess, but now that I’m getting it, I really want it.” Starsky’s heart pounded as he remembered it, and he pressed, unseen, against the mild, but distracting erection in his jeans, hoping Jade didn’t notice.

“Do you feel orgasmic while he fucks you?”

“I want to come,” Starsky remembered, and then he pictured the action. “But he won’t touch me, and he keeps me from touching my­self so I can’t finish.”

“How?”

“Um … holding my hands so I can’t.”

“Why does he prevent you from climaxing?”

“So it will last longer, I guess.”

“And it feels good?”

“Yeah, amazingly good. Unlike anything I’ve felt before. When he said I didn’t know what I’d been missing all my life, he knew what he was saying.”

“And the orgasm itself?”

Starsky remembered the intensity of that experience. “I came so hard, I felt light-headed. I think I saw stars.”

Jade imagined that he had. He let a pause settle and jut­ted his chin at Hutch to silently ask if he was all right. Hutch replied with a reluctant nod, so Jade continued.

“Now I want you to see another picture. It’s the same room. Same bed. Same you there in that stupid position—except it’s not Adam be­tween your legs and inside you. It’s Hutch.”

* * *

Starsky opened his eyes. He was jarred by the unexpected request.

“It’s all right,” Jade assured him. “Or do you not want to do this?”

“What’s its purpose?”

Jade lied. “This may be as close to having sex with Hutch as you’ll ever get. So let’s just see where it leads us.” He lied about the experi­ment being the fulfillment of a fantasy; he knew what its true purpose was and he was certain he’d get Starsky to see it. Maybe he’d even get Hutch to see it, too. “Want to play?”

“So long as I don’t get killed for it,” Starsky said.

Hutch grunted. “I promise to handle it.” Especially because this new fantasy involved him.

“That’s what you said last time.”

“This time it’s about me,” Hutch explained.

So Starsky inhaled his courage, shifted to get more comfortable in his chair, and closed his eyes again. “Okay,” he said. “It’s Hutch there.”

“Tell me what he’s doing.”

Starsky worked harder to see an image—and couldn’t.

Jade helped him. “He’s fucking you.”

Starsky squinted until a picture appeared in his mind. He was closer to it than the initial image he had of seeing Adam and him­self on that bed. He finally saw the amber light on Hutch’s naked skin, on his shape­ly muscle and his manly build. He didn’t miss the way it reflected off Hutch’s nearly translucent blond hair, either. And there he was, Starsky, lying on the bed beneath him, looking up into Hutch’s blue eyes—

“Starsky?” Jade asked.

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I said, he’s fucking you.”

Hutch leaned back in his chair. He didn’t understand Starsky’s stall. He watched him and waited, more curious than anxious, but it did bother him that Starsky couldn’t or wouldn’t follow the picture.

“Starsky?” Jade asked again. “Can you see him there?”

“Yeah, but …”

“But what?”

“He’s not standing. He’s got us further back on the bed, so he’s on it with me.”

“Is he lying next to you then? He’s not inside you?”

“He’s inside me, on top of me, between my legs, but he’s on the bed with me, and I don’t feel stupid. I don’t have to hold my knees. I can rest my legs against his.”

Jade re-pictured the image. “It’s a more comfort­able, less embar­rassing position.”

“Yeah, like that.”

“And he’s fucking you.”

Starsky stalled again. He looked more closely. “I can’t explain it.”

“Describe it then.”

Starsky didn’t know if he could find the right words, but he tried. “Maybe it’s the skin-to-skin contact.”

“How so?”

“He’s not wearing a rubber.”

Hutch’s anxiety dissipated. “Shouldn’t I be blood-tested first?” he asked playfully, stealing a glance from Jade.

“Should you be?” Jade asked.

“Well … Starsky was heavily tested for nasties after the attacks,” Hutch explained. “Seems I should be as clean as he is, or at least wear a—.”

“Will you quit with this?” Starsky whined, his eyes still closed. “You’re spoiling the mood.”

Hutch shut his mouth, propped his chin in his palm, his elbow on the chair arm, and waited to learn more.

“So it’s all Hutch there,” Jade assumed, “and because—unlike Adam—he’s not wear­ing a condom, he can feel you and you can feel him better.”

“The skin contact makes it more … intimate. Is that the word? Or maybe I mean affec­tion­ate. He’s taking his time and feeling every fraction of an inch of the … union. It’s a soft kind of rhythm, I guess you could say. But to tell you he’s fucking me would give the wrong impression.”

“It would make me think he was out for himself?”

“Like I said, I can’t explain it. He’s inside me. We can feel each other. It’s a slow, steady rhythmic building of … sex.”

It didn’t get past Jade that Starsky struggled with his words. “Are you having difficulty because Hutch is listening now … or are you having a hard time explaining what you see?”

“That last part,” Starsky replied, honestly. “Did you want me to replay the same picture I had with Adam? Was that the purpose?”

“No. You’re doing what I want you to do. Paint me the picture you see. Is Hutch pleasing you?”

“Yes.”

“Is he touching you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me how.”

Starsky smiled. “He’s holding my face.”

Hutch couldn’t help but smile, too. He knew why Starsky imagined that image. It vindicated him.

“Why’s he holding your face?” Jade asked.

“Because he’s kissing me.”

Jade raised an eyebrow at Hutch. He hadn’t expected the answer, but he could tell Hutch had. A warm and soft light shone in Hutch’s eyes. Jade abandoned him to focus again on Starsky. “Are you kissing him back?”

“Oh, yeah. I can’t get enough of him. I want to kiss and suck on every part of him.”

Hutch chuckled, twirling his water bottle. He couldn’t help his reaction.

Starsky heard him, but didn’t open his eyes to indulge the relief he felt to hear Hutch’s light-heartedness. “At least you’re amused.”

“Not amused,” Hutch corrected him. “More like … charmed.”

If only Starsky could charm Hutch into that very fantasy he played out in the doctor’s office.

“How does it feel,” Jade asked Starsky, “to have him penetrating you, ‘soft fucking’ you, and kissing you at the same time?”

Starsky felt the stirring ache in his groin just from the thought of it. His heart pounded. “To use Hutch’s word, it feels ‘awe­some.’”

Hutch imagined it just might feel that way—if he could bring him­self to deliver.

“Does he climax while he’s kissing you?” Jade asked.

“He’s in no hurry. He slows things way down. He stops kissing, sits up, and makes me wait. He waits, too. He handles me some while he’s in me—so I feel both things. God, it all feels really good. Relaxing and exciting and … good. We just take our time, you know?”

“Can you see his eyes?”

“He’s watching himself handling me and then he looks into my eyes, so, yeah, I see them. Pretty blue. Hey, I think he just winked at me.”

Both Jade and Hutch quietly laughed.

“Is Hutch laughing in your picture?” Jade asked.

“He’s smiling.”

“Why’s he smiling?”

“Because he feels good. Because he’s happy.”

“Is he happy for you or just himself?”

“Oh, he’s happy for me, too.”

Some of Starsky’s answers were in stark contrast to those he gave about his sex-making with Adam—just as Jade expected they would be. And just as Hutch hoped they’d be.

“Is he saying anything to you?” Jade asked.

“No. He doesn’t need to say anything. We know what gives.”

“You feel peaceful.”

“Oh, man, I feel great. He’s there and he’s doing that with me and we’re just taking our time and slowly going where we’re going. He handles me. He kisses me. He rubs my tummy.” He laughed with Hutch when he said that. “He’s just … being my buddy.”

Starsky’s last comment made Hutch’s eyes shimmer. He never imag­ined that having sex with Starsky would be something he’d do for his bud­dy. On reflection, he also realized he’d perceived Starsky’s solicitation pure­ly as something physical, but in this role play, Starsky made it such an affec­tion­ate and sensual intimacy—just the way he knew Hutch would want it.

“Is it like making love to a woman?” Jade asked Starsky.

“No. Not like that.”

“Is it like fucking a man?”

“No.”

“So, if it’s not like making love to a woman and not like fucking a man, then what is it?”

“It’s like … a lovemaking fuck with Hutch.”

Jade couldn’t avoid the inescapable. “You’re in love with this guy.”

“What else is new?” Starsky giggled.

Hutch swallowed to release the choke in his throat. If only Starsky’s defin­ition of ‘in love’ was the same as his own …

“Between the two pictures, then,” Jade noted, “I’d be a rich man if I bet you prefer the one with Hutch to the one with Adam.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Starsky said, “that fuck with Adam was … damn. But, yeah, between Adam and Hutch, my heroes have always been cowboys.”

“So, you’re saying the picture—the experience with Hutch—is better than the one with Adam, right?”

“By far. Hutch is my pal.”

Hutch laughed, lightly.

“Isn’t Adam your pal, too?” Jade asked Starsky.

“Different.”

“How so?”

“Adam doesn’t …”

Jade pushed him. “Doesn’t, what?”

Starsky couldn’t finish the sentence. He opened his eyes and looked at Jade. Then he shrugged to tell him he couldn’t voice the words and he was sorry he couldn’t. It would sound too cheesy.

But Jade wouldn’t reprieve him. “Adam doesn’t what?” He thought he knew the answer—and the answer was key.

Hutch braced for Starsky’s answer.

“It’s different and better with Hutch,” Jade pressed Starsky, “be­cause Adam doesn’t, what?”

“It’s corny.”

“So be corny. Adam doesn’t …”

“He doesn’t love me,” Starsky finally blurted.

“Adam doesn’t love you?”

“Not the way Hutch does. Not even close to the way Hutch does.”

Hutch pursed his lips to control his gratitude for what Starsky knew.

“So Hutch loves you,” Jade concluded. “But it sounds like anal sex with Adam was more fun than handling Hutch.”

“I don’t think so. Not emotionally as satisfying, anyway. I like sex with Hutch more, no matter what kind we’re having.”

“But you didn’t even finish the fantasy with Hutch.”

“If you want me to finish it, I will. No problem. It’s just not impor­t­ant to finish it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It will finish just the same. It’s not like I stopped the fantasy to avoid finishing it. Oh, believe me, we’d finish.”

“But why isn’t it ‘important’ to finish it, especially since we’ve started it?”

“Because he was doing what I want him to do and I’m in no hurry to finish it.”

“Which is what? What is it you want him to do?”

“Just be there …”

“Inside you.”

“Yeah. Inside me. Jesus.” Despite how often he said it or thought it, he couldn’t believe he had such thoughts about Hutch. He averted his eyes from Jade’s to avoid further sexual thoughts about Hutch, his hero, especially since Hutch didn’t want to have that specific experience with him.

“And that’s all you want him to do, to be?”

Starsky thought about it. “It’s not all I want. If we did that, I’d want to finish. I’d look­ forward to finishing. It’s just not the important part.”

“His being inside you is the important part.”

Hutch tapped his water bottle against his knee and tried to figure out what Jade’s point was before Starsky figur­ed it out, but he didn’t have any luck, either. It seemed to him that Star­sky was as confused, too.

“Yeah … having him there, inside me,” Starsky said again, “that’s … every­thing.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why.” He was frustrated because he didn’t know why. Isn’t that why he’d hired the doctor, to help him figure out such things?

Jade knew why it was important to Starsky to have Hutch inside him, and to just have that, to be content with the union itself, but he wanted Starsky to come to that understanding on his own. He found another ques­tion to get Starsky closer to his answer, one Starsky had already voiced, but hadn’t quite heard himself say yet. “Is that how Hutch can prove he loves you, by being inside you?”

“He doesn’t have to prove he loves me. I already know he does.”

“But you want him in there more than you want the finish.”

“Because he loves me. Don’t you understand?” He himself didn’t understand. He prayed Jade did.

“Because he loves you?” Jade asked again. He wanted Starsky to hear himself.

Starsky got angry then—out of an unrelieved frustration. “Yeah, I want him in there because he loves me.”

“The finish is just the icing on the cake, you mean?”

“Yeah, like that.”

Jade cornered him another way. “Why’s he happy for you? Because he knows you want him inside you and you’re getting what you want?”

It was probably time to end their session. Starsky didn’t think they had gotten anywhere. The answer seemed obvious to him and he didn’t understand why it wasn’t obvious to Jade. “He’s happy for me because he loves me,” he repeated.

“Yeah, you said that,” Jade insincerely noted. “I’m sorry I missed it. So what about the kiss­ing then? He kisses you in your fantasy. Adam didn’t kiss you. Would it have felt more like Adam loved you if he kissed you?”

“Your logic is backwards,” Starsky charged. “Adam doesn’t love me. It’s not like he can do some sex thing to make me feel loved.”

“Well, suppose you’d known Adam as long as you’ve known Hutch. Wouldn’t you love him by now and he you?”

Starsky laughed at the doctor’s absurd hypothetical. “Let’s suppose your little fairytale could come true and I actually knew Adam for as long as I’ve known Hutch—or longer, even. It would still be imposs­ible that we’d be as tight as I am with Hutch.”

“Impossible? How’s that possible?”

“Because you only get one friendship, one brotherhood—like ours, mine and Hutch’s—to a lifetime.”

“Why not have that friendship, that brotherhood, with Adam? What makes Hutch so special?”

Starsky sneered. “You want me to fantasize that the sky is yellow when it’s blue. Some things you can’t change. It’s just the way it is, the way it was meant to be. Hutch and I have an unmatched chemistry. We were ‘preordained by the stars’—as he sometimes jokes. Or some dumb thing like that. What makes Hutch so special? Hutch is what makes Hutch so special. He’s not your everyday person. Even you can see that, can’t you?”

“I can.”

“Oh, you’re good,” Hutch laughed at Jade. It finally struck him where he wanted to corner Starsky. When he caught Jade’s glance, he repeated himself and then said, “But how does this actually help him?”

“If nothing else, he proves to himself what’s he’s needed all along.”

Starsky was excitedly curious. “Tell me.”

“I need you to answer the question,” Jade said. “Why didn’t Adam kiss you?”

“Because I asked him not to.”

“Why?”

“Because I only wanted to do with him what they’d done to me.”

“They, the men who attacked you.”

“Yeah.”

“And they didn’t kiss you.”

“Of course not.”

“So Adam wasn’t ‘allowed’ to kiss you; he may have wanted to, but you didn’t want him to.”

“Exactly.”

Jade found the provocative question then. “Why would you allow Hutch to kiss you in that instance and not Adam?”

“Because Hutch is my buddy,” Starsky replied. “I like kissing him.”

“Why?”

Starsky was depressed again by his own frustration and Jade’s inabil­ity to understand what he had tried more than once to convey. Maybe if he had Hutch’s vocabulary, he could impress Jade, but he didn’t. He was left with his own limited edi­tion. He’d said it before, but he said it again, that time with a strong emphasis on each word and with the hope that it would enable the good doctor to clearly hear him. “I like kissing Hutch because I care about him and he cares about me, because I love him and because he loves me. What aren’t you getting?”

“Oh, I get it, Starsky,” Jade said. “Believe me, I get it.” He then finished with his last question, the one he’d fought hard to find and the one he knew would set Starsky free. “But the question is: What is it you’re not hearing yourself say?”

Starsky didn’t understand at first. He wound the conversation back through his mind: He loved Hutch and Hutch loved him. It was because Hutch loved him that he wanted that experience with him. Then he heard himself, the specific words he’d said and had repeated numerous times in just that one session, realized their context, and then said them out loud. “Because he loves me.” He paused for nearly a minute and then looked over at Hutch to see those blue eyes. “I want to do that with you, not because I love you, which I do, but be­cause you love me. I need you to save me.”

“Yeah,” Hutch replied, twirling his bottle. “I think that’s the point.”

“It was fun with Adam, but it’s love with you.”

Hutch winked at him. “How could it be any other way?”

“You’re not gay,” Jade told Starsky. He got Starsky’s full attention then. “You’re not straight, either. Hell, you’re not even bisexual. There’s gay and there’s straight and there’s in between. But then there’s this whole area I call ‘gray.’ You’re in the gray area. It’s always and only been about your ‘buddy.’ He’s the one you want sex with. And you want sex with him, not just because you love him, but because he loves you.”

Starsky didn’t argue with that conclusion. But he didn’t like the implication, either. “That seems rather selfish of me, to want what he feels for me to save me from myself.”

“You call it selfish. I call it survival.”

“And what is it I’m trying to survive?”

Jade thought it obvious, but he had to ask it anyway. “What do you think you’re trying to survive?”

It was because it was obvious that Starsky hadn’t gotten it earlier. But there was only one answer. “I’m trying to survive what they did to me.”

“Now put it all together,” Jade encouraged him.

Starsky had the revelation Jade hoped he would. He laughed at himself. “If I can do that with Hutch, I can replace an act of violence with an act of love.” He looked at Hutch who gave him a shy smile. Then he looked back at Jade. “And I can’t do it with Grace—who also loves me—because she’s, well, female. She doesn’t have the right body parts to make the difference. And I couldn’t pull it off with Adam because, well, he doesn’t love me; at least, not like that.”

“That, and no one loves you more than Hutch does,” Jade said. “I’d go further and suggest that no one loves you as much as he does, either—and that includes Grace, which doesn’t diminish her love. His is just far greater.”

“That, I know,” Starsky said. He sat quietly for a minute and mulled that fact in his mind.

“Grace said the same thing,” Hutch reminded Starsky, “about you wanting me for that reason because of how I feel about you. Now you’ve had two professionals analyze it for you.”

“But, at the same time,” Starsky said impulsively, “it’s more com­plic­ated than that. Those guys attacking me didn’t make me want to do this with Hutch. Those guys attacking me simply made me realize how much Hutch loves me. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense,” Jade said. “His love was the catalyst for your grati­tude. Isn’t that what I said some sessions ago? And your gratitude is what made you feel closer to him, more wanting of him, in all ways pos­sible. You didn’t want Adam. You don’t even necessarily want sex with Hutch. What you want is love. And you want love from him because of what you’ve been through. In the end, the only way to get more love from Hutch than the enormous love he already gives you is to have sex with him. In other words, you want to feel his love come through him in ways it hasn’t over the past decade, and the only way it can do that is through sex, through sexual intimacy. What other way is there remaining to feel Hutch’s love? Complicated, but simple.”

“And all that to arrive at something so obvious.”

“We’d have gotten to it sooner,” Jade reminded him, “if you’d told me about the rapes when you guys first got here.”

“No one’s blaming you,” Hutch said.

“Yeah? Well, if you’d told me this sooner,” Starsky chastised Jade, “you could have spared me a lust-filled night of man sex.”

“You needed to go through it to get to the next step. Besides, you made a dream come true for someone.”

“Yep. At least Adam’s happy.”

“Now it’s my turn,” Hutch said. Starsky’s revelation had been his own, too.

Jade and Starsky looked at him and he flashed them a smile.

“Your turn to be happy?” Jade asked.

“My turn to make a dream come true,” Hutch said.

“And which dream would that be?”

Hutch looked at Starsky, into those sleepy-blue eyes, into that face he’d seen for more than a decade, into the heart of the most important person in the world to him. He remembered the void that still hollowed Starsky’s soul, the one only Hutch could fill. He and he alone. All along he thought he’d been asked for an act of sex—some­thing he couldn’t give—to erase an unconquerable and vicious memory, and because sex could never con­quer any­thing. Only love could. But an act of love—especially for Starsky—was something Hutch had always been able to give him. He’d do anything for Starsky, anything that didn’t go against his nature. Giving Starsky the love he desperately needed didn’t rub against the grain of his soul.

“Which dream do you want to make come true?” Jade asked again.

Hutch heard the question, but he couldn’t leave the look on Star­sky’s face, the one that urgently anticipated his answer. Hutch knew what he had to do, just like Starsky then knew it. Hutch even knew he could do it—and that he finally wanted to. “Which dream?” He ges­tured with a nod to Starsky to convey his decision. “Why, his, of course,” he said, re­ceiv­ing that knowing wink in return, “because I love him.”

* * *

“Get a beer?” Adam asked.

Starsky accepted. They decided to meet at their usual bar, the one near the Grange Hall they used for their support group meetings. The session had inspired Starsky. He was able to help a couple of men understand they weren’t alone with their feelings of guilt—for having inadvertently and accidentally enabled the men who’d raped them access to the insides of their homes.

He was empowered by the light he’d shed for them, and Adam toasted him for that very thing after they got their beer and spent time talking about the night’s meeting. They compared it to other support group sessions and agreed they’d made progress even as un­licensed counselors, something they had become by necessity, not by trade.

When the conversation waned, they each sat quietly and contem­plated the evening’s events in their own time. After a few minutes, Adam asked what he’d waited days to ask. “How come you told Hutch what we did?”

Starsky stared into his beer and thought about what he could tell Adam without lying to him—but without telling him the truth, either. In the end, he settled on what was the foundation for all his actions. “He’s my partner and my best friend,” he said. “There isn’t anything about me he doesn’t know or that I wouldn’t tell him.”

“It would follow there isn’t anything about him you don’t know, so didn’t you figure he’d be as pissed off as he was?”

“What I didn’t think,” Starsky admitted, looking Adam in the eye, “is that he’d run into you. He tried to stop me before I went over to your place and he only learned that I’d gone through with it the afternoon he confronted you. He didn’t have time to cool down. I’m sorry, man.”

“I thought he was gonna kill me,” Adam confessed.

“What he wanted was to kill me,” Starsky explained, “but I was no­where to be found when he ran into you.”

“I’m afraid to be around him again.”

Starsky was sorry about that, too. “He’s okay,” he assured him. “He got it out of his system. If he didn’t hurt you then, he’ll never hurt you.”

“Did he beat the shit out of you?”

“His punches were emotional ones, but he’s a reason­able man when given the chance. He’s seen the error of his ways.”

“Jealousy isn’t reasonable,” Adam said, taking a long drink of beer. He knew he’d thrown Starsky a provocative comment and waited to see how it was received.

It took Starsky half a minute to appreciate what Adam said, that Hutch was jealous. He then laughed lightly, drank beer, looked off for few seconds to corner his thoughts, and then, to avoid seriousness or truth, turned to Adam and playfully said, “If you weren’t such a good looking guy, maybe he wouldn’t care.”

“Ooh,” Adam said. “That’s my cue to ask if you want to come home with me tonight.” He couldn’t not ask. “If the third time’s the charm, we still have to get through the second time.”

Starsky enjoyed Adam’s humor and was flattered by his desire. He stared again into his beer while he considered it. The memory of his ecstasy on Adam’s bed was formidable. He was aroused just thinking about how strong his orgasm had been and how easy it would be to have another—and how much he wanted one, too. He looked at Adam. “Have you ever been on prescription painkillers?”

Adam knew rejection headed his way because Starsky answered his question with a question; Starsky wanted Hutch, after all—or so Adam assumed. But he appreciated Starsky’s tact. “It’s been a while since I’ve been on prescription painkillers,” he said.

“They gave me some when I was in the hospital after the attacks,” Starsky recalled for him.

“Me, too,” Adam said.

That, they would always have in common: Their experience at the un­delivered mercy of brutal men.

Their eye contact was steady; Starsky also didn’t want Adam to think he was ashamed about the sex they’d had, or that his reasons for turning Adam down that night were in any way personal. They weren’t. “Well, the really amazing thing about prescription pain­killers is that they have two benefits to them,” Starsky said. “One is they relieve pain. The other is they make you high.”

Adam sipped beer. He was entertained. “Right. Go on.”

“I took them for a few days after I got out of the hospital. Then one day, when I was no longer in pain, I took one anyway. I took it for the high. When I came down from it, I realized what I’d done and that I didn’t want to be an addict, so I flushed the rest of the pills before I got tempted again.”

Adam touched his beer bottle to Starsky’s in a toast. “Kudos.”

“Well, you see, that night I spent with you,” Starsky explained, “that was the part of the drug that killed the pain. So, if I went home with you now, I’d just be going for the high—and, like I said, I don’t want to be an addict.”

“That’s the hippest rejection I’ve ever gotten,” Adam said. “You let me down easy, boy. I appreciate that. And I respect your willpower, too, baby. The offer still stands, but kudos again just the same.”

* * *

It was genuinely coincidental that Hutch happened to sit on his porch that night, comfortably dressed in sweats, shortly before Starsky arrived home. He didn’t know what time it was, but he knew it was earl­ier than usual for Starsky to return from a support group meeting, especially if he spent personal time with Adam afterward. Hutch loved the outdoors and he enjoyed an isolated piece of it that night. The days had gotten longer and full summer was on the up­coming calen­dar. He listen­ed to crickets, stared at the stars, and mused about life. He did have to silently admit, however, that he was relieved to see Starsky return home sooner than expected; it had to mean Starsky hadn’t gone to Adam’s—though they conceivably could have stopped at a local hotel. Never­theless, Hutch would have felt embarrassed if Star­sky caught sight of him, as if he had waited up for him, as if he’d kept tabs on Starsky, when he hadn’t.

Luckily it was dark and, unless the Ford’s headlights were able to miraculously sweep over Hutch’s driveway when Starsky pulled up to his own garage—and catch Hutch’s outline there on his porch in their beams—Starsky would never know Hutch knew he’d arrived home when he did. But Starsky did the unexpected. He drove past his own house and came slowly down to Hutch’s.

Hutch felt stupid to have been caught. He leaned back on his hands, outstretched his legs on the steps, and crossed his ankles. He braced himself, prepared to be chastised even though he wasn’t guilty.

Starsky braked his car to a stop beside Hutch’s truck. He turned off the ignition and the lights, and opened the door. Then he got out of the vehicle and stretched his arms over his head. After a half-minute of staring at the black sky, he also stretched his back and then closed the car door. The fallen night was lightly breezy, noticeable because the leaves rustled in the largest of the shade trees. He pocketed his keys, turned, and walked toward the house; it was only then he noticed Hutch alone on the steps. It sur­prised him enough that he stopped in his tracks. “Hey,” he quietly said.

Hutch realized Starsky hadn’t seen him from the road after all; he’d come to the house because he wanted to come to the house, not because the sight of Hutch had baited him. “Hey,” he said back.

Starsky walked to the bottom of the steps and looked up at him. “Wait­ing for me?”

“You won’t believe I wasn’t.”

“I’d believe it,” Starsky said. He relaxed with his hands in his poc­k­ets. It had been a replenishing evening. “You’ve got your eye on some super­­­­nova, I’m guessing.” He lifted his head and scanned the star-lit sky. “Yeah, there it is,” he joked. Then he looked at Hutch and smiled at him, a friendly, sort of wanting smile. He’d give anything to at least kiss Hutch again. Light from the porch lamps sparkled in Hutch’s blue eyes. Did Hutch want that with him right then, too? They planned con­dom-less intercourse together; couldn’t they kiss while they waited for Hutch’s blood test results? Couldn’t they go further than a kiss, into sex just short of inter­course?

Hutch noticed how nicely Starsky was dressed; it wasn’t unusual for him to be well-groomed for his support group meetings, but Starsky had also dressed as nicely the night he visited Adam. And Hutch hadn’t seen Starsky as relaxed as he appeared, either—at least not for some time. May­be Starsky had gotten laid after all. After a minute, he realized Starsky intently looked at him, that their eye contact had been long-lasting and sin­cerely affectionate. Hutch pushed off his hands and sat forward again, went back to rest­ing his forearms on his thighs and feeling more confident, but he never stopped watching Starsky watch him.

Starsky slowly ascended the steps. When he got beside Hutch, he bent over, took a firm hold of Hutch’s wrist, and encouragingly tugged on him. “C’mon,” he said. “I turned down a sure thing to be with you, so let’s go watch a movie.”

Hutch rose to his feet and allowed Starsky to lead him by the arm into his house. When they got to the living room, Star­sky let him go to take off his blazer, and then tossed it onto his favorite armchair, the one on which he’d spent con­siderable time during his recovery after he’d tem­porarily moved in with Hutch following his release from the hos­pital. He left Hutch stand­ing near the sofa to retrieve a refresh­ment from the kitchen, and then came back with a bottle of orange juice, popped the lid, and drank; all the while he made and kept eye contact with Hutch. He could tell Hutch knew he was up to some­thing because Hutch hadn’t taken a seat on the sofa; he stayed stand­ing, waiting, as it were.

Starsky offered him the juice.

Not breaking the connection he held with Starsky’s eyes, Hutch declined a drink. Something about Starsky’s demeanor intrigued him and he was too curious about it to take the bottle. “Did you really want to watch a movie?” he asked. Somehow he didn’t think television was on Starsky’s mind.

“Eventually,” Starsky said.

“Want me to play you a tune?”

Hutch hadn’t played his piano in a while, and the balmy night might lend itself to something inspirational.

“After,” Starsky said.

“After?”

Starsky walked to the front door—and locked it. Then he looked at Hutch to size up his reaction.

Hutch lightly laughed. “Is my piano playing so bad that you don’t want the sound to get out?”

Starsky didn’t laugh. “We both know you’re good.”

“Is it a scary movie then?” Hutch further joked. “Afraid the zom­bies might get us?” He knew Starsky had locked the door for privacy rea­sons, but he still wanted his hunch confirmed.

Starsky returned to within inches of Hutch and looked longingly into his eyes. He was never quite sure about Hutch’s com­pliance; he would never forget Hutch’s purge that night when Hutch thought he was asleep. But Hutch did say he was willing to take their sexual rela­tion­ship to the next level, into intercourse; he said it right in front of Jade, so what harm was there in yet another handjob? Maybe the ques­tion wasn’t whether Hutch could indulge him, so much as it was that Hutch would enjoy himself in the present and be sorry later—just the way Starsky often felt, so he was tentative. Maybe Hutch would hit him if he tried to kiss him.

Hutch’s heart pounded. He was sure Starsky was about to kiss him, or at least wanted to; was Starsky afraid he’d be rejected again? Hutch himself was afraid if he showed he desired it as much, or spoke a single word, he’d blow the moment and be terribly disappointed. Maybe he misread Starsky. All he could do was anticipate and hope his wish would come true.

When neither of them made a move, Starsky finally braved the con­tact. Deep down, in his gut, he believed Hutch wanted what he wanted, too, and he wouldn’t be rejected; he just didn’t know it as consciously. Ironically, maybe it was Hutch who simply had a harder time coming to terms with his sexuality than Starsky did.

He grasped the back of Hutch’s neck and pulled Hutch’s face close to his. He hesitated at the last second, to give Hutch one more chance to stop him, and then he closed the space between their lips when it was apparent Hutch wouldn’t. He looked Hutch in the eye, dropped his line of vision to his mouth, the one he longed to kiss, savored the shapes of Hutch’s familiar lips, remembered their warmth, then waited another half second, trusted Hutch wouldn’t retreat or retal­iate, closed his eyes, and then delicately touched his mouth to Hutch’s. It had seemed longer than it was since they’d last kissed, given the emo­tional roller coaster they’d ridden in that time.

The touch finally became a kiss.

A tender kiss. A new lovers’ kiss. And it had its own soft begin­ning, its loving and sensual life, and a mutually satisfying end. They smelled and tasted each other; they inhaled deeply and exhaled audibly. They felt the other’s warmth and suppleness. They imagined it turned them both on and that aroused them. It was a perfectly choreo­graphed inviting kiss.

When their lips naturally parted, Starsky pressed his forehead to Hutch’s to let him know he appreciated the reception. Then he warm­ly squeezed Hutch’s elbow and made firmer eye contact.

Hutch smiled at him. “Welcome back.”

“It’s good to be back.” He pulled Hutch by the arm and led him to the hall. “Now let’s get naked.”

Hutch willingly followed at first; he was immediately excited and anxious to indulge another kiss, or even and especially a more sexual­ly satisfying one. The unexpected possibil­ity that they would get to play again thrilled him beyond the physical, too. But when he imag­ined Starsky wanted to go further yet, he tactfully pulled out of Starsky’s grip when they got to the bed­room door. “Wait.” He didn’t want to wait; that’s not what his body wanted, or what his heart wanted, but there was that little matter of a blood test—

“Yeah, I know,” Starsky said. He read Hutch’s mind, stood with his arms at his sides, and faced Hutch. “I know it’s too soon for…” He searched the air for the right words. “It’s too soon to get that close,” was all he could manage. He knew Hutch knew what he meant, so why depreciate it with imperfect words? Starsky looked at him, expect­antly and hungrily, into those blue eyes, into the face of the man who loved him—and seemed to want him, even then, espe­cially then, may­be. “But we can still give each other a hand in the mean­time, can’t we?”

The implication and the reality that they could still play sexually with each other made Hutch’s heart pound. “I don’t see how any­thing can stop us,” he said. He gently shoved Starsky into the lamp-lit room.

Starsky went right to the bathroom to empty his bladder. As he re­lieved himself in the toilet, he thought about the fact that he could have gone to Adam’s and enjoyed a repeat performance with him; may­be even something more gratifying than the last one, but he much pre­fer­red to be in Hutch’s room, even for something a lot less sexual than what he’d get on Adam’s bed. Maybe it was more right to have sex with women, but somehow, for the first time, it didn’t detract from his feeling that it was all right to lie with and handle Hutch, either. In the end, as Hutch would say, who did it hurt?

Hutch removed his watch and placed it in the bowl atop his dresser. He was undoubtedly excited by women, too, but there was something electrifying about anticipating a sexual encounter with Starsky. Maybe he should be the one in therapy, he inwardly laughed. He sat on the side of the bed, at the edge of the mat­tress, and unlaced his shoes. He heard the clock tick­; a soothing sound, as if the time of their lives would never end. He removed his shoes and un­buttoned his shirt. Then he lay back on the bed with his socked feet on the floor, stared mindlessly at the slowly spinning ceiling fan, and won­dered if he should undress completely or wait for Starsky to do it with him. Before he could decide, however, he heard the toilet flush and Starsky return to the room.

Starsky crawled onto the bed from its other side. He landed beside Hutch and noticed that Hutch’s shirt was open—and because he couldn’t resist touching that bared skin, he caressed Hutch’s chest for a minute and looked into the blue eyes that fondly looked back at him. “Could we be any more opposite?” he asked.

“Or any more gay?” Hutch joked.

“C’mon. Seriously.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re blond. I’m the opposite. You’re hairless and I’m the oppo­site.” He pulled Hutch’s shirt open further, bent down and gently sucked one of Hutch’s nipples, the one closest to him, heartened by how quickly the small nub hardened between his lips. He then leaned back to add, “You’re perfect-looking and I’m perfect.”

Hutch quietly moaned when Starsky resumed the stimulation of his nipple. “Well, we could be more opposite,” he said. “One of us could be a woman.”

Starsky released the nipple to laugh out loud. He ruffled Hutch’s hair. “Well, it would have to be me,” he said on closer thought.

“How do you figure?”

Starsky bravely reached inside Hutch’s sweat pants and took a hold of his genital, pleased and excited to find him already hardening there, too. “You’ve got the bigger dick.”

“Oh, well, I guess that settles it then.”

Starsky tenderly squeezed and massaged Hutch’s penis and knew he wasn’t the only one who eagerly anticipated their play. “Do you have any of that oil we used last time?” he asked.

For a while, Hutch enjoyed the way Starsky handled him long before he mustered the reply that he’d get the bottle. When Starsky let him go, Hutch rolled forward to reach the nightstand; he retrieved it from the lower shelf. Then he continued the roll, to crawl further up on the bed, to sit against the headboard. Starsky grabbed Hutch’s waist­band when he moved away and pulled down his sweats, so together they completely undressed him there in the quiet light.

“Let me see you,” Starsky said. He rested on his elbow at Hutch’s side, gripped Hutch’s hip, and pulled him over further to have a closer look at his unsheathing penis. He didn’t think he’d ever see it again and was excited to lay eyes on it. It was as he remem­bered it. “Yep,” he said. “I’ve still got the little dick. You’ve got the big dick. Things are as they should be.”

“Yours isn’t little,” Hutch argued, knowing Starsky knew that fact al­ready, but probably just wanted to hear it.

“Compared to yours, it is,” Starsky said.

“Don’t compare it to mine. Compare it to average. You’re above it.”

“How would you know?”

“I read. The average American guy is five-and-a-half inches. You’re well above that.”

“And you know that without a ruler?”

“I’m going by the fact that I’m taller than you.”

“So?”

“So it’s a proportion detail.”

“You’re only an inch taller than me, so if your reasoning was valid, then proportionately you should only be an eighth bigger than me, but you’re half again as big.”

“Not true—and stop measuring.”

“But that’s what I was doing,” Starsky said, glancing into Hutch’s eyes, but briefly, “comparing our opposites.”

“I see,” Hutch said. He comfortably opened his legs then to allow Starsky to visually explore him. While he watched Starsky, he squeezed a few drops of the oil onto his bare chest and slowly rubbed it into his skin while he waited. “You can tell it’s great to have you back,” he fin­ally said in reference to his obvious erection.

“It’s great that it’s great,” Starsky said. “The one thing I love about your … foreskin … is that it lets me know how hard you are.“

“Or how soft?”

“Or how soft. But, in this case, it’s telling me how hard you are.“ He continued to visually admire Hutch’s beautiful penis.

“Does that thing scare you?”

Starsky laughed, somewhat annoyed by the implication that Hutch could scare him. Not like that, anyway. He lifted his eyes and looked into Hutch’s and got back a smug smile. “I won’t have had bigger,” he admitted in a low voice. “But you don’t scare me.” Then he looked again at Hutch’s engorged penis, his tight scrotum, the shape of his lightly haired legs, the flatness of his belly and its navel. The image did arouse him. Because it was male? Or because it was Hutch? He took Hutch firmly in hand again, heard him moan, and watched Hutch’s belly visibly rise and sink with a halt­ing breath. “You like that.” He stroked Hutch’s distinctly warm shaft, watched the crown fully emerge from its fore­skin, heard another moan, and also noticed Hutch’s breath­ing had deepened. “Yep, you like that,” Starsky repeated, and then instructed Hutch to, “Pour some of that on your dick.”

Hutch squeezed a small amount of the oil on his penis and abrupt­ly inhaled when Starsky massaged it into his highly charged skin. The oil made Starsky’s strokes more plea­surable, his grip the perfect tight­ness, his unhurried and calming pace mesmer­izing and sensual.

“I remember how you like it,” Starsky said. “You like it roman­tic and easy-going.” They were opposite in that way, too, he thought.

Hutch looked into Starsky’s amorous blue eyes. The man sure did read him. “Yeah,” he was slow to say. “Take your time.”

“Time’s all I have.”

Hutch settled into the bed pillows at his back and behind his head. Maybe he’d get to last a while. The aching titillation made him close his eyes and surrender to it. He quietly moaned with each exhalation; inhale, moan, inhale, moan.

“I can’t help but feel I’m taking advantage of you,” Starsky impul­sive­ly admitted. He knew Hutch did it for him and wanted to—but should he take advantage of it, just the same?

“Well, decide that later, will ya?” Hutch managed to tell him. “For now … don’t stop … permission granted to take advantage of me.”

Starsky stroked Hutch’s penis from end to end and back again; Hutch’s size enabled long, firm strokes, so there was no guessing he enjoyed the touch. His penis glistened in the soft light of the room and the visual of it in Starsky’s oiled hand also mesmerized Starsky. He liked how it looked, not just how it felt, to slowly inflate Hutch. And he liked the shape and size of Hutch’s penis, his foreskin and scrotum, too, but also the noticeable rise and fall of Hutch’s belly as his breath­ing grew more fervent and audible. He pushed Hutch’s shirt away to expose more of his chest and then studied Hutch’s closed eyes, noticed that his mouth was open, that he’d begun to pant, and he envied Hutch’s blissful escape into the liberating indulgence of the flesh. Hutch was a good-looking male—and all the more attractive in the throes of ecstasy; he could make any watcher want to touch him in that instance, male or female.

Starsky did love that man. He did love gratifying him, of taking Hutch to ejaculation. What more did any man want any­way than what Hutch enjoyed just then? And why wouldn’t Starsky give him some­thing as beautifully necessary as the pleasure he gave him? Wasn’t that love? Wasn’t that the meaning of life? to do for some­one else a thing of such passion and beauty? Maybe it wasn’t com­pletely an ad­van­tage he took. Maybe he did give.

Hutch was the taker, and not in a bad way. He gripped Starsky’s forearm and held tightly. That he was close to his orgasm made Starsky smile. He watched the action: Hutch’s stiff penis slipped into and out of his slick, lubricating fingers and palm. It would have been easy for Starsky to bend over and take Hutch in his mouth. He was near enough for that. He was even, well, want­­­­ing to. Besides, Hutch was nearly gone; how could he poss­ibly complain? Take him out on a high, Starsky thought. Didn’t Hutch allow him to take advantage? But Starsky didn’t have that permis­sion. He was liable to get punched at the least, interrupt Hutch’s plea­sure at the most. In the end, all Starsky could do was fantasize and feel the arousal he caused himself by the sheer idea of sucking on Hutch’s penis. He pressed his own erection to the inside of his pants, up against Hutch, and made himself harder, too.

Then Hutch opened his eyes, firmly pulled Starsky’s hand off him, and laughed. Where he’d gotten the willpower neither of them knew. “I’m not ready to quit,” he said, panting heavily. “I want to handle you now and feel this horny at the same time.”

Starsky sat up to take off his own shirt. Together, they fully un­dressed each other and, once nude, Starsky lay on his back as he eagerly awaited Hutch’s stimulating touch. It was one he didn’t expect.

Hutch opened Starsky’s legs with his own and knelt be­tween them. He drank in the pleasing view: Starsky’s haired chest and belly—which was, oh, so beautiful, despite its bullet scars—his haired arms and legs, his olive skin and dark wavy hair, his sleepy blue eyes and his snugged scrotum, tight against his legs. Hutch had given himself license to penetrate Starsky, though they would have to wait for some other time to indulge it, but it didn’t stop him from imagining how it might feel to enter him. He gripped Star­sky’s waist and hips and pulled Starsky tightly against his groin so their erections nested together on Starsky’s haired belly.

Starsky noticed Hutch’s face; it appeared quite happy with the look of their kissing genitals, and he was emboldened to experience Hutch’s assertive com­fort with him. He handed Hutch the bottle of oil. “Go for it,” he said. “Make a mess.”

Hutch drizzled a generous amount of oil over their shafts, like he iced a cake and didn’t care that he’d spilled on the counter. They looked in each other’s eyes then and laughed. But they stopped laugh­ing, and quite abruptly, when they massaged the other in their hands.

“Jesus-fuck-me-christ,” Starsky hissed as he slid into Hutch’s tight fist and withdrew, then pushed in again.

They stroked and pumped and watched each other. Sometimes Starsky lifted his head to see; sometimes he dropped the back of it into the pillows because he wanted to purely feel and to look with his hands at the same time. He glanced at Hutch’s face and smiled when he got a smile. He laughed when Hutch winked at him.

They were as close to his ‘lovemaking’ fantasy with each other as he’d ever gotten. They were fully nude, and they were entangled, and they were fear­less, and they indulged themselves and each other as if no one and nothing else mat­tered or existed. The time was their time. And though their excitement quickly consumed them, they were in no hurry.

Hutch shifted forward on his knees, bent down, and touched Star­sky’s mouth with wet, sensual, sucking kisses, as he thrust his penis into and out of Starsky’s oiled palm and fingers with long, slow strokes that ex­quisitely height­ened his arousal and desire. He moaned on every exhale, and pumped Starsky’s penis in his own slippery hand as he listened to Starsky’s responsive grunts and his heavy respiration and his sometimes just audible whimpers. He didn’t understand why Star­sky felt such a need to compare the size of each other’s penises; Star­sky’s quite comfortably filled Hutch’s hand and there was plenty of length to enable long strokes. They were similarly hard, as well. Per­haps the only real difference between them was the respective emotional invest­ments in their actions. Hutch’s feelings for Starsky had changed more radically than the reverse, but even that was purely a matter of degree.

Still, they were equally aware of each other’s sweat, of the smell of their mouths and skin, the warm feel in their hands, the surrendering ache in their groins, the ecstasy in their swollen penises that craved more and harder strokes, ones they encouraged by rolling their hips and thrust­ing against and with each other. Kisses spurred them; they sucked each other’s tongues and lips, breathed on occasion in each other’s mouths when they had to catch their breaths, and laughed because the recip­rocating pleasure was just that good, too good not to know they knew how un­common such a joining was for them—and how thrilled they were to have that kind of desire for it in the first place.

Starsky fantasized that Hutch was inside him; they were in the perfect position—Hutch between his legs and Starsky’s resting on top of Hutch’s thighs. Were Hutch thrusting inside Starsky instead of his hand, they’d be having sex—even by Hutch’s definition. They were that close. But all Starsky could do was imagine—and the image was power­ful, the want for it so strong, it heightened his desire and pushed his orgasm over the edge. He broke away from the kisses and ejaculated first, though there was no competition. And he moaned and he shud­dered and he un­intentionally abandoned pleasing Hutch because the intensity of his own pleasure was so great he could think of and do noth­ing else but experience it to its pinnacle.

Hutch didn’t want to get left behind. He sat back on his heels between Starsky’s legs, and closely watched Starsky crest. He couldn’t absorb enough of what he saw, try as he might: Starsky’s closed eyes, his blissful grimace, his semen as it then pulsed onto his stom­ach from the slit in the crown of his penis, glistening with oil in Hutch’s hand. But the action was so primal, so purely sexual, so raw, and Starsky so help­lessly con­sumed by the ultimate physical plea­sure of it, that Hutch couldn’t help but abandon the visual stimulation and finish himself.

They ejaculated on Starsky’s stomach rela­tively together while their hearts heavily pounded. They moaned and they grunted and they laughed and they panted with a wordless under­standing that they shared the ecstasy equally: the male sex drive, doubled; the release purely ani­mal—and without shame.

When it ended, Hutch rolled off of Starsky and onto his back beside him. He con­tinued to audibly pant and to laugh quietly, and then to close his eyes to stop the room from spinning.

Starsky finally caught his breath, too. He ran his fingers through the oil and their semen where they’d commingled in his stomach hair, and then he dropped his hand against Hutch’s thigh to liber­ally smear the mix on his partner’s skin. “We share everything from here on out,” he warned him.

Hutch opened his eyes when he felt the moisture touch him and realized what Starsky had just done. “I don’t remember voting on that rule,” he said reprimandingly. He bravely clasped Starsky’s wet hand, slick with the emol­lient and sticky with their semen, and patted him reassuringly. “But whatever it takes to make you happy, lover boy. Whatever it takes.”

“I want whatever makes you happy,” Starsky replied, seeking con­firm­ation that Hutch didn’t have bad afterthoughts. “Deep down, that’s what you wanted, right? what we just did, you wanted that, same as me?”

“Same as you,” Hutch agreed, sleepily, “deep down—and on the sur­face, too.”

* * *

Hutch woke in the middle of the night; he couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t because he was troubled by anything, but because his life had taken an unexpected direction, and it was about to change again when the lab tests would liberate them into a closer intimacy with each other. He didn’t have second thoughts, either. He simply lay in bed that night, in the dark, and imagined how and in what ways the next few days, and the follow­ing weeks and months, or even years, would transpire, and what they would mean for himself and for his relationship with Starsky.

Or with Sara, for that matter—but especially with Starsky.

He heard Starsky lightly breathe beside him as they stretched on the king-sized bed. They never redressed. They didn’t bury themselves under blankets. They had caught their collective breath, turned on the bed­room’s television, and scanned the channels until they found what Star­sky had hoped for: A Glenn Ford movie. When it ended, they handled each other again and, then, physically exhausted, they couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer. Hutch turned off the TV and the bed lamps and joined Starsky in a deep slumber.

When he woke around 3:30 a.m., the room was dead-still save a tick­ing clock and Starsky’s deep, quiet breathing. Hutch stared at the ceiling for a while, at the small green light that marked the smoke alarm. Then he covered his eyes in the bend of his elbow and drifted away on his thoughts about what he’d done with Starsky and what they yet planned.

He couldn’t remember ever feeling so new to an experience. He couldn’t recall his initial feelings when he lost his virginity some two decades earlier, but he was certain it wasn’t as thrilling. The relation­ship he had with Starsky was rich with emotion and history—and their recent intimacies with each other were highly charged in that context. As he thought back over the kissing and the two orgasms he already had with Starsky earlier that evening, he got aroused again.

Were Starsky a woman, he would have let her sleep, or else be pun­ished for waking her. He’d even be careful not to slip his foot out from under hers, lest he disturb her sleep. But he didn’t have a careful thought in his head at that moment. Instead, he rolled over behind Starsky, felt along his arm, and then his hip, to reach for his groin.

Starsky stirred only when Hutch cupped and mass­aged his scrotum and flaccid penis, and then he woke from sleep with a moan, stretched onto his back, and almost instant­ly got hard.

There were no words between them. They couldn’t even see each other in the dark. There was only the occa­sion­al bump of the bed when they shifted, and the quiet sounds of their heavy breathing, audible moans, groans, and grunts, their lips kissing, of their bodies in rhythmic harmony, hands on skin, the sucking of their breaths through clenched teeth as their climaxes neared, and the smell of their mingled sweat and semen after their ejaculations. And then they slept again, more soundly, despite the wet spot they made between them on the top blanket.

Or maybe because of it.

When morning arrived, Hutch was the first to wake. He realized, only after he shifted on the bed and Starsky’s foot touched his, that Starsky was still beside him. He opened his eyes and saw Starsky’s bared back, the line of his dark, mussed hair along the base of his neck, and the shape of his muscled shoulder. Hutch scooted closer, up against him. He reached over Starsky’s hip and took him in hand again. It had only been a few hours since their last release and Hutch was well aware neither of them had the energy or the ability to climax a fourth time in a nine-hour period, least of all at their age, but he couldn’t resist the tease.

Starsky woke to being handled, to his penis in Hutch’s loose fist. He grunt­ed. “You’re kidding me, right?” he hoarsely asked.

They broke up laughing.

Starsky rolled onto his back when Hutch let him go. Their eyes smiled when they met. “But you’ll make us pancakes, won’t you?” Star­sky sleepily encouraged him. “You will, right?”

“Right,” Hutch said. “I’ll make us pancakes.”

* * *

Starsky showered and dressed and hungrily ate the breakfast Hutch made—of fresh fruit, coffee, toasted muffins, and lightly roasted pota­toes. He made pancakes and they ate those, too. They had worked up an appetite despite the sound sleep.

“Don’t worry,” Starsky said. “I won’t make a habit out of last night.”

“Break my heart.”

“I know you like your privacy,” Starsky explained, troubled by what he believed wasn’t a casual remark. “I don’t want you to be afraid I’m going to move back in.”

Hutch twirled pancake at the end of his fork in a spill of syrup. “Hang out all you like. You’re the most fun I’ve had in years.”

“At least in the last month,” Starsky agreed. He remembered that Sara would be home from Italy at the end of the week and Hutch could have his romantic sex life back. “But you have to know I’m not ever going to turn you down.”

“You did this morning,” Hutch cracked. He winked at Starsky when he got that expected reply of an irritated look in his eyes. “What’s the matter, buddy boy?” he teased him, knowing full well that he himself was spent. “Can’t you deliver as often as I can?”

“In your dreams,” Starsky said.

“In my dreams?” Hutch asked.

Starsky realized his mistake. “Shut the fuck up.”

They finished most of their breakfast before Hutch said anything else; not because he had taken Starsky’s order seriously, but because he was deep in thought about the night he’d just spent with him. That, and thoughts beyond the morning to what lay ahead in the day consumed his attention. “Tell Grace I said hello.”

Starsky had meant to call Grace the night before to tell her he wouldn’t be home—when he knew he wouldn’t be home, but by then he was too engrossed in what he did with Hutch to think of it. “I’m hop­ing she’ll be so glad to see me, she won’t wonder where I was last night.”

“Why would she be that glad? She can’t see your car parked across the driveway?”

Starsky finished eating. “You can’t see your drive­way from my house because of the trees,” he said, looking at Hutch as if Hutch should have known that fact. “You can only see the porch.”

“So what are you saying?” Hutch pressed him. He didn’t like the implication and wanted clarity. “You went to a support group meeting last night and didn’t come home? That’s all she knows?”

“I wasn’t planning to not go home,” Starsky defended himself. “When I got back last night, I thought I’d drop by and say hi to you. I didn’t have any plans until I saw you sitting all for­lorned on the steps.”

Hutch laughed, not amused. “I wasn’t ‘forlorned’. Is that even a word?”

“I felt sorry for you,” Starsky teased him. “I wanted to cheer you up. A call home would only have spoiled the mood.”

“Of the pity party? Be careful, Starsk. Don’t blow it with her.”

Starsky got off the bar stool to stop himself from saying that, if he was going to blow anyone, he hoped it would be Hutch. “I’ll go home now,” he said instead. “If you don’t hear from me in a couple of hours, come look for the dead body. She’ll have killed me.” He didn’t believe she’d be upset; he promised he would tell her anything and be for­given for it, even after the fact, so that was his plan. He wasn’t worried and he didn’t want Hutch to be worried, either, so he walked over to him at the sink, and clasped the back of his neck. “I’ll see you around.” He then kissed Hutch’s cheek. “Thanks for breakfast—and those other things.”

“You’re welcome for breakfast,” Hutch said. “And, um, thank you for those other things, too.”

* * *

“How did Grace take it?” Jade asked Starsky. At that point in the un­folding, he thought the concern was no longer Starsky’s relationship with Hutch, but Starsky’s relationship with Grace. “Was she worried and upset about where you were?”

“She said she wasn’t,” Starsky replied, “because she thought I was probably with him—and then she came down the driveway that night to confirm that my car was there.” He laughed when he remembered what else she’d told him. “She said she sort of enjoyed being at the house by herself, knowing I was nearby. She spent the time hanging pictures where she wanted them hung, and listened to music she wanted to hear, and made dinner she wanted to eat.”

Hutch, too, was fascinated to hear how Grace had accepted Starsky’s absence. “I knew this day would come,” he said jokingly. “She’s al­ready tired of you. But I thought it wouldn’t be until after seven years of marriage.”

“Do you say things just to provoke me?” Starsky asked him.

“What other reason could there be?” Hutch replied with a wink.

“I think you boys say things to each other all the time just to pro­voke each other,” Jade observed, “so if we’re going to talk about long-term marriage behavior…” He got the laugh out of them he hoped to get. “The point is, Grace was comfortable with your sleep-over across the driveway?”

“She said maybe she’d start having her pregnant friend spend the night sometimes,” Starsky recalled. “And she said it like this: ‘That way I can have time to take care of Jana’—that’s her friend—‘and you can have time to take care of Hutch.’”

“Ooh,” Hutch said in a murmuring voice, “I like that idea.”

“When is her girlfriend due to deliver?” Jade asked.

“I can’t remember,” Starsky answered. “A while yet. But she also said she didn’t expect me to tell her about my … private rela­tions with him unless she wants to know.” On an impulsive second thought, he asked, “Do you think I deserve this woman?”

Jade spoke with conviction. “Yes.”

His blunt answer surprised Starsky. He didn’t know what to say and was momentarily too stunned to ask for a validation.

Hutch read Starsky’s pause. “And not be­cause you had the shit beat out of you as recently as four months ago and therefore deserve some good in your life,” he said quietly, “but because—despite your flaws, or maybe even because of them—you’re a good soul, too.”

Starsky cocked his head at Hutch to solicit the follow-up stinger, but it never came. “You love me,” he finally said to the silence in the room and into Hutch’s blue eyes.

“You can’t prove otherwise,” Hutch replied.

* * *

Hutch stirred when he heard movement inside the house that next morning. The sound of heavy footsteps crossed the hardwood floor in the living room and slowly came down the hall. He recognized them, instinctively, and then consciously, as Starsky’s. The realization made him open his eyes and squint at the digital clock on the nightstand be­side his bed. No wonder Starsky had come to the house; Hutch had overslept that morning by two hours. He was about to bolt awake with the notion that he might be late for a scheduled meeting, but he re­membered at the last second that it was Sunday. Starsky had simply come to investigate Hutch’s whereabouts because it wasn’t like Hutch to sleep so late.

When Starsky reached the doorway, Hutch made eye contact with him. He noticed Starsky was dressed for appearances and therefore wouldn’t undress. “I’m alive,” Hutch said quietly to reassure him. He tried a smile, but it was too sleepy to be noticeable.

“Are you feeling all right?” Starsky asked. Hutch looked remark­ably good to him that lazy morning—disheveled, passive, primal. Of course none of it explained why Hutch had overslept.

Hutch stretched further onto his back, covered his eyes in the bend of his elbow, and audibly exhaled. “I feel fine,” he promised. “Drained is all.” He tried for a laugh, but only managed a grunt. “Too much play and not enough work makes me … weak and unmoti­vated.”

“That’s too bad,” Starsky said sorrily. He wasn’t serious. First, be­cause he didn’t believe Hutch was serious and, secondly, because he didn’t care. He entered the room, approached the bed, and lifted the sheet off Hutch to drink in the visual of Hutch’s healthy build and his lightly tanned muscle, his bare chest and darker nipples, his navel and haired groin that nested his flaccid and sheathed penis. Then he looked at Hutch’s half-hidden, yet perfect face. Could a man be more beautiful than he? Not likely. “I say that’s too bad,” Starsky repeat­­ed, “because I was planning to drain you again first chance I get.”

Hutch laughed and didn’t open his eyes. Jokingly, he said, “Well, here’s your first chance. Help yourself.” He didn’t know why he ex­pected Starsky to take his suggestion every other way but sincere­ly. Maybe he thought it because Starsky was casually dressed and probably had something more important to do than undress just to dress again. On the other hand, if Starsky truly wanted to milk him, nothing would stop him. Maybe Hutch thought Starsky wouldn’t solicit him because Starsky was quite awake and already into his day and he wasn’t about to get side­tracked by something as frivol­ous as giving a morning hand­job. Or maybe because Hutch wasn’t accust­omed to orgasmic plea­sure being given to him that easily—even as limited as theirs had been and de­spite how often they had it—or without any effort, without his initi­ation, and without some determined nego­tiation.

Starsky retrieved the almond oil bottle from its place on the lower shelf of the nightstand. He pulled the sheet off Hutch to completely expose him, and then, without touching Hutch, climbed over him to lie beside him on the mattress. He lay to Hutch’s left, on his right elbow, nearest to Hutch’s hip than to his shoulder, and he didn’t bother to even kick off his shoes. He squeezed a few drops of the oil on Hutch’s belly and then glazed Hutch’s hairless chest with it. “Help myself?” he said in a hushed voice. “Don’t mind if I do.” He noticed Hutch’s drawn breath and slow exhale. If Hutch wasn’t relaxed before, he was then. “Don’t go back to sleep,” Starsky advised him, “because we’re going to the market.”

“We are?”

“We’re going on a picnic,” Starsky explained.

“I say again, we are?” He imagined Starsky would coat his penis with the oil and that obviously excited him; the idea alone was enough to brew his erection. If he weren’t so sleepy, the antici­pa­tion itself might push him right off the bed.

“I told Grace we’d get the food,” Starsky added. He noticed Hutch’s swelling shaft and desired to touch it, but didn’t because he wanted Hutch to feel the anticipation longer. “It’ll be the four of us,” he said.

Hutch forced himself to understand Starsky’s meaning; he conclud­ed that the fourth person must be Jana, Grace’s pregnant friend with whom she spent considerable time recently. “I’ve already got a girl­friend,” he reminded Starsky.

“It’s not a set-up, you idiot—and, besides, Jana’s not your type.”

Hutch was keenly aware of Starsky’s warm hand on his belly as it continued to smear the organic lubricant over his skin; he anticipated the inevitable touch of his penis and the hunger distracted him—but not before he was able to say, “You got that right. Pregnant women aren’t my type.”

Starsky squeezed the bottle for another few drops of the oil, that time directly on Hutch’s penis, and heard Hutch moan with enjoyment when the cool moi­sture touched his enlivening skin. Starsky then slid the warm shaft into his slick, loose fist and heard Hutch abruptly inhale through his mouth. “I told Grace we might be a little late because I was going to stop by and do this to you,” Starsky said. When Hutch was able ask what he meant by ‘this,’ Starsky more tightly squeezed his shaft. “This,” he empha­sized. “Milk your dick.”

Hutch grunted. “There’s a time and place for words like that.”

“This is the time,” Starsky said, laughing, “and this is the place.”

“I think you’ve got your … time … timing off.”

Maybe he did. “I’ll try those words later then,” Starsky decided, continuing to stroke Hutch, “when you’re closer to cumin’. But this is definitely the place. No argument there, right?”

“Right,” Hutch said—as slowly as a single word could be said. He wasn’t sure at that moment what he had just responded to.

“We can take our time, too,” Starsky added. “I told Grace I’d be over here a while doing this.”

Hutch grunted again when the information momentarily stalled his plea­sure. “She bringing a Glock 19 to this picnic?”

Starsky wasn’t serious; his newly requested promise to Grace about his private rela­tions with Hutch were only available to her if she asked for them. He simply wanted to get a different rise out of Hutch from the one his hand obviously gave him. He bent over and kissed Hutch’s navel while he petted and caressed Hutch’s hard­ening penis; his fingers were slick with oil and made for easier strokes and squeezes. “She won’t shoot us,” Starsky promised. “You have to get over that idea.” He watched Hutch’s belly resume its notice­able rise and fall as his breath­ing deepened. “The picnic is her way of letting us know we’re one close family.”

Hutch didn’t know what to think—or how to feel. Nor did he care too much all of a sudden. He was extremely aroused by the unex­pect­ed contact that morning, and he was excited by the notion that Starsky planned to indulge an orgasm for him then and there, but he was also torn by his urge to reciprocate. He dropped his arm to his side, opened his eyes, and looked at Starsky, expecting to see someone as sleepy as he was. But Starsky appeared rested, handsomely groomed, dressed, and it came back to Hutch when he remembered Starsky standing in the door­way that morning that he was someone on the move. On the bed, how­ever, he was also inviting. Sultry, blue eyes scanned Hutch’s nude body and the exam didn’t go unnoticed. Starsky’s shaved skin, his fresh­ness, and the excitement on his face hardened Hutch further.

Starsky was aroused by Hutch’s arousal. He gently, sort of teas­ingly, caressed Hutch’s penis. Then he kissed Hutch’s chest, near his nipple, then his belly near his penis to inhale Hutch’s un-showered scent. He finally looked at Hutch when he sensed Hutch’s attention. “You smell good,” he said. “Animal.”

Hutch toyed with the top button on Starsky’s polo shirt, but Starsky ig­nored his effort and instead kissed Hutch’s thigh, quite close to his scrotum, and further inhaled the muskiness of Hutch’s skin. He kissed him with wet lips that time and then tentatively trailed licks and nibbles to his bared belly. When Hutch didn’t resist or stop him, Starsky kissed him again, more sensually that next time—soft, wet, warm kisses—all over his electrified skin. He noticed Hutch’s shaft had grown larger and stiffer in his hand, too.

“C’mon,” Hutch said, when his brain briefly engaged. “Take off your shirt.” He pulled at Starsky’s shoulder.

“I’m spent,” Starsky confessed.

Hutch felt Starsky’s grip on his penis tighten as the massage grew more determined. The stroke felt so good, Hutch was momentarily distracted by it and had to forcibly recall why Starsky wouldn’t undress. “You’re spent?” he asked with an audible pant.

“I’ve already made a deposit,” Starsky laughed. “Made love to my woman just before I got here.” He smiled at Hutch to amuse him. “Now I’d like to take care of my man—a kind of pay-it-forward thing.” He knew Hutch had trouble with one-sided sex play, so he would have to talk Hutch into it with every stupid com­ment he could think of.

And Hutch could also tell, by the look in Starsky’s eyes and the anti­ci­pation on Starsky’s face, that Starsky appreciated his concern and remem­bered that he didn’t want to be a taker. “I can wait then,” Hutch said.

“Don’t wait,” Starsky debated him. “Let me do this for you. Lie back, close your eyes, and take it like a man.” He tried to further con­vince Hutch by squeezing him tighter still. Hutch’s full size enabled him to lengthen the stroke. “Sometime in your lifetime you just took it, haven’t you?” he wondered.

“I can’t recall,” Hutch said. He confessed to himself that he really enjoyed Starsky’s hand on his penis and that trying to remember any­thing prior to that minute would be impossible.

“You’ve had women get you off and you enjoyed it for the sheer pleasure of the taking, right?” Starsky asked. “A quickie for the road, hm? A gift from the gods?”

That, Hutch did recall. “Never.”

“No woman has gotten you off and called it a day?”

Hutch stared at the ceiling fan and was mesmerized by its slow spin. He couldn’t concentrate. The pleasure Starsky created for him nearly derailed him. “I haven’t had your experi­ence,” he was finally able to say out loud. “I haven’t been with as many women.” He watched Starsky watch himself handle him and felt frustrated because he couldn’t handle Starsky in return. “C’mon,” he said again. “I can wait until later.” He didn’t want to wait, but he’d never been able to indulge him­self at someone else’s expense. It simply wasn’t his nature.

Starsky didn’t understand Hutch’s way of thinking; sexual giving wasn’t dependent on quantity of lovers or on a percentage of the over­all sum—at least not in his experience—nor in what one gets for what one gives. “Then let me be the first to give for the sake of the giving—and you take just for the takin’,” Starsky said. “We’ll both get some­thing out of it that way.”

He hoped Hutch would allow him to resume because he realized he actually wanted to please Hutch orally that time; Hutch smelled so good, so ‘animal’—and his late morning passive­ness made Starsky brave enough to try, too. His heart raced. Hutch hadn’t stopped him from those earlier kisses on his belly, so maybe Starsky didn’t have to ask. He would either get punched or he’d be given permission; either way, he was com­pelled to indulge his long-held desire to put his mouth on Hutch’s penis. Whatever the outcome, even if it was painful, the risk would be worth the price he’d pay.

He first kissed the patch of hair that nested Hutch’s genital, and deeply inhaled the familiar scent of his skin. The sexy aroma spurred Starsky bravely forward; he firmly held Hutch’s shaft and kissed the very tip of his un­sheathing penis, a quick, rather friendly, not so sexual kiss, but one that lasted long enough for him to further inhale the blend of oil with Hutch’s maleness—and to make Hutch gasp.

For Hutch, the sensation was pleasant, but it mildly confused him. He felt it, the kiss. He knew what it was and where it had been placed. But he never expected it. And it happened so fast, in the heat of his arousal, that he didn’t know what to think of it, either. After all, it felt good, despite how brief it was. Maybe more than good. Maybe closer to necessary. The idea that it could be followed by a series of kisses, even perhaps by strokes from Starsky’s tongue, or further, to be com­pletely orally consumed and sucked on by him, about gave Hutch an emotional heart attack. But orally pleasing a man, even one he loved as dearly as he loved Starsky, wasn’t anything he’d ever be able to reci­pro­cate, so he wasn’t comfortable accepting it. Still, despite his reser­vations, he wasn’t strong enough to resist it, either.

Starsky was aware Hutch hadn’t reacted to the kiss—at least not outwardly—and he knew Hutch had to have felt it. Was Hutch’s non­verbal in­action Starsky’s permis­sion to indulge them both that way? He pressed his luck, delicately pushed Hutch’s foreskin away from its head and tightened the shaft’s squeeze. He kissed Hutch’s crown again, for longer that time—with wetter lips and a warm tongue. He then gently sucked and tasted the sensitive head of Hutch’s so-hard penis. When Hutch’s only re­sponse was a barely audible, whispered-through-clenched teeth, “jesus,” Starsky no longer wondered whether he could take full liberty with his desire, so first, he delicately nursed the very tip and then tenderly sucked its foreskin in between his moist lips. The oil and his saliva made for a slippery, sensual, erotic contact—for himself and for Hutch, who inhaled abruptly at the compelling sensa­tion. Using his lips, Starsky gripped and then stretched the foreskin over the penis’s crown, carefully drawing its wafer-thin skin into his mouth. He probed it lightly with his tongue; a delicate, fleshy, warm, stim­ulating bit of extra Hutch.

Hutch had never, in his lifetime, wanted to weep in the middle of sex, but he sure felt like he might then. It required strength just to keep the tears from spilling from his eyes. Starsky’s loving gesture was a far cry from tolerance; it even went beyond acceptance. Starsky had taken the time and desire to indulge that part of him that had often been mis­­understood and neglected. Starsky loved him. Every single inch of him. Hutch covered his face with his hands to unsuccessfully repress his emotional reaction. And then he laughed—at himself, at how stupid he’d been to make Starsky pur­sue him in the first place, only to end up there in that unexpectedly precious moment fully enjoying him while he was fully enjoyed.

Starsky had just had the pleasure of an oral copulation and it was fresh in his mind. No woman pleased him more than Grace did. Her touch had been, and still was, unpretentious in nature. And be­cause of it, she didn’t have preconceived ideas about how to please him; she followed her instinct and her heart, so Starsky decided to do the same—and to use Grace’s technique, which was to join mouth-with-hand, to have them work in tandem as a single, oil-slicked shaft—as opposed to against each other as was often the case in his experi­ence. He figured if it worked beautifully for him, it would surely satisfy Hutch, too.

He released Hutch from his mouth, noticed Hutch covered his face in his hands, and handled him for a minute while he listened to Hutch breathe in reply to the touch. “Are you okay?” he asked when he saw the tear roll off Hutch’s temple and onto the mattress.

“Yes,” Hutch replied with a whisper to his voice.

“Is it okay?”

Hutch dropped his hands to his sides. “Yes, darling,” he whispered. “It’s okay.” He closed his eyes to finally accept the pleasure Starsky gave him—and that achievement thoroughly elated Starsky.

He rose to straddle Hutch’s knees, took him gently in hand, and completely exposed the sensitive and visibly wanting head of Hutch’s penis on a downstroke. Then he gently slid him into his mouth as far in as he could take him—for the very first time. After pausing them to savor the moment, he ever-so-slowly withdrew and, just as slowly, just as care­fully, just as sensually, licked him along the way, before he swallowed him again.

The sensation of Hutch’s penis sliding past his lips in both di­rections mesmerized Starsky. The phy­sical feel was wet and it was warm and Hutch’s skin was baby soft on the surface and yet rigidly hard beneath it. Hutch also filled Starsky’s fist as fully as he did his mouth. The evenly slow and firm strokes Starsky gave him were sen­sual, stim­ulating, and erotic; Hutch’s smell sexy, his taste amazingly gratifying. He heard Hutch gulp for a breath from the sheer intensity of the height­ened sensation. He was aware then of his own erection; pleasing Hutch pleased himself, too, but he remained faithful to the gift he gave; there would be no taking on his part, even if he could indulge his own orgasm after all.

Starsky was tentative at first only because he wasn’t certain he had the right rhythm, but when he heard Hutch heavily pant and moan, and then sigh with an audible grunt, Starsky abandoned his apprehension and confidently sucked on, lavishly licked, and sensually kissed Hutch’s meaty organ. He decided to build Hutch’s desire and not play with it, to make it last for Hutch instead, and he did that by releas­ing Hutch’s swollen penis to suck on his testes for a while, a lengthy while, first one and then the other, and then to suck Hutch’s penis into his mouth again when he sensed the man couldn’t stand another second of waiting for it.

Then Starsky repeated the acts to further lengthen and deepen Hutch’s pleasure.

Hutch achingly craved every downstroke as much as he relished the withdrawal. Starsky’s rhythmic grip couldn’t have been more accom­modating or more perfect. To feel such a seductive and stirring, a warm and tight, well-timed and determined, oral sex sensation, and one that indulged every part of his groin, Starsky’s caring tongue and caressing lips, his viscous mouth and oiled, slippery hand, took its emotional toll, too. Together they awakened a lust in Hutch. It had been too long since the last time he’d felt that urge to climax from being sucked, let alone got to satisfy it; he thought he’d never feel it again and that made him hungrier for it in that instance, as much as it made him eternally grate­ful.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head from his pillow to watch for a minute. The visual of his penis appearing and disappearing into Star­sky’s snugly warm mouth and hand heightened Hutch’s awareness and sensitivity: It was Starsky, not a woman, after all, who earnestly sucked his penis. It was Starsky, not a woman, who determinedly pleased him. It was Starsky, not a woman, who lovingly and sensually stroked him—as if he wouldn’t let go nor stop until Hutch ejaculated. This was no woman’s means-to-an-end, a ploy to get him to come so the ‘ordeal of fellatio’ could end sooner; he knew then that the pleasure was its own end: Starsky’s gift to him. He drop­ped his head back to the pillow and reached for him, to feel Starsky in his hands—to know through touch alone that Starsky was actually there between his legs, sucking and kiss­ing him out of his own pleasure—and to do what little was in his power to make sure Starsky didn’t abandon him in the middle of the dance.

He clasped Starsky’s hand, the one on his shaft, and lightly held it to enhance his visual, the one through his fingers, to help him believe that someone actually loved him enough to stroke him there and in that way, to take him with an uninhibited willingness—in and out of and back into Starsky’s mouth; firm grip, tenderly tight strokes, lubricious and pol­ished, and not without their own desire. He grasped the back of Starsky’s head, gripped his hair, followed Starsky as he lifted and lowered with each further-arousing stroke. Hutch moaned, he panted, he broke into a rhythmic, uncontrollable beat of, “Oh,” on each of his deepen­ing ex­hales as his orgasmic pleasure intensified, magnified, and began to crest.

Starsky sensed the inevitable; he felt it in his fingers and against his tongue, inside his palm and at his lips: Hutch’s hardened and power­less swell to bursting. He heard it in Hutch’s effort-filled, wordless voice and in his heavy breathing. The muscles in Hutch’s previously soft belly had tightened; his grip stronger on Starsky’s wrist and in Starsky’s hair.

Starsky loved every subtle and every obvious building reaction he felt—as much as he relished all those orgasmic sensations he knew he caused the man he loved, his hero. He’d give him anything—and espe­cially this.

Hutch was disappointed and lustfully hungry at the same time: He was about to climax; it would end and end too soon, and yet he ached for the relieving ecstasy it would bring. “I’m gonna come,” he managed to warn Starsky through a painfully arrested breath. No doubt Starsky would have to release him before he did—and that disappointed Hutch, despite that it was expected.

But Starsky, who was himself overwhelmed by the devoted exhilar­ation he felt for Hutch and by his own arousal of the sex he gave him, didn’t have any reason, nor any intention or plan, to release Hutch un­til Hutch fully expelled himself—along with every appreciative moan that came with it—into his wet, sucking, and inviting mouth.

Spill, Hutch did. Starsky didn’t retreat, so neither could he. He filled Starsky’s mouth with undulations of creamy semen, each wave an extra­ordinary pulsation of pleasure. He was so overcome by it, and so thoroughly immersed in every second of its enjoyment, that he couldn’t care if Starsky was offended.

But Starsky drank every mound of warm semen Hutch delivered. He did it willfully and with great personal satisfaction. He could tell how deeply and how protracted Hutch’s pleasure rated; it came through in Hutch’s loud moans, in his halting breaths, in his desperate grip, in his violent spasms, in the surprising amount of his ejaculate, and in the unusual length of his orgasm. And none of that was something that could ever possibly offend Starsky. From the moment he’d arrived that morning until that very one they experienced, it was love that drove him. It was Hutch’s happiness that thrilled him, that immersed him in the pleasure with him; it was Hutch’s joy that gave him joy. He couldn’t want for anything more.

Or anything less.

* * *

Starsky found Hutch in the condiment aisle staring at shelved jars of olives. When he stopped beside him, he affectionately squeezed the back of Hutch’s neck. “Can’t decide?”

“I’m having trouble—”

“Green olives are always good.”

“I didn’t mean with those,” Hutch said, hackled by Starsky’s misinterpretation. “I mean I’m having trouble taking something I can’t give.”

Starsky understood. He squeezed Hutch again. “No one’s asking you to give. I did it because I wanted to, not because I’d get the same thing back.”

Hutch picked out a jar of green olives and stared blankly at the label. He appreciated Starsky’s physical affection, but he didn’t know what to say. Things had gone further than he thought they would, and yet he didn’t want to argue about them, either. Or alter their course.

“Besides,” Starsky added when he noticed Hutch’s pause, “I have a built-in giver at home. In fact, I got one of those myself this morn­ing. I told you I was spent, remember?”

“So that makes it okay that I don’t return the fav­or?”

Starsky briefly pulled Hutch into a one-armed embrace. “Did you like what I gave you? That’s the question.”

The explicit memory of his orally induced ejaculation that morn­ing, as well as Starsky’s grip on his neck, made Hutch close his eyes to press back the sexual arousal it caused him in that grocery aisle.

Starsky had his answer. “So we’re all happy, then, right? What’s the problem?”

Hutch opened his eyes and looked into Starsky’s. “I guess the problem is…” he said, surrendering, “… shall I get a big jar of green olives or a little one?”

* * *

“So …” Jade began, his eye on Hutch, who was slumped com­fortably in his chair, “you enjoyed the blowjob while you experienced it, but you’ve had second thoughts since?”

“Where did you hear me say that?” Hutch asked. He sat closer to Starsky than usual, not by purpose, but simply because the clean­ing crew had left the chairs in that position from the night before. So Hutch felt Starsky’s intimacy beside him and said, “It was the most enjoy­able and satisfying blowjob I’ve ever had,” he remembered. “The only negative is the guilt I feel for not reciprocating—”

“Do you guys have to call it that?” Starsky interrupted them. “Do you have to use that word? Don’t you both have some sort of English degree between you that, combined, you can pull some better phrase from?”

Jade was more amused than Hutch. “Anything else I can think of is just as crass—”

“He’s right, doc,” Hutch said to mock a second thought. “We’re smart enough to come up with something else. Blowjob isn’t an accur­ate description any­way. Let’s say … it was the most enjoyable and satisfying suck job I’ve ever experienced.”

“Fuck you,” Starsky said under his breath.

Starsky was close enough that Hutch could hit his arm. “Lighten up, buddy boy,” he said. “The word is nothing compared to the action.”

“You’re trying to embarrass me,” Starsky decided.

“He might be,” Jade agreed, “but I’m not trying to embarrass you. I’m sorry you still feel uncomfortable after all the conversations we’ve had. We can call it fellatio, if you prefer.”

“Is that the medical term?”

Hutch chuckled.

Jade ignored him and hoped Starsky would do likewise while he ex­plained. “It’s not a medical term; it’s the scientific term.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it before,” Starsky said. “I just thought maybe it meant something more specific than … ‘blowjob.’ But I—”

“So, then,” Hutch interrupted him and addressed Jade, “it was the most enjoyable and satisfying fellatio I’ve ever experienced.”

“Because he gave it to you?”

“Well, it follows,” Hutch said, “that he was the in­volv­ing party; therefore, I couldn’t have experienced it with­out him, but, yes, it was his enthusiasm and his desire and his tech­nique and his inhibition, and certainly his total acceptance of my body, all that—and that he loves me, wants me, enjoys me, and seems to want to please me—that made it the best orgasmic experience of my life.”

Even Starsky was surprised to hear Hutch rank it so highly.

“I’m assuming that’s quite a statement,” Jade noted.

“Maybe it should just mean that the overall fellatio I had before was less than satisfactory.”

“I should have known it wasn’t a compliment,” Starsky mumbled.

“That’s not what I meant,” Hutch said. “I meant that no one else has had your enthusiasm or your desire or your technique or loves me that much or wants to please me to the degree you do. The four … five? women I’ve had as sex partners—combined—simply can’t hold a candle to you.”

“I think it’s more like seven or eight,” Starsky figured, mostly to flatter himself.

“But your point was …?” Jade asked Hutch.

“That there shouldn’t have been any reason why they couldn’t have loved me as much, wanted me as much, pleased me as much. The fact is, they didn’t. For whatever reason. Because they’re women. Because they have ulterior motives in relationships—babies, financial security, status, whatever. Because they wanted an average-looking guy in the package department. Or maybe because I’m just not that lovable, or I’m only that lovable by him.”

“Okay, so what difference does it make?” Starsky asked, playfully. “Whatever the reason is or was, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been the best … of your life, right?”

Hutch nodded an air kiss at him. “I was being asked to explain it.”

“Well, don’t,” Starsky ordered. “I’m happy just knowing the facts and not the reasons.”

“Spoken like a true detective,” Hutch said with a wink.

“Suppose some other guy fellated you?” Jade asked Hutch, bring­ing their conversation back to the point. “Let’s assume all men would have Starsky’s obvious desire to please you.”

“Why would I care?” Hutch wondered.

“You care only as far as it lends itself to exploring your own sex­ual boundaries.”

“I’m not interested in other men. There. Boundaries explored.”

“Maybe my question should have been, Do you think you can ever feel about giving fellatio to Starsky the way he feels about giving it to you?”

“It’s the one black spot on all of this,” Hutch confessed. “I can’t reciprocate. So it follows, then, that if I can’t give back what he gives me, then I shouldn’t take it from him, either.”

“And you still feel that way even after Starsky has made it clear—”

“More than once,” Starsky injected.

“—that he doesn’t expect or necessarily even want you to return the favor?”

“I’ve said it before,” Hutch replied. “I’ll say it again—”

“‘It’s not how my dog feels about me,’” Starsky quoted Hutch, cut­ting him off and beating him to the punch, “‘it’s how I feel about my dog.’”

“And a well-trained dog you are,” Hutch replied.

Jade couldn’t help his laugh, but Starsky sneered.

“Let’s talk about this,” Jade said. He sank further into his own chair, propped his heels on the coffee table between them, settled into what he hoped would be a long and enlightening conversation, and made his proposal. “Suppose you could feel that same enthusiasm and desire for Starsky that he feels for you?”

“Well, yeah, if I could feel that way, I’d feel that way, but I don’t feel that way. Capeesh?”

“What’s stopping you?”

Starsky looked at Hutch to wait on his answer, but Hutch held stead­y eye contact with Jade instead.

“He ate my semen,” Hutch bluntly said after half a minute when he realized Jade and Starsky would wait forever for his answer. The notation didn’t faze the doctor, but it sure did make Starsky squirm in his chair. Hutch heard the movement beside him, ignored it, and closed his case by say­ing, “I simply couldn’t do that. I can’t suck off some guy and swallow cum, know what I mean? Can you?” His question had been hypothetical, but he hoped it didn’t seem as if he was taking sides, either.

Starsky was offended, but he didn’t know how or why, so he fol­lowed his gut and impulsively defended himself. “I’m not some guy,” he argued vehemently. “But, you know what, doc? I’m not asking him to return it. Therefore, I don’t want the con­ver­sation to be about this. I’d rather we left it on the high note of know­ing it was the best fellatio of his life.”

Jade saw the hurt look in Starsky’s blue eyes. He also noticed, again, Hutch’s quiet, relaxed, unimposing demeanor, and knew Hutch had meant no harm. Jade wanted to end it on a ‘high note,’ too, but he was in pursuit of an even higher one. Treading lightly was one of his long-practiced virtues. “If the repulsion is cum-eating,” he proposed to Hutch, “you realize you could stop the fellatio immediately prior to ejaculation and make him come with your hand, right?”

It was a rhetorical question, so Hutch didn’t answer.

“Or you could just spit it out afterward,” Jade suggested.

Starsky exhaled audibly to let them both know he was unhappy that the conversation hadn’t ended where he’d asked it to end.

Jade ignored him, purely to get at something more positive, so Starsky would feel vindicated instead. “How many women in your lim­ited experience,” he further asked Hutch, “have swallowed your semen?”

Hutch didn’t even have to think about it. “None,” he said.

“And yet they gave you fellatio, yes?”

“Not like he did.”

“But they did nonetheless.”

“Your point?”

“That one can perform fellatio without the … consumption.”

“So, what you’re asking me,” Hutch surmised, inconspicuously feel­ing un­com­fortable with the questions—or maybe it was his not-nearly-as-fond memories of fellatio with women that spurred his dis­comfort, “is whether I can fellate Starsky and not swallow.”

“That’s what I’m wondering, yes.”

“I don’t want him to answer that,” Starsky decided. “His answer is only going to piss me off. He can’t ‘suck dick’—he’s made that clear. And I say it crassly because that’s how he sees it: Gross, disgusting, dis­turbing, repulsive … And that becomes a reflection on me, you understand? I don’t want to hear it.” His voice cracked. “I especially don’t want to hear it after having done it to him.” He had more to say, but his emotions got the better of him, so he shut his mouth.

Jade waited for Hutch’s reaction. No doubt Hutch heard the dis­may—or even the pain—in Starsky’s voice. And, like Starsky, Jade had sim­ply wanted Hutch to appreciate that Starsky wasn’t ‘just some guy.’

Hutch was well aware of Starsky’s wounded pride. Or maybe it was his wounded soul. He’d never been given a more beautiful gift than the fellatio Starsky had performed on him only days earlier—and he was­n’t about to detract or dishonor it, either. He lowered his eyes from Jade’s and stared instead at the table between them. It allowed him to feel Starsky’s presence beside him—and to further feel his burden.

It also reminded Hutch of his own feelings later that day, there at the picnic in the early afternoon. He lay on his back on the blankets they’d un­folded on the ground, one arm behind his head. He closed his eyes to absorb the warmth of the sun and the healing quiet and the peace­ful­ness of the most relaxing day he’d had in a long time; it had begun with such an unexpected thrill: Starsky’s gift to him that morning, one that had emo­tionally com­forted Hutch as much as it immense­ly satis­fied him orgasmically. He tried not to think about it, but he was conscious­ly aware that it had happened to him and that it was the reason he felt so tranquil. He heard insects and birds, the flow­ing brook near them, and Grace and her friend, Jana, speaking softly to each other; Starsky hum­med, carefreely, so Hutch focused on that sound, the low voice of his new lover, and marveled all over again at where their friendship had gone, where it was on that day, at that very minute. All was well, at least for then. Hutch was in the presence of the people who mat­tered most; whatever lay ahead in his life was pure vanity.

He lifted his eyes and noticed Jade still waited on him. “I don’t know what to say,” he confessed in a shameful voice. “I got the most beau­tiful and liberating orgasm of my life—and can’t give it back to him. To explain why or to even explore why will only hurt him further—and hurting him at all is the last thing I want.”

Jade was skilled, but he wasn’t certain he was skilled enough to grant Hutch that wish, so he said nothing. Where they went next, what they talked about after that, would be Starsky’s determination.

“He can’t give it back to me,” Starsky echoed Hutch after a minute of silence in the room. His, too, was a low voice, more steady than previously, but just as solemn. “That’s what he can’t do. What I can’t do … is convince him—or you, doc—that I’m not asking him to do what he can’t do. Maybe it’s my turn to say that it’s not how my dog feels about me, but how I feel about my dog that matters most to me.” He didn’t use those words with any jest nor any hint of it in his voice or delivery. He meant it with the same conviction Hutch had once relayed it to him.

Jade had shifted his eyes to Starsky’s—and he held the connection with him for an even longer minute after Starsky’s speech. It was clear to him that Starsky’s conviction was just as strong in his eyes as it had been in his tone.

“He takes care of me in other ways,” Starsky then said, intriguing Hutch as much as he did Jade, “and in ways I don’t take care of him.”

“Tell me about one of those ways,” Jade said. Perhaps it would be the high note they sought, the redeeming end to their session that day.

“In fact,” Starsky began, “he took care of me in one of those ways the day after I had ‘taken care’ of him.”

* * *

“You made an impression,” Starsky said.

Hutch shoved Starsky against the wall and planted his mouth on his lips. He didn’t give Starsky time to explain his comment because he hadn’t stopped thinking about the fellatio he’d received the morn­ing before, and he was horny again for a release, though he didn’t expect to get one the same way then.

“The back of your head into my sheetrock?” Hutch asked after he ended the kiss. “Was that the impression I made? Or was it this?” He carefully grabbed Starsky’s crotch and squeezed his bulge.

“I like that impression,” Starsky said. He seized Hutch’s face in his hands and resumed their kisses. Then he unbuttoned and un­zipped his own jeans, pulled them down to his knees, and freed his stiffened penis into the cool air. His back was to the wall and Hutch had him pinned, but he eventually managed to find Hutch’s hand and force him to grip his crotch again, that time without his clothes, for a skin to skin contact.

Hutch sucked a deep breath when he felt Starsky’s warm and hard and sizable erection in his hand. He massaged him, moaned with him, and allowed Starsky to pull down his sweats to take him, too.

They kissed and they fondled each other and they eagerly grunted and pleasurably moaned, and then they sank to the floor right there in front of the closed front door of the house. They weren’t frenzied, but they were passionate—and they were determined.

Starsky was as anxious for an orgasm as was Hutch, so he focused more on his own. “I have to be careful,” he said between pants. “I don’t have time to shower.” Or blow dry his hair. Nor did he have other clothes to change into should they make a mess. He didn’t want to explain anything to Grace, despite how accepting she’d been. “You and me are going to town in a bit.”

“I’ll cover you,” Hutch reassured him.

They busted up laughing because those words had new meaning. They just hoped they wouldn’t laugh the next time they had to use them in a shoot­out situation with bad guys and one of them needed cover in order to make an exposed run to a more advantageous position. It cracked them up to realize, yet again, how much and in what ways their lives had changed—and that they both knew it, wordlessly.

Their sexual encounter that morning was short-lived; they were anxious and excited for it—and quite comfortable with it, too, so it didn’t last long. Hutch allowed Starsky to ejaculate first. He eagerly mas­tur­bated him, right there on the wood floor while Starsky lay on his back, breathed heavily and panted with him, moaned with and kissed him, and then kept his word that they be careful; he cupped Star­sky’s crown so his semen would pulse directly and com­pletely against Hutch’s palm. Then Hutch used Starsky’s cum as a lubricant to mastur­bate himself while he propped on his elbow and faced Starsky—and Starsky eagerly watched and lent a hand. Despite the powerful ec­sta­sy, Hutch was able to take careful aim; they pumped his semen onto Star­sky’s exposed and hair-dusted belly and over Starsky’s penis, too. Then they lay beside each other on the floor while their hearts pound­ed and they caught their breaths.

“You’ll cover me,” Starsky noted after a couple of minutes. “But who covered you?” He smeared Hutch’s semen over his own slowly fad­ing erection to squeeze out that last bit of pleasure.

Hutch defended himself. “We kept it out of your clothes,” he said proudly. “Wasn’t that the objective?”

“How come you didn’t let me blow you? What’s that other word?”

“Suck me?”

“It starts with an F.”

“Fuck me?”

“Not that F,” Starsky said, laughing, though briefly wishing he could engage Hutch that way. “But I’da sucked you. How come you didn’t ask me for it?”

“I didn’t know I could,” Hutch replied.

“Anytime, buddy.”

Hutch wasn’t sure he could believe him, but he gave him an appre­ciative smile just the same. Then he got up off the floor, pulled his sweats back to his waist, and went to the bathroom to get a towel. It took a couple of minutes for the sink water to warm, and then he im­mersed the towel in it, wrung it out, and re­turned to the living room. Starsky still lay where he’d left him. He hadn’t moved a muscle except to slightly turn his head and look into Hutch’s eyes when he approached.

Hutch then lay beside him and noticed Starsky looked fondly at him. He looked back for half a minute, but when Starsky didn’t say anything using words, Hutch resumed his task. He washed Starsky’s belly with the warm, wet towel—and he was meticulous. He wiped in the direction of his hair growth, gingerly bumped Starsky’s semi-flaccid penis out of the way a couple of times to do a thorough job beneath it, and then re­folded the towel to wash Starsky’s penis with it, too. When he was done, he tossed the towel on the floor near them.

Starsky didn’t move. He didn’t then pull up his jeans or button his shirt. Hutch turned his head and looked at Starsky to decipher his stall, only to be startled by the tears in Starsky’s eyes. Had Hutch done the wrong thing? Had he gone too far?

“What?” Hutch asked.

Starsky tried a smile through his tears to let Hutch know he wasn’t hurt. “Remember that day you found me after what they’d done?”

Hutch remembered; he’d never forget: The morning after the third night of those ter­rible rapes. Starsky, blindfolded and bound, stripped of his clothes except his shirt, chained to the wall, lay bloody and bro­ken on the cold, dirty floor of that abandoned warehouse.

“Remember when we were in the ambulance?” Starsky asked. He knew Hutch remembered that, too. “You washed my face.”

Hutch would also never forget what he saw on that first video: Starsky’s attacker ejaculating on him—after the guy had slapped Starsky’s cheek as hard as he could; he was angry at Starsky because Starsky had refused to fellate him. He expelled himself on Starsky’s face instead—with that video camera up close on the action, its impres­sions burned forever onto a videotape, and then left in Starsky’s VHS player by those same men. Hutch remem­bered it vividly: One of the first things he did for Starsky the morning he’d found him was to wash the caked semen off his face. “It was the least I could do,” he said.

“I thought you were just cleaning me up,” Starsky re­called. “I didn’t know you knew what they’d done. I was actually relieved to think you’d gotten rid of evidence before even you could figure out what happened to me.”

Painful moments—and such a painful time; the two of them care­ful not to offend or hurt the other. Now, there they lay, having just orgasmed on Starsky again; first those men, then he and Starsky. “Is this thing we’re doing making you remember what they did?” Hutch asked.

“Not like that,” Starsky said. He wiped his tears on his sleeve and stared mo­men­tarily at the ceiling. Then he looked into Hutch’s blue eyes again. “It’s just that … you washing me just now re­mind­ed me of the wash you gave me in the ambulance and how I didn’t know you knew what you were doing. You have this way of tak­ing care of me.”

Hutch tugged on Starsky’s waistband and encouraged him to lift his hips from the floor to pull his jeans back up. “You’d do the same for me,” he said. He tousled Starsky’s hair. He knew the man appreciated him. “Do you think any of this has helped you—or are we just having a good time?”

Starsky studied Hutch’s face in search of a clue to his unsaid words, but those blue eyes merely sparkled in the light. “Are you knock­ing what we’re doing?”

“You know I’m not,” Hutch said.

Starsky thought about Hutch’s question, then answered, “It’s kind of like they broke me and I’m getting fixed back together in a way that had to be above the call of duty if it was going to have any reason to it.” He didn’t think he’d explained himself all that well. Words weren’t his gift. “What about for you?”

Hutch placed his hand on Star­sky’s chest and looked into his beautiful blue eyes. “I think there’s only one way for us to be any closer and that’s to be inside each other, don’t you think? I like that we’re now this close—I didn’t think we could get any tighter—but it bothers me that it can’t be mutual, that I’m not cap­able of giving head or of letting you inside me the way we’re planning on me being inside you. I always thought you were the intolerant, self-oppressed one. Truth is, it’s me.”

Starsky felt sorry for Hutch, for his feeling that way, but he under­stood it, too, given Hutch’s upbringing and his father’s prejudices. “Maybe you could look at it like what they did,” Starsky said, “that something that brutal … you get to help me end with some­thing, well, wonderful, you know?”

Hutch appreciated that Starsky forgave him for his double standards.

But Starsky didn’t want Hutch to feel pressured, either. “Would you rather not do it?”

“No.”

“Are you nervous about it?”

“I don’t like that I might hurt you; that scares me.”

Starsky cradled Hutch’s chin and forced him to make more seri­ous eye contact. “You won’t hurt me,” he promised. “It isn’t in you.”

Hutch hoped he was right.

“Besides, I’ll be there to help you through it,” Starsky said.

The concept made them both smile; they were amused and con­soled at the same time.

“And what can I do to help you?” Hutch asked. He meant about their upcoming anal sex plans, but Starsky had a different request.

“I’d like to get a list of all the regis­tered sex offenders in the area and start paying them a visit,” he said. “You know how we’re always hearing about some scumbag who’s out on parole and ends up kidnapping a kid and the system never bothers to follow up on these guys? I’d like to start doing some follow-up—voluntarily, I mean. Go through the list. When I get to the end, start over again.”

Hutch smiled at him.

“Do you think you would do that with me?” Starsky asked.

“Try stopping me.”

Starsky shifted his eyes to the ceiling and imagined adding that line of investigation to their routine. It pleased him to think they might pre­vent a kidnapping—or end one sooner, had they not inter­vened. He felt Hutch nudge him and he refocused on Hutch’s eyes.

“And you wonder why I love you,” Hutch said quietly.

Starsky grunted. “Hell, no, cowboy, I don’t wonder. You’re the pret­ty one, but I’m the cool one. Who doesn’t love me?”

* * *

“That’s an admirable endeavor,” Jade noted. With folded hands, he pressed his knuckles to his chin and looked fondly at Starsky. Despite his client’s struggles and sometimes seemingly immature behavior, the man was a genuinely good one—and his ambi­tion in life was evid­ence of how much. Jade wanted to completely absorb the positive vibe he felt from Starsky’s true nature, so he gazed upon him purely with feel.

“Admirable?” Starsky asked. He thought Jade’s attention was scrutiny and wanted clarification. “You mean, what Hutch did…?”

Jade finally spoke. “Well, that, but it’s also an admirable endeavor to want to rescue abused, frightened, and forgotten children.”

Starsky didn’t seek praise, so he was speechless.

“He’s an admirable guy,” Hutch said, not facetiously.

“It’s those things,” Jade said to Hutch, “that continually remind me why you feel the way you do about him.”

“It might be hard to imagine this,” Hutch said, “but it’s not just the honorable in him that I respect so much; it’s the child in him, too.”

Jade didn’t want Starsky to be any more embarrassed than he al­ready seemed to be, so he readdressed their point in time. “Tell me more about the picnic,” he encouraged Hutch. “Did you feel com­fort­able in Grace’s com­pany?”

“She made it easy,” Hutch said. “She was ten times more at ease than I was and it wore off on me. Then it turned out it really wasn’t a set-up. Jana, her pregnant friend, is only fifteen years old.”

“She sure did take a liking to him, though,” Starsky recalled. “She’s blond and blue-eyed, too—and mostly an orphan—so…”

“What happened to her parents?” Jade asked.

“They were killed, along with her brother, in a car accident less than a year ago. So, naturally, she’s got this crush on Hutch and this enormous hope he’ll adopt her.”

Hutch looked over at Starsky, surprised to learn what he heard.

“I tried to tell you you made an impression,” Starsky defended his un­timely disclosure, “but you wanted to make an impression of the back of my head into your sheetrock, remember? and I never got the chance to explain it.”

Hutch was so startled by Jana’s plight that he couldn’t even find solace or humor in Starsky’s defense. He continued to stare blankly at him.

“What about the girl’s boyfriend?” Jade asked.

“She hasn’t got one,” Starsky said solemnly. “The pregnancy is the result of a rape.”

Hutch’s mouth dropped and he looked off to recapture his com­posure. He’d spent that afternoon at the picnic enjoying Jana’s com­pany and her attention on him, not realizing how much he mattered to her—or why.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jade said sincerely. “Has the guy been caught?”

“She’s clammed up about it—even to Grace,” Starsky replied. “But we’re hoping Jana’s crush on Hutch might help her open up to him.”

“And that’s why I was invited to the picnic,” Hutch realized. “It was a set-up, after all; just not the kind I feared it would be.”

“Must every good thing that happens to you be a conspiracy?” Star­sky argued with a growl. “That’s not how it happened. Grace has spent a lot of time with Jana; she’s in a foster home for now with a much older couple, so Grace is being a big sister to her. And she thought it might be nice for all of us to spend time together, just the way I explained it to you that morning. But after Jana met you and we saw how excited by you she got, we hope it’ll help her talk about what happened to her so we can nail the motherfucker who attacked her.”

Hutch raised his hands in surrender. “Okay. You win. Use me.”

“So the picnic went well,” Jade assumed. He didn’t like to see the men argue, even when that ended well, too, and especially not when he felt he’d started the debate. “And you’re okay with the fellatio you received,” he said to Hutch. Then to Starsky, he asked, “And you? Are you okay with the fellatio you gave?”

“I was at the time.”

“But not now?”

“I’m okay with doing it. The now I mean is right now talking about it.”

“What would you prefer to talk about?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about we talk about why he’s not okay talking about it?” Hutch submitted.

Jade tried not to smile, but he didn’t succeed.

“For all the reasons I’ve said so far,” Starsky answered them, ignor­ing Hutch’s abuse and Jade’s amusement. “When we talk about it, it makes it real in a different way.”

“What way?” Jade asked.

“It’s like … I gave him fellatio, right? But when we talk about it, it’s like I gave him a blowjob.”

“So, it’s the difference in how it’s perceived,” Jade noted.

“Yeah. I did it because it was sexy and it was sex—by my defini­tion—and because I liked pleasing him that way. But when you ask me to talk about it, you’re asking me to justify why I gave a guy a blow­job.”

“­That’s not what I’m asking you,” Jade countered. “But appar­ently it’s what you think I’m asking you. And you think I’m asking you to justify why you gave a guy a blowjob because you feel embar­rassed or ashamed of what you’ve done, yes?”

“Both those things,” Starsky admitted after half a minute.

“Would you feel embarrassed telling me you’d orally pleased a woman?”

Starsky thought, and then said, “Probably.”

“Would you feel ashamed telling me you’d orally pleased a woman?”

He didn’t have to think that time. “No.”

“So it’s more for reasons of shame that you don’t want to tell me that you gave a guy a blowjob, more than it’s about embarrassment.”

“I guess so, yeah, by that logic.”

“But like you said earlier about yourself not being ‘just some guy,’” Jade reminded him, “we can also say that Hutch is not just ‘some guy,’ either.”

“Which is why I don’t like talking about it. Because when I talk about it, it’s like he’s reduced to ‘some guy’—and he’s not.”

“In your mind? Or you think he’s reduced to ‘some guy’ in mine?”

“In yours,” Starsky said, certainly. “He’s never been ‘some guy’ in mine.”

“How can I convince you that he’s not ‘some guy’ in my mind, either?”

“I don’t know,” Starsky mumbled, lowering his eyes. He knew he projected motives and thoughts onto Jade—all without evidence and all from his own insecurities. He was ashamed of that, too.

Hutch didn’t have anything to add to their dialogue, so he sat quietly and listened carefully. Maybe he’d find something to analyze.

“How long before you actually performed the act of fellatio on Hutch,” Jade asked Starsky, “did you think about doing it?”

Starsky shrugged.

“A month before?”

He couldn’t remember.

“Six months ago?”

That he knew. “No, I never thought about it until close to when I did it.”

“You’ve never had a thought—six months ago or over the past decade—about giving fellatio to Hutch?”

“No. Never. Not before we started playing around.”

“So it’s a recent thing.”

“Yeah, all of this is recent. Playing around with him. Handling him. Fellatio-ing him.”

Jade again didn’t smile. He didn’t want Starsky to think he was continually amused. “And you never had thoughts about fellating any other man, years ago, throughout the years, or recently?”

“God, no,” Starsky said emphatically. “Didn’t I already answer that question?”

“Right,” Jade said, “so it should follow then that I have never thought Hutch is just ‘some guy.’ It’s been quite clear to me that he and he alone is the one-and-only man we’re talking about here. He is a some­body.”

Starsky realized he’d been caught in his own trap, but he appre­ciated it. “Okay,” he genuinely surrendered. “I get it.”

“Let’s return to the more important issue,” Jade said. “We haven’t yet settled whether you’ve had bad feelings about it, other than those associated with talking about it here and now.”

Starsky understood. “Okay. Other than the bad feelings I get talking about it, no, I haven’t had any bad feelings remembering it or know­ing I did it—or even thinking about doing it again.”

“You don’t feel ashamed, even fleetingly, to remember that you put your mouth on his penis?”

“No.”

“That you brought him to orgasm that way?”

“No,” Starsky said again, in a lower voice, but not because he was un­comfortable. “If I think about it—but not when I talk about it here—I actually feel horny for it again.”

“So, why are we here?” Jade wondered, not seriously, but also not in pursuit of any particular answer. “It sounds like you’ve got it under control, that you’re okay with the way things are now, yes?”

“Well, no,” Starsky expectedly said. “I mean, if I was okay with it, I wouldn’t feel bad talking about it, right? And it still doesn’t change the fact that I shouldn’t be okay with it.”

“And you shouldn’t be okay with it,” Jade surmised, “because sex with a man is what you’ve been taught to believe is wrong.”

“My parents never said—”

“Taught by culture. By your peers. By your religion.”

Starsky silently explored Jade’s conclusions. “Yeah, okay,” he finally agreed. “Especially that last one. God forbids it, so I feel ashamed for doing it because I shouldn’t do it.” On further reflection, he added, “This guy was raised by a preacher.” He nodded in Hutch’s direction. “His father still hates ‘the fags’. You’d think Hutch would be the one to not be okay with all this—because his father would drown his own son if he knew what he’d done.”

Jade looked at Hutch who raised a sheepish brow at him. “That true?”

“True,” Hutch admitted. “And his father a preacher and his father a preacher and so on.”

“And you?”

“An atheist.”

Jade was impressed, but he looked at Starsky. “So, Hutch has apparently overcome his upbringing when it comes to man-on-man sex—”

“He hasn’t overcome it,” Starsky argued. “His religious brainwash, despite that he’s no longer a religious person, is the reason he keeps resist­ing me. He won’t admit it, but I know it’s true.”

Hutch grunted. “There are two ways to looking at that, Starsk,” he said. “One is that my former brainwash keeps me from broadening my horizons as quickly as you want me to broaden them. The other is that my non-religion, my non-belief, enables me—in the end—to take those steps with you each time my gut tells me not to because religion doesn’t ultimately control my behavior. I simply need to be reminded of that on occasion.”

* * *

“Should you be doing that?” Hutch wondered.

Still fully dressed himself, Starsky let him go, pulled the front of Hutch’s sweats back to his waist, and patted Hutch’s hip as he pretended to agree. Hutch didn’t ap­prove, after all. He had time to think about it and no longer wanted to receive fellatio. Or maybe it was one of those moments when Hutch’s upbringing kept him from ‘broadening his horizon.’

Whatever it was, Starsky felt he had done wrong. “What I should be doing is working,” he said. He didn’t let the hurt of Hutch’s rejec­tion show, but he couldn’t look him in the eye, either. Hutch seemed to have enjoyed what Starsky had begun to do for him; Hutch had an erec­tion, after all. And Hutch’s breathing was tellingly audible and he moaned that familiar sound of pleasure. But what one’s body wanted was­n’t neces­sarily what one’s mind thought appro­priate—and being fellated by Starsky apparently didn’t sit well with Hutch that second time. In fact, on the morning that Hutch slammed him up against the sheetrock and they ended up handling each other on the floor in front of the door, Hutch hadn’t asked for fellatio then, either, when he easily could have.

Starsky had feared this day would come, the moment of that in­evitable rejection.

It was his fault. He assumed he was welcome because he had been welcome the first time. On reflection, he initiated the encounter in that instance, and he hadn’t asked for permission, either. Now he felt foolish and embarrassed, but also, admittedly, hurt when Hutch refused him.

He rose from his knees in front of the sofa and quietly stood. “I have calls to make,” he said, “letters to write, dogs to pat, babies to kiss, hands to shake …” He took a few steps away from Hutch, left him on the sofa, and made more effort to sound unharmed. Besides, maybe if Hutch didn’t want it, it shouldn’t be wanted—by either of them. “I’ve also got walls to paint, tires to rotate, things to eat … a shit­load of a schedule … and so do you, by the way, so get off your lazy ass and let’s get going.”

Hutch was hurt then, too. He didn’t understand why Starsky ended their sexual play so abruptly and seemingly with such ease, par­ticularly since Starsky had initiated it and had made him feel as good as he had obviously felt. Couldn’t Starsky tell he enjoyed the few min­utes of oral stimulation? Hadn’t his erection been big enough? If a man couldn’t un­derstand the depth of another man’s sexual appetite, especially in the heat of it, then who could? Besides, Starsky had already told him he could have fellatio ‘anytime.’ Hutch was right not to believe him.

He briefly rubbed his aching penis through his sweat pants, mostly to calm himself, and focused on Starsky’s inexplicable de­meanor. “What you’re saying,” he observed, “is that you’ve got plans then?”

Starsky faced Hutch, made firm eye contact, and bit his lip to stall his pain; he didn’t want it to come through in his voice—but it was a struggle and he barely pulled it off. He only managed one word. “Yep.” Then, to keep from losing a grip on his emotions, he walked to the front door. “Meet me at my house when you’re ready and we’ll hit the road.”

Hutch couldn’t think of any place they were supposed to go except to a therapy session with Dr. Jade later that afternoon. But while he deciphered Starsky’s behavior, Starsky abruptly left the house—without a goodbye.

Hutch bolted after him. “Hey!” he yelled when he got outside.

Starsky was already a couple of yards into the private gravel road on his way back to his own house, but he kept walking, despite Hutch’s call.

“Stop, god­dam­mit!” Hutch said next, more loudly. He couldn’t follow Starsky beyond the top of the porch because he was bare­foot.

Starsky halted with his back to Hutch. His effort to hide his feel­ings hadn’t worked, so he was left with the effort to contain them instead.

“Turn around,” Hutch said in a raised voice.

When Starsky did as he was told, Hutch was alarmed to see the fallen expression on Starsky’s face. He had defin­itely been hurt by something—and to the point that he appeared to not want to explain it, either. But Hutch couldn’t let him go without knowing. “Come back here. Please?”

Starsky dropped his arms to his sides and looked off for a second. He was also frustrated. “Let it rest.”

“Not until you tell me what I said or did that drove you out of here.”

Starsky squinted at him. “Maybe it’s not about you.”

“I’m involved. Now, for once, will you stop shutting down when you get hurt and talk to me before it gets the better of you?”

Starsky stared up the driveway, past Hutch’s house, to the back of the property, to its tree-line. He hooked his thumb into a front jeans pocket to express his helplessness, his inability to explain it, even though he truly wished he could.

“Come back here,” Hutch ordered him again. “Just come closer so we’re not having this conversation with anyone who might be within earshot. Can you do that much?”

Hutch could pull Starsky out of his melancholy; he was often the only one who could, even if Hutch had done the harm. It was for that reason that Starsky returned to him, not because he’d been ordered. He wanted salvation and there was only one place to get it, even if it hurt. He just wasn’t capable of remembering that fact when he first got injured; it was a weakness, but he was strong enough to know where to find the salve. He stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up at Hutch.

Starsky’s return had consoled him.

“Tell me what happened,” Hutch said. He drew a relaxing breath. “We were, I thought, having a good time.”

“Were we?”

“Weren’t we?” Hutch asked. He knew he had enjoyed Starsky’s mouth on him, even despite its interruption. He mentally raced through reasons Starsky would have ended the play, from something Hutch said to a flash of horrific memory Starsky recalled, given that he’d been forced to fellate the men who raped him. “Okay,” Hutch corrected him­self. “I should have said I was the one having a good time.”

Hutch’s comment frustrated Starsky; would he ever be understood without having to explain himself? “You asked me if I should be doing what I was doing,” he reminded Hutch.

“So?”

Starsky apparently couldn’t explain it. He hated that he didn’t have Hutch’s vocabulary, his articulate way with words, or that he wasn’t able to rise above his hurt enough to be coherent. He turned away again. “So, never mind.”

Hutch urgently shot a “Wait!” at him. He knew he had to help Star­sky express himself. When Starsky hesitated and faced him again, he intuitively asked, “Did you think by that question—‘should you be doing that?’—that I meant you shouldn’t be doing ‘that’?”

“What else could you have meant?”

Hutch then understood. “Jesus, Starsk, that’s so far from what I intended. My fault. I’m not all that gifted with words when you’ve got my dick in your mouth.”

Starsky didn’t smile.

“What I meant …” Hutch searched the air for the right words so there’d be no more misunderstandings. “What I meant by it was that maybe you should be getting a blowjob, not just giving one. The ques­tion was my roundabout way of avoiding guilt and greed.”

Starsky squinted at him. “Are you saying I should get a blowjob—from you?”

Hutch stalled. He couldn’t bring himself to fellate Starsky, so to explain it further would only insult him.

But Starsky understood that he’d misunderstood. “I’ve told you before that I’m not expect­ing you to suck me,” he said. “Besides, what makes you think I didn’t already have that this morn­ing, so who needs it from you anyway?”

“Because you got one from Grace a couple of days ago, you said, the day you gave me mine, remember?”

“And that was my allowance for the week? Is one per week your limit, too?”

“I don’t know what you’ve got going at home.”

“Grace and I agreed to never say ‘no’ to each other’s needs.”

“What could she possibly need from you that you’d say ‘no’ to?”

“She needs me to go to the store on the spur of the moment. She needs me to take out the gar­bage. She needs me to listen to some story I wouldn’t otherwise care to hear; chick stuff, maybe. She needs me to not pretend I’m not playing with you. She needs me to not want sex from her every day.”

Hutch was impressed. “And, in exchange, she doesn’t say ‘no’ to your needs?”

“So long as I don’t ask for it every day.”

Hutch was envious. “You have it every few days with her?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t answer smugly.

“Blowjobs, I mean,” Hutch clarified.

“I meant sex,” Starsky explained. “I have sex with her every three to four days. Sometimes it’s a blowjob; sometimes it’s, you know, sex-sex.”

Even that was enviable.

Starsky looked Hutch in the eye. “So … how often do you lay your woman?”

Hutch calculated an average after staring away for a moment and was embarrassed to admit it. “Well, she’s been gone a month now, so it’s been at least that long. Before that, I got it about once a week maybe.”

“Once a week, maybe?”

Starsky responded just the way Hutch thought he might, so he de­fend­ed Sara. “She was raped four years ago, remember?” Surely, Star­sky could recall that Hutch actually met Sara at a rape victims work­shop—one Starsky himself attended as its Keynote Speaker. “I think you could appre­ciate what it takes to heal from that kind of violation,” Hutch added.

“I can appreciate it, but when it comes to the two of you, you’re the one at the top of my list. Is she scared? or turned off?”

“She has flashbacks. It makes it hard for her to relax and enjoy her­self. Didn’t you have flashbacks? Don’t you still?”

Starsky was sorry Hutch thought he had abused Sara. “My attack­ers were men, so I don’t think about them when I’m with Grace. But, honestly, I haven’t had a flashback playing around with you, either.” At least, not at that point in time, he hadn’t. “It’s just way too differ­ent, you know?”

“Well, Sara’s not Grace—or you,” Hutch said. “She’s having a real hard time with it. I’m the only one she’s been with since the rape. She went years without a man in her life. She’s beau­tiful. She’s intelli­gent. She’s a giving, warm, affectionate person, but she’s having a hard time with this, so we’re taking it slow.”

Starsky accepted it. “Okay. But what you’re also telling me is that you haven’t been getting laid as often as you’d like.”

“Who does?”

“Lately, I do,” Starsky quietly laughed. “Between you and Grace, I’m drained on a fairly regular basis.”

“Then lucky you.”

“So, is that it? You’re jealous of how often I get it? If you reject me, we can both be deprived of sex?”

“I didn’t reject you. And I’m not jealous. Envious, maybe, but not jealous.” Hutch had put Starsky on the defensive and he didn’t mean to. “It just seemed to me that you’re giving more than you’re get­ting and that bothered me—but I stand corrected. You’re getting plenty.”

“Is it that? Or is it that you’re getting more than you’re giving?”

“That, too.”

“Meaning, what you’ve been getting from me is lucky for you, but you don’t feel lucky because you’re eaten up with guilt.”

“Who needs Dr. Jade?”

Starsky smiled at Hutch’s crack. “You felt guilty this morning and asked me if I should be doing that,” he said, “if I should be giving you head, but really you wanted me to give you head; you just didn’t know how to take it—again.”

“I should be paying you for therapy,” Hutch said. “But it’s not so much the taking; it’s the not giving back that concerns me.”

Starsky was actually relieved to learn what he just did. He didn’t like being rejected by Hutch, but he understood why he thought he had been, and that relieved him. He studied Hutch as he stood at the top of the steps. His hero. His brother-by-fate. They looked at each other. Starsky loved the idea that they could fill in with each other where their women didn’t: if they wanted sex every day, they could have it every day—with each other. “So, when was the last time you got a blow­­job?” he asked.

Hutch didn’t have to think. “Sunday morning.”

Starsky laughed, annoyed. “I meant, before the one I gave you.”

Hutch knew what he’d meant. He was embarrassed to say. “A while.” When Starsky firmly looked at him to confess further, he said, “With Emma.”

“You’re saying Sara’s never given you head.”

“She was forced to suck off the guy who attacked her,” Hutch explained, “so … naturally … giving head isn’t something she wants to do—at least not right now. Sex itself is hard enough for her.”

Starsky was dismayed. He wanted more for Hutch than Hutch got, and he thought, after Hutch met Sara, she a registered nurse, that Hutch had gotten his due. Starsky didn’t have to ask. Sara apparently had difficulty with all aspects of sexual intimacy. He identified with the pain of a rape, especially forcible oral copulation; he was sorry for Sara, but mostly he was sorry for Hutch. “A man’s got a right to a blowjob now and then,” he said.

“Is that how you see it?”

“I do. And I wanted to give you one again this morn­ing—if you had just kept your mouth shut …”

“It’s hard for me to take—”

“It was hard, all right,” Starsky fondly remembered. “I’ll have to pay more attention to what your dick says than to your words.”

They smiled at each other with their eyes, but Hutch still didn’t feel deserv­ing.

“Learn to take without giving back,” Starsky advised him, reading Hutch’s mind. “Like I said, a man’s got a right to a blowjob. You must feel you’ve died and gone to Heaven, almost getting two inside of four days. But you need to learn to take them because I plan to give them to you … daily, if you want ’em. Or didn’t you hear me before?”

“I didn’t believe you.”

“That’s on you. I meant what I said.”

“I see that now.”

“I think it shouldn’t be ‘almost’ two in four days, though,” Starsky decided for him. “I think it should be that you did get two blow­jobs inside of four days. So, let me repeat this: You can get one anytime you want one. Anytime.”

“Yeah?” Hutch mischievously asked. He felt a stirring in his groin from the idea alone.

“I’ll prove it,” Starsky said. “Starting now. So, get back in the house, Hutch. I’m here to serve and to protect your rights, remember?” He teased Hutch further as he ascended the steps. “Yeah, yeah, I know: It’s a dirty job, but apparently somebody’s gotta do it.”

* * *

Jade leaned back in his chair, locked his hands behind his head, and put his feet on his desk, crossed at the ankles. “You boys haven’t done the big deed yet, though, have you? Or are you not telling me about that?”

“You’ll be the first to know when we do the nasty,” Starsky said. When Jade laughed, he added, “Finally! I got a smile out of you.”

“Well, this isn’t a kiss-and-tell,” Jade said, “but I thought you’d share it, since it’s been one of the more important aspects of your ex­ploration.”

“So what’s so funny then?”

“That you referred to it as ‘the nasty.’ Like I said, it’s an important relation; you made light of it and that struck me funny.”

“But really it’s not,” Starsky concluded.

“Really, it’s not,” Jade echoed.

“I haven’t gotten the test results back,” Hutch explained. He took a swallow from his water bottle. “Doctor’s office told me to call around three o’clock, but it’ll have to wait until after our session.”

It had just turned three.

“Do you want to call now?” Jade asked. “We can talk about the results while you’re here—if you want or need to. Or would you rather do that in private?”

Hutch thought it a good idea to call then. He suspected the news would be good news, that the test results were all negative, given that he’d never had any genital trouble that he was aware of, except that he hadn’t gotten sex—prior to Starsky—as much as he wanted over the years. He leaned over to Jade’s desk to transfer the phone from it to his lap.

Jade gave his attention to Starsky while Hutch made his call. “Grace is still okay with you and Hutch?”

“She says she is,” Starsky replied. She hadn’t said anything else to him about his relationship with Hutch or behaved any differently; she hadn’t asked any new ques­tions, either. “But how long will that last?” he wondered with a quiet voice.

“Grace is an old soul,” Hutch remarked. He pressed the receiver to his ear and waited for the line to be answered after he dialed. “She’s one hell of a woman.”

“That almost sounded like you think she deserves better than me,” Starsky said. Hutch didn’t hear him because he was then dis­tracted by the call he made. But Jade heard him.

“I don’t think he meant that,” Jade said about Hutch’s comments. “Hasn’t he already said he believes you deserve her?”

“Yeah, but that was then.”

“A week ago?”

“Like I said, that was then. Things change.”

“You tend to seriously misread him sometimes—and yet you’ve closely known him for a very long time. How can you be that off-the-mark these days?”

“Yeah, okay, so I misunderstand him more often now,” Starsky replied while he stared at the floor, “and I think it’s because I’ve been emo­tional ever since the … you know …”

Jade knew he meant having been raped, so he continued. “Why did it hurt so much to think Hutch refused you this morn­ing? So what if he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of your oral gen­erosity?”

Starsky smirked at Jade for wording it that way, though he appre­ci­ated it, too. “He did want to be on the receiving end. We went back in the house and I finished the … job.”

“Right. But I’m asking, so what if he didn’t want to get one? I mean, suppose he’d completely called it off? Why be so hurt by that if he had?”

“Because it would mean I was doing something wrong.”

“Just because Hutch didn’t want it?”

“He’s the voice of reason.”

“So, fellatio is wrong because Hutch reasons that it’s wrong?”

“One of us has to stay sane.”

“Is Hutch wrong for taking it?”

Starsky had to think. “No,” he decided.

“He can’t stop you?”

“Yeah, he could.”

“So he allows a guy to give him fellatio.”

“It’s still different,” Starsky insisted. “He’s … an innocent bystand­er. He’s not the one making it happen. He just enjoy­s what he gets. What’s wrong with that?”

“But you’re bad for giving it to him.”

“Yeah. I’m the one who’s wrong because I’m the one doing.” Star­sky thought for a second and then said, “And, it’s like the kissing was in the beginning. It felt good and right while I did it, but then, after­ward, when I thought about it, it didn’t feel so right. Same with this other thing. It feels right when I’m doing it to him. It feels good to give, you know? I like satisfying him. But, then, when you ask me to talk about it—well, then, it just seems … wrong.”

“Because?”

“Like I said … because a guy shouldn’t do that to another guy.”

“What about kissing him? Is that still unnatural or immoral for you?”

“Not anymore,” Starsky said certainly. “But there’s a big difference between kissing and sucking. Even you’d agree to that, wouldn’t you? When I started kissing him, I didn’t think I’d ever be doing this other thing to him. This other thing is fairly extreme, right?”

“Suppose the guys are gay? Is it right for them?”

Starsky listened to Hutch’s un-telling one-word replies to the person at the end of his phone call, and then refocused to answer Jade’s question when Hutch wouldn’t look at them, let alone join them. “It’s fine for gay guys,” he said, somewhat alarmed by the conversation when he imag­ined what Jade wasn’t saying. “Are you implying you think he and me are gay?”

“I’m just asking if you think fellatio is normal and natural for gay men.”

“Well, yeah,” Starsky said, frustrated, “I suppose so. But if he and me aren’t gay, then it’s not natural for us to do those things. It’s not morally right. But if I’m hearing you, you’re saying, because it feels right to me when I’m doing it, then it’s natural for me and therefore I must be gay, even if he isn’t.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jade said, emphasizing his words so Starsky would better hear him. “I’m wondering why, in your mind, it’s okay for gay guys to have homosexual sex, but it’s not okay for straight guys to have homosexual sex.”

Starsky snorted. “Like I just told you: If it goes against your nature, then it’s not natural and therefore it’s morally wrong to do it—and a morally wrong deed is a nasty one.”

“So, if it’s natural for someone, it’s not nasty?”

“How can natural be nasty, know what I mean?”

“But it seems that having sex with Hutch is natural for you.”

“Jesus,” Starsky swore under his breath. To finally hear Jade say that sex with Hutch was natural for him in that context about gave him a heart attack. Wouldn’t that officially mean he was gay? Isn’t that what Jade was saying—and not saying? He found his out. “If I’m feel­ing shitty about it,” he said, “then how can it be natural for me?”

“You said, when you have it with him, it feels natural. You only feel ‘shitty’ talking to me about it. I’m just us­ing your words.”

Starsky scratched his head. “Maybe all of it is nasty then,” he said, frustrated. “Or maybe I just mean to say it’s morally wrong—because, even though it feels natural to me, I’m wrong to have it … unless I’m gay.”

“If you’re not gay and it feels natural for you, is it morally wrong because God disapproves?”

“I don’t know anymore what God thinks, but, yeah, probably.”

“Or is it more than that, Starsky,” Jade pressed him. “It’s a reflec­tion on you, isn’t it?”

“How do you mean?”

“If it feels natural for you to give Hutch fellatio, in your mind it means you must be gay. You can’t be a straight guy having homosexual sex with a man you love; you can only be a gay guy having sex with a man—especially if you enjoy it.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Let’s then, for the sake of argument, say that’s true: You’re gay. What’s wrong with being gay?”

Starsky had never had to point-blank answer that question, even to himself, and didn’t know then how to reply, so he threw out an im­pulsive thought. “My whole life up until now would have been a lie.”

“And so what if it were?”

It seemed a dismissive question and Starsky was about to argue with it, but then he realized Jade simply tried to flesh him further. So he searched the air with his eyes for some semblance of an honest con­fession. When he found it, he said, “If I’d spent my whole life lying about what I was,” he said, “then it would follow I did it because I was ashamed of it and, therefore, that it was something to be ashamed of.”

“Or afraid,” Jade countered. “Maybe you would have lived that lie to keep from being ridiculed or beaten up. Or killed. Something men did and tried to do to you just on the assumption you were gay.”

“Except I never lived with that fear, I mean, before they attacked me. And I never felt ashamed of some secret part of me. I’ve never had anything but pure excitement for women. Even after doing this with Hutch, I didn’t think, ‘Ah, that’s what’s been missing. I’ve wanted a man all this time’—or even that he’s what I’ve wanted all this time. Hutch is the icing on the cake, not the thing I’ve been secretly search­ing.”

“But you came in here troubled by the question of your sexual identity,” Jade said, “and my question back to you now is, ‘So what if you were gay?’ Let me ask it a differ­ent way: When you first arrived here, and from what I’ve gathered from the conversations we’ve had over these many sessions, you think being gay would make you less of a man, even if it’s natural, don’t you?”

Starsky tried to define exactly what he thought, so he wasn’t mis­read or judged. “I see gay men … I mean … there are butch ones, tough guys, and there are female-like ones, queens … and there are those who live with fear, and others who are comfortable in their own skin, and all that. But, yeah, overall, I think gays are less than real men because to be a real man is to have sex with women—to conquer that domain kind of thing. I don’t fear gays and I don’t hate them, but I do think less of them. And that just makes me a bigger asshole than you knew before, right?”

“Do you think Adam is less than a ‘real’ man?”

“Wow.” That question stopped Starsky in his tracks. “No,” he said, realizing it wasn’t possible to believe that about his friend. “I don’t think he’s less than a real man—even though he’s not having sex with women.” The notion reprieved and therefore relieved him. “Okay,” he said on second thought. “I’d say he’s just a dif­ferent kind of man. He’s gay and gay sex is right for him, but he’s also a guy’s guy, you know, a normal everyday guy—except he likes man sex.”

“Do think Hutch is a real man?”

“God, yes.”

“Because he has sex with women?”

“No. Because … he’s … Hutch. Because he’s been nothing but a man, in every way a man is a man.” He didn’t really know how to explain it. “His having sex with me is just the … exception in his … manhood.”

“So, maybe you’re both simply a different kind of man, too.”

“Right,” Starsky said, mulling the idea. There was something re­deem­ing in that belief. “Except I’d be a different kind of man altogether if I was a straight guy who liked gay sex.” That piqued Star­sky’s self-aware­ness even further, but then a secondary thought dashed it. “It would follow,” he said, “that that different kind of man was being im­moral—because he’d be having gay sex and he was straight, therefore it wouldn’t be natural for him.”

“So Hutch would be being immoral, too, yes?”

“Well, no, because, like I said, he’s just taking what he’s offered. Hutch doesn’t give head or receive anal, so Hutch is a better man.”

“I guess I appreciate that distinction, but we were talking about how you’d feel if you were gay, not straight, and having homosexual sex—with gay and straight men.”

“So, you’re saying that … I’m gay having gay sex with Adam, who’s gay by nature, and I’m gay having gay sex with Hutch, who’s straight by nature? But, in both cases, I’m gay.”

“I’m not saying you’re gay. I’m exploring your thoughts about how you’d feel about being gay if you were.”

“I see. Okay. If I was gay … I’d see myself more like I see Adam: A real man who likes man sex. Wow. But I’d still have to live with the fact that I spent a lifetime in a lie with myself.”

Jade didn’t want to further debate the point. He could tell Hutch was about to wrap up his conversation with the doctor’s office, and Jade had one more line of thought he wanted to address. “What about when you’ve talked to Grace about your sex acts with Hutch? Does it feel wrong when you talk to her about it?”

“Yeah, but mostly because it’s wrong to do things like that with him when I’m in a relationship with her. But, yeah, to answer your point, it feels wrong when I talk about any of this with her or with any­one—but him. And then, when I think he disap­proves, it’s wrong even when I talk to him about it.”

“So, it’s when you imagine it from someone else’s point of view, from someone else knowing what you do, that’s when it feels bad.”

“Like that,” Starsky said. “I guess that means I’m letting what other people think decide what I should feel about it.”

“It does sound that way, doesn’t it?”

“That adds stupid to the way I am about all of this,” Starsky mum­bled, disappointed, but also relieved to learn that about him­self.

“Do you think you’ll ever be fine with it—or do you imagine that playing with Hutch will end after you’ve had your curiosity satiated?”

“Satiated?”

“Satisfied.”

“I don’t know. The answer depends on him.”

The him in question finally ended his call, hung up the phone, and returned it to Jade’s desk. His move made Starsky and Jade stop and look at him.

“Well?” Starsky finally asked when Hutch sheepishly looked back.

“As expected,” Hutch replied. “I’m as clean as a new pin.”

“Is that cleaner than a whistle?”

“Maybe. I mean, really, what does it even mean to be as clean as a whistle?”

“They’re shiny, I guess.”

“Then say as shiny as a whistle.”

“Yeah, you’d think—”

“Boys,” Jade interrupted them.

They looked at him.

Jade was amused. “So … your tests were negative. You’re dis­ease-free.”

“Apparently,” Hutch said.

“That means we’ve got a green light,” Starsky cheerfully noted.

Hutch looked over at him and smiled proudly with his eyes. “Now that’s an appropriately used metaphor.”

“You’re sure it’s a metaphor and not an analogue?” Starsky asked.

“Yeah, buddy boy,” Hutch said with a laugh, winking at him, “I’m pretty sure it’s not an analogue. It’s not even an analogy. Are you ques­tion­ing my judgment?”

“Just your vocabulary.”

“Boys,” Jade repeated, firmer that time.

They looked at him again.

Jade gave up and laughed instead. His clients were in a good mood and it showed. “To use another metaphor, I won’t rain on your parade. So why don’t you guys call it quits early today and go cele­brate your clean bills of health?”

“No can do,” Starsky explained. “I want this thing with Hutch to be espe­cially planned—and I already have a date to take my woman to a movie tonight.”

“He meant for us to celebrate with a beer,” Hutch corrected him, “not with a fuck.”

Starsky locked eyes with him. He’d misread the doctor, too.

Hutch explained it further, in a raised voice to tease him, as if Starsky would hear him better. “He means we shouldn’t get weighted down with a therapy session today; we ought to go get a beer and relax. Enjoy our good news.”

“You don’t have to yell,” Starsky playfully warned him, embar­rassed. “I knew that’s what he meant.”

“Unless you boys need to see me beforehand,” Jade said, “why don’t we re­schedule until after you’ve, you know, consummated the—how do you want me to say it, Starsky?”

“Brotherhood,” Starsky answered. “We’ll call on you again after we’ve consumed … completed … the brotherhood.”

* * *

THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM

When Jade opened his office door that late morning, he expected to see Ken Hutchinson seated on the sofa, but his client wasn’t there, and he wasn’t in one of the chairs at the doctor’s desk, either. Instead, Jade found Hutch in the back corner of the office, near the storage room, beside a crammed bookcase. Hutch stood staring out the window into the park­ing lot below, so Jade slowly approached and greet­ed him with a quiet “good morning.”

Hutch replied in kind.

“Get you something to drink?” Jade asked.

Hutch raised a small thermos of water he held and thanked Jade for the offer just the same.

Jade studied him for a minute.

Hutch didn’t appear relaxed, de­spite his posture at the window and his relative wordlessness. The weight of what brought him to Jade’s office by himself that morning was apparent on his face. He looked strained. Then Hutch shrugged help­lessly at the doctor and returned his stare to the outside.

“Have you had another misunderstanding with Starsky?” Jade asked. He leaned against the window frame near Hutch and faced the room inter­ior.

Hutch shook his head.

“A fight then?”

Hutch straightened and looked at Jade again. “Nothing like that. As far as he knows, he and I are the happiest guys on the planet right now.”

“And why does he know that?”

“Because we did the deed.”

Jade’s client wasn’t sheepish, nor did he seem embarrassed to have disclosed what he had. Maybe Jade misunderstood. He sought clarifi­cation. “You had sex with him, you mean. Sex sex. Anal inter­course.”

Hutch lightly laughed, a sad, sorry kind of laugh, and leaned against the wall near the window frame, only feet from Jade. He silently mulled Jade’s words over in his mind and then out loud. “Anal intercourse. Yeah, okay, I guess there’s such a thing.”

“There is such a thing. Did you do such a thing?”

Hutch rested the back of his head against the wall and looked away for a moment. “Yeah, we did such a thing,” he finally confessed. “Two nights ago.”

When Jade last saw them, both men had excited­ly gone forward into the experience; they’d had at least two counsel­ing sessions prior to that night. Hutch had even made the effort to be blood-tested, so he wouldn’t have to wear a condom. But now it seemed he had second thoughts or bad after-feel­ings. And appar­ently he hadn’t shared them with Starsky. Jade didn’t know where to begin—except at the begin­ning. “You him, right? Like the plan?”

Hutch finally made eye contact. “Yeah, just like the plan. I fucked him, not the other way around.”

“Am I safe to assume you’re having buyer’s remorse?”

Hutch was overcome by his emotions, none of which he could deci­pher or explain, but so much that he was unable to answer. He looked back into Jade’s light brown eyes and prayed the doctor knew which direction to take him out of his melancholy.

“You feel bad,” Jade began.

Hutch bit his lip and nodded.

“You did a bad thing.”

Hutch managed to find his voice. “Intellectually speaking, I didn’t.”

“You did a bad thing morally?”

“Emotionally.”

“You did an emotionally bad thing.”

“Or maybe it’s ethically, too,” Hutch said. “I mean, part of it is that I had an affair. Sara will leave me.”

“But you knew that going in, didn’t you? You were prepared to take that risk.”

“Yeah, I knew it going in,” Hutch admitted. “But, no, I think some­how she won’t find out. Or I won’t have to tell her—because, for some strange reason, it doesn’t count in the scheme of things. I had the affair with a guy, after all, and not just a guy, but Starsky, my partner and best friend, so how could it possibly be the same thing? Or she won’t care even if I do tell her. But none of that is logic­ally sound, ei­ther. They’re just excuses. It’s self-forgiveness, so it means nothing.”

“Do you feel bad about what you did with Starsky or are you anx­ious about what’s going to happen between you and Sara now?”

Hutch stared out the window in search of better words. It wasn’t like him to be at a loss for them. “I don’t know,” he decided. “She’ll never suspect and, if I never tell her, we’ll go on as we are, so I don’t think it’s that I feel anxious. Maybe I just feel guilty. Or maybe it’s just as simple as … I fucked him. I remember sitting in that chair over there on Day One”—he nodded at Jade’s desk area—“and telling you, with convic­tion, that he couldn’t move me beyond a kiss and here I am telling you I fucked him.”

The reality brought tears to his eyes. He looked at Jade for help, but didn’t get it as soon as he hoped, so he sank to the floor with his back to the wall. He sat cross-legged and twirled the thermos in his hands. “So much for my convictions,” he mum­bled. “Maybe it’s just that I’m not the man I thought I was.”

Jade joined him on the floor. He sat against the wall beneath the window, he, too, cross-legged, almost knee-to-knee with Hutch, and his heart went out to him. Hutch was the emotionally stronger of the two, of he and Starsky, and yet he appeared so broken then. Broken and help­less. All Jade had were questions. Until he knew what truly troubled Hutch, he couldn’t help him, but he didn’t think it was as simple as Hutch im­plied.

“You had anal sex with him night before last and yet he believes, even now, that you’re both the happiest guys in the world,” Jade said. “Why would he believe that? Are you hiding these bad feelings from him?”

“I’m not hiding,” Hutch said. He didn’t think he was, anyway.

“Have you seen him since you had sex with him?”

“I saw him yesterday. He spent the night with me that night, the night we had sex; we had break­fast that next morning, and worked yesterday afternoon. Then he stayed home last night with Grace.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Not a bit. Really, it doesn’t.”

“So, he was just so happy yesterday that he didn’t notice you weren’t?”

Hutch understood what the doctor meant. He dropped his thermos into his lap and hid his face behind his hands for a minute to repress his feelings. “He thought I was tired,” Hutch remembered, lowering his hands to speak. “I’ve had more sex with him this week than all the sex I’ve had in five years. It didn’t faze him to imagine I was tired.”

“And by ‘sex’ you mean the hand- and blowjobs, and now anal intercourse, yes?”

Hutch nodded. “Isn’t that how you would define ‘sex’?”

“Well, you said you’ve had more sex with him this week than all the sex you’ve had in five years, but, in the past, you haven’t wanted to call French kissing and masturbation sex. I wasn’t sure you were tell­ing me you’d had intercourse more than once since two nights ago.”

“Yeah, okay. So it’s all sex. But we only had the anal stuff once.”

“So you haven’t seen him today?”

“No. I have to pick Sara up at the airport in a couple of hours. He knew yesterday that I was coming into the city this morning. We didn’t plan to work today. I didn’t even stop by his house to check in.”

“So he doesn’t know that you’re still ‘tired’ then, right?”

“Right.”

“And what are you really? Overcome with guilt?”

“Maybe.”

“Shame?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you don’t think you did something immoral, that the kind of sex you had with him was an immoral act.”

“I don’t think that, but I don’t know. Something about it feels … wrong.”

Jade repeatedly hit dead ends. He decided to go further back. He settled into his posture on the floor, got as comfortable as he could, and planned to stay there a while— until he got to the source of Hutch’s pain. “You had sex at your house?”

“Yeah.”

“In your room, on your bed?”

“Yeah.”

“Did Starsky initiate where and when or did you?”

“He did.”

“Did you willingly follow him into the exper­ience?”

“Oh, yeah. I was very excited about it. Excited and nervous. He’s been and has become even more familiar to me lately, know what I mean? I know him. I’ve known him and I’m closer to him now. I know better how his mind works, how he breathes when he’s turned on, and how to measure his pleasure by the way he moans, and what his hands and his mouth and his ‘man parts’ feel like. So all that excited me. But the anal inter­course was new and that made me nervous. Not so ner­vous that I didn’t want to do it. Not so nervous that I wasn’t turned on by it—because I was. I didn’t have an unwillingly bone in my body—and neither did he.”

Jade couldn’t help but feel Hutch was so troubled that morning that he would pour every detailed part of his soul into the desperate explor­ation to find out why he was conflicted—and how to remedy it. That excited Jade. There wasn’t a question he couldn’t ask; he’d silently been given per­mission.

“Let’s take it from the top then. You’re on the bed with him. I assume you’re both undressed.” When Hutch didn’t correct him, Jade continued. “You’re about to engage in anal intercourse and you’re both nervous and excited,” he said. “Did you get right to it or was there some fore­play?”

The doctor’s question was one Hutch actually appreciated. He’d been think­ing about that very thing for weeks, even prior to his inter­course with Starsky. “I’m always surprised by how much foreplay there is between us. I always figured two guys would just get to it, know what I mean? We’re ready right away, after all. So I assumed foreplay was some­thing we reserve for women, but I’m amazed by how much he and I have. That night was no different. We fondled and kissed and teased each other. He sucked me for a while— until I made him stop, or the night would have been over before it began. I think he did it to dis­tract me from my nervous­ness.”

“Or maybe he did it to make you feel good.”

Hutch lightly laughed. “Or maybe that.”

“You were in high spirits overall?”

“We were having fun, despite that we were nervously excited.”

“Or maybe because of it?”

Hutch lightly laughed again. “Okay, maybe. I remember feeling like I was having sex for the first time—but with hindsight. I mean, it was like I’d never had it before. It was new and it was him. I can’t explain it. We played around. We laughed a lot. It wasn’t a serious thing. It was fun and it was affectionate.”

“Who initiated the penetration?”

“He did. I wasn’t going to do anything until he was ready.”

“How’d he let you know he was ready?”

“We ended up in the position, I guess—though, look­ing back, maybe he maneuvered it. He’s a smooth operator, that one. He’s more sexually experienced than I am.”

“You’re not inexperienced—not with your looks.”

“Thank you. I’m just saying he’s better at getting things going. He’s more adventurous. Brave.”

“What position did you end up in?”

“Him on his back, me between his legs on the bed—the way it was in his fantasy—as if I was about to pene­trate a woman in the missionary position. Like that.”

“Did it take a natural course from there?”

“Well, we had to prepare first.”

Jade remembered they’d planned to have condom-less sex, so he was momentarily confused. “How so?”

“Well, like he said, the rule is ‘too much lube is almost enough.’”

Jade understood then. “You ‘oiled’ him up?”

“Him and me both. I mean … my dick … his ass … but he did all the honors.”

Jade could tell Hutch had a hard time telling him that last part; he’d spoken in halting cadence. “And then?”

“And then I did what I thought I’d never do: I entered him.”

“How did the penetration feel?”

Hutch thought back to it. He’d been uncharacteristically nervous; so excited and nervous and awkward and aroused that the details of that night blurred together even then. Jade had just asked him to slow down the moments, to bring them into focus, and that’s what he did to help him make sense of his remorse.

The penetration.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been harder for anything in my life.”

* * *

“Are you ready for this?” Starsky asked.

Hutch thought that was a question he should have asked Starsky, not the other way around. He knelt between Starsky’s legs and laughed at himself to let him know they both knew he was nervous and that he appre­ciated Starsky’s light-hearted concern.

Starsky handed him the oil bottle. “Here. Make generous use of that stuff. It’ll make you feel better.” He lay beneath Hutch on the blank­eted mattress, the back of his head in the pillows, and anticipated Hutch’s next move.

Hutch shyly smiled at him. “It’ll make me feel better?” he asked.

“You won’t have to worry about hurting me.”

It was more than Hutch’s anxiety about physically hurting Starsky that unsettled him; it was the act itself, something Hutch had only done once before, years earlier—with a woman—and nothing he’d ever imagined doing with a man, let alone with Starsky. That, and—deep down—he feared he’d live to regret every second of it, though he consciously couldn’t figure out why. Still, he popped the lid on the bottle, but before he used it, he paused long enough to look at his part­ner in the quiet light, as deeply into Starsky’s dark blue, eager eyes as possible, to convey his un­spoken thoughts. He hoped, in the end, that Starsky would conclude that the sex between them, past and present, had been worth the exper­ience, too, and that Starsky wouldn’t live to regret any of it, either.

Starsky read Hutch’s thoughts; they were written all over his face—in those liquid blue eyes and in Hutch’s excited, but timid expression. “C’mon,” Starsky said, “let’s break the ice.” He held out his hand, palm up, and asked for a squeeze from the bottle.

None of their relating that night was like making love, at least not the kind of lovemaking Hutch was familiar with, that of romance and careful tenderness, but it wasn’t devoid of deep feelings, either. Affec­tion, trust, excitement, personal history, loyalty, a warm fam­iliar­ity, and a host of other emotions and bonds, not even he could itemize, were all at play between them on the mat­tress there in the privacy of Hutch’s bed­room. Starsky was disarmingly playful and direc­tive; Hutch accom­modating and eager, despite his apprehen­sion. He could easily succumb to his emotions, but Starsky kept him one step ahead of them, so Hutch followed the instruction and squeezed a gener­ous amount of oil into Star­­sky’s hand.

Starsky rose onto an elbow to reach between them to thoroughly lubricate Hutch’s mostly erect penis. He could tell, by Hutch’s approv­ing moan alone, that he’d aroused Hutch more than he intend­ed, and that pleased them both. He then lubricated his own stiffened shaft and enjoyed the good it caused him. Then he asked Hutch for another spot of oil, which he instructed he wanted on the tips of his first two fin­gers, and which he then used to lubricate his own anus.

Hutch watched Starsky’s action and then looked him in the eye. “Tacky,” he said.

“Ain’t it, though? I’m just trying to help you out. What’s a partner for?” He wiped his hand on Hutch’s bare chest and could tell by that smile, too, that Hutch enjoyed the feel when he rubbed the oil into Hutch’s skin. Hutch wasn’t alone with his ner­vous­ness, but Starsky had already experienced anal intercourse with a man; he knew he should lead the way. “I’ll let you oil me next time.”

“You’ll let me oil you next time?” Hutch replied. “Is there a future in this for us?” He hoped the massages would never end; he enjoyed the feel of Starsky’s hand on him just then and the way it sensually relaxed him with the oil.

“We can only have a future if we have a present,” Starsky joked. He lay back against the mattress and didn’t take his eyes from Hutch’s. “C’mon, cowboy. Mount up.”

Hutch squeezed more oil out of the bottle and onto his penis; Star­sky had joked with him that ‘too much lube was almost enough’ and he took it to heart. The absolute very last thing he wanted was to hurt Starsky, phys­ically or otherwise. He coated his own shaft with the oil to make him­self harder, focused on the pleasure he gave him­self, and watched Star­sky watch him. It was Hutch’s responsibility to make the penetra­tion; Starsky had long ago given him permission—and they were both physically ready.

Hutch was also quite mindful of the delicate nature of the act itself when he pulled Starsky’s hips against his own and then gently pushed between his legs and into him. He held himself in hand and felt for the entrance with the tip of his engorged penis, pre­pared to use his fingers, but was rewarded before he needed to.

Their collec­tive breathing instant­ly accelerated at the unexpected sensation of the initial genital-to-anus, skin-to-skin, contact, and the look of each other stimulated them, too. There was a naked body beneath Hutch, after all—a rather willing sex part­ner, an inviting, want­ing play­mate, an as equally aroused partici­pant—enjoying the titillation with him and with the same intensity and desire. And, for Starsky, there was a rather shy, but determined blue-eyed blond beauty between his legs, obviously full of love and affection for him, about to enter not just his body, but the deeper part of his soul.

Their oiled skin glistened in the lamp light; there was enough of it to see every­thing Hutch wanted to see, yet not so much that it neu­tralized the ambiance. Hutch couldn’t but closely and excitedly exam­ine the action; he panted with pleasure at the sight and feel of himself as he determinedly, painstakingly, and with palatable concern, gently drove into Starsky’s anus with his swol­len penis. The opening was tight­er than he expected, much more snug than a woman’s vagina, but it felt as slippery and gave him incen­tive to push deeper, but to push deeper slowly, as if it was in­evitable that he’d cause pain in the drive.

He heard Starsky grunt, but not enough to alarm him; it actually sounded more like a greeting. It did make Hutch take inventory, though. He consumed the look of Starsky’s scrotum, and his erect penis as it lay against his hairy belly, and the way Starsky’s stomach tellingly rose and fell with antici­pation and excitement.

Were Hutch vaginally entering a woman, he would have pushed inside her, withdrew slightly, pushed in further, pulled out less, pene­trated deeper, and so on, until he was in as far as she was able to take him—which wasn’t all the way. But the body he’d joined that night was no female’s. That, and the man he had just barely entered was Starsky, his partner of ten years. The vivid reminder caused him to lift his eyes and make contact with Starsky’s.

“It’s all right,” Starsky whis­pered, already there to greet him. He could tell, by the way Hutch’s expression instantly softened, that Hutch needed the assurance. “Take your time,” he added. “We’re not in a hurry and I know you don’t want to hurt me. I’m relaxed.”

In fact, Starsky was more relaxed than he himself thought he’d be. Hutch’s meticulous and empathetic nature enabled him to release his own tension early on. He wasn’t afraid of pain, not then, not then because he didn’t think Hutch was capable of hurting him, not even by the nature of the act itself, or the size of him. Just from the one experience he’d had, that one with Adam, he knew relaxation was key to painless inter­course—that, and he wanted Hutch inside him so badly, his body was simply prepared for the entry. He also remembered what Hutch had just re­called: That they were closer than brothers—and had been for more than a decade. Those blue eyes, that dis­hevel­ed, trans­lucent blond hair, the attractive shape of Hutch’s face, his emotive expres­sions, his almost visibly pound­­ing heart and his audible, heavy breath­ing, his mind­fulness and his ability to be tender­ly careful, all served to loosen Starsky’s appre­hensions—as well as his every muscle, includ­ing and especially the one Hutch then pene­trated. He noticed Hutch’s open-mouthed, shy smile. “Just do what you’re doing, lover boy,” he said, “and you won’t hurt me. I promise.”

Hutch took comfort in Starsky’s words. He pushed in deeper and looked for the most subtle cue that would belie them, but never found one. Deeper still and he could tell that Starsky was completely relaxed; just beyond the entrance, Hutch slipped past the tight, fleshy fist of a ring and unexpectedly slid further inside than he intended. Starsky’s raised eyebrow at him made him lightly laugh. “I think I’m in at least,” Hutch decided.

“It sure feels like it,” Starsky moaned. “Let’s see how far in you go.” He rolled his hips to encourage Hutch to oblige him. His mind had long ago disconnected from his body and desire—and completely from his morality and self-oppressing thoughts. All he could feel was Hutch inside him, hard and unmoving, painlessly and unashamedly, with care­fulness and fullness. All he could hear was Hutch’s heavy breath­ing; he wasn’t even aware of his own. He was too intently focused on Hutch’s exper­ience to make certain there’d be no second thoughts, and he gauged it by listening closely to Hutch’s excited noises, by studying the concentrated expression on Hutch’s face, and by the still somewhat concerned look in those blue eyes.

Hutch penetrated deeper. The pleasurable sensation it gave him made him break eye contact with Starsky and drop his sight back to the action between their legs. He was mesmerized by the visual attraction, by the look—not just the feel—of his penis buried deeply inside his part­ner, by the shape of Starsky’s legs where they joined his butt, by the curve he could see of each cheek edge beneath Starsky’s tight sac, by the dark hair on Starsky’s belly and the denser patch at his groin, by Starsky’s sizable erection, which told Hutch all he needed to know about how it felt to Starsky. Deeper yet and Hutch slightly shifted to further open Starsky’s thighs and have them pleasantly rest against his own, there in that missionary position. Deep­er still and Hutch abandoned that great burden of anxiety he’d carried with him for days. He completely dis­appeared inside Starsky and then looked at him as his question emerged. “Can you feel all that?”

Starsky smiled with satisfaction and extended his arm out from his side to sink further into his surrender. “And there’s a lot there to feel,” he noted in a friendly voice. He felt heavy on the mat­tress and filled with Ken Hutchinson. He felt Hutch’s penis throb inside his anus, at the entrance, comfortably stretching him open, but also deeper, too, for an air-tight union; he felt their legs and pel­vises joined; he felt Hutch’s hand lightly grip his ankle.

Hutch leaned for­ward then and touched Starsky’s face with oiled fingers, tenderly, like a lover would, to make him smile again. No place Starsky would rather have been than where he was, doing what they did. He’d died and gone to that holy land he believed was Heaven.

Hutch had no place to go but to withdraw. As carefully, he eased himself out—but not completely. He didn’t retreat beyond the tight opening. He pushed in again and heard Starsky draw as deep a breath. “Does that feel good?” It at least felt good to him.

Hypnotized, Starsky replied, “It … feels … like … coming … home.” And it felt that way both sexually and emotionally. He couldn’t find any other words than the ones he used, so he moaned instead to let Hutch know just how much he loved the feel of the man inside him.

Hutch accelerated his pace; it enabled him to measure how well lubricated Starsky was still, how easily he could thrust into him with­out hurting him, and how it seemed to relax Starsky even more. He noticed Starsky’s grip on his own thigh had loosened and that Starsky had closed his eyes to focus on the pleasure Hutch gave him. Starsky’s glistening penis had grown noticeably larger, too. They were the cues Hutch needed to completely aban­don his fear of harm­ing Starsky, and to settle into a quiet, pleas­ing, arousing rocking of deep­ly pene­trating thrusts. The orgasmic sen­sation, the stimulating tight­ness, the con­scious­­ness of his action, the look of his penetrations and with­drawals, made him harder—and, in turn, made Starsky pant with a similar rhythm while the slowly passing minutes heightened the thrill of their union.

Hutch lowered himself to an elbow on the mattress beside him; his action made Starsky open his eyes. Their faces were so close, they could feel each other’s warm breaths on their own skin. The context of their lives emerged in a silent dialogue between them. They were as aware of the line they’d crossed as much as they were turned on by the sex itself. And with that under­standing, Hutch fol­lowed through with his intent and kissed Starsky. His thrusts were erotic­ally tender and pleased them both; the width and the length of his deeply pene­trating strokes—from against his groin to his penis’s tip and back again—made them both delirious. They were borne from the love Hutch had for Starsky and spurred by his admiration and respect for him, too, and that love and that admiration and respect, coupled with his passion for the sexual ecstasy they enjoyed with each other, translated into the kiss: A tender, sexual, loving, wet touch, sensual, warm-lipped, arousing kiss.

Starsky moaned with him. That he pleased Starsky with his penis and with his lips made Hutch want to thrill Starsky with his hand, too. He reached between them and gripped the man. He wasn’t about to climax before his partner did.

* * *

“So you did enjoy yourself,” Jade noted, glad to hear that much.

Hutch didn’t hesitate. “Immensely.” He was certain it didn’t explain his after-feelings, though; they couldn’t possibly have been related to the lovemaking itself because he wasn’t ashamed of his enjoy­ment. Or was he? He leaned more firmly against the wall and studied Jade. “Other than the snag we hit,” he said, “it was one of the most thrill­ing experi­ences of my life. Or maybe it was the most thrilling, period.”

“The snag?”

“Let’s just say Starsky and I have different definitions of inti­macy.”

Jade thought that went without saying, but he voiced his thoughts to hear himself and move the conversation along. “Starsky’s visceral; you’re more emotional.”

“He has a stronger sex drive than I do, too,” Hutch said. “I think it leaves him no recourse but to grab for physical gratification more often—or at least more quickly—and to do it at any cost.”

“Are you basing that on the quantity of women he’s had com­pared to you?”

“I base that on the frequency with which he engages sex. I think he’s one of those guys who can have it six times a day or more—every day—and still function. I’d be running on empty all the time if I tried to keep up with him.”

Jade stood corrected. Hutch was right, of course. “Why do you suppose he’s ‘needier’?”

It was probably as simple as the obvious. “His testosterone levels are higher, I imagine. He can’t help the way he is. Or maybe he’s just had a more liberated upbringing when it comes to sex. His father wasn’t a preacher.”

“So, was that the snag you ran into? He wanted intercourse more than once that night?”

Hutch hadn’t even considered it a possibility. “No,” he mumbled. He was temporarily distracted by the concept of such a thing, to have had that experience twice that night. It had been emotionally over­whelming for them both and they were exhausted afterward. Then he refocused. “The snag wasn’t related to sex per se,” he said. “I should have said that his idea of what it means to be intimate is, well, like you said, more visceral than mine. So he ended up, purely by his nature, by accident, I mean, pissing me off—and then I made him cry. And not because he was happy.”

Jade wasn’t certain he understood. Had Hutch been flippant, sar­castic? “While you were having sex with him, he pissed you off and you made him cry?”

“Can you believe it?”

It was hard to imagine, but it certainly would explain Hutch’s bad feelings that morning, his reason for hiring Jade in private, though Hutch had said twice that he didn’t think he felt guilty. “Am I hearing you right?” Jade asked again to be sure. “While you were in the mid­dle of sex with him, in the middle of anal intercourse, an experience you say was the most thrilling of your lifetime, you made him cry and not because he was happy?”

Hutch felt ashamed all over again. “I can be such an asshole some­times,“ he confessed. “But it was worse than that, even.”

* * *

This is an adult scene. Because so much of it is relevant to the story (the entire scene), we are choosing not to put it in a toggle, so skip ahead or read at your own risk. Or your own enjoyment.

“That feels … damn … good.”

Starsky was only able to utter those four words because Hutch, who was overwhelmed by his own emotional and sexual plea­sure, had finally released Starsky’s mouth to kiss his cheek, and the disconnect allowed Starsky to speak. Hutch buried his face against Starsky’s per­spiring neck; his breathing was labored and his repeated moans were evi­dence that he was near the edge. It made Starsky laugh with an aud­ible pant to know his partner was as aroused as he was. “Don’t stop doing that,” he whis­pered.

He referenced the penis-in-anus thrust­ing, as well as the hand stroke Hutch provided him at the same time. The dual sensations were intox­icating and Starsky was afraid it would end too soon, but he couldn’t help him­self when he told Hutch to not let up; he’d forgive himself for his greediness later. He also realized that, no matter how it happened or how long it lasted—or didn’t last—it was more import­ant that they experienced the intercourse—and enjoyed it together.

Hutch heard him and abruptly stopped both actions. He lifted off Starsky and partially withdrew; then he pushed deeply into him, briefly enjoy­ed the sight again of his own penis buried inside his part­ner, held them in that position, and looked Starsky in the eye.

Starsky laughed with disbelief. “I tell you not to stop and you stop?” He wiggled to encourage Hutch to move again, but it didn’t work.

“I don’t want it to be over,” Hutch confessed. “What say we slow way down?”

“Slow down in one way, maybe,” Starsky said between pants, “but speed it up in another, will ya?” He was anxious to feel the strokes inside him again and clenched his sphincter to encourage a wave of pleasure from the tumescence of Hutch’s penis still inside him.

“Speed up, how?” Hutch asked. Did Starsky want a speedy dura­tion or a faster rhythm—or both?

“Don’t be afraid you’ll hurt me. Go ahead and fuck me nice.”

“I wasn’t fucking you nice then?”

“Oh, it was nice, all right. I mean, you know—” He pushed back into Hutch’s groin with a rather hard thrust of his own and was keenly conscious of Hutch’s penis swelled inside him, pene­trating him with a dizzying fullness. “But, you’re free to fuck me, to give me a good, hard fuck—like there’s no tomorrow kind of fuck.”

He wouldn’t be able to explain it if he was asked, but Hutch was immediately and seriously bruised by Starsky’s instruction, and it was because he couldn’t assimilate it that he reached for the oil bottle instead. He found it clenched in Starsky’s hand and forcibly removed it before Starsky realized what he want­ed from him. Hutch laughed, relieving some of his own private misgiving. “You holding on to that with dear life, are you?”

Starsky laughed with him.

Hutch opened the lid and then turned the bottle upside down; he squeezed oil drops into his hand, recapped it, and gave the bottle back to Starsky. Then he withdrew from him, without pull­ing out all the way, and lubricated himself again. His penis was engorged and glis­t­ening, and its inherent pleasure compelled him to continue even though he was tempted to withdraw completely. He didn’t know why, but he sud­den­ly felt ‘wounded in action.’ To end their union would have emotionally hurt Starsky, and he didn’t want to do that, either. Starsky would mis­­under­stand his inten­tion; he didn’t under­stand it him­self.

He bent forward over Starsky, propped on his hands, and pushed into him again; the penetration was slippery and felt overwhelmingly good. When they made eye contact, Hutch tried his best not to let his second thoughts show, but they were fueled by Starsky’s further instruction.

“C’mon, Hutch,” Starsky said. “Give me what you got. Fuck that ass like you won’t ever get to again.”

Hutch almost ended the sex by his sudden want to call it off, out of anger. The joining was emotional, after all—at least for him. It was founded on a sensi­tive intensity. And it had just been damaged. He was no actor. But he didn’t know how he would explain himself, so he said nothing—except, by accident, all over his face.

Starsky noticed the not-so-subtle change in Hutch’s expression. “You okay?” he asked.

Hutch dropped his head and lowered his eyes to watch the action between their legs; he hoped the visual stimulation would dis­tract him from his wounded pride—if the physical sensations could­n’t. He did­n’t answer while he watched. It felt and looked good—and it didn’t.

“Hey,” Starsky called him. “Talk to me.”

Starsky’s ignorance offended Hutch further. He lifted his eyes and looked into Starsky’s concerned ones. Then Hutch fired the first shot. “I can’t help but notice what a ‘good queer boy’ you’ve become, that’s all,” he said with a light growl.

Starsky visibly winced. ‘Good queer boy.’ They were the words Star­sky’s attackers had used against him—while they repeat­edly gang-raped him. He no longer enjoyed the feel of Hutch inside him. It suddenly pained him, and not in a physical way. He caught his breath as he tried to emotionally fend off whatever Hutch directed at him. “Don’t talk like that,” he said. “Don’t use those words.”

“Which words?”

“You know which ones.”

Starsky felt the fullness of Hutch’s penis inside him, its thick cir­cum­ference and its lengthy depth—and that time, he didn’t like it. He squinted at Hutch to get a read of his intention, but he couldn’t find it soon enough to stop the next hurtful thing Hutch said.

“Maybe I should talk like a homo then. Lessee …” He concen­trated for a few seconds on his unrelenting thrusts. They felt good and yet sick­ened him, too, but he didn’t stop them. “You like that, boy? You like my dick in your ass? Didn’t know what you’ve been missing, did you?”

Starsky’s heart raced with his confusion and brewing fear. “Shut the fuck up,” he said. He pushed Hutch’s hips to encourage him to with­draw, to stop the hard strokes inside him. He thought Hutch baited him. He thought Hutch mocked Adam. He thought Hutch thought they should replay the rapes. He thought Hutch was angry about some­thing and used Adam and the rapes to humiliate him in retal­iation. Starsky didn’t know what or which to think. He roughly bumped Hutch with his knee. “Get off me.”

“You mean get out of you?”

Starsky was then afraid Hutch might physically hurt him if he didn’t stop the intercourse; Hutch had already emotionally hurt him. How­­ever he had wronged Hutch, Starsky grabbed onto his self-preser­vation and instinctively clung to it. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said. He reached between them and attempted to push Hutch’s pelvis away, then to try to hold Hutch back with pressure alone, but it didn’t work, so he gripped Hutch’s wrist instead and got his atten­tion that way. “Get off me, I said.”

Hutch loosed himself from Starsky’s grasp and instead pinned Star­sky’s wrists above his head on the pillows—first one and then the other. He expected they would tussle then, but Starsky obeyed him without resistance. “Maybe you’d like to try harder to stop me,” Hutch said, not under­standing Starsky’s capitulation. His heart pounded. He was angry and he was ashamed of himself and he was hurt. He could tell Star­sky was hurt, too, yet his own pain didn’t allow him to ease it.

Starsky needed to punch him to stop him, but he refused to wrestle. He knew, like he hoped Hutch knew, that a struggle would be remin­iscent of his nightmare in the hands of his captors. But already, by his sub­missiveness, he felt inex­plicably violated—and by Hutch, no less.

“Maybe I should handcuff you to the bed,” Hutch suggested. His grip on Starsky’s hands was tight and his voice heavy with his resent­ment. “But don’t let me decide. Why don’t you tell me exactly how you’d like this to go down. Blindfold, maybe?”

Those were the final words to break Starsky’s spirit. He com­pletely surrendered to the actions against his will. Tears shimmered in his eyes. He gave up physic­ally, too, and withstood the unwanted pene­tration. But he still had the courage to look Hutch in the eye. “I don’t know what I did that made you want to hurt me,” he confessed, his voice crack­ing, “but, whatever it was, I’m sorry.” A tear spilled with­out his ability to catch it and rolled off the side of his face to the pillow.

Hutch saw it—noticing it at the same time he became aware again, purely from circumstance, of Starsky’s three nearly fatal bullet scars, the one beneath his right nipple, in particular, so close to his heart, and all a reminder of what he’d nearly lost a few years earlier—and it was enough to shake him to his core. He abruptly stopped the action and he stopped his words. He knew Starsky had fought with his every muscle to escape the brutality of his attackers—and all to no avail. Star­sky had surren­d­ered again, but that time he used an apol­ogy as his means of escape. To ignore it, Hutch believed, would be to violate his partner—more than he already had.

“Shame on me,” he said with self-contempt under his breath. He loosened his grip, let go of Starsky’s wrists completely, sat back again on his heels, and shifted his eyes to between their legs. With great care, he slowly withdrew and ended the inter­course. His engorged and glis­tening penis no long­er pleasured him; it shamed him instead. When he was finally out, he looked at Starsky again. The pain on his part­ner’s face was almost too much to bear. Hutch had tried to make his point, but had gone too far with it and all the wrong way. He attempted another route to salvage the moment, not just soothe it. How could he possibly apologize for what he’d just done?

Instead, he stroked one of Starsky’s scars with the tips of his fin­gers to remind himself of how easily shatterable were their lives, found his voice, and said, “Remember when they forced us to work together, what, ten years ago now?” He tried a smile to ease Starsky’s concern, but it was weak. “Remem­ber how different we were, I mean, how obvi­ously different we were? We punch­ed each other a lot back then.” He could tell Starsky remem­ber­ed those early years, not because Starsky gave him any overt expres­sion or gesture to say he did, but because he stared intently at Hutch, as if he’d give anything to know why Hutch had abused him just then, including remembering something that seemed to have no connection to the event that had just transpired between them. Or was that Hutch’s way of throw­ing another punch?

“We couldn’t agree on politics or relig­ion,” Hutch con­tinued. “Hell, we couldn’t even agree on tactics and strategies sometimes—and often it came to blows, remember? I think they put us together just so they could take bets on which one of us lived and which one of us didn’t.”

Starsky lowered his arms to his sides to show his passiveness, to prevent Hutch from another reason to hurt him, despite that he was aware of how Hutch had just touched him—and where, those scarred reminders of their fragile lives. Still, he wished he could close his legs, but Hutch knelt between them. He wished he could get dressed, leave the room, rethink that wish of his to have sex with Ken Hutch­inson. He fiercely stared at Hutch and felt choked with emotion, but he listened to him; he listened with all his might because he was des­perate to be freed, no matter the route he’d have to take to get there.

“I tried for a transfer a couple of times,” Hutch reminded him. “But, looking back, that bet probably had some high stakes—and there was no way they were going to let me out of it.” He didn’t smile. Those minutes, in the aftermath of his abusive behavior, were too serious for humor. He hugged Starsky’s knees to his sides, under his arms, to create as much of an embrace and intimacy between himself and Starsky as he could under the cir­cum­stance. “I think maybe you tried for a trans­fer, too,” he added. “But there was no escaping it. So we made do with what we had, remember? We found common ground.”

Starsky studied Hutch’s face, his blue eyes, and the way they were genuinely concerned for him then, and for the real sorry he thought he saw in Hutch’s expression, too, one that silently settled Starsky’s nerves. He noticed that Hutch’s hair was mussed from his earlier sweat. He heard Hutch’s voice, noted its soft temperance and inflection. And he felt Hutch hug his knees under his arms. He remem­bered their common ground.

“We learned what it meant to be loyal,” Hutch said. “We learned what it means to have implicit trust in another human being. We under­­stood—better than most people—what it means to uncondi­tion­ally care about and love some­one. We had to find the life preser­ver and we found it in those things. Remember that?”

Starsky remembered, but he conveyed it with the tears in his eyes, and by way of his silence, not with words.

“Then one day you got between me and a bullet that had my name on it,” Hutch said.

Starsky remembered that, too; he ended up shot in the shoulder. It could have been his back or his head, but luck had been on his side that day. Further luck was that the bullet ripped through his right arm—and he was left-handed. He wiped his tears then with his palms and kept eye contact with Hutch. “You made up for it,” he recalled quiet­ly. “You took a couple for me two years ago.”

Luckily, for them both, the shooting hadn’t been nearly as lethal as Gunther’s hit on Starsky. But that’s what Hutch wanted to hear, so he could say, “I’d do any­thing for you.”

As Starsky would do anything for him.

“Why would I do that?” Hutch asked. He nudged Starsky. “Why would I do anything for you? In some ways, we’re as different now as we were then. Nothing’s changed. Common ground is all we’ve got—well, that, and all this loyalty, trust, and respect. But big deal. It doesn’t explain why I would trade my life for yours. I mean, who the hell are you?”

Starsky knew what answer Hutch sought. He crossed his arms over his chest to comfort himself when he replied, “I’m your pal. Your part­ner. You’d do anything for me because, along with all that loyalty, trust, and respect, you love me.”

Exactly, Hutch thought. “Have I proven that? Have I done any­thing that even remote­ly proved to you in the last ten years that I love you? that I’d do anything for you?”

That answer also went without saying, but Starsky couldn’t not say it. The list was long, but he knew Hutch referenced one thing, one thing, in partic­ular. “This,” he said quietly.

“This,” Hutch echoed in a whisper. “I’m doing this for you”—and he gestured at their nakedness there on the bed and all it implied: the kissing, the handling and playing around, the anal intercourse. “I told you where I drew my line and you had me redraw it. And then redraw it again. And again. And now look at me.” He glanced between their legs; neither of them had an erection any longer, but they both knew that they had and where they’d been. He looked into Starsky’s eyes again and saw the still-shimmering tears in them. “I was pissed at you tonight because it seemed that you forgot it was me here with you—and I don’t want to be forgotten. I didn’t sign up to be an any­body in this thing with you. I’m not an experiment.” He could tell by Starsky’s barely notice­able nod that Starsky understood and appre­ciated what Hutch told him.

“So I’m going to say this now because now’s the time to say it,” Hutch said. “If ever there was a moment that called for such a thing, this is it.”

Starsky swallowed; that time he relinquished the rest of his pain. He knew what Hutch was about to say. Hutch was right, after all: Starsky had lost sight of him—and Hutch tried to remind him of that by behav­ing in a way that wasn’t him, so Starsky would see the differ­ence. But, instead, Starsky had gotten sidetracked by his hypersensitivity, by his fear, by his memory of the terrible feel­ings of the rapes themselves.

Starsky knew what Hutch would say. He was no longer afraid.

“I love you,” Hutch said; he looked squarely into Starsky’s eyes to drive home his sincerity as well as the truth. Then he sought that lighter moment because he noticed Starsky had let go of his pain and was open to more relief. “I was in your ass a couple of minutes ago,” he added. “I can’t think of anything that proves my love for you more than that.”

When Starsky wiped the tears from his face, gave up on his own pain, evidenced by a shy smile, Hutch knew he had his complete atten­tion. “I’ve gone against my own sensibilities to be here with you,” Hutch said. “Make no mis­take: I’ve enjoyed every second of it—once I got past being scared shitless. But this union is not without its risks. Both of our emotions are more fragile now and we’ve got to be careful.”

Starsky silently understood. He also thought he knew specifically then why Hutch had been offended, and Hutch then confirmed it.

“So, for this one time, for this first time, at least,” Hutch told him, “remember it’s me here and where this willingness comes from—” he placed his hand over his heart—“and then don’t belittle it again by asking me to perform like the porn star of your dreams. I’m doing this out of love, buddy boy. Don’t expect me to reduce this thing to a ‘good hard fuck like there’s no tomorrow.’”

* * *

“That was some ‘snag,’” Jade noted. His voice was tinged with dis­ap­pointment. “It was cruel and it was brutal.”

“Don’t think for a second that I don’t know that,” Hutch defended himself. “It will haunt me to my grave. And I know he appreciates me, but some­times he crosses the line in the opposite direction. Or, hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s me. May­be my feminine side is stronger than my masculine one. I can’t just fuck somebody, know what I mean?” He sadly laughed. “Least of all, him.”

“But you can’t think he thought, even for a moment, that what the two of you do and did together was nothing more than fucking, do you? How could he possibly? You’re his hero. You’re the one he relentlessly pursued. You’re the one—the one, specifically—that he wanted to have that healing experi­ence with.”

“He should have handled it like he knew me.” Even as he said those words, Hutch was ashamed of them, too.

“All right, okay,” Jade said, sensing Hutch’s guilt.

“Well, what do you think he should have done?” Hutch asked.

“I don’t think in terms of shoulds. He did what he did. He made a mistake. He didn’t have sex with you as perfectly as you wish he’d had it. But to say he ‘should’ have done it differently only leads to resent­ment on your part because he failed to do so. Just as you feel guilty—resentment turned inward—when you tell yourself that may­be you should have reacted differently, too. What would you tell me?”

Hutch understood. “That it is the way it is.”

“You forgive him for it, don’t you?”

“There was nothing to forgive. It was only important that he for­gave me.”

“Did he?”

“For abusing him? Yeah. But, still … like I said, I can be an ass­hole sometimes. I overreacted. He didn’t deserve the punishment. Not for anything.” On an additional thought, Hutch said, “I was guilty of ‘forcible sod­omy’ under the law. He asked me to stop and I didn’t. Not right away. How different does that make me from the men who attacked him? Jesus. Do you understand what I did?”

“I do,” Jade said. He didn’t excuse Hutch, but he knew the man would punish himself without anyone’s help. He leaned more com­fortably against the wall behind him, stretched his legs out before him, crossed at the ankles, and studied Hutch. He could assume it was obvious why his client felt the remorse he did that morning, all things considered. But Hutch would have seen the obvious, too, and wouldn’t have needed Jade. So, what else trans­pired between Starsky and Hutch that night that left Hutch feeling sick at heart?

“Did you boys resume then—or did you call it quits until later?”

“We continued,” Hutch said. “We wanted to.” He stared at the floor while it blurred. “And … in hindsight … his stupidity and my cruelty actu­ally made the rest of our experience more meaningful—and not just for me.” He paused, reflected, and then said, “At least while it lasted.”

* * *

Hutch crawled up on Starsky and lay snugly beside him, still nested between Starsky’s legs. He propped on his elbow, temple in hand, and looked into Starsky’s quiet blue eyes. He was ashamed and angry at himself for making Starsky cry, for pushing his lover that far and hard into it. He was also sorry for the fear he caused, for the insult to the injury he inflicted, for the violation itself. He held Starsky’s cheek in his still-oiled fingers. “I didn’t mean to break you,” he said softly. “God knows the last thing I wanted was to hurt you. It was my biggest fear of this whole thing—and now it’s been real­ized.”

Starsky returned the affectionate eye contact. Hutch’s warm hand on his face spurred his forgiveness. “You wanted me to remember you and you did it by showing me who you weren’t. I just didn’t get it. I’m dense that way, you know.”

“I crossed the line.”

“I played a role.” On more careful thought, Starsky said, “I thought it should be like it was with me and Adam. I figured if that worked for me, it’d work for you, too. I wanted it to be as good for you as possible, but sex for the sake of sex isn’t you.”

“That doesn’t justify it. You realize what I did, don’t you? You understand that what I did wasn’t any different from what those guys did to you—except in degree.”

Starsky rolled his eyes. “And you realize if you believe that, then you’re a stupid motherfucker—and we both know you’re not that.” Before Hutch could protest, Starsky cut him off by saying, “Maybe you should watch those videotapes if you think you’re in the same league with them.”

Hutch winced. He wouldn’t watch them again even if his life depended on it. But he could also tell, from Starsky’s tone of voice, from his words and his argument, that he’d been forgiven, whether he deserved it or not. “I’m sorry,“ he said, to end the direction he’d taken.

Starsky held Hutch’s hand against his cheek. Then he closed his eyes, turned his mouth to Hutch’s palm, and tenderly kissed and licked his skin to taste him. Hutch smelled only of nut oil, which was surpris­ing because of where his hands had been. Starsky drank in the scent. Whether anyone else would think Hutch’s actions were un­jus­tified was irrelevant; they did serve to remind Starsky that he lay with his part­ner on that bed, both of them nude, and that Hutch had sacri­ficed parts of who he was and what belonged to him to oblige Starsky—and it was he, Starsky, who’d been inappropriate for asking Hutch for so much of him­self and then failing to show him how enormously he appre­ciated it. And that alone, in Starsky’s mind, made Hutch’s actions justi­fiable. Hutch uncon­ditionally loved him. That he knew—and not despite what Hutch had done to him that night, but because of it.

He looked back at Hutch and got a sheepish smile in reply. “I don’t want you to do any more than you’re capable of,” Starsky said. “I’m not going to ask for anything else.”

“I resisted you at first,” Hutch admitted, not accepting Starsky’s reso­lution. “What kind of friend was I then to reject you the way I did? And what kind of friend would I be now to not carry through on your wish, especially knowing better how important it is to you? Isn’t that why I’m here? Isn’t this what real friends are for?”

“Sometimes friends ask for more than they should.”

“That just means they’re best friends.”

Starsky grunted at him. “So the more you give up, the better a friend you are?”

Hutch squeezed Starsky’s neck. He did love the innocent light in those heavy-lidded eyes. “I’ve learned all over again that you’re no sacrifice. You’re my life.”

Starsky was grateful all over again by how emotionally bonded they were. And by how physically close they were, too. He felt Hutch’s length along his, pressed to him. They were wrapped in each other’s legs, groin to groin, hip to hip, warm skin to warm skin. Hutch was snug against him; he lovingly stroked Starsky’s haired chest while he looked into his eyes.

They’d kissed; their lips and tongues had tasted the other’s. They’d sexually gratified each other in their hands. Starsky had orally pleased Hutch. More than once. And there they lay, only minutes after they’d been joined by an un­precedented, albeit inter­rupted, physical inter­course between them. Ten years—of loyal­ty, trust, love, understand­ing, of care and honesty, protection and, he did believe, sacrifice—and all despite the differences that left others won­dering how they’d ever come to call each other best friends.

“Opposites attract,” Starsky said.

“And sometimes they collide,” Hutch countered.

“Builds character.”

“Yeah, but when does that start?”

Starsky laughed with him, a quiet, knowing, comforting laugh. He admired those blue eyes and the lamp light reflected in them. No matter how often or in what ways or how deeply they hurt or mis­understood each other, they found their way back rather quickly. That was some­thing they had in common, though it was mostly Hutch who brought them to the table. Starsky promised him­self he’d work harder to get there before Hutch had to corner him.

“So … do you want to quit for now?” Starsky asked. “Try another night—or do you want to pick up where we left off?”

Hutch didn’t like where they’d left off. “How ’bout we start over instead?”

“From where I sucked you? that far back?”

“No, not from there. I know where my dick’s been since then.”

Starsky groaned. “Talk about tacky.”

“Just trying to keep up with you, pal.”

“Well, don’t try so hard. I don’t like you when you’re crass.”

“I don’t like me when I’m crass, either.”

“I’m glad we settled that. Now, where’s that bottle?”

Hutch lifted his eyes from Starsky’s face and searched the top of the mattress. He spied the bottle on the blankets and reached for it. When he leaned over Starsky to get it, Starsky kissed Hutch’s chest, then sucked on his nipple when Hutch paused to let him; he gave Starsky a minute to arouse him with his lips and tongue, and then set­tled back against Starsky’s side. “I think you just ambushed me,” he remarked.

Starsky held out his hand, palm up. “Let me ambush you another way, too,” he said.

Hutch squeezed oil into Starsky’s hand. He didn’t know what Star­sky would do with it, but his curiosity and anticipation gave him an instant erection. When Starsky reached between them, Hutch lifted his hips to allow him access; he expected that Starsky would lubricate himself, but instead he oiled Hutch’s hardening penis as liberally as he could in the tight position they were in. Hutch shifted inside Starsky’s thigh to allow him more freedom. It felt amazingly good.

“I have to say…”

“Go ahead,” Starsky encouraged him. “Say it.”

Hutch realized only then that he’d been so distracted by the plea­surable feel of Starsky’s hand on him that he hadn’t finished his sen­tence. “I have to say … that you … do that … so well.”

“I aim to please,” Starsky cracked.

“Your aim … is … a … bullseye.”

Hutch gave him a reassuring smile and then watched the action of his own penis sliding in and out of Starsky’s oiled fist as it stiffened further. He rolled his hips to press deeper into the wet­ness, and Starsky tightened his grip in reply.

Their hearts beat heavily in their chests, their respiration was aud­ible and uncontrolled. Starsky lifted his head from the pillow to watch with Hutch. His own erection was wantingly visi­ble. Hutch saw it, too. He squeezed drops of oil from the bottle onto Starsky’s thicker shaft, hand­ed Starsky the bottle so they wouldn’t lose sight of it—and because he knew how much Starsky needed it—and then devoured Starsky’s penis in his hand. They manu­ally aroused each other for a while. It wasn’t a com­pe­ti­tion, but neither of them wanted the other to stop, so they spurred each other along.

“I like the way your foreskin feels,” Starsky said affectionately, drop­ping his head into the pillow and looking at Hutch. “You’re softer on the outside than I am, and hard as rock inside.”

Hutch liked how it felt, too—for a different reason, as the receiver.

“And I like the way your dick comes and goes out of it,” Starsky added about Hutch’s foreskin. He then watched that for a while, Hutch’s crown emerge and then nearly retreat with each stroke until it was fully tumescent and the foreskin was the thing to disappear. “Like I’ve told you before: I can tell when you’re maxed-out-hard because your dick’s too big to hide.”

As Hutch’s penis was then, too engorged to be completely con­sumed by its blanket, and Starsky massaged just the head of Hutch’s penis—to reward it for its permanent emergence.

Hutch relished how Starsky had played with him, how Starsky did play with him, when Starsky touched and aroused him. He loved Starsky for his attention to that neglected and misunderstood part of him. Starsky didn’t let an un­circum­cised penis deter him; in fact, Starsky tasted every part of Hutch’s foreskin with his fingers, and with his hands sometimes, and by kissing and suck­ing on it, by gently pulling and stretching its wafer-thin skin between his lips. It was as if he loved that ‘little bit of extra’ Hutch for that very purpose. Hutch wished women had felt that way, but it was the memory of Starsky’s mouth on him that made him as hard as he could get.

Starsky felt the difference. “What are you thinkin’?”

“You.”

“Me what?”

“Sucking me.”

“You want me to suck you now?”

“No—for reasons I gave earlier.”

“We can fix that. Let’s shower.”

Hutch had a pang of guilt, but didn’t allow himself a second to analyze it. “I don’t want to break this.”

Starsky let go of him and gripped Hutch’s upper arm to pull him onto his belly again, to put him squarely between his legs. They kissed, mouth to mouth, lips to each other’s lips, their tongues sensual and prob­­ing. It made them breathe even heavier, then to moan, to feel the beauty of their collective arousal.

Hutch rose and then pushed back to sit between Starsky’s legs. He snugged Starsky’s groin to his own and found entry again. In silent reply, Starsky squeezed oil between them as Hutch slid deeply into him—and then Hutch liberally lubricated himself on one of his nearly com­plete withdrawals. He then did likewise to the rim of Starsky’s anus with his fingers, enjoy­ing the feel of its fleshy opening and his penis buried inside it.

Then Hutch winked at him.

It made Starsky laugh. He had craved to feel Hutch deep inside him again—and he was rewarded for that wish when Hutch pushed in as far as he could go. That Hutch had become immersed in their sex-making was a dream come true.

Hutch watched himself and he watched Starsky while he com­pletely penetrated him—with as much care and sensitivity as he had the first time. He relied on Starsky’s expression and his relaxed sphinc­ter to guide him. He pushed all the way in and then paused before he slowly with­drew—only partially—and then drove in again. After a couple of min­utes, he was able to gently thrust inside him, and heard Starsky’s audible pants evolve into occasional moans.

Starsky was certain the more sensual thrusts would please Hutch more than they would please him, but he promised to honor Hutch’s wishes. A sensual experience was important to Hutch and, if it was important to Hutch, it was impor­tant to Starsky, too.

But, then, something amazing happened. Those slow, rhythmic, deeply penetrating and withdrawing strokes, the ones Starsky had mis­takenly imagined would please Hutch more than they would please him, made Starsky feel light-headed. They had their own exceptionally distinct pleas­ure; they were long-lasting and lustly stimulating. They made his heart pound in a conscious beat. The pleasure in his rectum fueled and heightened the orgasmic ecstasy deep within him—and a surge of im­measur­able desire shot through him. He had completely aban­doned his mental interference and he dismissed his notion that he ever had to be the leader in anything.

Hutch saw Starsky’s liberation force his eyes closed, but he inter­cepted how far it would take him by push­­ing all the way into him and then paused there, tightly against him, as deeply into him as he could physically go. It gave Starsky that second he needed to stall his ejacu­lation.

Starsky’s penis visibly throbbed during the lull. He fearlessly moaned instead of climaxed. “Oh, man,” he managed to say, amazed by how close he’d come and then thankfully didn’t.

Hutch broke a sweat as he briefly tasted Starsky’s pleasure inside his own penis. That Starsky had been that near to orgasm and then brought back from it forced Hutch to arrest his own reaction.

Starsky opened his eyes and found Hutch’s. “You’re going to love me right over the edge.”

“That’s the plan.”

And then they repeated the performance—but that time, the surge of pleasure near that finishing end was even greater because they anti­cipated it. When they stalled it, Starsky could barely catch his breath. He again made eye contact with Hutch and got another wink. They laugh­ed, panted, sweat, and relished the way each other looked and felt as much as they indulged their own wants.

“One more time,” Hutch said. He pushed Starsky’s legs open wider; the thrust was so hard and so deep, he felt his testicles get pleasantly stroked between Starsky’s butt cheeks. Then he withdrew enough to re-oil himself. When he slid in again, they both appreciated the lubrication and the feel of the tight and slippery pene­tration, as far into Starsky as the previous one.

Starsky tried not to smile. He’d been wrong to think ‘fucking,’ the kind he had with Adam, would have felt better, even for Hutch. It wouldn’t have the depth of pleasure Hutch’s loving strokes gave him. And Hutch wouldn’t have been able to do to him what he did next.

He poured a generous amount of oil on Starsky’s penis, handed Star­sky the bottle again, and then stroked Starsky’s shaft with his hand while he stroked Starsky’s tight, but relaxed anus and the inside of his rectum with his hardened penis. The dual sensation—Hutch’s hand on the down­stroke of his genital while he thrust as deeply into Starsky as he could physically go, and on the upstroke when he withdrew—was abso­lute­ly per­fect in its deliver­ance. The slowness made the craving more intense and the in­evit­able ending more necessary.

Starsky watched as long as he could—Hutch’s bared smooth, pers­pir­ing skin, his sweat-mussed hair, those blue eyes sparkling in the light, Hutch’s expres­sion of a pleasurable pain, his erect nipples, that sheen over his chest, neck, perfect face, and muscled arms, the way their legs meshed, and the visual of their physical union, Hutch’s large, hard, and swollen penis plunging into and out of him, filling him with a meaty hard­ness, the manual stimulation of his own penis as it throbbed and burned with desire from every solid thrust—and then he surrendered to the mattress and to his pounding heart and to his inability to breathe and to his over­whelming ecstasy and then, ulti­mately, to his all-con­suming orgasm. He gripped Hutch’s forearm with one fist and the blank­ets in his other—and then un­controllably climaxed on himself.

The visual of Starsky beneath him, of Starsky’s semen pulsing from his penis, of it spurting onto Starsky’s hairy belly, the look and feel of Star­sky in his hand, of his own penis still inside him, deep inside him, and then the sounds Hutch heard, of Starsky’s moans, of his labored breathing, of his beautiful, blissful face, his sweat and his tightly closed eyes, coupled with his spasms and his occa­sional writhing and his heav­ing belly as he savored every second of his orgasm—made Hutch fin­ish within half a minute of Starsky’s release. He pushed as hard into Starsky as he could man­age, his scrotum tightly pressed to Starsky’s buttocks as he could force it, and then, with his eyes tightly closed to focus on the blissful sexual reward, he climax­ed, too.

The pleasure was incomparably fierce, physically crippling, and emo­tionally liberating at once. The last of his remaining thrusts were actually uncon­trollable spasms of delirium. They came in powerful and relieving waves of heart-pounding ecstasy, pulses of extreme pleasure that forced loud and resounding moans out of him, the loudest he’d ever been, and racked his entire being, from deep inside his loins to as deep into his soul.

They had taken a long and painful journey to get to that place with each other—but it had been worth every step of the way.

Or so it was at that moment.

In the next, Hutch was immediately sidetracked by an in­explicable nausea and overwhelming remorse, one he couldn’t deci­pher or repress. He lowered himself to one hand and then lifted his hips to slowly with­draw from his partner, carefully, so as to not hurt him. Finally out, he looked at Starsky, only once, to get a read—and found Starsky watched him.

Starsky smiled with his sleepy blue eyes and with his relaxed face, and contentedly said in a peaceful voice, “Thank you, partner.”

Hutch was too shaken to reply. He forced a smile, broke a cold sweat that time, and then weakly lay beside Starsky in the quiet ambi­ance of the bedroom. He felt Starsky grip his wrist just to hold onto him, to keep them joined—even in that small way—as Starsky basked in the aftermath of their exper­ience. And he listened to Starsky breathe deeply in the silence that soon enveloped them, whisper his gratitude one more time, while Hutch, him­­self, fought to catch his own breath—to keep his heart from break­ing.

But he was too late.

* * *

THE ART OF THE GIFT

“Hey, partner,” Hutch said into the receiver after Starsky answered the phone with a cheerful hello. Hutch had no clue until that minute that Starsky had expected a call from him sooner—not until he heard the sub­sequent annoyance in Starsky’s voice.

“What took you so long to call me?” Starsky asked.

Hutch lay on the bed, resigned himself to a difficult con­versation, and stared at the ceiling. “I’ve been busy,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. He’d spent the two days at a hotel relaxing in his room. He’d also strolled on a crowded beach, attended an art exhibit that afternoon, watched a couple of movies at an independent film theater the day before, spent browsing time in a book­store, and shared cold beer and peanuts with strangers at some of the local bars both even­ings. A couple of days had passed since his sexual rendezvous with Star­sky on that king-sized bed and he felt a need to check in with the man—but he hoped, unsuccessfully, to avoid a confrontation, especially one he didn’t expect.

“Well, yeah, I figured you’ve been busy,” came Starsky’s impatient voice on the other end of the line. “You have a month without Sara to catch up on. But it’s been a couple of days now. You could’ve at least let me know you’re alive.”

“Now you know,” Hutch said. His glib answer spawned a strained silence. He wasn’t irritated, but he imagined he didn’t sound as ap­proach­able as Starsky ex­pected he’d be. He kicked himself. It wasn’t Starsky’s fault.

“You don’t sound happy,” Starsky noted.

“Sara and I broke up,” Hutch explained.

“Oh.”

“I confessed to an affair while she was gone,” Hutch continued, “to one with a man. I didn’t name names, but I guess she could guess.”

Half a minute passed. Hutch thought he’d lost the connection, but then he heard Starsky’s masculine voice, not so frustrated with him, say quietly, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah … well …” Hutch replied, “I suppose I saw it coming. It was the right thing to do.”

“When did this happen? Just now?”

“Thursday night.” He knew when he disclosed that infor­mation that it would rile Starsky again because it meant Hutch had plenty of time and no excuses not to have called him sooner—or come home. But he was wrong. Star­sky sounded more con­cerned than disappointed.

“So what have you been doing for the past two days?”

“I’m holed up in some hotel in Marina Del Rey.”

Hutch silently mused that his words had the ring to a country song in them, except that Marina Del Rey was anything if not an upper class neigh­borhood in many respects. “Out seeing the sights,” he added, “and hang­ing with the locals—”

“In Marina Del Rey?”

Starsky cheered Hutch with his cynicism.

“Actually, I hung out with a Santa Monica crowd,” Hutch said. “Remember how we used to cruise the Board­walk?”

“Are you avoiding me then?”

Hutch hadn’t invited Starsky to join him on that Memory Lane excur­sion, so it was no wonder Starsky wondered. Hutch didn’t know if he avoid­­ed Starsky or if he avoided everything. He simply sought an escape long enough to figure out what to do next. But he didn’t answer Starsky soon enough and his silence became an answer in itself.

“You can fuck me in the ass,” Starsky complained, “but you can’t look me in the eye?”

If Starsky had asked that question in any tone other than the one he used, Hutch would have known Starsky was angry, but he could tell Starsky played with him—with a serious objective. He laughed lightly at Starsky’s choice of words. “I did it for you,” he said.

“Did what for me? Fucked me in the ass or avoided me?”

Hutch stared at the pattern of wallpaper across the room. It peeved him that he could make out the seam in a place on the wall he shouldn’t have. “I’ve kept to myself these past couple of days,” he said, “for you.”

“How do you figure?”

“Are you happy?”

“I was until I answered this call.”

“Then, there you have it.”

“Have what exactly?”

“My point.”

A momentary silence hung between them before Starsky figured out what Hutch meant. “The longer you avoid me, the longer I’d stay hap­py?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Hutch asked.

“You’re an asshole.”

“So you’ve said.”

“C’mon, man. What’s going on? Is this about us? or just about Sara? You think if you ignore me, I’ll go away?”

“It’s not personal,” Hutch assured him.

“It just feels personal.”

Hutch audibly exhaled and bunched the pillow behind his head to get more comfortable with the conversation. “I’m having trouble, that’s all,” he explained. “Same shit, different day. I have to figure out what I want and—”

“And what would you tell me if the tables were turned?” Starsky inter­rupted him.

Hutch didn’t have to think. He knew what he’d say and he knew Star­sky knew it, too, but he answered regardless. “That things are just the way they are. To ‘roll with it.’ But don’t do as I do, Starsk. Do as I say. Accept that I’m a hypocrite. Roll with that.”

“You also wouldn’t let it rest until you had me spill my guts all over your lap,” Starsky said. “This does involve me, Hutch. I’m not going to sleep tonight unless you take your own advice and cough up what’s bothering you—where it concerns me, at least. And it must concern me some­where along the way or you wouldn’t have taken this long to be in touch with me.”

“I didn’t want to…”

“To what?”

“To … trouble you.”

Starsky huffed, and then asked, “Where did you say you are?”

“Marina del Rey.”

“Yeah, but where in Marina del Rey? What hotel?”

“I’ll be gone by the time you can get here.” He didn’t want Starsky to drive all that way; rather, he didn’t want Starsky around at all while he made sense of his own life. But he knew, even before Starsky said anything, or, more obviously, that Starsky didn’t say anything, that Starsky had read his com­ment as further avoidance. “My truck is being serviced,” Hutch added. “When it’s ready, I’ll come home.”

A long silence hung on the line.

Hutch knew it was a cop-out answer and yet he couldn’t help him­self; there was truth to his elusiveness. Honesty was his next option. “I need time to think things through, that’s all. You know what that’s like.”

“Maybe,” was the subdued reply. “Except you always make me make sense of what bothers me. It pisses me off that you can’t do as you’d expect me to.” He purposely disconnected the line and left a hol­low silence in his wake.

“Starsk?”

* * *

Hutch stood at the window in socked feet and looked out across the city basin from the seventh floor of the hotel building. He watched the airliners for a while as they arrived at the international airport above the nearby rooftops. The horizon was a character­istically gray haze. He could see traffic everywhere he looked and felt its pres­ence in places he couldn’t see it. He was lost inside it all.

Twice, he tried to reach Starsky by phone, but no one picked up, not even Grace. He couldn’t even leave messages on Starsky’s answering machine—which was odd, given that Star­sky had been so proud of that new toy. But, of course, Starsky was upset with him and didn’t want to talk. His partner was right, after all: Hutch did need to do what he expected Starsky to do. Isn’t that what he usually did, anyway? Neither of them would sleep that night if he didn’t resolve the tension between them. As soon as his truck was ready, he’d go home and work it out with his partner. Plant some trees. Play the piano. Get back to his life, how­ever it would be defined.

The auto mechanic didn’t want him to return for another two hours—which was also as long as it would take to get back to the farm. Four hours of separation. Impatient, he called Starsky again, but it rang into oblivion, too. Hutch was to blame for the break between them that early after­noon. If he’d called Starsky right after his break with Sara and explained it to him then, he could have avoided the conflict.

One of the most famous cities in the world stretched in every direc­tion as far as the eye could see from that window, and yet Hutch didn’t have any interest to be in it. He pushed away from the view and turned on the tele­vision, changing chan­nels until he found a 1940s film that starred Dana An­drews, something Starsky would have watched. The dialogue had a sooth­ing cadence, so he lay down on the mattress, on his back, up against the pillows, in his untucked shirt and jeans, and stared mindlessly at the TV. Maybe the movie would distract him for the next couple of hours, after which he could retrieve his truck, grab something to eat, and then head home—but he found it hard to concentrate.

Priorities. That’s what Jade had asked him to evaluate during that private session only a couple of days earlier. Priorities. Hutch was al­ready certain that the single most important person in the world to him was David Starsky. Bar none. Period. In fact, Starsky was the only thing that ever truly mat­tered to him. In the ten years of their partner­ship, he’d never questioned how he really felt about Starsky, deep down felt about him, but was he sexually drawn to the man? He’d decided, three years earlier, that he wasn’t, but when pressed, as he’d been in the past four months, apparently he was. He had believed that Starsky would never get him beyond kissing each other, but that turned out not to be true. Starsky would never get them to manually orgasm each other, either, but Hutch had eventually surrend­ered to that, as well. Hutch had then been so sure he’d never have anal inter­course with Starsky, and yet he’d done that very thing only a few nights earlier. The only real reser­va­tions Hutch had were his in­abilities to return the favors. Every line he drew in the sand got redrawn, so maybe recipro­cation was a line capa­ble of a redraw, too.

Starsky was his weakness, after all.

That was one way to look at it, he decided. But there was also an­other way: Starsky simply mattered that much to him. Starsky wasn’t just his weakness, or just his partner, or just his best friend, or just his hero, or just his lover. Starsky was all those things. He wasn’t, as Starsky once put it, ‘some guy.’ Starsky was every­thing.

That’s it, Hutch realized, semi-dozing to the sound of the TV’s low volume, as he dreamed about Starsky outside the realm of ‘some guy.’ It’s what Jade had tried to help him understand during their private session two mornings ago: That the only issues Hutch had with sex with Starsky were issues with himself, with his own sensibilities, his own morality, his own perceived incapabilities, warped by his upbringing, brainwashed by his father’s judgments, the culture’s biases and prejudices. And only he could change his mind about who he was or what he was able to experience in his life; no one else could do it for him. Starsky may have obviously seduced him, but the succumbing was of his own volition.

While the movie on the television aired, another movie began to play in Hutch’s mind—and this time, that movie would have a different end­ing from the ones he’d given it before.

* * *

A distinct knock sounded on the door and woke Hutch from his light, half-hour-long sleep. He didn’t expect­ any­one to come to the room, so he didn’t answer it. No one would even know he was there if he didn’t move a muscle. But another knock sounded and a male called out to him, forcing Hutch to at least see who the visitor was. Because he couldn’t tell whose voice he heard or what it said, he cautiously approached the door. He’d have given anything to see Star­sky in the hallway, but the farm was roughly two hours from Marina Del Rey, and not even Starsky’s Gran Torino—nor his lead foot—could have gotten there that fast.

But, sure enough, when Hutch looked through the peep hole to see who was behind the door, he spied Starsky on the other side, dressed in jeans, a tucked shirt, and a red, un­-zippered sweatshirt.

Starsky kissed at him through the tiny window. “You can run, man,” he said affectionately, “but you can’t hide. Open up.”

Hutch laughed and his heart raced with his excitement and he couldn’t unlock and open the door fast enough. “What the hell?”

Starsky scowled at him when their eyes met. “Next time you decide to crawl off to sulk,” he said, greeting Hutch with a warm hug in the doorway, “let me know where you are. I could’ve been here half an hour ago.”

The embrace felt better than Hutch expected under the circum­stances; he reluctantly let Starsky go when Starsky moved away. “How’d you get here so fast?” he wondered.

Starsky walked further into the room before he turned and made eye contact. “Since nobody was answering Sara’s phone,” he explained, “I drove down here to personally drag you out of her bed. But right before I got to her house, you called me.”

“I thought I was calling you at home,” Hutch said. “How’d I end up calling you in the car?”

“I had my calls forwarded,” Starsky said. “If you weren’t so tech­nology stupid, you would know how the new world works these days.”

“So, you were in the neighborhood.” That explained how Starsky had arrived so quickly. “How’d you figure out specifically where to find me?”

“I’m a detective, remem­ber?” He walked to the large window, didn’t look out, and faced Hutch again. “I had a revelation,” he said.

“Might you mean an epiphany?”

“Is there a difference?”

“Not much.”

“Then why did you mention it?”

Hutch winked at him. “To mess with you.”

Starsky rolled his eyes. “Well, let’s say I had an epi­ph­any then.”

“In the last half hour?”

“Do those take longer?”

“About the same.”

Starsky smirked at him and ended the play. He wanted seriousness. “Well, I’ve come to tell you something.”

There was a pause, one they reached together. It had been days since they’d last seen each other and they realized, in that moment, what their sexual connection had been, and how unprecedented and special that sexual experience was between them. They arrived at the memory together and acknowledged it in their eyes.

Starsky didn’t want to be sentimental; he broke contact with Hutch and balanced himself against the back of the armchair to remove his shoes. “I’m not usually the smart one between us in these matters,” he admit­ted, “but this time I figured something out all on my own. You’ll be proud of me.” He walked to the foot of the bed and motioned for Hutch to join him. “Lay here with me. I have something to say.”

Hutch didn’t correct Starsky’s grammar; he was much too happy to see him, but he did hesitate. He looked into Starsky’s eyes and hoped Starsky under­stood his pause, so he would­n’t have to use any uninten­tionally hurtful words about why he didn’t want to lie down with him. But Starsky didn’t seem to grasp the meaning of Hutch’s stall, so Hutch asked, “You can’t say it standing up?”

“Two people can’t lay down on the same bed together and not fuck each other?” Starsky asked.

“Not these two people,” Hutch argued. He knew how horny they’d been for each other, and how easy it would be to fall into sex again. He did want to hear what Starsky had come to tell him.

“Let’s prove ’em wrong,” Starsky said. He crawled onto the bed, lay on his side, propped his temple in his palm, innocently looked at Hutch, and then patted the mattress. “C’mon. Really,” he said. “I’ve only got words for you—important ones—and we need to be close when I tell them to you, so you know how serious they are.”

Hutch squinted at him.

“If you can’t trust me…” Starsky reminded him.

“It’s not sex I’m concerned about,” Hutch said. “It’s that we really need an understanding here. You need to know where I’m coming from now.”

“Exactly.” Starsky patted the mattress again. “C’mon. But I go first.”

Hutch then lay on the bed as Starsky did: Faced him, propped his temple in his palm, too, and made affectionate contact with those warm blue eyes. “I’m listening,” he said sincerely.

“I never got a chance to thank you for what you did for me the other night,” Starsky said.

“You did thank me,” Hutch recalled. He would never forget that Starsky had actually used the words “thank you” the night they’d had inter­course. He thought it almost sad at the time, really. And, given his own un­easiness that night, at that moment, the moment of their con­sum­mation, he had been humbled by the words, too. “In fact, you thanked me twice.”

Starsky didn’t remember; he’d been too overwhelmed by the exper­ience. “Well, what I never told you is that I got what I wanted that night. You gave me what I asked for, what I had to pry out of you, okay, but what I asked for just the same. That’s not a joke or a pun or what­ever. I mean, I appreciate that you’ve been uncertain and all that, but you anal-sexed me anyway. It’s not just what you did that I thank you for, but that you did it at all. Does that make sense?”

Hutch admired Starsky’s sincerely expressive eyes. “Perfect sense.”

“Well, I want you to know that I don’t expect anything else from you,” Starsky continued. “I mean, not that I expected that. I didn’t say that right. I mean to say, I don’t want you thinking you have to do any­thing else for me or that I’m going to ask for anything else—because I’m not. In other words, you’re free to go—if you want to.”

Hutch appreciated Starsky’s sensitivities. But he also knew it wasn’t com­pletely about him, either. “Okay,” he said, decidedly.

“I also don’t want to be seen as the one to end this if ending it is what you think we should do,” Starsky ex­plained. “I ended it once and fucked us up, and I don’t want to do that again. But what I’m saying is that I’d be happy to have ended it Wed­nes­day night, if that’s where it ended, if you need it to end now. And there’ll be no hard feel­ings.” He realized his words, but didn’t play on them because he wanted to be taken seriously. “I got more than I deserved that night. I can look back now and know that, in the long run, that terrible thing ended on some­thing very, well, beau­tiful. That’s the only way I can describe it. What you did for me the other night was beautiful.”

Hutch never thought he’d hear that word from Starsky about their sex-making, especially after Hutch’s cruel and brutal behavior, despite how brief it was. It was Hutch who didn’t deserve what he got. “I could have been kinder,” he said. “You should have had me arrested. You should have arrested me yourself,” he said on second thought when he remem­bered Starsky had the official authority to charge him.

“You need to let that go,” Starsky implored him. “If you don’t let that go, then the whole night was a bust, and I can’t let you take that from me.”

Hutch didn’t want to compound the matter with self-loathing for what he’d done. He took Starsky’s plea to heart. “Okay. It’s gone,” he said. He felt choked up then and was certain it showed.

“You want to know how I felt?” Starsky asked, and then answered, “Privileged. You fucking me, you cummin’ in me, made me feel priv­ileged. And I believe I used that word the right way.”

Starsky’s experience had been so different from Hutch’s; more than that, Starsky hadn’t felt any­thing even remotely similar to how Hutch felt. “I was a taker,” Hutch explained. “I didn’t give anything back—”

“You did give back,” Starsky insisted, but he didn’t get a chance to explain.

“By your measurement, I gave something that night,” Hutch said. “I get it, Starsk. I gave you a gift, the one you wanted, but you had to fight for it. In the end, I gave it willingly, I gave some of it selfishly, and I gave it all without strings or obligations. But it’s not how my dog feels about me,” he added, to use his own analogy, “it’s—”

“Yeah. I know. It’s how you feel about your dog.” He couldn’t argue with Hutch. It wasn’t possible to argue with any­­one’s feelings. “But what am I supposed to say to that?” he asked, frustrated. “I keep tell­ing you I don’t expect you to do what I do or feel what I feel or be­lieve what I believe. I haven’t even had a fan­t­asy about me fucking you.”

“Well, I was here watching a movie,” Hutch said, ignoring Star­sky’s lament and assuming he’d heard all that Starsky had ‘come to say’, “and think­ing about the two options I have: One, to end it, like you’re saying, or, two, to learn how to be a taker—because some­thing is better than nothing.” He got off the bed then, went to the bath­room, and didn’t stop talking to Starsky from there. “But as I was trying to make the decision between those two, a third option emerged, one I hadn’t really thought of before.” He unzipped his jeans, pulled his penis forward, and relieved himself in the toilet; he didn’t speak while he urinated, which made him impatient to finish, so he could return to the conver­sation.

Starsky listened to Hutch’s urine spool into the toilet bowl’s water, and wished to hear words instead. He stared unseeing to the opposing wall and was left to wonder what that third option was. After Hutch flushed the toilet and returned to the room, Starsky glanced over at him and saw the small plastic bottle in Hutch’s hands. He didn’t know whether to be excited or confused by it, but he was keenly interested in why Hutch had it. “You carry that stuff with you wher­ever you go?” he asked. “Isn’t that what’s in the bottle? our sex lube?”

“I came down here to see Sara, remember? I thought I’d try some­thing new with her, see if it’d be easier for her to … at least give me a handjob. But I couldn’t go through with it because I knew what I’d done with you while she was gone and I needed to come clean instead.” He crawled onto the bed, pushed Starsky to his back against the mat­tress, and mounted Starsky’s legs.

“You didn’t come,” Starsky assumed. “You just came clean?”

“Ha,” Hutch replied. “Funny.” While he unbut­toned his right-hand shirt sleeve and rolled it to his elbow, he noticed how carefully Starsky watched him and knew he was excitedly intrigued.

“That’s the magic potion, right?” Starsky asked, still trying to pre­dict the experience he hoped he was about to have. “That’s the stuff Emma gave you, the stuff we’ve been using, right?”

“She told me the oil’s made from almonds,” Hutch said, toying with him by not answering his questions. “She gets it from a friend of hers up north where I guess they grow thousands of the trees by the square mile.”

“If we’re going to keep using that stuff,” Starsky said, “we’re going to have to plant our­selves an orchard and get us a nut press.”

They busted up with a laugh.

“But that’s the oil we use, yeah?”

“Here,” Hutch instructed him, presenting the bottle, “hold this.”

Starsky took it from him and held eye contact as he searched for a clue to Hutch’s intent. He wanted to be purely excited. He wanted to think Hutch was about to have sex with him, that Hutch decided to take what­ever he could get, even if he didn’t give back, and that Hutch was right: Some sex was better than not having any sex with each other. But he was sure Hutch had a third option planned because that’s what Hutch had mentioned right before he retrieved the bottle from the bathroom. So Starsky was confused when he wanted to be aroused. He felt Hutch’s weight over his thighs and he studied Hutch’s face and looked into Hutch’s eyes and anxiously waited.

Hutch lowered himself to his hands, bent over Starsky, looked more firmly into his eyes, and smiled at him. “I got to thinking this afternoon … What if you asked me to give you head? Could I do it if you asked? Could I suck you off if I knew you really wanted me to?”

Starsky realized in that second that he’d just been given the first clue to that third option—that Hutch might actually put his mouth on his penis, and that idea abruptly and purely excited him. It also instantly hard­ened him. “Could you, do you think?” Starsky asked, “suck my dick, I mean? because you have to know I would want you to if you wanted to. I don’t think I’d want any­thing more.”

“Blow some guy?” Hutch continued, still not answering Starsky’s antici­pat­ing questions. “Not poss­ible. Too disturbing for words, let alone mental pictures.” He sat back again to unbutton Starsky’s shirt. “Have some guy come in my mouth?” As he re­leased the buttons on Starsky’s shirt, he watched Starsky watch him. “The idea of blow­ing some guy isn’t an ethical or even an immoral idea to me so much; just a gross one,” he disgustedly said.

Starsky tried to smile, but he didn’t want to get ahead of himself, so he ignored Hutch’s perceptions. He hadn’t been repulsed to have Hutch ejaculate in his mouth and he didn’t know how to explain how sexy it was to have done such a thing.

“But this afternoon,” Hutch said, “I remembered something you said in Jade’s office.”

“Yeah? I said something prolific?”

“It was at least profound. You said that you’re not just ‘some guy’.”

“Because I’m not—not when it comes to you.”

“And neither am I when it comes to you.” He pulled Starsky’s shirt open and exposed his haired chest and belly. “I’d do anything for you,” he continued, drinking in the fam­iliar look of Starsky’s nakedness, even as limited as the view was then, “because you’re the one thing that makes my life worth liv­ing.”

Starsky couldn’t help himself; the tears immediately pooled in his eyes as he looked back into Hutch’s. Never would there be such a love as pure as theirs.

Hutch pulled Starsky’s shirt out of his jeans and fully opened it. Then he gently gripped Starsky’s chin to get his full attention, as if he didn’t already have it, and could tell by the tears in Starsky’s eyes that he had more than his focus; he had Starsky’s heart in his hand, too.

“If some­thing hap­pened to you,” Hutch concluded, “and by some stroke of the supernatural, the powers-that-be made me a once-in-a-life­time offer: ‘Everything you own and every­­thing you have now or in the future with anyone else—love, fam­ily, sex, joy—in exchange for one single minute more with David Starsky,’ I’d make that trade in a heartbeat and never look back.”

Starsky actually broke a quiet sob. It didn’t matter that Hutch heard his weak moment or witnessed it. He wasn’t ashamed of it. He was emotionally overcome and couldn’t repress it, regardless. But he did man­­age to catch the tear that spilled from his eye before it rolled off his face. “I hate your fucking guts,” he mumbled, mockingly wounded by having been made to cry.

“Sure you do, buddy,” Hutch said, with a wink. “You’re jealous because I have a way with words.”

Starsky lightly laughed and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Ass­hole.”

“I had a different part of the anatomy in mind this time,” Hutch said. He wanted to leave the emotional behind and give pleasure, not talk about it, so he shifted back to Starsky’s knees, enough to expose the fly on Starsky’s jeans, and then released the button at the top of the zipper. “There was this third option, see,” he explained, “one I came to after you hung up on me.”

“Yeah?” Starsky asked, breathlessly, twirling the small bottle in his hand. “And what’s that?”

“That I don’t have to be a taker. I can give back.” He un­zipped Starsky’s jeans, felt Starsky’s hardening erection beneath the cloth at his fin­gers, and looked firmly into those deep blue eyes again. “And I want to give back,” he concluded. “It’ll make us both feel good.”

“Well,” Starsky said slowly, “I’d have asked, but you’d have grumbled and bitched and moaned and made me feel like shit—”

“Yeah,” Hutch sorrily agreed, but then found redemption. “We should both know by now that I would have eventually redrawn the line—like I’m doing now.”

Starsky warmly smiled at him.

“I don’t want to put words on this, do you hear me?” Hutch said. “Not ever. I want this to just be what it is.”

Starsky didn’t dare breathe a word then. He felt aroused and want­ing—and eternally grateful. He’d given Hutch an out, but Hutch didn’t take it; instead, Hutch wanted to go into that sexual relationship with him even further. So Starsky lifted his hips from the mattress and, with Hutch, pulled his jeans down from his waist. His penis was flaunt­ingly visible with an erection, spurred by Hutch’s words and his own anticipa­tion, and he couldn’t wait to feel Hutch’s hand on him, let alone his mouth. But he didn’t dare beg Hutch, though he wanted to, felt a need to, an impulse. He handed Hutch the bottle of oil when Hutch asked for it and watched as Hutch squeezed some of its content into his palm.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” Hutch laughed. He meant about fellatio; he was already quite sure he knew what he did when he wrapped his fingers around Starsky’s penis and gave it a sensual stroke. It was a familiar and pleasing visual: Its crown, thick shaft, seeming to emerge from Starsky’s tight sac, and there was the aesthetic shape of his haired legs and groin, and Starsky’s feel, too, that Hutch had grown quite ‘in-the-know’ about; how hard Starsky’s erec­tion could get and how to make it harder. There were some things, then, that Hutch knew he knew, but fellatio simply wasn’t one of them. “I’ve seen this done and I’ve had it done to me on occasion,“ Hutch added, ”but I don’t know the first thing about this. You’re so fucking good at it, I never thought well enough while you’re doing it to remember how you do it.”

“I’m sure you’ll be great.”

“Based on what evidence?”

“Because you’re sexy people.”

Hutch appreciated the vote of confidence. He slid his grip to the base of Starsky’s penis. “Any technique you’d like to pass along?” he asked.

Starsky enjoyed the slide, so much he had to make himself think to answer Hutch. Technique? He could think of one, the one he used on Hutch, in fact. “Use your hand and mouth together. Makes for one long shaft, you know? A longer stroke both ways.”

“Be more specific.”

When Starsky couldn’t concentrate for half a minute, Hutch re­leased him from his hand so Starsky could speak. It made them both laugh.

“Yeah, okay,” Starsky said. “Um …” He instead felt Hutch caress his haired belly quite close to his erection and that, too, temporarily dis­tracted him.

Hutch realized any touch would interrupt Starsky, so he stopped it com­pletely and propped himself on either side of Starsky’s shoulders. “Go on,” he encouraged him.

“Well, anyway,” Starsky said when he remembered what he wanted to say, “you need to make a fist.”

Hutch shifted his weight and bent his arm to ball his hand.

“Not like you’re going to punch me,” Starsky said with a laugh. “Like you’re holding the neck of a wine bottle.”

“Or your dick?” Hutch asked. He turned his hand and loosely closed it to sim­ul­ate a bottle of burgundy in his grip. Or Starsky’s penis.

“Yeah, like that,” Starsky said.

Hutch raised a brow at him to mock his own pride.

“Now lift the bottle like you’re going to drink from it.” When Hutch did as instructed, Starsky pushed Hutch’s fist up to his mouth to press it to his lips. “Make them touch,” he said. “Your hand and your mouth are join­ed—perman­ent like—got me? They work together, not against each other, despite what you’ve seen or had done before. This is better. By far.”

“I can attest to that,” Hutch said with a raise of his eyebrow, remembering how satisfyingly Starsky fellated him.

“Now open them both enough to slip me in,” Starsky told him, “from your hand into your mouth, and, you know, out again—but don’t break the connection between your hand and mouth while you do it.”

Hutch thought he understood. He could never have described to anyone the technique Starsky used to orally please him, but he certainly knew it was differ­ent from any other oral sensation he’d felt, and that it was better than any woman had pleased him, and that there wasn’t any­­thing like it on Earth. Just to think about Starsky’s mouth on him made him want his own orgasm.

“You can see what’s going to happen there,” Starsky added, himself still aroused from the earlier stimulation, and then further from the conver­sa­tion. “The ‘shaft’ I’ll slip into is no longer just as deep as your mouth, but the combined length of your hand and mouth, working together.”

It did take Starsky’s explanation to make Hutch see it. “Amazing,” he whis­pered.

“Like going deep into pussy,” Starsky said.

“Yeah, I got it,” Hutch replied. “Only it’s deeper than you can go in pussy.”

“Exactly.”

“But not as deep as you can go into ass.”

Starsky tried to bite his tongue, but couldn’t. “I wouldn’t know,” he said.

Hutch relished rattling Starsky’s cage just then, but he didn’t expect he’d get rattled back. He felt momentarily ashamed to be reminded of yet another sex act he didn’t allow Starsky to have with him. But one baby step at a time. “What next?”

“Next you just do it,” Starsky said. “Follow your heart.” That’s what he had done when he pleased Hutch in kind.

“And how shall I expect the end result to taste?”

“What does cum taste like? Like alfalfa sprouts.”

“How would you know what alfalfa sprouts taste like, Mr. Junk Food King?”

“Grace said so.”

Hutch had to believe her. “I’ll never look at a salad the same way again,” he said.

“I don’t have to come in your mouth,” Starsky reminded him.

“Oh, we both want you to.” He winked again at Starsky, then con­fessed, “But I can’t swal­low.”

“Who’s asking you to? Besides, most women never do, either. The one I have now doesn’t.” It was the most specific thing about his sex with Grace that he had ever shared. “And, if it’s any help,” he added, “I can’t remember that you taste much like anything at all anyway.”

“Thanks for the tips. Now, do me another favor.”

“Name it,” Starsky whispered.

“You lie here and enjoy every second of this—even if I’m not that good at it.” He gripped Starsky’s firm erection in his oiled hand again and slid it along the shaft in a tightly and further arousing stroke. He heard Starsky moan with an approving pleasure. “You come all the way,” Hutch emphasized. “You take this experience from me. Do you under­stand what I mean, boy?”

Starsky barely nodded. “Come in your mouth.”

“We both want you to,” Hutch said with a twinkle in his eye.

Starsky didn’t know if he’d last long enough to take much of any­thing. Hutch’s touch was already electrifying and the idea alone that Hutch would draw him into his mouth to the very end was life-giving.

“Don’t you dare try anything in return,” Hutch warned him, shifting back over Starsky’s ankles. “To help me balance this out, you have to take what I give and not give back. Not this time. This time it’s all for David Starsky—because David Starsky is who it’s always been about for me. I’ve told you before that sometimes I just need the nudge.”

Starsky relaxed into the pillows behind his shoulders. He held warm and steady eye contact with Hutch as he anticipated an experience he’d never even dreamed of having. Hutch’s blue eyes sparkled—and not from the light in the room, but from all the love in his heart. It was the reminder of Hutch’s person, there on that face and in those eyes, of Hutch’s gentle nature, of their unbreakable bond, their loyalty and their history, all that and so much more, that forced Starsky to fall further into the mattress beneath him, and into an unknown surrender he intuitively trusted. “God, I love you,” he said in a hushed voice—even before Hutch kissed him, a first kiss he knew wouldn’t touch his lips, but would be delivered else­where, and whose antici­pation nearly killed him.

Hutch couldn’t keep the smile from shining in his soul when he heard the words, ‘I love you.’ Love was the ingredient after all. He lowered himself to Starsky to inhale the scent of his familiar skin, that time mixed with more than just Starsky’s sweat and cologne, but with his musky maleness. The hairs on Starsky’s groin tickled Hutch’s nose, broadening that smile in his heart. He inhaled deeply to drink in the aroma of Starsky’s penis, its unfamiliar smell, but not a displeasing one; it was animal and it was male and it was sex. Spurred by reciprocating love and the rap­ture he was about to make, Hutch held the hard­ened shaft in his massag­ing hand, oiled and slippery, and then kissed Star­sky’s penis, its fleshy head, first gently, and then more sen­sually when that initial contact height­ened his own desire. The feel was warmer than he expect­ed—and sex­ier, too. What could be more erotic than his mouth on his man’s penis?

He looked up at Starsky when he heard Starsky whisper, “Holy shit,” under his breath. Starsky had turned his head, still pressed into his pillow, to make eye contact again. “You okay?” he asked Hutch.

“Couldn’t be hungrier,” Hutch said to playfully return Starsky to his indulgence.

Starsky smiled and closed his eyes. He knew then that Hutch wasn’t offended—and the subsequent tender, nibbling kisses that fearlessly rounded his crown proved what he knew.

Hutch sucked him, inch-by-careful inch, along the length of Star­sky’s rigid shaft, around its swollen head, up its tumescent sides, and back again. His eyes, too, were closed. He could see with his tongue, with his fingers, and by the feel of Starsky’s warmth and hard­ness. The ecstasy he gave came naturally for him. The doing was with­out thought. He heard his own sucking sounds, coupled with Starsky’s appreciative, responding moans, and their shared heavy breathing, Starsky’s more audi­bly, but Hutch’s just the same. He sucked and he licked and he kissed Starsky’s penis—as if he didn’t love any­thing or anyone more—because he didn’t and because he couldn’t.

Starsky’s hand was in Hutch’s hair, loosely; Hutch felt that, also. It remind­ed him that he had a hand, too, and that he was to use it. He broke away from the kisses and the licks and stroked Starsky’s penis with oiled fin­gers instead. Starsky seemed to enjoy the familiar manual stimu­lation, but when Starsky realized Hutch no longer touched him with his mouth, he opened his eyes, and they looked at each other again.

“You still okay?” Starsky asked, panting.

“I couldn’t be better. You?” He slid Starsky’s penis in and out of his fist, tightly and with a determined rhythm.

Starsky laughed, tickled, excited still, and closed his eyes again. “God, what you do to me. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, not anything in the whole wide world.” Hutch’s follow-up words brought Starsky to tears again, but they weren’t visible that time.

“I’m not rushing this,” Hutch told him, “so don’t worry about me. Any hesitation you feel is purely a stall to make it last and enjoy it to the max—for me, if not for you.” He pulled Starsky’s penis away from his haired belly; he only saw it for a few seconds, its glistening head and meatiness, that narrow slit in its crown, the thick shaft that blended per­fectly proportioned into the ending curve, its frenulum, that super­sen­si­tive area he knew too well on himself that sent him reeling, its raised veins and darkly colored, shimmering skin. He only saw it briefly because he devoured it before he could examine it more closely with his eyes. Into his mouth, he took Starsky’s penis—somehow remem­bering to press his lips to the edge of his tightening fist, to stroke Starsky down­­ward in tandem with his squeezing hand. Starsky wasn’t as small as he made himself out to be; he filled Hutch’s mouth with enough left over to allow for elongated strokes.

“I can’t believe this,” Starsky whispered after he sucked air through his clenched teeth. When he felt the inevitable upstroke, Hutch’s wet, warm hand, his lips, and his lashing, licking tongue along his penis’s length, he nearly yelped, a unique sound interrupted purely by his sudden need to gulp another breath.

Starsky wouldn’t leave Hutch’s mouth until it ended; that he finally knew, too. Each stroke downward was rewarded by an upstroke, in and nearly out of Hutch’s tight lips, then into the back of his throat, inside the snug­ness of his electrifying grip, all of it slickly viscous, all of it enormously tantalizing, erotic, sexy, sensual, necessary. And beautiful.

With titillating, unhurried practice, Hutch found the right rhythm. He did it by listening to Starsky’s breathing, to his moans, to his few words, to Starsky’s tightening and releasing grip in his hair, to Starsky’s taste and his hardness. All of it told him when and where to touch him, how to stroke him with his lips, how deeply to take him, how long to hold him, how to pace him—and especially how to tantalize his fren­ulum, that ultra responsive smoothness at the base of his crown where it joined the underside of his shaft—and to do it over and over and over again. It was only when he himself felt the discomfort in his jeans that he realized he, too, had a compelling erection, one that was impris­on­ed in his clothes, pressed against its constraints to a nearly painful burst­ing.

While he sucked and stroked Starsky using one hand, he fondled Star­sky’s scrotum with the other—and he heard Starsky cuss from the sheer joy of the dual experience. And all of it—Starsky’s penis, rhythm­ically into and out of Hutch’s hand and mouth, pausing on occasion so Hutch could lap his most sensitive, most reactive skin, there at the base of its cap, on its underside; Starsky’s sac, gently, but noticeably squeezed in Hutch’s fingers, their labored breathing, their moans, mostly Starsky’s, their fleshy contact, their heightened eroti­cism, and then all that love mixed into it—was an overwhelming blend of the sexually physical and emotional.

How could he have ever thought that orally pleasing Starsky—the way Starsky had already more than once pleased him—would be some­thing he couldn’t do? Doing it as he did it then—straddling Starsky on that bed in that Marina del Rey hotel room, Starsky’s shirt opened, his jeans around his knees, his penis hard and wanting in Hutch’s squeezing and caressing hand, came so easily for Hutch—and with such genuine love and respect—that he was aroused himself, hard, and as wanting of what he gave.

“You make my dick feel so good,” Starsky said between pants. “God, you make it feel so good.”

Hutch smiled on his lips; it broke the sealed con­tact he had with Starsky’s penis, but he simply couldn’t stop himself from its expression.

Starsky noticed the difference, subtle as it was. He laughed because he thought he knew what caused it, and when he opened his eyes to look at Hutch, that shy smile confirmed it for him. He rose onto his elbow while Hutch continued to suck him, stroked Hutch’s hair and his face while Hutch raised and lowered himself on his unbelievably thirsty penis, and said it again. “You make my dick feel so good.”

Hutch tried to ignore him, but both the good humor and the pres­sure he’d begun to experience in his own jeans kept him from success. Despite it, he wouldn’t please himself, not even to relieve the pain.

Starsky reached between them and squeezed Hutch’s bulge through the denim. He found what he hoped he’d find—Hutch’s penis, just as hard as his was, proving that Hutch enjoyed what he did, that it wasn’t purely obligation—or obligation at all.

When Hutch tried to nudge him away, Starsky explained himself. “Just checking,” he said. “But, stop,” he firmly added. He gripped Hutch’s hand and reluctantly forced him to release him. “C’mon,” Starsky encouraged him. “At least let that thing breathe, okay? How’m I going to enjoy myself knowing you got him caged like that?”

Hutch licked his lips and straightened when he released Starsky. The flavor was a mix of almond and sweat, of his own saliva, and Star­sky’s skin, most of it a familiar taste, but none of it in that lubricious com­bin­ation. He appre­ciated the reprieve to unzip his jeans. After he pulled his penis out of the fly, he gave Starsky a warn­ing look not to touch it once it was freed, and then pushed Starsky back onto the mat­tress even before Starsky could lay eyes on it.

Starsky willingly fell into his resignation. The last thing he con­sciously remem­ber­ed was that look of sheer excitement on Hutch’s face, his panting breath, his shy smile, his knowing eye contact, and how all of it melted into absolute desire when Hutch spied that drop of clear, color­less, viscous fluid that had emerged from the slit in Starsky’s crown and stretched to his frenulum.

He bent over Starsky again, that time to hungrily lap it onto the tip of his tender, loving tongue, for the most unique and exciting flavor he’d ever tasted.

* * *

“How far did you go?”

Hutch thought the answer was apparent, but he offered the informa­tion nonetheless. “All the way,” he said.

“Starsky finished in your mouth, you mean,” Jade said.

“That was the idea.”

“I realize it was the idea; I’m wondering if the idea succeeded.”

Starsky chuckled. He’d never been all that into words, but he did enjoy the way Jade and Hutch sometimes battled with them.

“What’s so funny?” Jade asked Starsky.

“It seemed obvious, you know?” Starsky said. “I mean, I’m smiling here today, aren’t I? The idea must have succeeded.”

“Well, I’ve seen you boys assume and be wrong. When it comes to your detective skills, you need more practice with each other.”

Starsky smirked at him.

“He came in my mouth,” Hutch said to make his point, “and—for the record—I’ll let him do it again when­ever he wants.”

Starsky jokingly unbuckled his belt.

He could be such a kid at times, but it was one of the reasons Hutch loved him, too. He glanced at Starsky—just in time to see that boyish smile flash over Starsky’s face. Then he tossed his half-empty water bottle at him and hit him in the shoulder.

Jade mocked dismay at Starsky’s childish antic, but his focus was on Hutch. “And?”

“And, what?”

“Did it taste like alfalfa sprouts?”

“He didn’t eat it,” Starsky said.

“Okay,” Jade replied, “but he still could have tasted it, no?”

Hutch laughed, embarrassed. “Actu­ally, it didn’t taste much like any­­thing. Or maybe I was simply pre­occupied with my other senses.”

The men’s voices were lower and they spoke more slowly. Jade couldn’t help but see the contentment between them. “What’s on your mind that we can also discuss today?”

“Nothing specific, really,” Starsky said. “But, maybe if we analyze it some more, I’ll think of something.” He smiled at Jade to let him know he played with him. “The thing is … now I’m in this with him and I want to talk about that part.”

“Are you boys having sex often these days?”

Starsky wasn’t suspicious of Jade’s question, like he would have been in the past, but he was curious, so he set out to answer it the best way he knew how. “Well, like I told Grace when she asked me the same question, the answer is that I have sex with him every day, so would you call that often?”

“Even on days you’ve had sex with Grace?”

“Even on those.”

“Sex with Hutch every day?”

“To quote my partner, define sex.”

“Any activity that ends in an orgasm—for either or both of you.”

“Yep.” But Starsky didn’t say it proudly. Just factly. “By that defini­tion, he and I have sex every day—unless he’s holed up in a hotel room avoiding me—”

“I won’t do that again,” Hutch promised.

“Do you ever have it twice a day with each other?”

“Sometimes,” Starsky said. “Usually.”

“More than twice?”

“Rarely, but sometimes. Does my frequency make you think differ­ent of me now?”

“No.”

“You were just curious?”

“I was curious about frequency because it lent itself to the ease with which you have sex with him now.”

Starsky understood, but he wasn’t certain about that word, ‘ease.’ “Trust me. The man isn’t so easy. I’ve had a hell of a time getting him in bed, remember?”

Jade exchanged a knowing glance with Hutch, who shrugged at him. Then Jade asked Starsky, “Has it worked out that you have sex with him every day or do you wake every morning and plan to have sex with him?”

“I’d say I pretty much expect to have sex with him every day in that, if I see him, I’m going to … have sex with him. It’s kind of like, ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’—and there is a will, his and mine together.” He thought Hutch probably felt the same way, but Hutch didn’t say anything, so Starsky continued. “I don’t wake up in the morning and think, ‘oh, I have to get across the driveway because I’m going to play with my buddy today. I do think, I’m going across the drive­way today at some point … maybe we have to run to the nursery or a hard­ware store or whatever … maybe we’ll go knock on some doors and fuck with some pedophiles … But we always see each other, he and me, I mean—and we always have—so there’s that expectation, I guess you might say, to see each other, to con­nect for whatever reason. But nowadays we add to that something like, ‘hey, man, I think we’re alone right now … wanna play?’”

“And he never says no.”

“Not yet, he hasn’t, not since we turned that fellatio corner. I suspect he never will.”

“Your suspicions are grounded,” Hutch said with a grunt. “But let the record show that it’s you, not me, who can’t say no—to women, men, and snakes.”

“Snakes?”

“You once said that you’re so horny, you’d fuck one if some­one held its head.”

“You know,” Starsky fired back as playfully, “if I wasn’t wanting another fellatio from you, I might just tell you to go fuck yourself.”

“Here’s to your wants.”

Jade kicked the coffee table to get their attention again. “This love/hate relationship you have is fascinating,” he said dryly, “but let’s get back to the point.”

“You think there’s hate in there?” Starsky asked, alarmed.

“I didn’t mean it seriously,” Jade said.

“Now, see,” Hutch noted, “if you were better educated, Starsk, you’d have known the good doc wasn’t serious.”

Starsky made firm eye contact with Hutch. “This is where I tell you to go fuck yourself.”

Hutch kissed at him.

“Fuck you double,” Starsky said in retaliation as he looked away to repress his smile. Then to Jade, he said, “I think I’m coming to terms with my morals of sex with him. Because of you—and because of him—I’m seeing it all through different eyes. Maybe I shouldn’t. May­be, despite what I think, God still sees it the same, but I’m beginning to bet He doesn’t.”

* * *

Hutch felt the pinch; it wasn’t an accident. It made him open his eyes, look quickly at Starsky to get a read of Starsky’s intent, and groan from the pain it caused him.

“What the fuck was that for?” he asked. Starsky had pinched his up­per arm; he dug into Hutch’s muscle—on purpose and Hutch couldn’t find the motive in Starsky’s eyes. They seemed fond of him and pleased. He rubbed his arm where Starsky hurt him. “Why are you such an ass­hole?”

Starsky chuckled. Then he tried to put his finger in Hutch’s ear, but Hutch jerked his head away before he could and told him, “go fuck your­self.”

“I’ll leave that to you,” Starsky said, challenging him further. “Did that hurt? Was I annoying you?”

They had just enjoyed another lengthy and enthusiastic sexual ex­per­i­ence with each other. Every encounter left them more confident—and freer. Usually, their play ended in complete exhaus­tion. They dozed afterward into lazy daydreams while minutes slowly passed.

Then had been no different, either. The overhead ceiling fan in Hutch’s bedroom even­tually dried their per­spiring skin. Their heart rates returned to normal, as did their breath­ing. They were physically drained and emotionally aimless and quietly happy. One of the differences between sex with women and sex with Hutch, Starsky pondered, was that he didn’t have to talk afterward. He could just drift away into the replen­ishing aftermath of his exhaustion—just the way Hutch did.

But on that particular late afternoon, he had wandered into musings about right and wrong, punish­ment and pleasure. He’d roused from his exhaustion and risen onto his elbow to have a long look at Hutch’s nude body alongside him there on the bed—without Hutch knowing he had. He drank in the shape of Hutch’s muscled arms and legs, the tight smooth­­­ness of his bared skin, his darker-colored and erect nipples, his flaccid, uncut penis nested in a patch of thick, light brown hair, and the contented expres­sion on Hutch’s perfect face. Closed eyes, tousled hair, unshaven chin and cheeks. On his back on the mattress, with the bed stripped to its bottom sheet. There was no visible sign of their semen, though Starsky could still smell it. It was mixed somehow in their cooled sweat and the slickness of oil on their hands and mouths and skin.

Hutch had left his ejaculate inside Starsky; after he withdrew, he orally brought Starsky to climax. That there hadn’t been any evidence of his own semen made Starsky believe Hutch had eaten it. He wished he knew for certain because the thought alone aroused him. He could ask, but he was on a different mission. He fondled Hutch’s penis and scro­tum, mildly stimulating him, watched how Hutch sleepily surren­dered to the massage, and drank in the look and the feel of Hutch while his own mind wan­dered into those thoughts he explored.

Starsky knew what Hutch thought; he knew what answers he’d give, too, but he wanted to hear them, regardless. He pinched Hutch, Hutch’s bicep, hard, to jolt Hutch the way he hoped.

It worked. Hutch snap­ped from his doze with a start and shot a ‘go fuck yourself’ at him when Hutch didn’t get an immediate explanation of Starsky’s reason for wound­ing him.

“Did that hurt?”

“Hell, yeah,” Hutch replied. “What’s with you?”

“I was thinking …”

“Do it quieter next time.”

Starsky looked at those angry blue eyes and knew they’d eventually forgive him—especially after they discussed those things Hutch loved to talk about. “Do you suppose I’ll burn in hell for the pain I just caused you?” Starsky asked.

“You should.” He didn’t under­stand why Starsky would force him out of his deep daydream, or why Starsky would want to end those pleasur­able and necessary time-passings for him, let alone with an abrupt and unwarranted pain. “I thought you loved me,” Hutch said, affectionately. “Why do you relish hurting me so much?”

“Think I’ll be damned for annoy­ing you?” Starsky asked.

Hutch slapped his hand away when Starsky tried one last time to penetrate his ear with a finger. “I’ll damn you,” he swore. He wasn’t really, truly angry. He was certainly quite used to Starsky’s prodding and poking and punching over the years. He teased Starsky about not knowing how to show affection, but Starsky insisted that his seemingly annoying and ‘mildly violent’ contact was nothing if it wasn’t love. “I wouldn’t touch just anybody like that,” Starsky would promise. Still, it didn’t make Starsky’s ‘affection’ any less aggravating or punishable.

“If you want me to engage in sado-masochistic sex with you,” Hutch said, “think again.”

“Sado-maso…?”

“Sadomasochistic: Sadistic, self-inflicted, painful sex—for the pleasure of it.”

“Really? That’s where you thought I was going with this?”

“Where else?”

“Where I said. Do you think I’ll burn in hell for hurting you just now?”

Hutch studied Starsky’s expression, his relaxed look and mussed hair, how expectant Starsky appeared as he waited for his reply. He was too drained to guess what Starsky wanted from him, so he swallowed the bait. “You know better than to ask me about hell,” he said. “I believe it’s right here on earth. Look around.”

“Okay, but, like the hell you were taught was hell … the one I believed in … do you think I’ll end up there for how I’ve hurt you—or do I have to hurt you again—worse, next time?”

“You won’t get away with it again.”

“Will you just answer the fucking question?”

Hutch squinted at him when he realized what Starsky had just said. He gripped Starsky’s wrist, then, too, to control him in case Starsky wanted to carry through on his threat to pinch Hutch again before he could answer his initial question. “What did you just say?” Hutch asked. “The hell you believed in? past tense?”

Starsky tried to force an answer out of Hutch by grabbing at his mouth, but Hutch’s grip kept him from it. He laughed instead and begged him. “Can you just answer the question … please?”

“You won’t go to hell for pinching me,” Hutch obliged him, “but you should. Maybe all your abuses will add up and warrant a one-way ticket there. What do you think?”

“Let go of me,” Starsky said. He tugged to get out of Hutch’s fist, but couldn’t. “C’mon. I’m going to be nice.”

Hutch studied Starsky more closely—his eyes and face, his posture and his closeness—in search of a subtle clue to Starsky’s sincerity. When Starsky finally and genuinely smiled at him, Hutch let him go.

Starsky cupped Hutch’s penis and scrotum again, gently, and looked into his eyes while he fondled him. “But, under the rules,” he noted, “I’ll burn in hell for touching you here—even though it doesn’t hurt you, right?”

Hutch bypassed the pleasure the contact caused him to answer. “Well, I think you can save yourself if you repent.”

“Repent?”

“Say some ‘Hail Mary’s and some ‘Our Father’s or something, all sins are forgiven, find your way to Jesus, don’t engage in this sinful behavior again, make amends, restore your life as to God’s intent, and you might just avoid hell.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I didn’t make this shit up. Call my father and ask him. You’ve got his number. He’ll explain it to you. And I’m not telling you it’ll keep you from hell. I don’t believe in hell, remember? I don’t believe in God. I also don’t believe you’ve committed any sin. Well, except when you purposefully hurt me.”

“That’s exactly my point,” Starsky said. “That’s the thing that’s got me rethinking my religion. I wouldn’t go to hell for hurting you; it was a little pain, after all, right? But I’d go to hell for doing something to you that made you feel good, that didn’t have any pain at all. I don’t under­stand how my making you feel good is a sin.”

“It isn’t,” Hutch said. He rotated his hips then to encourage more of Starsky’s fondling.

“But it’s a sin in my religion,” Starsky explained, “and in many reli­gions around the world.”

“Which makes them all wrong,” Hutch said between breaths.

They’d debated religion and the existence of God before; it was nothing new between them. They never did it to change each other’s minds. Starsky’s effort even then wasn’t to agree with Hutch, but to let him know that his thoughts were reconsidering. “I still believe in God,” he said, “and I probably always will, but you’re right: I’m forgiven for killing people in self-defense and in the line of duty, yet … somehow, making you feel wanted and loved, well, I can’t imagine that it’s going to have me burn in eternal fire. It makes no sense to me.”

Hutch realized Starsky’s struggle—and appreciated it. He gently stroked Starsky’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. It softened the look in Starsky’s eyes and made him smile. “We’re not hurting any­body,” Hutch said. “The Grand Design, in my religion, is love. And isn’t that what we got here?”

Starsky sobered. “Yeah. It’s what we got here.”

“So stop worrying about hell. There’s no hell in your future. Hell is part of your past. You tell me what could have been worse than what those three men put you through.”

Starsky locked eyes with Hutch and silently thanked him. He need­ed the reminder. “I was wondering about something else, too.”

Hutch took a moment to objectively see him. That Starsky always had questions for him, that he seemed to believe Hutch had the answers, or at least would help him find them, flattered Hutch. He loved Starsky; he wasn’t sure he showed it as much as he could have. Per­haps it came through in other ways, the way Starsky’s love did for him, like it did that day, on that afternoon, in Starsky’s vulnerability and his desire to share his thoughts and his doubts.

“What else you wondering about?” Hutch sportively asked him. He continued to tenderly stroke Starsky’s cheek and look into his heavy-lidded eyes and admire the way his dark wavy hair contrasted with his olive skin. Starsky had a certain innocence to him, despite all he’d been through over the years, and all he’d dished out. He was five months older than Hutch and often seemed five years younger. Naive in some ways, well-intentioned always, and impulsive to a fault, so there was no guessing whether he was happy or troubled or reflective—or that he loved Hutch. Hutch’s ego was stroked with each stroke he gave Starsky. “Are you think­ing twice about this?” He assumed Starsky knew what he meant by ‘this’; Starsky’s questions about ‘burning in hell’ led Hutch to believe Starsky recon­sidered more than his religion.

“I think twice about this all the time,” Starsky admitted. He gazed into those blue eyes. “I think once and set out to do it and then get ’er done. Then, after I get my muster up again, I think twice and hope I get another time with you that day. Sometimes I think three times and wish—”

“Shut up,” Hutch said. He should have known Starsky was in a re­flective mood and not a troubled one. Hutch’s own fear of rejection got in the way of his own perceptions sometimes. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Well … I was wondering what’s on yours.”

“Nuthin.’ Until you woke me out of bliss, I was happy just drifting along in … nothingness. Is that why you hurt me? Was that the only way to make your point?”

“I’m saying I wonder what’s on your mind. We’ve talked to Jade about all this, but we’ve never asked you what you think. Do you think we’re actually having sex now?”

“Yes, I do,” Hutch said, matter-of-factly.

“Because it’s anal, you to me?”

“Yeah, because of that. And because of the fellatio.”

“But how is getting each other off using our mouths be sex and get­ting each other off with just our hands not sex?”

Hutch’s expression softened. Starsky had cornered him. “Okay,” he agreed, “all of it, all along, was and is sex.” He’d said so in a private session with Jade, but never to Starsky— until now.

“I’m not trying to be right. I just wonder how you see it. I mean, has your picture changed at all?”

They’d analyzed it together for months, but no one had point blank asked Hutch for a personal characterization of his and Starsky’s sex-mak­ing—at least not since it had become just that. It amused him that he was queried long after the behavior itself. He ran his fingers through Starsky’s hair, from Starsky’s temple to the back of his head, and then again. He squeezed Starsky’s neck, affec­tionately and with appre­cia­tion. Maybe Starsky hadn’t been ready for the answer until then.

“I felt compelled to go forward into sex with you by way of love,” Hutch said, “not by way of my gene­tic makeup.”

“So a gay guy wants to fuck another guy because he wants to fuck another guy, not because he necessarily loves that guy.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

Starsky had to rethink what he said because he didn’t expect to be correct. “You’re saying, if we’re gay, we’d have been born with the craving to fuck men.”

“That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’ve said all along.”

“Because of Us and the things that have happened to Us, we chose to have sex with each other,” Starsky clarified for himself, “not because we were born to want sex with each other. And because we weren’t born to want sex with each other, or with men at all, you say we’re not gay, that we just have homo­sexual acts with each other out of choice and free will.”

“That’s my belief verbatim,” Hutch said. He continued to stroke Starsky’s hair, to run his fingers through it, to feel its texture and its length, to comb it into place again.

“Add to that,” Starsky said, aware of Hutch’s touch, but controlled by his thoughts, “that you don’t believe in hell or that homosexual acts are sins—”

“Add to that, that.”

“—and we know why you sleep at night.”

Hutch was concerned then. “You don’t sleep so well?”

“I sleep all right, but I worry sometimes that I’m doing things I’ll be punished for forever. But, then, I don’t know. I think about God now and I’m having a harder time believing He’d make me pay for this special thing we have. I think maybe it’s not a sin after all.”

“You think that,” Hutch encouraged him. “And if you ever find the victim in this victimless crime, let me know—and then we can both fear for our eternities. But don’t lose sleep over it, not a single wink more; we’ve got love on our side.”

Starsky swept his eyes over Hutch’s bared chest, his belly and his genital, across his nudity and his comfort. “Well, it isn’t all love,” he said, smiling at Hutch, back into those eyes. “I mean, I got lust for you in my heart now, too.”

“Is that where you keep it?”

“Some of it.” He thought further about his musings and impulsively asked, “Do you ever feel … homosexual lust?”

“Every time I’m near you now.”

“I mean … do you ever, um, feel lust for other men?”

Hutch almost laughed, but realized Starsky was serious. “I told you I’m not gay.”

“Yeah, but, do you look at guys and wonder what it might be like to have homosexual acts with them—out of choice, I mean?”

“No.”

Starsky was inexplicably envious of Hutch’s self-assurance—and how firm it sounded. “You don’t wonder how it might be different with some­body else?”

“No,” Hutch said again.

“You don’t wonder if, under the right circumstances, you could have this kind of thing with some other guy?”

The interrogation made Hutch uneasy. Did Starsky want him to desire sex with other men so Starsky could be justified in his own feel­ings for other men? “No. I never wonder,” Hutch said suredly. But he couldn’t help the question the questions begged from him. “Do you look at guys, Starsk, and think about having sex with them?”

Starsky ran the risk of offending Hutch; that made him nervous. But he felt Hutch’s fingers still in his hair, and was aware of how kindly they stroked him, and that the blue fondness Hutch had for him still shone in his eyes, so he answered honestly. “I see some guy some­times and wonder what I’m capable of, you know? I wonder if I have it in me to have a string of boyfriends like I once had a string of girlfriends. Not that I want to do anything with that, but I wonder.”

Hutch’s heart sank. “How far do you take your wondering?”

Starsky lifted his eyes and stared off for a few moments while he considered the reply. His heart noticeably pounded then, too, but not because he feared Hutch so much as he feared his own admit­tances. “I play it out,” he said, looking at Hutch. “I mean, I fantasize about doing the things we do to somebody else, some faceless guy—in my head, I mean.”

“Does it turn you on?”

“Yeah.”

“You jerk off to it?”

“No. Shit, man, I’ve never jerked off. I had a barn full of fillies most of my life, and now I have two lovers to keep me quite busy and satisfied. Besides … the idea of fucking a sofa cushion could turn me on, too, but it doesn’t mean I’ll actually fuck the couch.”

“So what does it mean?”

“I guess that’s the problem. I wonder if I’m born with that DNA thing—or else why would I think about fucking other guys?”

“Curiosity?”

“Like, what’s it like to kill somebody in cold blood kind of curi­osity? Evil curiosity? Sinful kinds of curiosity?”

Hutch dropped his hand against Starsky to let him know he wasn’t pleased with the comparison. “Like natural curiosity,” he corrected Starsky. “You’re a naturally curious sexual kind of guy. That makes you a good lover, by the way. You like to try new things and explore uncharted territory. It’s also what scares me about you: I’m sure you’re going to want to try bondage or spanking or something along those lines.”

Starsky felt the sweat where their sides and hips joined as they lay against each other. It made him feel flushed and warmer yet, spurred by Hutch’s disquieting perception of him. “I told you I like to play rough sometimes—but that was before I got hurt, remember?”

“Suppose you re-find your urges with me?”

“If I did, it’d be a compliment to you.”

“Fair enough,” Hutch said. “I’m just telling you why I think you’re a good lover: Because you’re willing to play all the way and nothing seems to offend or embarrass you. You’re just troubled when it comes to your want to do it with me—because I have a dick.”

“Don’t forget your balls.”

Hutch rolled his eyes and ignored Starsky’s crudity. “And then,” he continued, “because you have sex with me, you wonder how it might feel to do it with someone else with a dick.”

“And balls.”

“It’s just your natural way of being.”

“Ah, my natural way of being—gay.”

“Your natural way of being curious.”

“Gay curious? Or curiously gay?”

“Then my question to you is: Do you fantasize about sex with men and get turned on by the fantasies? meaning, are you having a desire to have sex with other men?”

“No,” was Starsky’s sure reply when he heard that specific ques­tion. “I’m saying that I wonder what I’m capable of and I play out what being capable of means and then, yeah, that turns me on. But it’s the idea of getting off that turns me on, not the idea of fucking other guys. This I’m sure of.”

Hutch tousled Starsky’s hair—after he’d spent minutes combing it in place. “So, you like sex. That’s all. And, due to circum­stances, you inadver­tently—accidentally, without purpose, subcon­sciously, uncon­sciously—wanted sex with the person who loves you most. That some­one just happens to be male. My only fault, really.”

Starsky laughed with him; he liked Hutch’s answer. It forgave him for whatever sin he thought he committed. “You like sex, too.”

“Okay, let me say it this way then: For whatever reason—your up­bringing, your experiences in life, your testosterone levels—you’ve been more comfortable with sex than I’ve been. Or maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s that everyone is more like you and I’m the exception. And I’m the exception because—for reasons of upbringing or experi­ence or simply because I’m not cut—I haven’t felt as free to follow my own instinct and desire and want the way you have.” He stroked Starsky’s rough cheek with his fond­ness and his love for him. “None of that negates the fact that you were the victim of a brutal crime, one so pow­er­fully griev­ous that it served as a catalyst to your gratitude that put us where we are right now.”

Starsky was satisfied with the answers; he simply wished he was as certain. “I want your mind,” he said.

Hutch pressed his fingers to his own forehead and then pressed them to Starsky’s. “There. It’s now yours. You’re a genius.”

“I want to be sure like you are.”

“Stop questioning yourself,” Hutch advised him.

“I’d trade my sexual ‘freedom’ for your mental freedom any day, that’s how badly I wish I had it.”

“Let go of your illusions,” Hutch said.

“I want your dick, too, while I’m at it,” Starsky added.

“It’s yours anytime.”

“No, I mean I want it, like, on me, as in mine, my dick—to use the way you use it.”

“And how would you take it?”

“Take it?”

“Cut or uncut?”

Starsky paused to search out the answer. It didn’t bother him that Hutch wasn’t circumcised, but he knew Hutch had had problems with it—or rather, the women Hutch had romanced had certain repulsions with Hutch’s sheathed penis—and its size.

“Time’s up,” Hutch interrupted him. “I’m keeping it.”

Starsky lightly gripped Hutch’s penis; it was soft and unassuming, tucked into its cocoon, so he held it gently. Then he studied it at length and close­ly, enough to make Hutch notice he contemplated it. Then Starsky said, “On second thought, you keep it. I have more fun with it when you use it.”

“You think I have less fun with you because you have … less?”

Starsky bent over to kiss Hutch’s crown as a way of answering him, but Hutch blocked him. “Not until we’ve showered,” he warned, re­minding Starsky purely by his comment that they had just enjoyed anal sex.

Starsky rose back to his elbow and ignored the context in search of his earlier point. “Stands to reason; more is more, less is less,” he said. “You’ve got more so I have more fun. You’ve also got a stronger driv­ing force, too. Fact of life.”

“Driving force?”

“You’ve got a more powerful ass—all that muscle driving that other muscle.”

“If I have more,” Hutch calculated, “then it figures I’m the one who enjoys it more.”

“Ha,” Starsky laughed, as he accel­er­ated their competition and edi­fied him with the beginnings of a handjob. “You’ve got more to go inside me; therefore, Sherlock, I get more fun.”

Hutch’s plea­sure with Starsky was more than he’d ever experi­enced. It was intense and purely satisfying. There wasn’t anything missing from it, not a sin­gle thing. It wasn’t possible to have more. “Shows what you know,” he said to play along. Then he ran his fingers along Star­sky’s leg to Starsky’s emerging erection and, while Star­sky hard­ened him, he hardened Starsky in return.

They were both determined to en­lighten the other on the matter.

* * *

EPILOGUE

“Sounds to me like you’re both as comfortable with each other as you’ll ever be,” Jade noticed. “You boys don’t really need me anymore, do you?” he wondered. He didn’t want to see them go, but he didn’t think he could be of any further help. His clients seemed rather blasé with each other and the way things were.

“I don’t know,” Starsky said with a shrug. He still felt compelled to continue. He didn’t think he’d want to end the therapy until he found himself talking about the weather because it was the only thing that interested him then. Discussing his relationship with Hutch remained a high priority.

“I want you to be done when you’re done,” Jade replied. He looked at Hutch. “You never did tell me how that first time fellating Starsky felt to you, just that you did it.”

Hutch felt both men’s eyes on him, so he sheepishly answered. “I enjoyed the experience.”

“Because Starsky enjoyed it?” Jade asked.

“That was a necessary ingredient, but I enjoyed it for myself, too. It was mesmerizing.”

“It knocked me unconscious,” Starsky said playfully.

“Why so?” Jade asked him.

“Because all the love in the world drove him to it.”

“And love is what you were looking for all along.”

“Yeah,” Starsky said, thinking back. “He loved me when he anal-sexed me, but the fellating … that was his own decision.”

“Did you know when you did it,” Jade asked Hutch, “that you were finally liberating him?”

Hutch examined Jade’s implication and then answered as truthfully as he could. “In the end, looking back, and all things considered—what he endured, where it brought him, what I gave, what we’ve lived through together—I think it was me who felt most … loved.”

* * *

Starsky climaxed. He didn’t last as long as he had hoped he could. Unlike any woman’s touch, Hutch’s was much tighter and more pleas­ing because of it. That, and—because his lover was Hutch, his partner and his hero of ten years, the one who would give him no-strings-attached fellatio whenever he wanted it—the reward was far greater. But also, because he never expected fellatio from Hutch, never even dreamed of it until that first time he received it, he then couldn’t imagine how he could possibly ever live without it again.

He spilled—and hard—deeply into Hutch’s mouth, still clasped in Hutch’s hand. His cries were close to sobs, his moans more like whimp­ers. He gripped Hutch’s head in both hands to stop the stroking rhythm when he erupted, his penis too sensi­tive for a continuing friction, and then he held them in that unmoving union while he drowned in the relieving, painful, bliss­ful ecstasy of his orgasm. He trembled and he writhed and he cussed—all familiar reactions and sounds from all those other ejaculates between them, but this time more im­passioned. This time, he’d never felt freer—because this time he’d finally come to be­lieve Hutch enjoyed the giving. After all, the gift was one he’d never asked for.

Hutch felt Starsky’s warm semen emerge in his mouth, a tasteless concentrate of jellied cream. No other words to describe it. No offensive texture or flavor to repel him. He couldn’t even tell that it pulsed in its delivery. It was simply warm and it was simply there—the evidence of Starsky’s resolved euphoria. Hutch’s hand was slick with oil and his own saliva, but he allowed Starsky’s semen to slowly seep past his lips and then tenderly used it in his fingers to further lubricate Starsky’s still-hard penis with it. After a couple of lighter, careful strokes, and because he knew how sensitive Starsky’s penis had become, he even­tually with­drew from him completely and, panting and exhilarated him­self, stud­ied the man he’d apparently satisfied.

Starsky’s eyes were closed and his skin glistened with his sweat. He breathed heavily and was wordless, but his hands found Hutch’s hands, still slick with oil and his semen, and he squeezed and caressed them, lovingly and with appreciation. He simply didn’t have words at that minute to say what his heart and soul felt. Maybe he would never have those words.

But Hutch knew. He rolled off Starsky and lay on his back beside him, unintentionally losing the contact with Starsky’s hands in his action. Starsky barely noticed; he was lost in his swimming delirium. Hutch caught his breath, too, stared for a few minutes at the ceiling, and then closed his eyes and realized his head also spun at high speed. It was a telling tell. His erec­tion had no­where to go, so the blood rushed to his head instead. To give and not take had its detractions. It made him quietly laugh, the sport of it all. He licked his lips again and tasted that un­usual mix of sweat, semen, oil, and spit. And then he licked them again to fam­i­liarize the flavor. It was something he would repeat throughout his lifetime—if he had his way.

When silence embraced the room and Starsky should have awak­ened from his short-lived sex-induced sleep, Hutch rolled onto his side to get a look at him, to greet him upon his arrival. Starsky’s penis was still hard, though its visible stiffness slowly faded; it lay against his hairy belly, seeming to emerge from his tight scrotum, and pointed toward his left hip. Hutch shifted his eyes from it and grazed Starsky along the way to his face: Starsky’s still-worn, open­ed shirt, his haired chest, erect nipples, shaved neckline and face, his ruddier cheeks and his squarer jaw, the long line of his nose, his relaxed, but thinner lips, his closed eyes, and those thick black eye­lashes. He was cradled in pil­lows and couldn’t have appeared more sedated.

Hutch waited another minute while he enjoyed the view of his satiated partner. Maybe he’d given the man better head than he realized he had. Starsky was actually sleeping, quietly breathing, completely immersed in dreamland, it seemed. It made Hutch’s heart smile to have fulfilled Starsky that much. It had all felt so natural, so right; mostly, so necessary—for them both.

He rose to his elbow alongside Starsky, but didn’t touch him, lest he disturb his rapture. If he wasn’t mistaken, Starsky had been truly, deeply emptied, not just of his semen, but of his burden, one that per­haps neither of them realized had weighed on him—to that extent— until that very experience be­tween them. Starsky must have surely, finally, felt uncon­di­tionally loved by the person he loved the most. Wouldn’t that have been the difference—or could it have purely been the fellatio that had knocked him out?

Hutch had never heard Starsky cry with such delight or to that thrilled degree as he did that day; he’d never felt Starsky hold his head like that, either, with such tenderness, or stroke his hair that affection­ately, or sweetly caress his hands after­ward the way Starsky did. Those were loving gestures, intimate ones, kind and generous, a sincere reply to the love Starsky must have felt. And then Starsky obviously slept as deeply as he appeared to sleep when it ended, right there on the mattress in the middle of the afternoon—with Hutch, on the bed beside him, watching him sleep.

How could Hutch not feel more loved by the man he loved more than life itself?

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Next: Book Three From Dandelion Series 1: Finding Hutch.