The Reprimand

353

42,190 words.

The Reprimand follows Corroborating Evidence.

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PROLOGUE

Starsky waited longer than he thought he had the patience to endure; several minutes passed while he listened to a nearby clock tick and Hutch’s quiet breathing. He lay behind his partner, on his own side of the bed, facing Hutch’s back. It was nighttime, and the blankets were pulled to both their shoulders, but there was enough light in the otherwise dim room to notice the neatly shaped dovetail of Hutch’s blond hair at the back of his neck. Since their move-in together, it wasn’t often that Starsky got that view before their sex-making, so he knew that its presentation meant he was in deeper trouble than he’d previously suspected.

“Are you still awake?” he asked, his voice sounding unintentionally gravelly. Maybe Hutch had gone to sleep, exhausted from the emotional confrontation they’d had earlier that day, and that’s why he’d put his back to Starsky—because he simply didn’t have the physical strength to participate in their nightly sex. “Hm?” Starsky had to ask, nudging his partner with yet another sound to rouse an answer.

“Yeah,” was the noncommittal, but eventual reply. Soft voice, sort of hushed.

Starsky scooted closer to Hutch on the mattress. Hutch’s one-word answer had slightly eased his concern. “So how about I help put you to sleep?” he suggested, trying to be playful—but the knot in his own stomach told him he probably hadn’t succeeded. “I mean, you still want to do that with me, right?”

An excruciating silence dressed the room and made Starsky swallow his pride, though he couldn’t quite repress the hurt.

“I haven’t got the urge,” Hutch inevitably said. “Ask me in the morning.”

Starsky felt torn between his smarts to leave sleeping dogs lie and his desire to bridge the chasm between them—the one that he had created and, further, for the one in which he didn’t have the moral high ground. But his insecurity got the better of him and spurred him closer to Hutch. “I can’t say I’m sorry enough times to make up for this,” he confessed.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hutch said.

It was painfully obvious that Starsky had reason to worry: Hutch didn’t want to sex-make with him that night. Hutch had been understandably aloof and withdrawn all afternoon. He made them dinner, as he almost always did, and he watched television with Starsky for a while afterward, and he came to bed when it was time, but he was definitely not receptive to Starsky’s affection, let alone the pleasure he would get from it, nor was he open to discussing the matter further. “Don’t worry about it” was Hutch’s apparent way of telling Starsky to leave him alone.

But Starsky couldn’t—at least not until he knew he hadn’t committed a deal-breaking crime.

Despite his nervousness and ever-present fear of rejection, he finally made physical contact with his partner, stretching along Hutch’s entire length behind him, embracing Hutch’s waist under his arm, and nuzzling Hutch’s ear with his nose. The warmth of their bodies felt promising, but Hutch didn’t respond in kind. It was as if Starsky hadn’t touched him at all.

“Can’t we just lay here and be friendly?” Starsky timidly asked, gently rubbing his foot over Hutch’s calf and feeling its muscle. “Don’t you want to do that much, at least?”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Sex will make us feel better.”

“I’m not in the mood to feel better.”

Starsky’s heart sank as his pulse raced. He dropped his weight and abandoned his intended action. Maybe he deserved the cold shoulder—in fact, he did—but couldn’t Hutch acknowledge that he wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt by the hurt Starsky had caused? Didn’t that count for something? He gave Hutch half a minute to realize his own pain, for Hutch to remember how remorseful Starsky was, how much he regretted what he’d done, and that Starsky’s biggest fear in all the years they’d known each other was that he would be abandoned by those he loved most. Hutch was at the pinnacle of that love. Couldn’t Hutch instinctively know just how terrified he was? Or did Hutch simply not care?

Hutch continued to ignore him—and to punish him while doing so, whether he meant to or not, and he probably meant to.

Starsky withdrew his arm, tucked it bent between them, and lay motionless for several minutes, paralyzed by the silence. He was still pressed along Hutch’s nude body from head to foot; Hutch was pleasantly warm against his skin. He was inside Hutch’s contour, his knees to Hutch’s knees, his outside leg atop Hutch’s calves, Starsky’s hips, his sac and his penis, to Hutch’s buttocks—but Starsky’s beating heart was now protected behind the arm he’d wedged between them. He felt the perspiration of fear break across his brow, beneath the hair on his chest, and inside his elbow. There would be no running from it.

“Okay, but, do you still love me?” he managed to ask, his voice urgent and submissive at once, reflecting the way he felt in that moment.

“You know I do,” Hutch said, matter-of-factly. He hadn’t moved a muscle.

The promise of love wasn’t convincing—mostly because it didn’t sound to Starsky as if Hutch meant it. Why couldn’t he simply have said, “Yes, I love you”? Starsky was disappointed and somewhat annoyed by the voiced answer, despite his fear, so much that those sentiments drove his courage to then reply, “Could you at least say so?”

A beat of silence followed, one so long it seemed as if there could only be one conclusion from it: Hutch no longer loved him.

But then Hutch reached behind him, felt along Starsky’s hip, found his elbow, and stroked his forearm to coax Starsky’s arm back around his waist. He lifted Starsky’s hand to his mouth and tenderly kissed Starsky’s fingers with his warm lips. The affection was inviting, seemingly healing, and definitely reassuring.

“Something fierce, buddy,” Hutch said as he squeezed Starsky more snugly to him. “I love you something fierce.”

* * *

TWO WEEKS EARLIER

Hutch heard the front door open behind him, over his shoulder, coupled with Starsky’s footsteps on the hardwood floor. It had been minutes, it seemed, between the time the car had arrived in the driveway and Starsky entered the house. Or maybe it was just Hutch’s daze and haze that prevented him from connecting two events more closely together. “You’re home,” he said in a hoarse voice, his words strained, though audible. He hadn’t turned over on the sofa to verify Starsky’s return with visual contact; the blankets were warm and comforting, and his body too achy to move, but he was as certain of his partner’s presence as he was that sunlight still shone into the room on that late Sunday afternoon.

Starsky walked into the kitchen, opened and closed the refrigerator, and then returned to the living room. His shuffle stopped in its tracks behind Hutch, off the area rug. “You’d make a good detective,” Starsky eventually said. “The things you know without really knowing them is remarkable.”

Hutch grunted and closed his eyes to surrender to the reality that he was too weak to hold his own against Starsky—but it didn’t keep him from trying. He was more content with the sound of Starsky’s masculine voice—that it was playful, sarcastic, that his words were baiting—than he was in besting him. “I know everything plus all the things you know,” Hutch said. He was certain Starsky had enjoyed himself, though he also sounded tired. “How’d it go?”

“As planned,” Starsky said.

“How are your boys?”

“They recognized me.”

“They’re pigs,” Hutch said, as if to remind him. “Why wouldn’t they recognize the guy who saved their lives?”

“I just worry they’ll forget me one day.”

Hutch wasn’t worried. Even if Starsky went months without visiting his pigs, he was certain they would all remember each other.

“Are you still feeling like shit?” Starsky asked.

“Like shit warmed over,” Hutch replied. His eyes burned if he opened them for too long, and his head pounded in pain, his throat as if it were on fire, and his muscles as sore as if he’d run a 100-mile marathon. “But my fever broke again and hasn’t been back since you’ve been gone.”

“We’ve got that going for us,” Starsky said, pleased. “I’ll make you something. Some tea maybe, like I fixed it for you this morning?”

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” Hutch said, appreciating the offer, especially when he remembered how sweet and healing the brew had earlier been; it didn’t matter how much sugar Starsky had dumped in it. But one thing did bother Hutch: he didn’t like talking to Starsky behind his back. “Come over here first,” he coaxed his partner.

“I have to shower. Then I’ll make you some tea.”

“You can come over here for a minute—ease the pain of these sore eyes.”

“And you can wait another 15 minutes.”

“What’s wrong with you that you can’t come over here for half a second?” Hutch asked with a huff. His head hurt more in that moment, spurred by his confusion and frustration. He was curled on the sofa, facing its back, buried under a blanket, with a previously sweat-soaked pillow under his face. All he wanted to make himself feel better was to see Starsky’s beautiful blue eyes. Was that too much to ask?

“I smell like pigs,” was Starsky’s new excuse. “Let me shower first.”

“It’s not like we’re going to fu—”

“I’ll shower,” Starsky said, turning to leave for the hallway, or so it sounded, “and then I’ll make you some tea. I’ll be back in … no time.”

Hutch had heard that before. More than once. “‘No time’ is now,” he said dryly.

But he said it to no one because Starsky had already left the room.

* * *

Hutch had apparently fallen asleep while Starsky showered; he woke to Starsky’s hand on his shoulder afterward, gently squeezing him.

“Hey, buddy,” Starsky affectionately said. “I have your tea.”

Hutch rolled toward him, looking over his shoulder, and realized Starsky had taken a seat on the coffee table. He presented Hutch with a red cup of hot tea—and appeared so pleased with himself, as if he’d accomplished more than he’d set out to do, or at least made it better than expected.

Hutch turned all the way over, fighting with the blankets and his robe—the only thing he was wearing—when he got twisted in them, and appreciating Starsky’s help to unravel himself. Neither of them made a sexual innuendo over Hutch’s nudity, as briefly as they both saw it. Starsky told him to ‘sit up’ so he could drink the beverage, and Hutch followed those orders, too. He accepted the warm cup in both hands while Starsky pulled a blanket around his shoulders and tucked it under his armpits; likewise Hutch’s robe around his legs. Not until Hutch had taken his first sip of the sweet-tasting brew did he notice Starsky’s appearance: freshly showered, shaved, neatly combed hair, crisp blue shirt, clean pair of jeans, and he even smelled of a romantic cologne. “Are you feeling guilty about something?” Hutch teased him.

“Why would you ask me that?” Starsky wondered, sitting back as if taken aback. “I can’t clean up nice for you?”

“It’d be the first time.”

“How you lie.”

Hutch noticed the sparkle in Starsky’s blue eyes, despite his mocked affront. “You’re beautiful,” he told his partner, meaning it.

“Yeah? Talk like that will get you extra brownie points. You, on the other hand,” Starsky said, momentarily gripping Hutch’s chin in his hand to force a longer eye contact, “well, the good news is, I’ve seen worse.”

Indeed, he had: when Hutch was sick and near death with the plague. Worse yet: his heroin addiction and subsequent withdrawal; a sight too wicked to behold. But why Hutch remembered those terrible times, he didn’t know. Perhaps because he felt so sick that day. After all, Starsky was trying to pay him a compliment, the best he could under the circumstances of Hutch’s flu. Or maybe Hutch’s grim memories were triggered by something else.

“You never answered the question. Are you feeling guilty about something?”

“You’re delirious,” Starsky shot back at him, then sounding annoyed. Or offended. Or defensive. Or all of those things. “I don’t know why you ask.”

“No reason,” Hutch replied, mostly because his question had been gut-driven, and not thought out. “Because you look so good and smell so good and are being so polite, I guess.”

“When was the last time I took care of you when you were sick?”

“Years,” Hutch recalled, remembering the plague.

“So maybe you’ve forgotten how adorable I can be when I have to take care of you. In fact, I’ll make you some soup,” he said, decidedly.

“Make me soup?” Hutch asked, mocking dismay. “You’ve been holding out on me all these years.” He sipped tea and enjoyed the banter. At least that felt like normalcy, despite how graveled his voice had become.

“Then how about: I’ll heat you up some?”

“We’re out. I meant to get soup last time we shopped.”

Starsky playfully hit the end of Hutch’s nose as if to cheer him with more good news. “The folks at the sanctuary made some soup when they learned you were sick. I’ll heat up what they gave me to give you.” He presented Hutch with that closed-lips smile, grinning with anticipation, as if he needed Hutch’s permission to follow through on his plan. Yep, he did have beautiful, sultry blue eyes, and Hutch noticed them all over again.

“You know what would also make me feel better?” he sheepishly asked, aroused by Starsky’s look, his willingness and caring, his beauty and sexiness—just from the way he sat on the coffee table—and touching Starsky’s knee with now-warmed fingers.

“Yeah,” Starsky replied, knowingly, and getting to his feet, “but we can’t risk making me sick.”

“You could give me a hand job with almond oil. That wouldn’t be risky for you.”

Starsky left for the kitchen. “You could give yourself a hand job with almond oil.”

Hutch frowned, deeply disappointed. “I haven’t got the strength. Besides, you know it’s different.”

His plea fell on deaf ears, so he slumped into the sofa cushions at his back, dutifully drank his over-sweetened tea, and waited for Starsky to warm up the soup he’d brought from the sanctuary, all while keeping an eye on his partner from the living room. “What did you do for the three hours you spent with your pigs?” he asked.

Starsky’s back was to him in the kitchen as he prepared Hutch’s early dinner. “We played, you know, the way we do. Then I helped with barn chores. They need more male volunteers,” he said, upon obvious reflection. “Some stuff they can’t do without muscle, I mean. So they were really happy to have me fix things.”

Hutch nodded to himself while he listened, enjoying the sound of Starsky’s familiar and warm voice—its inflections and nuances, that he was home and safe—more than he was the stories Starsky told him about his pigs and their play, about the specific repairs he made at the sanctuary, and as he heated soup in a pot on the stove for his partner.

“Who all was there?” Hutch asked, shifting his line of sight to the coffee table and staring beyond it. He was sorry he couldn’t have been involved in the party, sick as he’d become that day.

“Bunch of people,” Starsky said. “The owner, Susan. Jack was there. Didn’t see Jill. But they had lots of volunteers, mostly young girls, giggly things, you know? Not much for farm work except to move stuff around or paint a wall.”

Hutch imagined the kind of work he and Starsky and Jack could have accomplished between the three of them. “I’ll help out next time you go up.”

“There’ll always be plenty to do.”

Starsky clanked around utensils and a soup bowl, maybe a plate. He seemed happily busy and friendly, too, while he talked about the sanctuary’s projects, and the future. “When we go, we’ll stay longer, maybe overnight, like the first time; sleep in the barn. That way we’re not driving four hours roundtrip for three hours of work the way I did today. We’ll get more done.”

Hutch had forgotten how long a drive it was—and that those trips probably bored Starsky, if not made him feel lonely, as well. Together the drive would be more interesting and pass by much faster. “Did you take my truck?” What Starsky could have accomplished with that vehicle would have been a godsend for the sanctuary, no doubt.

“I didn’t know I was going to be put to work up there.”

He came into the living room then, carrying a plate with a bowl of steaming soup on it, and a spoon. When he set the meal in front of Hutch on the coffee table, Hutch noticed half a dozen crackers on the plate, too. “There’s more of them where they came from,” Starsky said.

The presentation was colorful and the soup a sort of hearty stew, a varietal mix of vegetables in a thick broth. Someone had definitely gone through some trouble to make a delicious smelling dish.

Starsky sat on the table beside the plate—as if he intended to watch Hutch eat. Or make certain he would. But Hutch was hungry and didn’t need coaxing. He hadn’t eaten since his no-frills breakfast of toast and coffee.

“Scrumptious,” he said after he’d leaned over the table and taken the first bite—because it was. Even despite his clogged sinuses and his dulled tastebuds, he could taste the seasonings infused in the perfectly textured vegetables: mushrooms, onions, potatoes, corn, kidney beans, and more. Maybe it had been overly seasoned just for him, for the fact that he was sick and needed the extra punch, the way Starsky’s tea was heavy on the sugar.

While Hutch ate, Starsky more than once stroked Hutch’s hair. The first couple of times felt nice, comforting, as if Starsky silently told him he loved him, felt affection for him, maybe was even sorry for him. But after the third time, Hutch paused and looked Starsky in the eye. “Am I being a good boy?” he asked, assuming Starsky had actually been rewarding him for eating.

Starsky frowned, appeared puzzled. “I was just…” He didn’t finish his sentence—as if Starsky realized his words wouldn’t convey his meaning. “Are you mad at me?”

“You’re the perfect nurse,” Hutch said, but added something he wished he’d never said, which was, “or you’re feeling guilty about something.”

Starsky rested his forearms on his knees and didn’t break eye contact with Hutch. “I feel shitty,” he confessed, “for leaving you alone all day after knowing how sick you were by the time I left.”

Hutch knew it had to have been something besides Starsky’s care; there’d been an uncomfortable pressure in his gut from the moment Starsky walked into the house that told him things were amiss. He should have guessed what it was so Starsky didn’t have to tell him and he wouldn’t have made his partner defensive.

“C’mon,” Hutch debated him, to make up for his unintended abuse, “you know you have to go when the light’s green.” Neither of them could go to the sanctuary, for all the obvious reasons, unless they were invited; the hosts had to feel it was safe for anyone to visit. “You don’t want to risk those pigs’ lives again,” he warned—knowing he didn’t have to, but it was his way of telling Starsky he was sorry for interrogating him about his feelings. “It was my fault I couldn’t go with you. You’ve got nothing to feel bad about.”

“Well,” Starsky replied, as sorrily, “I’d have had a better time there if you’d been with me; the way it turned out, I was glad to have some chores to do because it wasn’t as much fun playing with Kenny and Davey knowing you were home, sick as a dog.”

“Next time,” Hutch assured him, patting Starsky’s knee. “Next time.”

“So you’re not mad at me?”

“I never was.”

Starsky pursed his lips, as if to say he was satisfied and finished with the conversation. He got to his feet, went to their end table drawer, retrieved the small plastic bottle of almond oil they kept in it, and returned to his seat on the coffee table, facing Hutch. While Hutch eagerly eyed the container in Starsky’s hands and tried not to be aroused by it until he finished his meal, Starsky said, “When you’re done there, let’s see if you have the strength to at least open your robe.”

“If I don’t,” Hutch said with a laugh, “I’ll be sure to find it somewhere.”

* * *

Oh, that exquisite, slick, orgasmic-building firmness. He would never tire of it, not ever. Starsky had become so skilled in giving pleasure, tuned into Hutch’s most subtle responses, to his mounting sexual enjoyment and needy, climax-heightening touches, to what he utmost desired—the inevitable ejaculation—and defensively appeased. Starsky read him, timed him, indulged him to the max. So it was with deep disappointment that, several heated minutes into the orgasmic satisfaction he so desperately craved, Hutch gently caught Starsky’s hand on one of its oiled downstrokes and held it tightly to his rigid erection—to stop him.

“Sorry, buddy,” he managed to say, speaking past his breathlessness, sinus congestion, and dismay, as if it were Starsky who’d been deprived. “It’s not working.” Maybe he was wrong about that; maybe everything Starsky had given him was as perfect as it could be and always had been. Maybe another few seconds and he would have crested into that glorious ecstasy that would rack his body with heaving convulsions of bliss and coat his chest with spurts of creamy semen while Starsky continued to squeeze him, to milk him with those strong and lubricious strokes, permissibly force Hutch into even heavier, breath-taking gulps for air and irrepressible and expressive moans, and followed by the eventual laughter and warmth of having emptied himself in one way, but filled him in another. One thing Hutch felt most certain about as he reluctantly ended the play, and regretfully refused the gift he’d been given, was that something inexplicable didn’t feel so perfect.

“Maybe you’re too tired to do this for me now,” he said with a laugh after half a minute, when he was able to catch his breath long enough to explain himself. “Or maybe it’s because I’m sick and it seemed like a good idea at the time. But, I get close and then lose it—over and over again.” Was that true? He tried to remember if it was often or just a couple of times. He did know he felt the occasional loss of traction in his gut, if not his penis, but he couldn’t quite figure out where the timing got lost—on his end or Starsky’s. “I’ll take a rain check, if you wouldn’t mind,” he added, releasing Starsky’s hand from his own, “and I’ll pay you back in spades.”

Hutch expected a retort from Starsky, something playful and retaliatory, some sort of tease or put-down, but Starsky only lay against him, seated as they both were on the sofa, snugged to each other, his oiled and open hand resting on Hutch’s thigh, and speechless. Hutch closed his eyes and breathed the best he could through his nose. He felt internally warm, maybe feverish, and didn’t have a need to close his robe, allowing the room air to cool his otherwise perspiring skin. “Maybe I just needed your mouth,” he said in spoken afterthought. A part of him wished Starsky would use it as a cue and resume that earlier pleasure for him while his penis was still swollen and sensitive to any touch, but Starsky didn’t move.

Maybe he’d fallen asleep.

“Thanks for trying,” Hutch said, to finish the encounter, “and for the soup.”

“Any time,” Starsky replied in a low voice, sounding subdued and hesitant. He pushed away from Hutch, sat for barely a moment beside him, not making any contact, eyes or otherwise, and then stood. Without saying another word, he stepped over Hutch’s feet and walked to the hallway. “Feel better soon,” he sincerely said in a parting shot before he turned the corner.

And then, if Hutch wasn’t mistaken, he heard Starsky leave the house through the back door.

* * *

Hutch stood in the kitchen doorway, dressed only in his terry robe, which he’d failed to tie shut, and scratched his head. He’d smelled coffee that morning; it woke him from his sleep and roused him out of bed. But the kitchen was empty, though the coffee pot steamed, and only then did he notice Starsky on the far wall of the nook, dressed in jeans and shirt, rolled sleeves, barefoot, sitting at the small table, facing the sliders that opened onto the side porch.

“Hey,” Hutch sleepily said, and about to offer coffee to his partner when he saw that Starsky already had a mug in front of him. “What are you doing over there?” Hutch walked to the counter and poured himself some of the beverage into an upturned cup that sat beside the coffeemaker. “But, more importantly, how long have you been awake?”

By the time Hutch had left the sofa for a bed the previous night, Starsky had already fallen asleep in the master bedroom, so Hutch slept in the guest room across the hall—not because he didn’t want to sleep with Starsky, but because he was still sick, possibly running a fever, and didn’t want to wake his man on what may have been multiple trips to the bathroom during the night. It had been a good call on his part; few trips to the toilet, but a lot of tossing about on the mattress as he suffered through chills and fever. “Huh, buddy?” Hutch nudged him into answering. “Been awake long?”

“An hour maybe,” Starsky said, sounding distant.

Hutch shuffled to the table where his partner brooded and blocked his view of the outside—not on purpose. The view he did offer was his nudity draped in a robe, and his penis and sac at eye level. He noticed Starsky briefly spy it and then avert his eyes to his coffee cup. So Hutch sat in the chair across from him, disappointed that he hadn’t heard a snappy, sexual comment from Starsky, and eventually made eye contact with him. Starsky appeared tired. “You’re not getting sick, are you?” Hutch asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Maybe Starsky was annoyed or hurt because Hutch had chosen to sleep in the other room. “Be glad you weren’t in bed with me last night,” Hutch explained, sipping the hot coffee and not breaking the look between them. His head still spun and felt heavy. “I think maybe I got a couple hours sleep, and none of it all that good.”

“Yeah, I heard you coughing up a lung all night,” Starsky said. “But you look like you feel better,” he added, giving Hutch closer scrutiny with a squint in his eyes.

“Marginally.”

“Well, yeah, obviously, because you also still look like shit.”

Hutch didn’t have any doubt that he looked rather weathered. His fever had broken by 4:30 a.m. and hadn’t returned, so he believed he was finally on the mend, but he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, nor really dressed, or bathed, for that matter. He wasn’t even sure he’d brushed his teeth. His senses remained under a fog. “So this isn’t a face you’d want to kiss, then?” he playfully asked, hoping to make Starsky laugh, even a little.

“In my defense, it’s not very … inviting.”

Knowing Hutch’s explanation about why he’d chosen the guest room over the master didn’t seem to alleviate Starsky’s reserved appearance. Nor had Hutch’s attempt at humor altered it, either. Hutch tried again. “You’re not lagging too far behind in the looks department.”

Starsky smirked at him, drank coffee, broke their eye speak, and stared off again, past Hutch, into the outside.

“Something you want to tell me?” Hutch asked, easing into the question, lest he trigger an aggressive reply in his weakened condition. He wasn’t feeling a hundred percent and didn’t want a confrontational conversation, but he also needed to know why Starsky was aloof. “Let me in on the machinations of your mind?”

Starsky shifted his eyes to Hutch’s. His facial expression was softer than the look he gave Hutch, but his words were deceiving, too. “Do I have to tell you everything I think and everything I do?”

Were it not for Starsky’s relatively sincere tone of voice, and not one that sounded chastising and defensive, Hutch was only mildly alarmed by the question. But it wasn’t rhetorical, as was obvious by Starsky’s compelling eye contact, pursed lips, and seemingly patient demeanor. “Unless it affects me,” Hutch said, decisively answering him, “then, no, you don’t have to tell me everything you think and do.”

Starsky nodded once, dropped his sight to the table, and seemed satisfied with the answer.

But it hadn’t been a complete one.

“If, on the other hand,” Hutch furthered, tucking his robe around his legs under the table as if doing so would protect him from the consequences of his bravery, “anything you think or do that stresses you enough to make you act strangely would obviously have an effect on me—as it’s doing now.”

Starsky sat back against his chair and looked Hutch in the eye. “You couldn’t leave it alone.”

“You’re … distracted. I’m not supposed to notice?”

“It doesn’t involve you.”

“Except in this way.”

“That’s it? If I behave in a way that you won’t notice, I can keep my thoughts to myself?”

Hutch wasn’t up for an argument, so he gave Starsky that raised eyebrow reply, and closed his mouth.

They both watched their coffee.

After a minute, Starsky broke the silence. “Are you well enough to eat something?”

“I can make us breakfast,” Hutch suggested.

Starsky declined the offer, saying instead, “I’ll do it. You go back to the couch for a while, okay? You’re not out of the woods yet.”

It was the escape Hutch wanted, so he took it. He got to his feet, pushed his chair under the table, wrapped his robe around his waist in one hand to cover his privates, and left the kitchen with his beverage. As he sat on the sofa, he heard Starsky open the refrigerator. Hutch set his cup on the coffee table and leaned forward, forearms on thighs, to watch Starsky from the living room.

Starsky whistled while he prepared Hutch’s breakfast—as if he no longer had a care in the world.

Because he didn’t?

Or because he was pretending he didn’t so his troubles wouldn’t affect Hutch and therefore he wouldn’t have to share them?

But what could possibly be weighing on Starsky’s mind so much that he couldn’t—or wouldn’t want—to tell Hutch? What had transpired in Starsky’s life in the past 24 hours that had put him in a personal bind? Maybe the half-hearted hand job his lover tried to give him the night before really was Starsky’s failure—but why? Their visit to the sanctuary had been arranged for weeks; it wasn’t Hutch’s fault that he got sick on the day they were to drive there, and that it was in everyone’s best interest that he not go. He had implored Starsky to go without him, to enjoy his time with Kenny and Davey every chance he got, because those times were few and far between. Starsky had no choice. He left early that morning, drove the two hours to the sanctuary, played with his pigs for three hours, and returned home a couple of hours after that. Had one of his boys died? Was Hutch so sick Starsky didn’t want to tell him about the pig’s death in light of Hutch’s frail circumstance?

No. One of the piggies hadn’t died: or Starsky wouldn’t be whistling in the kitchen. He’d be weeping—right there on the floor where Hutch had once wept for Starsky.

Starsky had told Hutch that he and Jack had made a number of repairs at the sanctuary. He had been busy, productive, involved in a meaningful cause. Such a thing would only leave Starsky feeling empowered and useful, not their opposites. So, maybe the glitch that happened was something on the way to the sanctuary—or on his way home. Maybe Starsky’s hunger had betrayed his morals and he’d stopped at a fast food restaurant to eat a hamburger. What else could it be?

Starsky brought Hutch’s breakfast to him on a food tray: a plate with an open-faced and toasted English muffin, a small bowl of jam, a cup of warm beans, and a mix of cut fruit sprinkled with sugar; a teaspoon and a tablespoon, a paper napkin, and a shot glass of orange juice. “Ta-dum!” Starsky said cheerfully as he placed the tray on the coffee table in front of Hutch when Hutch moved his coffee cup out of the way. “A meal fit for a king. Or a cowboy. Or a cop.”

“Or a cowboy cop?”

“That, too.”

It was colorful and appetizing in appearance, smelled good, and would kill Hutch’s hunger, but he was nagged by his musings and had to force his gratitude. “You’ve outdone yourself,” he said, pleased.

“You got your fiber,” Starsky noted, pointing to the beans, “and your vitamins and minerals,” he added, pointing to the fruit, “and your whole grains,” pointing to the muffin. “Something to drink.” The orange juice and coffee. He sat on the table beside the food tray as if he planned to stay while Hutch ate. “You know what they call this kind of thing up there?”

“First question: what thing?”

“This kind of meal.”

“Second question: up where?”

“At the sanctuary.”

“Tell me.”

“Vee-gun.”

“Vee-gun?”

“That’s what a person is who doesn’t eat anything made out of animals.”

“So, not a vegetarian.”

“Because vegetarians eat cheese and stuff.”

‘Stuff’ must have meant eggs and honey and, in some circles, fish and chicken.

“Well, anyway, after you eat,” Starsky assumed, sounding close to excited, “you might feel better and you can take a shower. I’ll even shave you if you want me to, too.”

“Tutu? Sounds kinky,” Hutch replied, “in a good way.” He ate while he was watched to make Starsky happy—and to kill time to find the best way to ask Starsky about his possible back slide. While chewing, so as to appear nonchalant, and because he had food in front of him and the new word, vegan, to use for a lead-in, he casually asked, “Do you ever get cravings for … um … meat?”

“You mean, yours?” Starsky asked with a snicker.

“I already know that answer.”

“You mean, meat meat?”

“Yeah, meat meat—whatever that is.”

“From animals, I mean?”

“From animals. Do you ever crave it?”

“No.”

“No fried chicken?”

“Hell no,” Starsky said with a wince. “Ever since you told me that frying chicken is giving that flesh a third-degree burn that scabs over like any other burn would—and then is called crispy—grossed me out too much to ever eat fried chicken again.”

“Baked chicken?”

“No.”

“Boiled?”

“No chicken.”

“Cow, then?”

“What’s with you?”

Hutch looked into Starsky’s concerned eyes, believing they were sincerely perplexed, but asked his last question to lay it to rest for himself. “You haven’t had cravings for hamburgers these days?”

“You must be sicker than you look,” Starsky said, sounding annoyed. “And you look mighty sick.”

Hutch had no choice but to believe him. He didn’t see any sign of guilt in Starsky’s face, nor hear it in his voice, nor in his words. To explain away his interrogation, Hutch simply said, “Sometimes people who go—forgive the pun—cold turkey, start to crave what they gave up. Like quitting smoking. All that meat shit is addictive, too. I just wondered if you were experiencing that.”

Starsky ruffled Hutch’s hair. “Most people don’t have you for a teacher,” he said. “And most people never go to an animal factory—or a pig slaughterhouse. Don’t you ever worry that I’m going to eat that shit ever again.” Proudly, he added, “I’m now a bona fide vee-gun.”

* * *

“Who wants to know?”

The older male voice hinted at an underlying hostility, despite its effort to be inviting.

Starsky and Hutch stood on the man’s porch in the late morning sunshine, exchanged knowing eye contact, and attempted to sound likewise. Starsky had picked the perp’s residence at random from his glove-boxed list of paroled pedophiles—simply because it was the closest one inside the city’s county line. The house itself was in a relatively nice neighborhood in a quiet suburb—not the kind of place one would expect to find a convicted sex offender, given the street’s obvious signs of children at play.

“Are you Charles Jordan?” Hutch asked the man behind the security screen door. He could distinguish the guy’s hefty build and height through the steel mesh, but not the details of his face. “Charlie?”

“Like I said,” the man replied, “it depends on who wants to know.”

“Well, we can’t tell you that,” Starsky obviously lied, standing at the ready beside Hutch, “until you tell us if we’ve got the right person. You’re the one behind the locked door. For all we know, you’re armed as we speak.”

“Yes,” the man reluctantly answered.

“Yes, you’re Charles Jordan?” Hutch asked.

“Yeah. So, what of it? Who are you guys?”

Starsky removed his badge from his hip pocket and flipped it open. “Just your friendly neighborhood—”

Before Starsky could finish his sentence, Jordan bolted away from his front door without closing it and headed presumably to an escape route through the backyard. Starsky instinctively did likewise, as did Hutch, jumping off the porch and racing around the right side of the house along its driveway, Hutch to its left. When he met the six-foot-high fence, Hutch hesitated only for a moment, and then cussed out loud as he lunged at it with every bit of strength he had. He caught two of its vertical boards in his wrapped arms, and swung his leg up onto another, in one fluid motion, but it was still a struggle to make it over. Did Starsky know about the fence when he chose the path he’d taken—purposefully forcing Hutch into the hard part of the job that morning?

After Hutch dropped to his feet inside the yard, he immediately ran toward the commotion he heard behind the house, but he tripped on the large manhole cover buried in the gravel, stumbled nearly to his knees, caught himself in his hands before he completely fell, and regained his speed and distance—but not in time to actually see what had transpired in the manicured yard before he got there.

Starsky had Jordan on the ground, his right knee firmly in Jordan’s lower back, and was yelling at Jordan—who was, himself, screaming at Starsky. Jordan had barely made it past the patio deck before the cop nailed him.

“What you running for?” Starsky repeatedly questioned him, while Jordan kept saying, “You got no right! You got no right!” “What are you hiding that you have to run, hm?” Starsky demanded to know, close to Jordan’s ear as he struggled to handcuff his uncooperative prey, and presumably controlling his anger and not punching Jordan in the head. “Why are you running?”

“He hit me!” Jordan said accusingly to Hutch. “He hit me!”

“Not as far as I can tell,” Hutch said, still panting off his fence-climbing and tripping excursion. He didn’t see Starsky hit Jordan. “Besides, he’s not the reprimanding kind,” Hutch added, giving Starsky a knowing wink when he got that disbelieving look from his partner.

“You didn’t see him!” Jordan complained when he was finally handcuffed. “But I’m going to report him to the police.”

“He is the police—or aren’t you getting that part, yet?”

“I didn’t hit him, much as I wanted to,” Starsky told Hutch, pressing his weight into Jordan’s back, and making Jordan wail instead of whine. “I didn’t,” Starsky said more firmly after Hutch gave him a moment to confess, if confessing was on order.

Hutch believed him. “Not possible,” he then said to Jordan, matter-of-factly, “for two reasons.” He helped Starsky pull Jordan to his feet. “One, because if he’d hit you, you’d be bleeding.” Hutch pretended to look Jordan over for signs of blood, but it was apparent, even without a careful examination, that he hadn’t been injured. They walked Jordan to the house. “And, two,” Hutch continued, “because anyone who didn’t hesitate to molest children wouldn’t hesitate to lie about police brutality.” He shoved Jordan up the porch steps.

“Oh, so you’re going to take his side now,” Jordan replied, finally surrendering to his captive fate by allowing the cops to direct him into the house. “Well, I can get you guys on false arrest.”

“Who arrested you?” Starsky asked. “All I did was stop you from fleeing the scene—and then handcuffed you to keep you from hurting me. You felons aren’t all that dependable, you know.”

“Well, I haven’t done anything. I’m clean these days. Check with the child people. They’ll tell ya.”

“According to our records, they haven’t seen you since before Christmas.”

“They were here last week.”

It was possible they had been; Starsky’s list hadn’t been updated until a couple of days after New Year’s Eve.

“We make our own rounds,” Starsky explained. He pushed Jordan onto his seat on the sofa. “While my partner keeps an eye on you, I’m going to take a look—”

“I don’t see a search warrant,” Jordan observed, accusingly. “You got no right to look around!”

“Funny thing,” Starsky said with a sneer when he headed to the hallway, “but your past behavior warrants a search.”

Jordan looked at Hutch, as if he’d find some comfort there, but Hutch flashed him that raised eyebrow, pretended to be meek and submissive, and instead said, “That was a good one, though, huh? ‘Your past behavior warrants a search.’ My partner can be witty when he wants to be.”

“Neither of you guys is funny.”

“It probably explains why we’re cops and not comics.”

Jordan rolled his eyes. He was a bigger man, though not in height, than the detectives who’d cornered him that morning—beefy in an overweight kind of way. Middle-aged. Beer belly. Mussed brown hair and clean-shaven.

From their research, Hutch and Starsky had learned Jordan was divorced prior to his prison sentence, and still lived alone. “How many years did you serve?” Hutch asked him.

“Four.”

“And eight kids, was it?”

Jordan didn’t answer.

“So one year per two kids, right?”

Jordan still wouldn’t answer.

Starsky passed through the room from the hallway side of the search into the rest of the house, having apparently not found anything.

“Was it eight?” Hutch asked Jordan when Starsky disappeared again, as if Hutch had been temporarily distracted from the answer he expected. “Oh, that’s right,” he pretended to remember, “you were only convicted of hurting eight kids. How many others do you figure they never found out about? Twice as many? Two dozen, maybe?”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Jordan shot at him. “I ain’t touched no other kids. I served my time, out on good behavior, go to my monthly hearings, and the child people were here just last week—so you guys can go fuck yourselves.”

Don’t mind if we do, Hutch thought, chuckling to himself, and reminded that he looked forward to night fall. “At least we’ll be adults doing it,” he said playfully.

Starsky returned to the living room, stopped near the sofa, hands on hips, and looked into Hutch’s blue eyes. “Nothing,” he said.

“Just like I told you guys,” Jordan insisted. “Now take these cuffs off me. I’m reporting this as a false arrest.”

“You were never arrested,” Hutch reminded him. He watched Starsky push Jordan sideways onto a sofa cushion.

“Then kidnapping,” Jordan replied. “I know these regulations now.”

“They’re laws, not regulations,” Starsky corrected him. He knelt on the couch to unlock the handcuffs, but Jordan hadn’t turned enough to give him the access he needed, so he pushed him further into the back of the sofa. “If you want out of these,” Starsky said with a growl, “you’re going to have to cooperate.”

“And he hit me, too,” Jordan claimed, again, and still seeming to expect Hutch’s sympathy. “I’m going to have your partner up on charges of police brutality.”

“You don’t have any witnesses,” Hutch noted. “Who’s going to believe a pedophile over a decorated police officer?”

“Just because you didn’t see him do it, doesn’t mean he didn’t. It’s not my fault you’re not as fast as him getting over a fence.”

“Did you have to climb a fence?” Hutch asked Starsky, watching his partner fumble with the handcuff key.

“Yeah, but don’t listen to this kid-fucker—he don’t know shit.” Starsky seemed to have fun calling the felon a ‘kid-fucker’ instead of a motherfucker because the word had a ring to it in his otherwise masculine voice.

So Hutch had been late to the backyard because he tripped, not because he had to climb a fence. “Wait,” he quickly told Starsky. “Don’t let him up just yet.”

“Can we just leave him like this, pretend we were never here?” Starsky joked. “I don’t think either of us gave him our names.”

“Let’s take a walk,” Hutch said, motioning for Starsky to follow him as he headed to the patio door—and to obviously bring Jordan along. Something in his gut suddenly bothered Hutch and he wouldn’t rest until he eased the discomfort. He led them to the side of the house, the one he’d been unceremoniously assigned to that morning. “Who puts gravel in a yard where there should be grass?” he asked, mocking curiosity. Of course, anyone would, for a host of reasons, and he knew that, but he wanted an excuse to revisit the side yard in case his hunch didn’t pay off. “Care to do the honors?” he asked Starsky. He took a slight bow and presented the manhole cover to him. “I’ll make sure Jordan doesn’t go anywhere.”

“You got no search warrant!” Jordan yelled at them. “You got no right!”

“You keep saying that as if it’s true,” Hutch replied. “Starsk? This is your bust. I’ll hold onto him, and you see what’s under that plate.”

Starsky’s expression was heavy with dread as he realized what Hutch suggested, and then he shifted just his blue eyes to the spot in the gravel. His entire body stiffened.

“You got no right!” Jordan reiterated. “You guys need to mind your own damn business.”

“I had this second thought,” Hutch explained to his partner, “that it seemed like a strange place to put one of those.”

Starsky left Jordan in Hutch’s clutch, knelt on the ground beside the manhole cover, and studied it for a quarter minute. The steel plate was relatively large, about two feet in diameter and pocked with several originally manufactured holes. “There better not be anybody under here,” he said with a hostile seriousness, “dead or alive.” He then bent over the grate, grabbed the side of its cover furthest from him, and lifted. It was also quite heavy, as evidenced by Starsky’s effort to move it—but he eventually swiveled it away from the hole in the ground.

Hutch couldn’t see Starsky’s face because he was bent over, but he instinctively felt the shudder that passed through his partner—and he felt his own sick rise in his stomach. Was it a body?

Jordan stopped yelling, surrendered his verbal resistance, dropped silently to his knees in the gravel, and momentarily caught Hutch’s attention—but it was brought back when Hutch heard Starsky’s softened voice.

“My name is David,” Starsky said to whomever was apparently alive in the hole. “I’m a police officer.” He showed the person his badge. “I’m going to take you home.” He reached inside the dug out, used his knees for support on either side of it, and then lifted a young, frail, dark-haired boy, possibly five or six years old, from out of his prison hell.

The appearance of the child took Hutch’s breath away; he audibly gasped. Impulsively, he then kicked Jordan’s shoulder, roughly shoving him into the gravel, and bitterly said, “Fuck you, Charlie. You’re going down.” As Starsky quickly passed him with the boy in his arms, hurrying toward the house, Hutch dragged Jordan to his feet and pushed him along in front of him behind his partner. “You’re going down for good. For good, Charlie.”

Inside the house, Starsky leaned into Hutch. “His name is Kevin,” he said, about the boy. “He doesn’t know his last name. I’m going to take him to the car and get him out of this house,” he quietly added, holding the boy as desperately as the boy clutched him. “You call it in, okay?”

“Yeah, go,” Hutch said, affectionately squeezing Starsky’s elbow. “Have a seat,” he then told Jordan, pushing the felon off-balance as Starsky hurried out of the house. Hutch watched the brute fall to his butt on the carpeted floor. “You just be glad it’s me you’re alone with, and not him. He’d kill you, for sure.”

Hutch went to the phone that he spied on the sofa’s end table and dialed Captain Dobey. “We got one for you,” he said into the receiver, turning his eyes to Jordan—who seemed to be looking for another way to escape his fate, but was too afraid to move. “Kidnapping and sexual assault, and who knows what else? so send a forensics team, Child Services, and a uniform—make that two.” He gave Dobey the address. “A boy,” he said to answer Dobey’s triggered questions. “Maybe five, six years old. First name, Kevin. That’s all we know. The perp is Charles Jordan. Oh, and, Captain? Send an ambulance, too. In the pursuit, Starsky had to rough him up.”

Jordan began yelling again when he realized what was about to transpire.

“You best hurry, too,” Hutch said into the phone, raising his voice above Jordan’s then-defensive wailing. “He’s obviously in a lot of pain, Captain. I think his nose is broken. Maybe even one or both of his arms. But he sure is bleeding all over the place. We’re going to need some bandages.”

* * *

“Cheers,” Hutch said, tapping his beer glass to Starsky’s, and then taking a refreshing swallow. They toasted their earlier bust, certain they were equally satisfied and feeling as rewarded as they deserved.

“Maybe we could do more of those unannounced visits,” Starsky said, hopefully. “I wouldn’t mind making a real habit of them.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“You know, Hutch, I can see how the mind of a thief works: he wants something and takes it, probably figuring that no harm was done. Murderers? There’s usually some financial or emotional or impulsive reasoning behind it.”

“Self-defense comes to mind,” Hutch mused.

“Then there’s your animal killers.”

“Mostly a market-driven cruelty—even if it’s for the fun of it, like bullfighting.”

“But rapists, guys that just want to abuse people for the sheer joy of it?”

“You’ll never understand it, Starsk, and neither will I.”

“And then there’s the child molesters.”

“A breed unto themselves.”

They faced the bar, sitting beside each other on two stools, and watched the goings-on behind them from the room-length mirror. It was late afternoon and they wanted to relax a while before making the two-hour journey home. After the Jordan arrest, they had driven to the police station to file their report, visit with Dobey in person, and decide, with his help, which case to tackle. Hutch had gotten away with the physical punishment he dealt Jordan; Dobey didn’t even question them about the felon’s injuries. And Starsky had enjoyed Hutch’s telling of it on their ride to the bar. It wasn’t the first time Hutch had dealt punishment, nor would it be the last—from the simple face-slap he gave Billy Harkness for assaulting Cheryl Waite—telling him at the time, “That’s for the girl; don’t you ever touch her again, you hear?”—to his seriously injuring the leader of the gang that had raped Starsky.

A beer break was Hutch and Starsky’s time to simply be in the other’s company and to reflect on their day. A job that well done, as had been the rescue of the captive boy, enabled them to savor what remained of their afternoon and evening.

“What sort of sick mind does it take, Hutch, to want to hurt a kid like that, hm?”

“Like I said, not one we’ll ever relate to. I guess we can be thankful for that, too—because it means we’re not capable of that kind of depravity.”

“You think you’d be capable of rape?”

“Well, no,” Hutch said defensively, taking another sip of beer to corral his thoughts, “but I might be able to understand the ego-deprived mentality of a rapist—which is not the same as relating to it on any level. But ‘kid-fuckers,’ as you call them, well, that’s a monster I don’t get at all.”

“Me neither.”

Starsky went quiet for a while, drank his beer, watched the mirror, sometimes stared into his glass. It gave Hutch the moments he cherished to study his partner watching others, of being grateful to sit beside him in that bar, at that moment, to feel his aliveness and his presence, admire his eyes and his eyelashes, his dark hair and shape of his nose—

“You think it might be in their DNA?” Starsky asked, innocently breaking into Hutch’s silent enjoyment.

“Who knows?” Hutch mumbled, still not certain what the answer was. “Abused themselves, studies show—but maybe it takes a combination of factors: environment, experience, DNA.” He nibbled on a pretzel while he kept an eye on Starsky, noticing his partner’s expression of reflection and self-study. “But let’s cheer up instead, what do you say, buddy? We did a good thing today.”

“I know we did. I just wonder why we have to.”

“Homo sap is one sick pup.”

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed in a low voice. “Sick is the word. But if it’s DNA, doesn’t that mean it has a purpose?”

“A mutated DNA.”

“I see. Kind of like what we got.”

Hutch had to look at Starsky twice to realize his partner had made a serious comment. “Like ‘what we got’? You think our relationship is a mutated DNA?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“You’re not feeling so good today, are you, pal?”

“Just thinking about stuff, that’s all.”

“Think smarter.”

“Well, I mean, shouldn’t we be checking out the babes in this room? Even if we were married guys, we’d be noticing the chicks, wouldn’t we?”

“Who says we haven’t?”

“Have you?” Starsky asked, turning his eyes over to meet Hutch’s, and appearing as inquisitive as his verbalized question. “Have you noticed any of the girl flesh in this bar?”

“Well, just that it’s there.”

“And more than you’ve noticed the boy flesh, right?”

“That goes without saying.”

“Does it mean you want to fuck what you see?”

“I’m looking at what I want to fuck,” Hutch said with a wink.

Starsky rolled his eyes and set them back to the mirror. “You know what I mean.”

“And I said what I mean.”

“So, your DNA isn’t interested in what else is in the room?”

“Did you want it to be?”

“I’m just curious.”

“All I need, Starsk, I’ve already got.”

Starsky turned his head and Hutch could no longer see his face or his eyes or his expression. His partner seemed distracted, distant, reflective—and not in a good way. How did he go from wondering about the depraved minds of serial rapists and child molesters to the merits of heterosexual sexuality? “Is there something you want to tell me?” Hutch asked him. He ate pretzels, drank beer, waited more than a minute before Starsky turned back toward him.

“All this deviant behavior,” Starsky mumbled. He stared into the pretzel bowl and didn’t say more.

“Which deviant behavior? Yours and mine?”

That was when Starsky abruptly faced Hutch, opened his legs toward his partner as he rested his feet on the stool’s lower bar, leaned his left arm on the counter, and firmly said, “Do not think for a minute that I’m having second thoughts about you and me.”

“Okay,” Hutch replied with some relief, well aware of the subtle sexual invitation he’d gotten.

“I’m trying to figure out this DNA thing is all,” Starsky explained. “Straight guys should be checking out the girls, not each other. And if kid-fuckers do it because of their DNA, then there has to to be a reason to it, mutated or not—and I just don’t see one. So I’m not sure anymore that DNA means anything.”

“Without it, there’d be no life on Earth. DNA also determines whether you’re male or female; it decides—”

“Give it a rest,” Starsky said, not unkindly. “What I really want to know is: how can I be enough for you if you’re straight?”

“I am straight. And I could be married and she would be enough for me.”

“Would she?”

Hutch was finally perplexed. He really didn’t know why Starsky was bent on boarding this newly discovered thought train. Unless…

“Is it that you’re attracted to some girl flesh in here?”

He looked around the room to see if he could figure out for himself which woman in the bar had caught his lover’s attention. There was a group of them at a table toward the back, a couple of them with some male escorts closer by, and a single woman at the end of the bar—but she was in her fifties, and not terribly attractive, not even by Starsky’s standards. “Somebody in here trigger your fancy?” he had to finally ask when his observations came up dry. “Or are you missing having threesomes?”

Starsky never left eye contact with Hutch; his blue eyes were firm in their message, too: “don’t be an asshole,” they seemed to say, but Hutch didn’t feel he’d been abusive. He tried again, from a different angle. “What’s got under your skin tonight—I mean, besides the sick fucks who sexually assault children?”

“That threesomes crack … wasn’t very nice.”

“Why not?”

“Because of all the obvious reasons.”

There was Kira—and those obvious reasons. There was Grace—oh, yes, and the resulting pregnancy. Reasons enough.

“But it did get my mind to thinking,” Starsky said.

“When and how?”

“Not threesomes,” he quickly explained himself when he heard the accusatory inflection in Hutch’s voice. “I mean, it got my mind to thinking about Grace.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“My visit to the sanctuary,” Starsky replied, impatiently, as if Hutch should have read his mind from the moment he’d opened his mouth inside the bar. “When I was up there two weeks ago … I got to thinking about Grace. Well, I was thinking about you, about how sick you were and how I had to go alone. And if Grace hadn’t gotten killed, she could have taken care of you when I left.”

Hutch wasn’t quite certain he understood the thinking processes of his man that early evening, but he did his best to listen—well, drink beer and listen. Starsky might make several rabbit tracks through the deep snow, but he’d eventually come back to where he began, wouldn’t he?

“That got me thinking about all the other ways things would be different,” Starsky continued, munching pretzels while he spoke. “She’d have had that baby, your baby, probably a blonde baby girl, and then I’d have had a baby with her, too, a dark-haired boy. We’d be a family of five. We’d live there at the farm and grow food and pick apples and maybe have some chickens and bunnies.”

Hutch was then amused. He set his elbow on the bar and propped his temple in his palm while he tried not to smile at Starsky’s fantasy future.

“She would have loved to help us rescue Kenny and Davey,” Starsky added. “She’d have loved to see the animal sanctuary up there. She’d have fit right in with all those other young people, taking care of the rescues, helping to farm, like a big family in a different way.”

“Would we fit in?”

“Well, yeah, we’d be the patriarchs, the defenders, and providers.”

Starsky seemed to then rest his case—leaving Hutch with pieces, but not a finished puzzle. “Is that all?”

“Is that all we’d be?” Starsky asked, for clarification.

“Is that all to your … musings?”

“I guess so.”

“How does thinking about Grace, and how much she’d love animals and trees, have to do with your thoughts about DNA?”

“Well, I mean, in order to have a dark-haired baby boy with her, I’d have to have sex with her.”

“I see. And you could do that because … you’re straight?”

“I am straight.”

“But what’s the connection?”

“I’m straight … and if she was still alive, I’d still be with her that way, wouldn’t I?”

“Is that what you’d rather; be with her, I mean?”

“We’ve been over that part before,” Starsky said, admonishingly, “and you know by now who I’d choose. But if she hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be living with you and having sex only with you, right? I’m just saying, if things had gone different, we’d have different lives, be doing different things, and I’d still be having sex with a woman, wouldn’t I?”

“I suppose you might,” Hutch said, hiding his dismay. He turned back to face the mirror behind the bar, to eat nuts from the other bowl, and to finish his beer. “And I also suppose you wondered if I noticed the girl flesh in the room so you could feel better about noticing it yourself?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Enough of the game. Let me ask you straight out: Do you need pussy, Starsk?”

“Don’t you, sometimes? I mean, don’t you at least think about it now and then?”

“I don’t, but what does it matter? The question is, do you?—and you obviously do.”

“Yeah, well, forget it. I had all these thoughts in my head that I wanted to get out.”

“Are you looking for permission?” Hutch pointedly asked him. “Do you need me to let you get a pussy fix?”

“Forget I said anything. I didn’t want to make a big thing out of this. Just some thoughts was all.”

* * *

“Oh, yummy, pancakes!” Starsky exclaimed when he entered the kitchen that next morning. “Someday maybe I’ll be as good to you as you are to me, but I see—and smell—that I have a long way to go to catch up.”

Hutch set a plate with three pancakes on it in front of Starsky after he sat on a stool at the breakfast counter. “Don’t sell yourself short,” he told his partner. “The blow job last night and the one first thing this morning made up for whatever you think might be lacking in your gift-giving.”

Starsky grunted. “That sex wasn’t just about you,” he said with a friendly snarl, as if he still owed Hutch more than he gave. “Besides, I have to get my protein some way.”

Hutch slid a bottle of maple syrup toward Starsky, and then resumed baking the remaining pancakes for himself. “If my cum is going to be your source of protein, then you’ve got a lot more sucking to do.”

“No complaint here,” Starsky said with a chuckle. He drowned his pancakes in syrup, and then recapped the bottle. “But, in the meantime, your loads are fairly substantial.”

“You’re gross.”

“You eat cum, too, don’t forget.”

“Rephrase: you’re crass.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true. You bring it out of me. I don’t talk to girls like this. Never did.”

Hutch took two cups and the pot of coffee to the counter. “So I’m the one to blame.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Starsky said, watching Hutch pour him a cup. “I’m not blaming you so much as I’m explaining you.”

Hutch poured himself a cup, and then left the counter to get the almond milk and sugar. He couldn’t help to think that, below the surface, way below it, Starsky was troubled; at least, conflicted. And, although Hutch didn’t want to break the good mood Starsky apparently was in, he also didn’t want to pretend. But he waited until he had his own pancakes on a plate, the counter was set, and he sat beside his partner, fork in hand, before he broached the subject. Starsky had inadvertently given him the lead-in.

“Do you think it gets old giving head?” he asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as he could. He wanted the conversation to be a productive one, and not end abruptly the way it had the night before when Hutch felt he’d said too much.

“No,” Starsky answered him quickly, evidence of his conviction. “Are you getting tired of it—giving, I mean?”

“Not even close.”

“So why would you think I’d get tired of it?”

“I don’t think you will. I’m asking if you think you might.”

“Can’t picture it.”

They ate the sugary breakfast for a couple of minutes before Hutch threw out his next provocative comment.

“But what about anal sex? That has to be boring after a while, don’t you think?”

“Boring? You must be doing it wrong.”

“Boring, as in … you miss that pretty visual of a woman’s wet pussy kind of boring.”

Starsky ate silently, as if he had no intention of answering.

“I mean, it’s like you were trying to say last night,” Hutch continued. “We’re straight. We weren’t exactly designed to want to ass-fuck all the time.”

“Listen to who’s crass now.”

“But, am I right? If we’re hard-wired for vagina, doesn’t the asshole get a little tiresome?”

“For you or for me?”

“You know where I’m going with this.”

“I’m not bored having sex with you.”

“Like I said, you know where I’m going with this.”

“Are you bored having anal with me? Are you looking for some snatch?”

“C’mon, Starsky, don’t turn this on me.”

“What do you want me to say? That’d it be fair and natural if we both want some pussy now and again?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted me to say last night?”

Starsky ate pancakes, sipped coffee, seemed then to ignore Hutch and his questions.

“What I’m saying,” Hutch argued, finally speaking when he realized he wouldn’t get an answer, “is that, if you’re torn between your hard-wiring and your love and desire for me, let’s talk about it without getting our feelings hurt, okay?”

Somehow, and for some inexplicable reason, it was too late to prevent hurt feelings. Starsky pushed his plate away, with half his pancakes still uneaten, stood, and said, “I’m not hungry.” And, on that note, left the room, apparently crossed the hardwood floor to the front door, and actually left the house, too.

Hutch set down his fork, too stunned to take another bite, and rewound the conversation in his head, wondering where he’d failed. He thought he’d offered his partner a good thing: the chance to discuss his innermost feelings, the ones he’d apparently been having for a short while, put them on the table, analyze and discuss them, assimilate and deal with them. Instead, his questions forced Starsky out of the house.

Hutch quickly ate, not finishing his entire breakfast either, took his coffee cup with him, and joined Starsky on the porch. The mid-morning was peaceful, sunny, and promised to be relatively warm, for the first time that spring. Hutch sat in the lawn chair next to Starsky’s and audibly exhaled—his way of letting Starsky know he was fed-up, too, so they had that in common. But he still needed to say what he planned before he would lay it to rest.

“You don’t have to tell me everything you think and feel if it doesn’t involve me,” Hutch said, remembering Starsky’s words from a few days earlier, “and how you feel about head, anal, or pussy isn’t affecting me—as was proven last night and again this morning.” He hoped that would cheer Starsky, to know that, whatever Starsky was internally battling, it hadn’t affected their lovemaking. “So I’ll say this and I’ll say no more when I’m done: if you ever want … scratch that … if you ever need to feel a woman, tell me so, and we can arrange it for you. We can decide together who, when, where, and how. I’d do anything for you, partner. Like your late wife told you, I too would rather have you in my life as happy as you need to be than not have you.”

Starsky dropped his line of sight to the porch boards. He was speechless, even expressionless. He stared away into only-he-knew where and was quiet for some time. When he emerged from his self-reflection, he eventually looked over at Hutch. “You’re a good man,” he said sincerely. “And you’re definitely a better man than me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Hutch replied, shyly, but flattered and playful. “When it comes down to it, I know you want me to be as happy as I need to be, too.”

“That, I do.”

“We might have different needs, you know. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I’m a true, blue, red-blooded American boy, in love with sex as much as the next guy, gay or straight. But I’m not naive, either, Starsk. We all have our preferences, our propensities, our desires, and they’re not the same, nor are they equal. You drip sex, unlike me. Everything about you is pure, unadulterated sex. It’s one of the things I envy and another thing I love about you.”

“Like I said,” Starsky began, but didn’t get to finish. He, like Hutch, was immediately sidetracked by the vehicle that had arrived halfway down the driveway before they noticed it.

“Oh, who might this be?” Hutch said, cautiously. “Have we recently broken any laws?”

“Just the one where you bashed Jordan’s head in,” Starsky reminded him. “But they wouldn’t send an I.A. agent out this way in a beat up car like that,” he assumed.

“And they’d probably send Davis anyway.”

The car entered the circular part of their drive and enabled them to tell that it was a woman—of all things—pulling up to the house, in an older car, a four-door sedan in need of a new paint job. When she got out of the vehicle, the first thing Hutch noticed was that she was blonde, good-figured, young, wearing a dress, and friendly. He heard Starsky say, “Oh.”

“So maybe your prayers were just answered,” Hutch said with a quiet laugh. His partner didn’t join him in the sentiment.

“That’s Ashlee,” Starsky said, having obviously recognized the woman. “She’s a volunteer at the sanctuary.”

Ashlee approached the porch as Hutch got to his feet to greet her. She was dressed in sandals and a light sweater, had styled her long hair, wore light makeup, carried a large shoulder bag, and couldn’t seem to stop smiling. “Hello, boys,” she said when she was close enough for a hug, but Hutch didn’t initiate one. He didn’t know the protocol. Animal rights activists were an unusually friendly sort, he’d discovered, but she may not have assumed he was involved as much in her cause. “Are the boys all right?” was his first, immediate question.

“They’re fine,” she said quickly. “This is a personal visit.” She smiled at Starsky. “Hello again.”

“Yeah, hi there,” Starsky said. He didn’t leave his chair.

In that moment, Hutch sensed an awkward pause.

“When you left,” she said, approaching Starsky, “you forgot your camera.” She then fumbled in her large bag, got the camera, and handed it to Starsky. “It was way too expensive for you to leave behind.” He thanked her for it, which prompted her to then re-enter her bag. “I took the liberty to have the pictures developed for you.” She gave him a photos envelope. “On the house,” she said about the cost. “It was probably better they got done in another county so they couldn’t be traced back to you.” She seemed then to wait for an agreement.

Starsky removed the pictures from the envelope and flipped through them, but he didn’t appear all that interested; his action struck Hutch as more of a formality. “Kenny and Davey,” he said, glancing at Hutch to explain the subject of his photos. “I took them without showing their ear notches, so I can put some in the house and nobody will be the wiser.”

Hutch stood with his hands in his back jeans’ pockets and keenly watched the body language between his partner and the young woman. He wasn’t impressed by Starsky’s unfriendly reception to Ashlee’s arrival—and her gifts. “You came a long way to return his camera,” he noted. “I’m not sure he deserves to be rewarded for his absent mindedness.”

“Sure, he does,” Ashlee said, cheerfully. “Don’t you, David?” She nudged his chair with her foot. And then waited. For him to say something? For his gratitude? For eye contact, at least? But she didn’t get any of those things. Her smile faded.

It was the second pregnant pause Hutch felt, so much that he strove to ease it. “May I get you something to drink, Ashlee? We just made a pot of coffee.”

“I don’t know if I’ll stay,” she replied, looking at Starsky when she answered. A quarter minute later, and she said to Starsky, “Is that all you have to say?”

Starsky seemed to reluctantly look up at her. “I … I’m feeling … like Hutch said … undeserving of your effort here.”

“So, that’s it? Not even a hug?”

He shrugged.

“I see,” she said in a quiet voice. She then looked at Hutch. “Thank you for the offer, but I’m going to go.”

Her leaving the porch was abrupt and fairly quick, not giving Hutch enough time to even ask her to reconsider. When she reached her car, he looked over at Starsky. “What’s going on there?” he wondered aloud.

But Starsky didn’t answer him; his eyes were on Ashlee and, a moment later, he was on his feet and running off the porch, too. He caught up with Ashlee just as she got behind the wheel, and kept her from closing her door, while Hutch walked to the top of the steps and puzzled over what he’d just seen and heard—and what he hadn’t seen and heard.

Starsky knelt inside the opened door of the car, cutting off Hutch’s view of his face, but he could tell it was Starsky who did the talking because Ashlee stared straight ahead and listened. While those minutes passed, Hutch did his own rewind—beginning with Starsky’s return from the sanctuary two weeks earlier right up to that present moment. He noticed that Ashlee had warmed up to whatever Starsky had told her because she no longer ignored him. Instead, she looked longingly at him, and then she stroked his hair—the way Hutch once had, and often still did; a gentle, affectionate, familiar, loving stroke, the way a lover might—

Then it hit him. And hard.

* * *

Hutch wanted out of his own skin. He had spun on the porch in search of a direction until the aimless impulse forced him into the house, where he anxiously paced the living room floor, and splashed cold water on his face in the guest bathroom. He thought he should drink something—a beer, a glass of wine, whiskey—but the kitchen held too many bad memories for him and he couldn’t bear to be in it on such an occasion. Out of desperation to calm his nerves, he rooted himself on the middle cushion of the sofa, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his head in his hands—and trembled off the adrenalin.

It wasn’t relevant what he may or may not have done in the past. Nor did it matter how generous he’d been in granting Starsky the freedom to live his life, how forgiving he’d be, or how much he understood and appreciated the complexities of their unconditional love and loyalty, least of all when it had been infused with their sexuality. Starsky didn’t really choose to be committed to Hutch; an airliner crashing into the Pacific some eight months earlier had decided the fate for him. But Hutch was wounded just the same—maybe more because of those things. He had no proof that Starsky had strayed, except for the certainty in his gut—and because his heart was so suddenly and utterly broken. All of that posturing, therapy, soul-searching, exchanged words and promises, out the window.

Starsky must have spoken with Ashlee for nearly half an hour before Hutch heard the car door close, its engine come to life, and its wheels roll over the gravel and fade away, but another couple of minutes of seemingly unending and excruciating silence tormented him. Starsky stalled outside because Starsky was guilty. He was cowardice, too, to face Hutch. Of these things, Hutch was almost certain. The front door eventually opened, Hutch uncovered his face, lifted his head; Starsky emerged in its backlit frame, and they made brief eye contact with each other. Hutch was terrified he’d lose what remained of his composure, coupled with his nausea and jumbled thoughts, so he broke the connection as quickly as he made it. He did notice Starsky had immediately seen him. There’d be no hiding for either of them.

The front door closed. Hutch heard Starsky’s quiet sigh, and then his footsteps as he approached. Hutch still wouldn’t look at him until Starsky sat on the coffee table in front of him, his knees on either side of Hutch’s knees, and the acknowledgement was unavoidable. Hutch did, however, sit back into the sofa; it was as far from Starsky as he could get at that moment. He made eye contact, held his breath, waited for the truth to materialize. Maybe his gut had been wrong.

“I had an accident,” Starsky said in a submissive voice. His face was lined with his own personal fear, and Hutch could feel the heat of Starsky’s sweat come off him. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“An accident,” Hutch echoed, but his take on it was in a voice of the absurd, pushed there from the confirmation of Starsky’s affair, and whose suspicion had just been laid to rest. “As in, your dick accidentally made its way into—”

“In that I let something happen that I knew better not to. It began and was over in less than five minutes.”

“A quickie—ending with you coming in her.”

Starsky dropped his chin, looked at the floor momentarily, but Hutch’s questions forced them to stare into each other’s eyes again.

“What?” Hutch asked dryly. “You thought it didn’t count because of its duration?”

A solemn, “No.”

“Were you under the influence?”

“No.”

“Stoned, maybe?”

“I don’t smoke that shit—and you know it.”

“She put a gun to your head?”

“I’m not saying I don’t deserve your anger.”

“Anger is the least of what I feel.”

Hutch’s voice cracked on his last comment; he realized in that moment, too, that it was immeasurable hurt and irrepressible grief he felt, far more than he was angry. He wasn’t even certain that the betrayal, if it was even that, was the sex act itself, or that Starsky didn’t tell him about it in the two weeks he’d been home from the sanctuary. Maybe the coverup was the root of Hutch’s pain. “You played me,” he managed to say. “Well done, pal.”

“I want to tell you what happened,” Starsky begged, his hand finding its way to Hutch’s knee, but he immediately removed it. “You’re trembling,” he noted, alarm and sorry in his voice. “Do you think this means I want someone else?”

“You obviously do—or did—even for a five-minute accident.” He couldn’t sound more sarcastic if he tried, and he didn’t like being found out, that he was weak in those minutes, that he was so internally injured that it had shown itself to Starsky in that brief touch. “Look, Starsk,” he began, his effort to take the aggressive high road in the situation, “I’m no altar boy. I’ve fucked with your heart more than once over the years—but I can’t think of a single time when I hid something like this from you. I don’t know what I feel—except that it feels real shitty to be me right now.”

“I want to tell you what happened,” Starsky insisted, pleadingly. “Make a judgment against me, but make it an informed one. Hear me out.”

* * *

“Your pigs are so funny,” Ashlee told him, laughing at some unknown memory she must have had of them. “You can tell they were raised without all the abuse—but they’re pigs who were saved, so they have that gratefulness in their hearts.”

Starsky enjoyed hearing how she described Kenny and Davey. He was a proud father. “But I can’t take full credit,” he said of his own self-reflection. “My partner helped me rescue and raise them.”

“Your partner?”

“Police partner,” he said to explain. He sat on the sofa in the small living room of the small house on the large land property and watched her make soup at the stove nearby. She’d already made him vegan hot chocolate with hoof-free marshmallows, and he nursed it while he waited for Hutch’s soup to be ready for its journey home. The sweet beverage hit the spot after the couple of hours of pig play and barn chores he’d undertaken that late morning. “You know he and me are cops, right?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I just didn’t realize that was a ‘partner’—even though I grew up on television cop shows. I thought maybe you had a partner, like a girlfriend or a wife.”

He didn’t comment and wasn’t sure why. Did she fish for his marital status? And why would he think so? Because she was young and inquisitive about him? because she was blonde and attractive? because he sensed she was drawn to him—or else why take the time to have cut up all those vegetables to make a soup for his ‘sick friend’? That’s what he’d called Hutch when Susan, the sanctuary owner, had asked him why he’d come alone, and Ashlee was there to hear him say it. She’s the one who offered to send him home with a warm meal.

Starsky noticed again that Ashlee was dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt, working boots and a ponytail. She had shapely legs, a curvy waist and hips, medium-sized breasts. What would a young, pretty, free-spirited woman like her want in an old, jaded man like him anyway? There was one trick he had to resolve his suspicions about her generosity.

“I am married,” he said, “in case you hadn’t noticed my ring.”

She didn’t reply for at least a minute, as if she was sorry to hear about his marriage, or she had noticed his ring, but his marital status didn’t matter, and she didn’t know how to tell him that. But when she spoke, he learned of a third option. “I read about you in the paper,” she said.

“All good news, I hope.”

“I read that you were in a plane crash last year.”

His turn to be speechless.

“I read your wife was killed in the accident.”

All true.

“I thought maybe you hadn’t given up the ring yet,” she concluded. “It didn’t seem logical that you’d already met someone and remarried.”

“You’d make a great detective,” he promised her with a light laugh.

She stirred the pot and then joined him in the living room, standing as she admired him a few feet away. “So, I was right then? You wear it because you still feel married to her?”

How could he ever explain the wandering path of his life? She, probably in her early twenties; he, already at 40—maybe twice as many years as she’d been alive, and all of his in an unprecedented life and eventual police work, coupled with loss and love and loss again, ending in a falling in permanent love with a different blond, and in ways that defied logic, perhaps; at least, description. But truth was in order. Her outside-the-box cause, her generation, could handle it, couldn’t it?

“I’m married to my partner,” he said. “The blond boy, the one you’re making the soup for.”

“I think that’s illegal,” she said coyly, kicking off her working boots as if she planned to stay a while. “And being police officers…”

He looked long into her blue eyes, pretty face: like a boy he knew. “Didn’t you hear?” he playfully replied. “He and me have been known to break the law.” Kenny. Davey. Breaking-and-entering. Misdemeanor theft. There might even be some law against the transport of stolen goods across county lines. And those were just the crimes related to two pigs.

Ashlee stepped closer—and she was already close enough. “So, you’re gay?” she asked.

“I’m not gay,” he said. That was truth, too.

“Good,” she told him, matter-of-factly, “because I think you think I’m pretty.”

He could tell no lies. “I think you’re very pretty.”

It was the cue she apparently waited for, a comment she obviously read to be an invitation. Without another moment’s hesitation, she mounted his hips, her knees on either side of him, her bosom immediately near his face, the light weight of her crotch over his zipper. He hadn’t seen it coming, not something that brazen, and he didn’t know how to react to it, except to slow her down by saying, “I think I’m old enough to be your father.”

“But you’re not,” she said, taking his hot chocolate cup out of his hands, and he letting her. “Don’t spoil the moment.” She set his drink on the end table beside him. “If you want,” she added, quietly and in his ear, softly and with a femininity he hadn’t experienced in months, “you can pretend I’m her for a moment, if that would help you to let go—even a little.”

I let go. I let go after two months on that island. I had no choice but to let go. The stark reality of her death was thrust upon me. I know death. I’ve seen it. Old men. Serial rapists. Pigs. I know its look, not just its smell. She was gone in that instant. I have no illusions.

While Ashlee kissed his neck, his face, while he felt her warm breath on his skin, while he was overwhelmed in those moments with the feel and the desire of a woman, he realized none of his thoughts about Grace or Hutch had been verbalized. He’d been caught off-guard, overtaken by the primal, abandoned by his rationale, so suddenly and powerfully that he stopped thinking beyond those initial reflections, none of which he didn’t think mattered to Ashlee. She was definitely determined.

Her mouth eventually found his—wet, warm, inviting, soft, and compelling. There was that ever-so-different gentleness, the kind only a woman could give him, one he’d forgotten, left behind in the water, and he followed it. He opened his mouth, nursed her tongue, enjoyed the pleasure he felt when she did likewise. Her fingers found the button at the top of his waistband and he allowed her to release it. When she met the resistance of his zipper, he lifted his hips, and her with them, to lower it for her. Or was it for himself? His erection needed the release and it, alone, drove him.

There was heat and there was immediate need and there was thoughtless—careless, abandonment, empty—action on his part. Other than responding to her lips and helping her to cut him loose, he made no overtures on his own, planned no direction, expected no fulfillment. The experience he’d be gifted would be of her making, not his—and, if asked, in those primal moments, he couldn’t have said why.

There was enough of him, apparently, for her to ride; neither of them tried to lower his jeans. She didn’t wear panties; he barely noticed, and probably wouldn’t have if she hadn’t placed his palms to her bared buttocks inside her shorts, succeeding in her objective to heighten his participation in the joining—and if for no other reason than to make him compliant. Her loose shorts were simply pulled aside at the crotch, and he felt the tip of his penis enter the wet tightness of her vagina, forcing him into his first expressive moan as the wave of pleasure tickled his frenulum—and begged for more.

Her noises were quiet, faint, but audible: a higher pitch of moans, a rapidly increasing rhythm as she pushed him further inside her with each downstroke against his hips. He had no involvement in the thrusts; how deeply he was taken, how quickly and how timed were out of his hands. He simply immersed himself in the orgasmic pleasure, in the sudden primalness of his taking, of her lips and tongue, her breasts to his chest through their respective clothes, of her slick and tightening pussy around his dick. It was that basic. It served no other purpose than to make him come. Whether she did or not wasn’t his concern. She sounded as if she neared a climax as he neared his; she broke the kissing, held tightly to his neck, rode him up and down more fervently and with determination, and then released a loud and lengthy moan of apparent bliss. He gripped her waist, held her steady and against him as he crested inside the notion that she orgasmed off slightly more than half the length of his rigid penis.

And then he spilled his cum, pushing hard into her, as deeply into her wetness as he could manage in that position and despite his clothes. He panted, he moaned, he writhed, he felt his sac empty with every pulse of semen it delivered, seemingly pushed out of him by the waves of contractions he felt within her. And then he cussed—even before the pleasure ended—because his mind caught up with him. “Jesus,” he said under a heated breath. But he couldn’t explain the conflicted way he felt for all the money in the world. Not then. Not at that second. Not with any words. He only knew he felt it.

“I’ve been wanting to do that with you,” she admitted, pleased and shy at once, “since the moment I saw you this morning.” She kissed his cheek, his neck, remained joined. “You’re so sexy. Oh my god, I’ve never been able to come like that before. Did you feel me?”

“I felt something,” he replied, somehow finding his voice. He tried a laugh, too, but he wasn’t amused. You should ask a man first before you do something like that to him. Give him a chance to decide his fate.

He realized he hadn’t verbalized those words, either.

Ashlee showered him in more kisses, but he wasn’t able to respond to the ones she planted on his mouth. She giggled, was in outer space compared to where he was, didn’t notice his lack of enthusiasm, and then quickly dismounted him. “I can’t burn the soup!” she realized, running to the kitchen.

The soup. The vegetable soup. The one she’d offered to make his ‘sick friend.’ The one he’d left on the sofa that morning, sicker than a poisoned rat, feverish and chilled, sore and in pain, helpless and alone. The blond. His Knight in Shining Armor. His savior and his salvation. The man he’d devoted his life to. The one he’d proven his love for—over and over again. The one who implicitly trusted him and the one he’d promised. That guy. The one he’d just spent five minutes forgetting even existed.

* * *

“I had a weak moment,” Starsky said, his voice full of sorry. He also appeared contrite, and his words were as much, but the compelling eye speak he leveled at Hutch didn’t do its job.

“Lucky you,” Hutch coolly replied.

“I let her take me.”

“Lucky her, then, too.”

“I admit it. I didn’t try hard enough to stop her.”

“You didn’t want to.”

“Maybe not.”

“No maybes. You could have outmuscled her and you chose not to.”

Starsky didn’t reply that time.

Hutch hadn’t moved from his elusive position on the sofa. He needed the facts, needed to know every bit of the truth—in detail—but he wasn’t happy for any of it. Forgive Starsky? Probably. Okay, of course, no doubt. Eventually. But, for then, Hutch wallowed in his own weak moment.

“I assume from the telling,” he said, “that you didn’t use a rubber.”

“I didn’t have time to breathe, let alone—”

“So maybe you made a dark-haired baby boy. Dream come true.”

“She told me afterward that she was on the pill,” Starsky said with a smirk, annoyed, obviously, by Hutch’s last crack about having-a-baby-boy-dream-come-true.

“Did she suck your dick?” Hutch asked, not missing a beat in his interrogation.

“No.”

“Did you go down on her?”

“I told you what I did. That’s all I—”

“You kissed her, though; Frenched her. That’s not passive—”

“I disagree.”

“You don’t get the privilege to disagree.”

Starsky closed his mouth, momentarily broke eye contact, nodded a reluctant acceptance. “Okay,” he said with a surrendering tone. “When you’re right, you’re right. I hereby give up all my privileges.”

“Nothing other than what you told me is what you did,” Hutch concluded, but seeking a confirmation in words.

“Except the part I didn’t tell you: about how fast I got out of there when it was done.” Starsky sounded hopeful, that his need to escape the scene-of-the-crime would reprieve him on a certain level. “I left in such a hurry, I forgot my camera.”

“You poor thing.”

“I’m just saying I knew I’d done wrong and I didn’t want to make matters worse—”

“So, a hit-and-run.”

“But for the fact that I was the one who got hit.”

“Some hit. You fucked her.”

“She fucked me.”

“Is there any other stupid thing you need to tell me?”

Starsky was apparently in distress: his breathing was labored, his body posture tense, his voice heavy with apology and defensiveness. But he didn’t break the stare between them; he seemed willing to hold his own as far as Hutch would allow him. Hutch didn’t have more questions, not about the sex act—and the questions he had about Starsky’s frame of mind, about his intentions, about his desires and his needs beyond their relationship, came so fast, he couldn’t isolate one long enough to ask it.

It gave Starsky an opening to further plead his case. “It was like trying to hold back a sneeze,” he said. “I didn’t stop it where I needed to, and then I was … I was … well, I mean, it got past the point of no return. I just let it happen.”

“Because you didn’t give me a single thought. It was about you and how good it felt.”

“I don’t know that it felt good so much as, like I said, it was something I had no choice but to finish.”

“No choice, huh? Not under the influence of drugs or alcohol. No gun to your head. Just your dick leading the way.”

“It happened, that’s all I can say. The conversation started, I was tired, she was … on … and I didn’t get a chance to turn her off before—”

“Before your dick accidentally lost its way.”

“I guess it did. You know what that’s like.”

“I’m not sure I do, not in a sober frame of mind.”

“You let Emma—”

“You were dead. Don’t make that comparison. You still have a need for pussy and—”

“I don’t know my reasons, Hutch. I wish I did. I do know I done wrong—and I’m sorry. You have to believe that—”

“Stop talking,” Hutch angrily said, raising his hand to pause his partner. “I don’t have to believe anything, and I’ve heard enough. You’ve had a couple of weeks to figure out what your reasons were—for doing it and for not telling me you did it. It’s my turn to assimilate what you’ve done—for myself.”

Starsky obeyed the order to not speak another word, even though Hutch was certain he had a lot more to say—if not to repeat himself. Starsky sat, dutifully, not budging, not surrendering, seemingly willing to take whatever punch Hutch threw at him, verbal or otherwise. At least he was accountable, Hutch thought, the notion of which eased his hostility. At least Starsky accepted responsibility for his actions, to a degree, anyway. If Hutch hadn’t made him so defensive, Starsky may have taken more; that would have been the Starsky he knew.

And loved.

In the end, what was the crime? The sex a straight man had with a straight woman after not having had it in months? Or the not telling his loyal lover and soulmate about the sex? Both those things? Them and something else or something else entirely? In those early moments of his mind-wander and his overwhelming hurt feelings, Hutch didn’t know which end was up or what direction he should take. He didn’t know how to feel and what he did feel was jumbled together in such an overpowering mix that he feared he’d never be able to separate it from itself. Only time would bring him the answers to questions he had not yet asked, not yet explored, not yet needed to know.

But Starsky seemed prepared. He seemed willing to tell Hutch whatever Hutch required of him. That determination was abundant in his blue eyes, in the brave eye contact he held with Hutch, in his expression of regret and surrender. For a split second, and not longer, Hutch felt angry at Starsky for having died in the plane crash; the memory of that horrific loss made it nearly impossible for Hutch to be the victim of something as frivolous as a one-off orgasm in the scheme of their lives.

He would use his brain this time, not his heart. He would find a way around the confusion and the pain he felt without causing more of it himself—because Starsky was everything to him. This he had learned only recently, the degree of it, the truth of it. And for that reason, he couldn’t hurt Starsky, especially not in the ways his retaliatory emotions threatened to push him. There was another path to the resolution he sought. He simply didn’t yet know where to find it.

“Here’s what we’re going to do in the meantime,” he said aloud, off his unspoken thoughts, expecting Starsky to keep up with him. “You’ll hold onto this.” He slipped the ring from his finger, the one Starsky had given him on a lifetime promise, and set it on Starsky’s knee. Its gold gleamed against the blue of Starsky’s jeans. Looking deep into Starsky’s bewildered eyes, he said, “I’ll let you know when—and if—I want it back.”

“Oh, Hutch,” Starsky said in a pain-filled whisper, his breath audibly taken from him in that moment. “You didn’t have to do this, did you? Not this.”

“For me, I did—so buck it up.”

“Then, can I say one more thing first?”

“Sure, pal,” Hutch replied, dismissively patting Starsky’s knee as he stood. “Just don’t expect me to care right now.” He stepped over Starsky’s leg and walked to the end of the sofa before he turned to face his partner. “What is it?”

Starsky bent forward and stared at the ring, spun it in his fingers while he appeared dejected and defeated. “Just that … I do know why I didn’t tell you what I’d done.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“I didn’t want five minutes of a mistake I made to cost us even five minutes of this.” He referenced the return of his ring by holding it between his thumb and forefinger—and all it represented. “I didn’t want my stupidity to cost us five hours, days, weeks … months.” His voice broke with his emotion. “I decided not to tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you for a lifetime over something as meaningless as that fuck was to me.”

* * *

Starsky still sat on the coffee table, leaning his forearms on his thighs, twirling Hutch’s gold ring in his fingers, staring at it sometimes with tears in his eyes and sometimes without, while the sun slowly moved across the sky. How could he have been so stupid as to have come to this moment? After all he promised Hutch, after everything he wanted Hutch to believe about how he felt about him and forever would, after convincing his partner that they were in the rest of their lives together, sans no one else. What happened to him in those sex-driven minutes with Ashlee? He’d spent so much time in the past couple of weeks making a decision about whether to tell Hutch that he hadn’t given a single thought as to his reasons for allowing himself to be taken by the woman in the first place. Would the answers, if he could find them, ease Hutch’s pain or compound it?

He’d heard Hutch leave the house a few minutes earlier, glanced over at him when Hutch returned with the coffee cups he’d gotten from the porch, listened while Hutch washed them at the sink. His partner didn’t whistle while he worked, as he sometimes did. Hutch then left the kitchen to the bedrooms and was gone a while. Starsky would have thought Hutch avoided him, but he eventually heard the washer cycling in the hallway—and Hutch did come into the living room afterward and sit in the armchair to read a book.

They didn’t speak to each other. Starsky didn’t know what to say that he hadn’t already said or that would get used against him. Or cause more pain and anger. He studied the ring in his fingers, turning it into the light to admire the shine, rolling it until he understood its circle of life more clearly, its endless promise of love. What a fool he’d been to tamper with such a privilege. He glanced at Hutch in the chair near him, noticed Hutch’s maybe half-interest in the book he read, dressed in jeans and tee-shirt, barefoot, unshaven, muscled, a blue-eyed, blond masterpiece of breathtaking beauty. In those things, Starsky saw the heart and soul of the man who loved him more than life itself. How could he have been so dismissive of Hutch’s trust?

Tears blurred Starsky’s vision when he lowered his gaze to the ring again. He would never intentionally or knowingly harm the one and special person who’d gone to the wall for and with him over the years. Not intentionally. Not knowingly. So why did he succumb, especially over something as superficial as those five minutes—and that he could never take back?

What had he told Ashlee outside the car? That he wouldn’t be able to love her in a way he suspected she hoped he might, that he allowed himself to fall for her sensuality and her invitation and her desire for him—and that he regretted that failure. Why? she wanted to know, confirming his hunch about what she fantasized about their future. Because, he said, he’d be forever in love with someone else, of that he was most certain. He let her believe the someone else had been a woman he unwillingly lost to fate. Ashlee’s infatuation with him was purely fantasy, he told her: that he, as a police officer, had broken the law to save a couple of pigs, and she was in love with that, not him. She insisted it was also his loving interaction with those pigs that melted her heart—that, and his sensual and masculine walk, deep voice, blue, bedroom eyes, sexy and casual manner. Those weren’t things he hadn’t been told before, so he had to believe them. But she would hang on a future that would never materialize; she would have to trust him on that.

He also told her he was sorry—sorry for having treated her so coldly when she arrived to return his camera, sorry he couldn’t be the man she wanted in him, sorry he’d been so blunt in telling her where he stood—and where he didn’t—sorry to have broken her heart.

But he was more sorry he’d broken Hutch’s. Immensely sorry.

How could he have been so foolish, so careless, so thoughtless, so … cruel?

He would get past it—he and Hutch—but it might never be the same between them. Why should Hutch ever trust him again? And where did the healing begin—with words, with action, only with time? What could Starsky possibly do to make Hutch take back the ring? In those moments of uncertainty, Starsky didn’t know how to repair the coveted bond he’d broken.

“Is there anything you want to do on the farm today?” he asked, braving the question, but more the interruption of Hutch’s peace. “Anything I can do with you to do something?”

He watched Hutch close his book, set it in his lap, stare off to the kitchen, seeming to think. After several minutes, Hutch finally said, “We can pick something for dinner, prune a few things while we’re out there.”

“Okay,” Starsky said, silently and overwhelmingly relieved to know Hutch hadn’t planned to shut him out completely. “I’ll get my gloves.”

* * *

Starsky sat at the counter while Hutch sliced-and-diced the vegetables they’d chosen for their soup and salad that evening. They ended up doing more on the farm than picking-and-pruning; they finished dismantling the piggy kennel and stored it away, but needed to rake the remaining shavings and move the dog house to a location closer to the house.

They set the burn pile on fire and watched it until they trusted it wouldn’t get out of control; it was a small collection of yard debris, wood shavings, and dried leaves. They watered the vegetable garden after choosing their tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, and a few red potatoes. They coiled the hoses, swept off the patio and porches, repaired a leak in the drip line.

They worked wordlessly, but spoke affably to each other on occasion. There was definitely a strain, but communication was still an open avenue.

While Hutch busied himself at the kitchen cutting board, Starsky sat on a stool and opened a file folder on the counter. He thumbed through it while he listened to the knife chopping veggies—but still no whistling from his partner.

“So this case Dobey gave us,” Starsky said, easing into his words and hoping for Hutch’s feedback and interest, “the one about those kids molested at the school. Do you know which one I mean?”

“Yeah,” Hutch said, not sounding like he cared either way.

“I thought maybe it was one of the teachers who did it. All the kids were girls.”

“But?”

“But there are only girl teachers there. Turns out it’s an all-girl school.”

“Even the principal and superintendents, the teacher assistants and substitutes?”

“Yep, according to the Department. All girls, all women.”

“So lesbian women molesting girls?”

“Okay,” Starsky said with a snort, “that’s just depressing. More things in the world I didn’t want to know about.”

“Well, who did the girls say did it?”

“A man, but they didn’t know him.”

“It had to be someone who got on campus then, someone who had access to the students.”

“I’m thinking maybe the janitor,” Starsky said, as if he knew. Who else could it be?

“Is the janitor male or female?”

“Doesn’t say in the report,” Starsky concluded after reading over the paperwork again.

“You mean, nobody asked?”

“I think nobody did.”

“You have a way with words.”

“What’d I say?”

“Nuthin’, never mind. But what you are saying is that we need to know who the janitor is.”

“Yeah. Wanna do that tomorrow?”

“Consider it done.”

Starsky closed the folder and sat back on the stool. His second relief of that day had come to pass: Hutch was still interested in police work with him. “Can I help you over there? Cut something up or whatever?”

“You can plug in the crock pot,” Hutch suggested, still busy slicing and dicing potatoes and carrots, wrapped in his apron. “Set it to medium.”

Starsky drew a deep breath and slowly let it out—some of his tension with it.

Hutch still wanted to cook with him—and eat with him, too.

* * *

Hutch listened to a nearby clock tick and to Starsky’s quiet breathing. He lay on his own side of the bed, facing the wall. It was nighttime, and the blankets were pulled to both their shoulders, but there was enough light in the otherwise dim room to distinguish the outline of the dresser and the few personal items that topped it.

“Are you still awake?” Starsky asked, his voice sounding unintentionally hoarse. “Hm?” he further asked, nudging Hutch with yet another sound to rouse an answer when Hutch didn’t speak right away.

“Yeah,” was Hutch’s noncommittal, but eventual reply. Soft voice, sort of hushed. He didn’t want to engage conversation.

Starsky scooted closer to Hutch on the mattress, Hutch’s one-word answer having apparently eased his concern, even if only slightly, and belied an invitation. “So how about I help put you to sleep?” he suggested, clearly trying to be playful. “I mean, you still wanna do that with me, right?”

An excruciating silence dressed the room until Hutch inevitably said, “I haven’t got the urge. Ask me in the morning.” He didn’t want to engage conversation, let alone sex. What he wanted was time to think, to find a way out of his emotional quagmire.

“I can’t say I’m sorry enough to make up for this,” Starsky said, pressing closer to Hutch. Hutch couldn’t count the times he’d heard the apology, so Starsky was right about that: he’d never be able to apologize efficiently.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hutch said, knowing Starsky wouldn’t let it go. Despite that Hutch had been understandably aloof and withdrawn all afternoon, he’d left enough of an opening between them to remain cordial. He made dinner after they chose and picked the garden vegetables together, and he watched television with Starsky for a while afterward, even though he didn’t see or hear much of it because his mind was preoccupied, and he came to bed when it was time because he still wanted to be with Starsky, but he was definitely not receptive to Starsky’s affection, not even for the pleasure he would get from it, nor was he open to discussing the matter further. “Don’t worry about it” was Hutch’s way of telling Starsky to leave him alone.

But Starsky couldn’t—because Starsky was terrified of rejection, especially Hutch’s, and Hutch knew that about him, too. Starsky wouldn’t let it go until Hutch reassured him all was not lost.

Starsky then made physical contact with Hutch, stretching along Hutch’s entire length behind him, embracing Hutch’s waist under his arm, and nuzzling Hutch’s ear with his nose. The warmth of their bodies felt promising to Hutch, but he didn’t respond in kind. He didn’t want to welcome that kind of reparation.

“Can’t we just lay here and be friendly?” Starsky timidly asked, gently rubbing his foot over Hutch’s calf. “Don’t you wanna do that much, at least?”

Hutch didn’t. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Sex will make us feel better.”

“I’m not in the mood to feel better.”

Hutch felt Starsky’s weight drop as Starsky was forced to abandon his intended action. Maybe Starsky deserved the cold shoulder—in fact, he did—but Hutch couldn’t not care about the pain they both felt. He was keenly aware of Starsky’s fear and his self-preservation, expressed physically when Starsky withdrew his arm, tucked it bent between them, and lay motionless for several minutes, no doubt paralyzed by Hutch’s rebuff. But Hutch was still pressed to Starsky’s nude body from head to foot. He was outside Starsky’s contour, his knees cupping Starsky’s knees, Starsky’s outside leg atop Hutch’s calves, Starsky’s hips, his sac and his penis, to Hutch’s buttocks—and he could feel Starsky’s beating heart at his back, despite the arm Starsky had protectively wedged between them. Hutch also felt the sweat as it broke over Starsky’s warm skin.

He didn’t mean to scare Starsky, didn’t want to scare him, but the pain Hutch felt in those minutes for himself kept him from easing his partner’s.

“Okay, but, do you still love me?” Starsky courageously asked, apparent by the urgency and submissiveness in his voice, reflecting the way he must have felt in that moment.

“You know I do,” Hutch said, matter-of-factly, not moving a muscle. Despite Starsky’s struggle, Hutch simply couldn’t bring himself to abate it.

“Could you at least say so?” Starsky asked, an annoyance and a definite disappointment ringing in his plaintive voice.

Of course, Hutch loved Starsky—always had, forever would—and he never wanted Starsky to doubt that love, despite its obstacles, trials and tribulations, or because of his own hurt feelings, emotions that would eventually pass. After all, Starsky was alive, there on the bed with him, skin to skin, breathing, obviously hurting, too. Hutch would never wish pain on Starsky, not intentionally. Ever.

He reached behind him, felt along Starsky’s hip, found his elbow, stroked his forearm to coax Starsky’s arm back around his waist. He lifted Starsky’s hand to his mouth and tenderly kissed Starsky’s fingers. The affection was reassuring, he hoped. “Something fierce, buddy,” he said as he squeezed Starsky more snugly to him. “I love you something fierce.”

A deep sigh escaped in Starsky’s breath. “Thank you,” he replied in a hushed voice, barely audibly, pressing himself tightly to Hutch as if desperate to convey his gratitude beyond words. He nibbled Hutch’s shoulder, softly and with warmth, whispering his appreciativeness again between gentle, moist kisses.

Hutch wished Starsky hadn’t engaged him in that way: the sensualness of Starsky’s touches tugged compellingly at Hutch’s hesitant desire for him. He should have known that one good kiss would beget another. His own sigh was one of reluctant surrender, purely sexually-driven; the primal response to Starsky’s orgasmic invitation overtook Hutch’s emotions, pushed his thoughts aside, and begged to be reckoned. When Starsky slipped his hand out of Hutch’s and pulled on his hip, Hutch willingly rolled to his back, gave himself up to what he knew would come next.

Even behind his closed eyes, Hutch could see that Starsky had risen to his elbow, that he eagerly swept his gaze over Hutch’s nude body to admire the smoothness of Hutch’s unblemished skin, noticed Hutch’s erect nipples, longingly enjoyed the picture perfection of his already engorging phallus. Hutch didn’t encourage him, subconsciously still wounded, but his fingers did trace the outline of Starsky’s haired arm, felt his muscle, anticipated the destination of his lover’s eventual touch—and then drew a deep and sudden breath when he felt the warmth of Starsky’s hand lovingly embrace his stiffening shaft.

Thought no longer existed—and probably not for either of them.

Silence evolved into the rhythmic cadence of their collective breath, into the sound of subtle movement against mattress, flesh against sheet, heating flesh against hotter flesh. Starsky’s breath was as warm as his skin, his moist kisses melting Hutch’s last resolve as they trailed from his shoulder to his penis—and nearly every inch of him along the way. He gulped for air when he felt Starsky’s lips suddenly tantalize his crown, tickling its circumference with his tongue, firming the grip of his hand, stroking the blood-filling veins of his shaft into a mesmerizing pleasure that seemed as new as it was overwhelming.

“Come on, suck me,” Hutch begged, wanting the tease to end much sooner than it usually did. He gently held Starsky’s head, pushed him into a downward stroke, and encouraged him to devour him completely. The subsequent primal sensation of Starsky’s sucking mouth and tightening hand on him forced a lengthy moan from Hutch, and he let Starsky go to allow him to direct where and how he’d be pleasured next. “Your suck … is so … good,” was all Hutch could manage to say between bated breaths. “Please … don’t stop.”

Starsky shifted on the bed, perhaps to get more comfortable, or to at least make himself accessible in a way his earlier posture didn’t provide, but nonetheless giving Hutch a momentary suspension of anticipation—and almost doubling his ache for resumption. Starsky handled Hutch’s shaft, stroking it gently at first, then more firmly, retaining the same sensual and slow rhythm, before he added his wet lips and probing tongue. He swallowed Hutch’s crown, teased its adjoining frenulum, licked along Hutch’s shaft as he took him in, until he’d completely devoured Hutch in his open fist and lubricious mouth, all slickly wet and warm and tightly. The sexual good Hutch felt was so strong and necessary that Hutch had to feel it with his fingers: he fondled Starsky’s grip, defining his own penis inside his lover’s hand, realizing how hard he’d gotten, and how deeply he was inside his man.

“Don’t make me wait,” he said with urgency. “Please.” Perhaps it was because he’d been emotionally hurt, maybe because he was needy in more than just the physical, needed closure, wanted resolution sooner. Or, subconsciously, he had to feel reconnected to Starsky after the break in their lives, a reaffirming healing in a way that transcended words. He’d give Starsky whatever he wished to have, forgive him for anything—no matter what Starsky said or did. “Take me,” Hutch implored him, encouraging Starsky’s pace, listening to the sounds of his breathing and his artful smacking, immersing himself in Starsky’s licking, his sucking, his nibbles and his wet, tight, warmth. He’d give Starsky anything, but oh how Starsky gave to him.

And maybe the stalemate could have ended there: with Hutch’s ejaculation, upon his crest into immeasurable bliss. His body racked, he convulsed, he writhed in orgasmic pleasure and total abandonment, forgetting his pain, forgiving betrayal, letting go of his pettiness. He gripped Starsky—his head and his hand—keeping them joined until every drop of his semen was expelled and swallowed, breaking sweat and gulping for air, and knowing in his heart-of-hearts that Starsky could do him no wrong, even if he had.

But as his orgasm rolled from build-up through inevitable peak and into restful aftermath, Hutch’s absolute and unconditional love for Starsky dissolved unavoidably into his personal pain. He couldn’t repress the realization that Starsky had experienced that same kind of explicit sexual rapture inside the body of someone else—and then didn’t tell Hutch about it. As Starsky now maneuvered to satisfy his own desire for climax, pressing his hardened penis to Hutch’s thigh, kissing Hutch’s belly as he abandoned fellatio, Hutch couldn’t bring himself to give in return. Not to send a message, but to fight for his emotional survival, he rolled away, inadvertently pushing Starsky off in the transition, dismissing Starsky’s neediness and his sexual ache, to pull the sheet over himself instead, what he could of it, and closing his eyes to vainly shut out the image of Starsky’s unfaithfulness.

He heard Starsky’s disappointed sigh, felt his weight melt into the mattress again behind him, imagined his fear of rejection and dismissal, and was sorry he couldn’t rise above it.

“Okay,” Starsky said quietly, his voice heavy with remorse and regret, “I had that coming.”

Meanwhile, a tear escaped Hutch’s closed eye and melted on his pillow.

* * *

“Somebody’s in a good mood,” Starsky carefully noted. “He musta gotten laid last night.”

Hutch was on the off-side of the counter when Starsky entered the kitchen that morning. Starsky was dressed in jeans, tucked shirt, socks, thinking he could show respect for Hutch by having already showered, shaved, and put on some semblance of clothes, but Hutch didn’t pay him close attention. Starsky, however, noticed right away—from Hutch’s unexpected smile—that Hutch’s demeanor was rather free-spirited.

“Things always look better in daylight hours,” Hutch commented, making brief eye contact with Starsky before resuming his oatmeal preparation. “I had a revelation.”

“Revenge don’t look so good on you,” Starsky replied, only a little offended by Hutch’s happiness and disappointed again in what he himself hadn’t gotten the previous night.

“I’m sorry about that,” Hutch said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to leave you hanging.”

Starsky didn’t believe him, but he had no one to blame except himself. “I deserved it.”

“No, you didn’t. We said we’d never say ‘no’ to each other for sex—and then that’s what I did. But not before I took from you … because I’m a weak boy when it comes to you.”

They made sudden, lengthier, eye contact that time. Wordlessly, they’d come to the same conclusion: Starsky had a weak moment with Ashlee; Hutch had one—again—with Starsky; after all, Starsky seduced him from the very beginning. But how were those respective weak moments different? The answer to that question passed silently between them until Hutch broke the dialogue to stir oatmeal in a pot and pour it equally into two bowls.

“So,” Starsky figured, easing into his observation, “you didn’t want to have sex last night; you fell for it because I have the magic touch.”

“I needed time to think,” Hutch explained. He pushed one of the bowls toward Starsky who only then sat on a stool for breakfast. “Turns out I got that time while you were in the shower this morning. I didn’t need to hold out last night, not even for a minute.”

Starsky didn’t want to debate Hutch, let alone about his recent affair, so he was speechless while he sprinkled brown sugar over his oatmeal with a spoon—and lots of it. “Whatever you came up with,” he finally said, somewhat disinterested, focused more on making the perfect meal, “it must be a good one if having a great come last night isn’t what did the trick for your outlook.” When all Starsky heard was silence after half a minute, he glanced up at Hutch, found his partner still standing at the counter, gazing back at him with an expression that seemed to say Starsky was an idiot.

“I’m sure I fucked up some words,” Starsky quickly said with a shrug, “but you got my point.” Hutch had already set the counter with all the ingredients for a healthy breakfast, along with coffee cups and a steaming kettle that sat on a potholder. It was a feast to behold—as his meals usually were. Starsky himself reveled in the colorfulness of it, and followed Hutch’s lead by adding blueberries, walnuts, shredded coconut, and raisins, to his bowl. “So, out with it,” he said when Hutch waited too long to tell him what his revelation entailed. “Or are you going to punish me some more and make me guess?”

“You couldn’t guess.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re an idiot.”

“That’s what you said a minute ago.”

“Well, not in so many words,” Hutch answered playfully, winking.

Damn those blue eyes.

“Yeah, not in so many words,” Starsky reluctantly agreed, “but you said it just the same. So I can’t guess? Watch me.” He poured a quarter cup of almond milk on his oatmeal and stirred it, noticing how the brown sugar had already melted over his steaming breakfast cereal. He would have to tax his brain to rise to the challenge he’d set for himself, trying to imagine what possible scenario Hutch had discovered that would cause such a difference in his mood that morning. In context, Starsky thought he knew what Hutch had decided. “I’m going to have to give you a set number of blow jobs,” Starsky assumed, “without getting any in return, to make up for what I’ve done. Is that it?”

“Like I said twice,” Hutch replied, sounding as if he repressed a laugh, “you’re an idiot.”

Starsky smirked at him, and took his first bite. The oatmeal was sweet, full of fiber, fruit, nuts, and tasted as good as it looked. He sure hoped he’d get to eat it all, but he wasn’t certain he wouldn’t feel sick to his stomach from nerves by the time Hutch was done talking.

“It’s a simple solution,” Hutch said. He, too, stirred his oatmeal and began eating. In between bites, he laid it out for his partner. “Every time you play with somebody outside this relationship, I’m going to play with somebody outside this relationship.”

Starsky sat back on his stool, feeling dumbfounded, and not sure he shouldn’t be relieved. “So, it’s an eye for an eye thing.”

“Rather, a cum for a cum.”

“Okay, but you’re not that guy. That’s not you—getting even, I mean.”

“I don’t know any other way to make this fair. I’d give you anything, Starsky. I told you that yesterday, even before I learned about Ashlee. Anything. But some things hurt to give—and I have to get some take-back to ease the pain.”

“Okay,” Starsky said again, acquiescing. “I accept your solution—because I’m never going to repeat this stupidness on my part. Affairs won’t be an issue down the road.”

“Yeah, well…”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I haven’t finished telling you how we’re going to do this.”

“Oh.”

Hutch passed him that, “Sorry, pal,” expression, pressing his lips momentarily while he raised his eyebrows, as if the look alone could lighten the blow he was about to deliver. It didn’t. “The rule is retroactive to the day you first kissed me—in the grass where the Grace House now stands—and, secondly, the reasons for our ‘extramarital affairs’ are irrelevant.”

Starsky’s heart sank—and he was no longer certain he understood. Hutch’s preface had told him to brace for impact, but his mind raced so fast, he couldn’t figure out the details on his own soon enough. It left him baffled and with one question. “What does ‘retroactive’ mean?”

Hutch frowned at him. “Really, Starsk?”

“Well, I mean, I know the definition, but how are you using it?”

“By its definition.”

“Meaning what, exactly? C’mon. Tell me what you’re saying.”

“That every time you play with somebody else, I play with somebody else—and the rule applies to all the time that’s passed from the moment you first kissed me. Grace doesn’t count because we both played with her multiple times. Therefore, you’ve had two scores to my one since then.”

Starsky tried to keep up, but he was suddenly feeling nervous about Hutch’s ‘solution’ to his weak moment with Ashlee. “You’re counting Adam in this?” he incredulously asked, retracing the path of his sexual encounters since he’d first kissed Hutch.

“Score Number One,” Hutch said, eating, drinking coffee, seeming perfectly at ease in his own skin.

“But you knew why I—”

“Right. Did you hear me earlier, about the reasons for these sexual exploits, that they’re irrelevant? My one score was Emma—who I let take me in a dire strait when I believed you were dead. That was my reason: but irrelevant under the new rules.”

“You can’t make up rules without my input.”

“You broke them,” Hutch sang, “I get to make them.”

Starsky felt his blood boil then, and not because he was angry at Hutch, but because he was angry at the situation—one he caused himself, and whose consequences were sound, despite how much he hated them. What Hutch was telling him, basically, was that, despite whatever reasons either of them had for bedding someone outside their relationship, Hutch would get to do so every time Starsky did—and that Hutch was making it clear he had a score coming to him, that Hutch would now get to bed a woman.

Maybe that’s what Hutch wanted all along. Maybe he was jealous of Starsky’s heterosexual exploits. Maybe that’s what had made Hutch so mad—and then he realized he could do likewise, that he’d even be justified, all of which put him in a better mood that day. But Starsky didn’t want to romance women. He didn’t even know why he fell under Ashlee’s spell. He didn’t want to bed anyone other than the man standing there in front of him, eating oatmeal, wearing sweatpants and a flannel shirt, disheveled, looking like he’d gotten laid the night before, and oh so goddamn beautiful.

Starsky had even promised Hutch that his loyalty and devotion to this particular one would forever be the case; he further backed it up by giving Hutch a gold, diamond-studded ring with that promise. And then he broke the promise over something as frivolous as an orgasm inside a vagina.

So let Hutch have his way, allow him sex with a woman, be done with this nonsense, get back to their lives, lessons learned, and all that.

“Do you have Emma in mind?” Starsky was able to ask, pretending then as if he hadn’t a single negative feeling about these new rules. What other women did they know? Hutch wouldn’t suggest Ashlee, would he? He didn’t want to take ‘settling the score’ to that degree, Starsky didn’t think. “Should we decide together on a date for you to do this?”

“I’ll do it on my own schedule, thank you very much,” Hutch said, factly. “But, no, not Emma. I have a man in mind instead.”

Starsky set down his spoon, pushed his bowl away, couldn’t eat, and didn’t break his stare with Hutch’s mocking-innocence eyes. “You’re not gay,” was the only thing he could think to say to call Hutch’s bluff.

“Neither are you,” Hutch said, still eating, still seeming perfectly at ease, as if his resolution to their problem was purely in his control, and nothing Starsky could do, feel, think, or say, would deter him from it. “But that hasn’t stopped us.”

With a choke in his throat, Starsky tried for another counterpunch. “We don’t wanna go through two months of blood tests again, do we? I mean, if you fuck some guy, we’re going to have to—”

“It won’t be ‘some guy.’”

At that point, Starsky felt the blood drain to his feet. “You don’t mean Adam.”

“Of course not,” Hutch said with a sneer, obviously disgusted by that idea. “He’s a friend of yours. C’mon, I wouldn’t do that to you, even if he was willing to—and I’d bet he’s not. Besides, he’s not my type. I’m talking about a friend of mine, Starsk—someone who’s never had sex with a man, so we don’t have to worry about blood tests.”

Starsky crossed his arms over his chest. It was the only weapon he had to protect himself from the next blow he withstood that morning. “Davis. You’re going to fuck Davis? He’s not gay.”

“He’s gay curious,” Hutch said, as if second thought. “I remember all those questions he had after he learned about you and me. I think he liked the idea of having a lover who never says ‘no,’ and who’d be as much into a blow job as he’d be.”

“You’re not really going to do this.”

“And he’s quite fond of me, too. Plus, you know, if it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead by now.”

“You can pay me back for what I’ve done some other way.”

“This isn’t about you, Starsk. It’s about fairness in our relationship. What you do, I do. Tell me where I’m off?”

“I made a mistake.”

“Reasons don’t matter.”

“You’re jerking me around now.”

“Nope, buddy. I’m deadly serious about this.”

Starsky fumed. He certainly didn’t like the idea, even if Hutch was just playing him, and he was no longer convinced it was simply a ploy. “Davis isn’t going to go along with this,” he said, hoping for reason to redirect the game plan.

“If he’s not,” Hutch said, turning to the sink to wash his bowl, “then I’ll find someone who is. There are no statutes of limitation on how long I have to collect my debts. But I’m pretty sure I can make Davis an offer he can’t refuse.”

* * *

PARTNERS

“I know you didn’t do it,” Starsky said, trying to sound as certain of it as he could, as if his adamance alone would make it so. “You didn’t do it because it’s not in you to do. That’s not the Hutch I know.” His voice wavered with emotion, and he felt on the edge of a major fall into the abyss. His internal tremble all but gave away his uncertainty, so he temporarily looked off across the property to avoid the expression of ‘sorry, pal’ on Hutch’s face.

“You didn’t do it,” Starsky repeated, arguing with the facts he feared, and that time in a low voice, one that promised to break him completely if he spoke another word. He sat in a lawn chair on the porch, dressed in Hutch’s sweat clothes, and where he’d been rooted since his call that morning to Davis’ house, to find out when Hutch was coming home, to wait for him, to not miss a single second of Hutch’s return. It had been nearly three hours since their last communication.

Hutch had arrived back to the farm around 3 p.m. that afternoon, in his truck, at a slower-than-normal speed from where he first appeared on the road, to his drive up to the house. He parked beside the Torino, gathered his belongings—or so it seemed to Starsky; used clothes, toiletries, whatever else he’d taken for an overnight visit—and eventually got out of the vehicle, stretching and gazing momentarily at the sun-filled sky.

When Hutch finally walked the short distance from the truck to the porch, small duffle bag in hand, Starsky also noticed how relaxed Hutch appeared, and how attractive he was: dressed in tight jeans, a loose, buttoned shirt, his casual shoes, neatly groomed, shaved, seeming well-fed and rested. Or maybe he was simply a sight of beauty to behold for Starsky’s sad and sore eyes that made Hutch all the more alluring. Either way, it only fueled Starsky’s anxiety.

“Tell me you didn’t do it,” he ordered, lifting his chin and looking up at Hutch. Both their eyes were hidden behind sunglasses; Hutch would never know how red and swollen Starsky’s had become. “But don’t lie to me.” He was embroiled in such a mix of feelings: from fear to pending relief to hurt and regret, so much that he didn’t care if Hutch could read the subtle but telltale signs. There would be no holding back—not in moments like that one.

Hutch dropped his duffle bag at his feet and knelt on the porch in front of Starsky, one knee to the wood planks, his butt on his heel. But when he put a hand on Starsky’s thigh, Starsky knocked it away, both with his leg and with a fist. “You tell me first,” he said. He didn’t want placating affection; he needed truth.

Hutch sat further back, raised his sunglasses to the top of his head so Starsky could see his blue eyes, and apologetically said, “I’m sorry, Starsk—”

“This isn’t like the time you scared me about the bears so I’d leave Dobey’s cabin when you wanted to go,” Starsky insisted, a pressing cry in his otherwise masculine voice as he struggled to avoid the well of disappointment that rose in him. “Or the time you pretended to have amnesia so you could teach me a lesson about … about careless driving, right?” He sat heavily against the cushion of his chair, the only thing to hold him steady. “This isn’t a game, like the one you played to get me out of my room after the rapes by leaving me alone at the house and returning to the scene of the crime so I’d follow you over there.” He now seethed with anger in light of those memories, realizing again that Hutch was quite capable of deceiving him, and none of it amusing. “This time, your bluff … it isn’t funny and it isn’t in my best interest. You can’t have done this.”

The idea of Hutch’s mouth on any other man’s penis enraged him again. Not even Starsky had performed fellatio on anyone besides Hutch. But he wasn’t at liberty to be righteous—and that pissed him off at himself. He boiled, and then ached. “Tell me you didn’t do it. You didn’t do it, did you, Hutch? Don’t lie to me.”

Starsky had learned of Hutch’s date the night before only a couple of hours prior to Hutch leaving the farm to drive to the city, much the way Hutch had inadvertently discovered Starsky’s rendezvous with Adam the previous year. When Starsky thought Hutch would begin making preparations for dinner—a suggestion for a meal, an invite to pick vegetables, the proposition of dinner in town—Hutch instead said, “I’m going to meet Davis tonight, and I don’t know when I’ll be home.” Starsky’s heart immediately sank—and it hadn’t risen since.

He followed Hutch into the bedroom and watched him pack the small duffle bag with a change of clothes—tee-shirt, socks, a sweater—reminiscent of his trailing Hutch around the house when he packed up to leave Starsky alone at the farm and return to the house from where Starsky had been abducted by rapists.

“You’re not really going to go through with this,” Starsky insisted, leaning in the doorway and hoping his hunch would make Hutch stop in his tracks to say in reply, “You’re right; I’m not. You called it, buddy. I’ll stay home. Better luck to me next time.” But Hutch went into the bathroom for his toothbrush and toothpaste, his shaving cream and razor, adding insult to injury when he first brushed his teeth and splashed himself with cologne, and then dropped the fragrance bottle into his travel stash when he was done. He was already dressed neatly, though casually, in jeans and tucked shirt, belt and casual shoes, and a crew-neck blue sweater—to bring out the color of his eyes, no doubt.

“Davis isn’t going to wanna fuck you,” Starsky said, as if speaking those words would make it true somehow. “He’s not a … he’s not gay.” Starsky was so angry, he almost used a slur, but caught himself in time, though it didn’t go unnoticed by Hutch.

“Watch yourself,” Hutch said, poking Starsky in the belly as he walked past him into the bedroom from the bathroom. “Besides,” he added, to obviously argue the point, “sex is sex. Under the right circumstances, and especially under the influence of booze, anybody’ll—”

“You’re going to change your friendship with him; you don’t want to do that, do you, Hutch?”

“I changed the friendship I had with you,” Hutch coolly replied, pausing only long enough to make brief and patronizing eye contact with his partner, as if to say, “and look where that got us.”

All was fragile between them during those forty minutes that it took Hutch to ready for his trip to the city and, in particular, for his date—wallet, keys, jacket, overnight bag—awkward, strained, edgy, and painful, blowing up only when Starsky made the mistake, in his panic and desperation, of saying, “It was just five minutes with her—if that.”

Hutch grabbed Starsky by his flannel shirt, a firm fistful of material and crunched buttons, and roughly shoved him against the wall beside the front door, fire burning in his angry, intense, threatening eyes. “Don’t you dare rationalize this again,” he growled, “or I’ll bust your head open.”

The slam to the wall momentarily knocked the wind out of Starsky and he had no words in his defense. What he’d done was indefensible. His reasons for justifying bad behavior were simply a ploy to stop Hutch from making matters worse, for his getting even with Starsky, and for causing more pain and hurt and sorry—and regret, on both their parts. But it was Hutch’s words that cut the deepest.

“Maybe I’ll do you a favor,” Hutch said with genuine hostility. “I won’t suck his dick for more than, say, two-and-a-half minutes, just long enough for you to know that I enjoyed the feel of somebody else’s boner, and that it also made me as hard as you know I can be. If he fucks me first, I’ll finish him off with a good blow job—all under five minutes.” He released the hold he had on Starsky’s shirt, stepped back, but didn’t let up on the reprimand. “But don’t you worry, little buddy: I won’t swallow. He’s not a vegetarian, after all, and you know my rules about that.”

“The goddamn shit you say,” Starsky replied, hurt and angry and balling his fists. He also felt helpless, off-balance against the wall. “You don’t have to be so mean just because—”

“You think this is mean?” Hutch asked with a disbelieving laugh. “You, forgetting I exist, not giving a shit how I would feel if you fucked somebody else, enjoying a good come with someone else, and not telling me about it afterward … that’s kindness?”

“It didn’t mean anything other than the fuck itself.” Starsky’s voice was unsteady, and he was pissed at himself for weakening in those moments, especially when he needed all his strength and his composure to withstand Hutch’s verbal blows and to stop him from doing what he planned.

“I can’t get it out of my head, Starsky: how you can want your dick anywhere other than in me. Weren’t you the guy who said we were one body, or am I confusing you with someone else? and yet you took liberty with my part of it. Weren’t you also the guy who promised there’d be no one else? not even a woman, you said. How am I supposed to take you at your word anymore? What is it you want me to believe?”

“I don’t know why I did it, but—”

“I don’t know, either. It doesn’t change the fact that I can’t shake the shitty way it makes me feel. And, me, sick with the flu that day and sorry I couldn’t go see the boys with you, and waiting for you to come home in what felt like forever, because I felt crappy enough without you that day. You, letting somebody take you simply because it felt good. What next? Bacon? because it’ll taste good?”

Starsky’s eyes narrowed and his heart noticeably pounded. He balled and un-balled his fists, not knowing whether he should punch Hutch in the face to stop his words and his leaving, or a wall, and feeling too helpless to do either. Tears pooled in his eyes and his knees went weak as he slumped further into the hardness at his back. If Hutch didn’t leave soon, he might just see Starsky drop to the floor. It wasn’t the words Hutch chose, nor the images he pictured for them, but the honest truth that Hutch had lost faith in Starsky—once again—and Starsky was responsible for it.

“I hurt you,” Starsky admitted, reaching for the remaining weapon at his disposal, which was his authenticity, “but getting even like this, Hutch … that’s not the way to fix it.”

“You haven’t given me an alternative.”

“Time,” Starsky replied, barely able to speak the word. It was, after all, the only thing that could undo the damage he’d caused, and if he lost it, he lost it all.

“Time, all right,” Hutch said. “As in, you get to play around, dismiss it as meaningless, and I’m just supposed to turn the other cheek—time and time and time again.”

“Okay, then punish me some other way.”

“I don’t have another way. Do you?”

Panicked, anxious, terrified, and desperate, Starsky tried again. “Let’s figure it out together.”

Hutch straightened, appeared resolved and resolute. “You’re on your own.” He then turned on his heel and grasped the door handle. “Oh, and, to quote you in times past: ‘Don’t wait up.’” Opening the door, he left the house, slamming it behind him.

“Please, Hutch,” Starsky whispered in a heavy breath, and only to himself. He pushed off the wall, bent over, hands on knees, and hyperventilated for half a minute, during which time he heard the truck engine start, the vehicle’s wheels roll over gravel, and eventually fade into the distance of the long driveway. “Hutch? Don’t do this to us.”

In the end, the truly sad thing for Starsky was the realization that it was he who’d done something ‘to us.’ He was responsible for Hutch’s pain, his retribution, his actions. Why did Starsky allow Ashlee to take him—and did it matter to know? How much forgiveness could he expect from his partner? How many more times was he capable of forgiving himself?

It was a miserable night. Between his self-loathing and his certainties that Hutch would return at any minute, confess to his masquerade, smack Starsky upside his head, and tell him what an idiot he’d been, Starsky was mostly sick to his stomach and sick at heart. He paced the living room floor while the news aired, not hearing a word of the broadcast; he barely ate—a piece of bread with peanut butter, and only half of it; he looked out the window countless times, sure he’d heard the truck in the driveway, only to be dismayed over and over again; and he didn’t sleep, at least very little. An hour before midnight and he decided to believe Hutch wouldn’t come home until after sunrise.

It had been one of the most painful phone calls in his memory, to place one to Davis’ house that morning, late into it when Hutch still hadn’t returned and not knowing whether he would, listening to the seemingly endless rings that echoed on the line. The call was finally answered. Davis’ voice in a cheery morning greeting. Starsky couldn’t even bring himself to say hello. “Is Hutch there?” was all he could speak in that moment—while praying the answer would be no, that Hutch had never been there, that he’d gone to a hotel for the night, and that Davis was as confused as he’d been cheerful. But Davis said, “Hang on a minute, Starsky, and I’ll get him.”

A minute did pass, a minute that felt like a hundred.

Hutch’s voice, almost warm, but not quite. “Hey,” it said when he came on the line.

“Hey,” Starsky replied, not masking his disappointment, but only because he wasn’t strong enough to pretend. He had a million questions then, wanting to know whether Hutch had bedded Davis, the details of that rendezvous, how Hutch felt about it and why and what did it mean for their relationship, his and Hutch’s, the Me and Thee they’d grown to know in each other. But he was also terrified of the answers—and the details would only make him sick to his stomach and give him mental pictures he’d never be able to unsee. So, instead, to avoid it, he asked, “When are you coming home?”

Hutch calculated the time and replied, “I should be back by three.”

It meant he planned to stay at Davis’ house another two hours, fueling that spark of anger Starsky had earlier kept under control. It also enabled him to find the courage to face the truth, despite that it was a temporary bravado, and to force his next question. “Did you do what you went down there to do?”

Another lengthy silence sounded on the line before Hutch said, quietly and with carefulness, it seemed, “Yeah, Starsk, I did. I—”

Starsky couldn’t handle a single other word between them, so he dropped the receiver into its cradle and disconnected the call.

He then sat on the stool at the counter beside the kitchen phone and pressed against the sudden disappointment and rage he felt rise in his chest, crossing his arms to corral it, but not having the luck he needed. Who was to blame if not himself? How did he let Ashlee rule the day? Because she was a woman? Was that all it took? Because she was young and sexy and aroused by him? Because he hadn’t had sex that morning due to Hutch’s flu, and wouldn’t be getting it any time soon until his partner recovered? Had it been that trivial?

But Hutch was right: Hutch had to live with the mental images of Starsky’s wet mouth finding someone else’s, sucking her lips and tongue, breathing heavily into her face and on her smooth skin, breaking sweat as the heat rose in and over him, filling his penis with blood, swelling it into a compelling hardness, making it ache and yearn for touch, for wetness, for the tight warmth of another body, and then cresting into an ejaculation, a spill of semen deep inside her, giving him that ultimate bliss of orgasm. What kept him from waiting to find that home inside Hutch, the man he’d promised, the person he loved most, the soulmate he’d give his life for, the gentle knight he sometimes barely deserved? Starsky had been careless and he’d been greedy. He deserved the punishment: Hutch’s actions in kind, his coolness and his righteousness.

But had Hutch really bedded Davis? Would he use his friend like that? Would he do such a thing to Me and Thee?

No, not the Hutch Starsky knew. Even despite their conversation on the phone that morning, Starsky held out for a different truth, only to have it dashed to smithereens when Hutch’s words repeatedly echoed in his mind: “Yeah, Starsk, I did.” Starsky’s tiredness and his sorriness and his rage had finally broken him, and he cried; bent over at the kitchen counter, alone in the room, buried his face in his arms, and cried, sobs of tears. But it was only then, as his wails filled the empty room and released him from the tightening grip of his guilt and grief, did he realize why he felt so utterly ashamed.

He felt that pain again in a wave that overtook him as he sat on the porch that afternoon and Hutch knelt before him—that beautiful, blond, blue-eyed, tousled hair, strong, honorable, tender, loving, kind, intelligent being who’d gone to the mat for him, who’d laid down his life for him, who’d given him every fiber of his soul, and then some—for years on end—an expression of sorry on Hutch’s face, as if he hadn’t relished a second of paying Starsky back for the crime.

“I hate myself for what I did to you,” Starsky said, panting off his regret with words that simply spilled without thought from him, all purely out of whim. “I hate that I hurt you, that I made you feel like a nobody—especially when I know in my heart-of-hearts that you’re everything to me. I cheapened you into an act of sex I couldn’t get that day, so I let myself have it somewhere else. And I hate that I thought you couldn’t handle the truth, so much that I hid it from you instead of calling on you as my partner to help me figure out what I’d done—or that I owed you the truth, regardless.”

He noticed how intently Hutch watched him, the shimmer in Hutch’s blue eyes, the way Hutch seemed to brace himself for Starsky’s purge, but willingly. “I know you didn’t do this thing with Davis,” Starsky said adamantly. “You couldn’t have. It’s not you.” He began to cry then; he couldn’t help it. Hutch said he had gone through with his plans, and Starsky simply hoped against hope that he hadn’t, but he wouldn’t surrender, not until he truly knew. “I hate that I made you fake it,” he continued, talking through his tears while he spoke, “that I forced you into this charade so you could teach me a lesson, so I’d know how it feels to be on the receiving end of an affair. And you’re faking this prank right up to this minute.”

Hutch didn’t argue with him, but he didn’t confess, either.

Starsky caught a tear that had spilled from his eye and emerged under the rim of his sunglasses. He had hoped to keep how broken he was to himself, but it wasn’t up to him. His heart was shattered. “I wish I…” he began, but then said, “I hate picturing you going down on some guy; I don’t care who it is, friend or stranger. I hate thinking you would be fucked by somebody else or that you’d fuck someone, for any reason, as payback or … because you had a weak moment or … whatever reason.”

He understood that those feelings were relatively new, too. “I didn’t care when it was Grace, but you’re right: times are different between us now. We’re making this life for us, so I can’t stand the idea that you would even kiss somebody else or hold them in your arms or be naked with them … least of all, be turned on and wanting to feel them in sex. I can’t handle that thought. I get it, Hutch. You made your point.”

Hutch still didn’t say anything, though he did break eye contact to presumably protect his own emotional reaction from surfacing.

“It is a shitty feeling,” Starsky added, remembering how it felt, the range of emotions he’d been through, all of it negative and eating him alive, overwhelming and abusing him, making him sick physically and emotionally and to the degree that he hadn’t eaten or slept since Hutch’s departure the evening before. He hated the sorry and the regret as much as he loathed the anger and rage. Or the helplessness and the kind of pain he couldn’t describe, including but especially the pain he realized he’d caused Ken Hutchinson.

That was the part of the equation he’d come to realize was the crime he’d committed, not the act of sex, not the affair, not its concealment, but the hurt he’d unleashed on Hutch, an innocent man, a man who trusted and loved him implicitly and unconditionally, and a person who didn’t deserve even a moment of that crushing blow.

Hutch reached to move Starsky’s sunglasses, asking incredulously, “Are you crying?” but Starsky knocked his hand away.

“Just tell me you didn’t do it, Hutch. I know you didn’t. It’s not you. It’s not the Hutch I know. The Hutch I know went down there to teach me a lesson, that’s all, but he didn’t fuck anybody. It was just a ploy, wasn’t it, Hutch?” His voice quivered, he shook, trembled, pleaded, and cried more visible tears. “I had that coming, this lesson, but you didn’t have to actually do it to teach it to me, right, Hutch? I realize what I did, that I broke your heart again. So, tell me you didn’t do it. I need you to say those words, do you understand? But don’t lie to me, Hutch. Don’t lie to me. I couldn’t handle that, either.”

He finally let Hutch place his hand on his knee, warmly squeeze him, a touch to ease the pain of his own broken heart, to hear Hutch draw a deep breath, and regretfully exhale on his answer.

“I’ll tell you what I did, Starsk. And I won’t lie to you about it.”

* * *

“Where’s Lover Boy?”

“Home,” Hutch said, “probably sitting on the sofa, eating potato chips, and watching a B Western.”

“And he turned you loose on the city by yourself?”

“He trusts me.”

“You poor thing,” Davis said, mocking pity and patting the back of Hutch’s hand as if to ease the pain. “Do you need me to get you into trouble then?”

They sat at a restaurant bar, one Davis had chosen, faced the wall-length mirror, studied the happenings behind them in its reflection, and drank beer while they waited for a pizza. “Cheese-less,” Hutch had ordered on his half, “with mushrooms, tomatoes, olives, bell peppers, spinach, garlic sauce—instead of tomato—and lots of pineapple. Thin crust, please.” And although Davis had simply wanted his to be “pepperoni,” when he heard Hutch’s answer, he asked to have the entire pizza changed to Hutch’s selections. “Gonna taste what you eat,” Davis said. “Besides, it sounds way more interesting.”

He then filled Hutch in on the status of taking ownership of the Grace House, and everything seemed to be on track and without a hitch. He even seemed excited about it—probably because he was. And it would be good for Starsky and Hutch, too: free them up to do more police work while still living their dream to rescue abused children. Plus, they got the added benefit of having another cop on the premises. But Hutch still did marvel over Davis’ excitement about being part of the plan in such a significant way. Once he and Davis had gotten past their formalities a year earlier, Hutch was able to see the heart of the man, and the Grace House responsibility only confirmed it for him.

That, and he would be forever thankful of the fact, not a sentiment, that Davis had literally saved his life.

“But there’s a bigger question to be asked,” Davis said after they wrapped up the small talk, “and that’s why you’re really here on your own tonight. Care to share?”

Hutch shrugged. He didn’t want to weigh down their evening by piling on his relationship problems—or especially his deeper feelings that had been triggered by them. At the same time, he knew Davis was a smart man, and there’d be no hiding from him. Perhaps there was a middle ground. “We locked horns over some stupid thing,” Hutch was willing to admit, “and I needed a walk before I knocked his head off.”

Davis didn’t seem surprised by the confession, but he was objectively respondent. “This, from the guy who said he’d move Heaven and Earth—”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t rub that in my face,” Hutch countered him. “I still have the right to be pissed off at his bullshit, don’t I?”

“I suppose so,” Davis replied, seeming to repress a smile. Or his amusement. He looked off to his right to completely hide his face, or so that appeared to be the case.

Hutch tried to bring him back around. “C’mon,” he implored him, “what do you find so funny over there?”

“It’s not funny,” Davis said, looking into the mirror again, still not making eye contact with Hutch. “Starsky obviously did something grievous enough to force you into a two-hour drive into my neck of the woods, so I’m not laughing at that—really, I’m not. But it’s just, you know, ‘interesting’ how life goes back to life after death.”

Hutch appreciated the dry humor in Davis’ assessment and he, too, watched people in the mirror, while he contemplated the evolution of Davis’ statement. ‘How life goes back to life after death.’ His friend was also a poet, he inwardly chuckled. “You know I’d die for the man,” Hutch eventually said.

“Oh, yeah,” Davis didn’t argue. “I don’t think anything will ever change that.”

The pizza arrived freshly baked and was set on the bar between them, sliced neatly into eight pieces. It sizzled and oozed with color and the promise of satisfying taste, so they dug into it while it was still hot, not speaking to each other until they were several bites into their respective slice. Only then did Davis say, “You hit the jackpot with this, Hutch. I just might have you order all my meals from now on.”

Hutch silently agreed, savoring the juxtaposing flavors, especially in between sips of beer. When Davis finally looked over at him to convey his pleasure in a wordless expression of approval, Hutch winked at him.

“But now you have me thinking about sex,” Davis admitted, laughing, wiping his mouth, barely able to contain his amusement.

“It’s that good of a pizza, huh?”

“No, I mean, if your taste in pizza is this perfect, then your taste in sex must be great. Maybe there is something to this boyfriend thing.”

Hutch was more amused with Davis than he was at his observations. Deeper into his thoughts, and he had to wonder if that wasn’t partly what troubled him about Starsky’s affair, loosely termed. Maybe Hutch was feeling less than adequate for his partner. Maybe the sex was no longer that good for Starsky.

“So, tell me about it,” Davis encouraged him.

Had Hutch been thinking out loud? He wasn’t sure all of a sudden and had to rewind his thoughts. “Tell you about what?”

“The sex. Tell me … is it still doing it for ya?”

“Yeah,” Hutch said in a low voice, certain the sex satisfied him, but now not certain whether it did for Starsky. “I’m not missing anything anywhere else, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Still at it every day?”

“Every day,” Hutch echoed. “But mostly twice a day.”

Davis had to stop chewing when he heard that answer. “Mostly twice a day?” he asked incredulously. “Where do you find the stamina?”

“In my dick.”

“That’s some dick. I’m years younger than you, but I don’t think I could hammer it out that often.”

“You need as hungry a partner, I imagine.”

“Right. That’s what you said then, and it’s what you say now.”

They continued to eat and drink and ignore the people around them while they discussed Hutch’s sex life. Hutch didn’t mind; he hoped it wouldn’t derail Davis’ good mood, but also because he thought it might shed light on Starsky’s motivations, especially if Davis didn’t know about Starsky’s straying.

“Do you think you could handle jacking off some guy?” Hutch asked him. “I mean, I know you’re not gay—neither am I—but, if you’re wanting sex on a daily basis, it might be something to consider.”

“I don’t know,” Davis replied, sounding sincere in his mental exploration. “Like I told you last year when we talked about this on the dock in Honiara, I’m not sure we’re supposed to want sex with the same, you know, sex—gender, whatever—that we’re supposed to want to make more humanoids, by nature, I mean.”

Hutch couldn’t disagree. “But when you can’t,” he suggested, “or when you don’t want to, what difference does it make where you get off?”

“I hear what you’re saying. Or if relationships just aren’t doing it for you … and you want a no-strings-attached total immersion in the flesh.”

“Yeah, what then?”

“Well, you have to be attracted to that sort of thing.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were attracted to him, though.”

“Obviously.”

“But not to his dick.”

“That came later.”

“Later? after the first time? Or, later, before the first time?”

“I guess I didn’t have your built-in disgust for dick, so I had no feeling about it one way or another when Starsky and I first played together like that. In fact, I remember being … fascinated by the overall experience. Fascinated, amazed, blown away by it.”

“Well, yeah, blown for sure,” Davis chuckled, as if his pun was as funny as he seemed to think it was.

“We didn’t blow each other the first time we crossed the line. Hand jobs,” he said as he drank beer. “And now that I’m recalling it, it did take me a couple of weeks to agree to that—but only, I remember, because I wasn’t sure this sex-between-us thing was a wise idea.”

“For the relationship, you mean.”

“Yeah, for that, mostly. How were we going to feel afterward if it had been a dismal failure?”

“And now look at you guys: twice a day!”

“Sometimes three,” Hutch corrected him, trying not to smile when he saw Davis’ eyes grow wider. “But some days go by without sex at all.”

“How come?”

“Well, like a few weeks ago, when I had the flu, a high fever. I tried to get off, but couldn’t.” He also remembered that his inability to succeed was linked to feelings he was having that Starsky wasn’t his usual attentive self during that hand job—and Hutch eventually discovered why. “Or like the day we had to rescue his pigs.”

“Pigs?”

“His ‘pink puppies.’”

Davis laughed. “He never had actual puppies? They were pigs? Okay, you’re going to have to tell me that story, but not right now. I wanna get back to the penis stuff, not the pig stuff. So, you had to work up to the hand job—but once you did it, you thought it was—”

“‘Awesome’ was the word I used at the time.”

“While you were doing it or after?”

“While.”

Hutch did find some amusement in Davis’ curiosity; was it because Davis was contemplating similar experiences with men, or was he simply interested in his friend’s life? Or maybe both? He remembered that Davis had long been intrigued by the relationship between himself and Starsky. Davis, too, apparently found it ‘fascinating.’

“So, now you think it’s ‘awesome,’” Davis continued, “but how long was it before you took it up a notch to, what? blow job then?”

“He snuck a suck job in on me one morning.”

“And you punched him or you just went along with it?”

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think you went along with it. What guy wouldn’t?”

“Even you?”

“I suppose. I mean, if I was already in the middle of a hand job—let’s say at some party where a random chick is jerking me off—and some guy came over and went down on me … yeah, I’d probably let him. But I might have to close my eyes for it.”

“Fair enough.”

“But, let me ask you this: now that you’re balls-deep into this boyfriend of yours … when you look at him when he’s, you know, stark naked, does his dick turn you on, even if it’s not hard? or is just him that turns you on?”

They were already halfway into the pizza and feeling the effects of a couple of beers each when the conversation took the most personal turn in Hutch’s direction. It was no longer about what he’d done—past tense—but how he felt, and not an aspect of the dynamic with his partner that he’d contemplated before. He really did have to think about it, not sure after a minute if he understood the question.

“Naturally, Starsky turns me on—and his being naked only makes it more obvious.”

“But, I mean, if I see a naked girl, for example,” Davis explained, “I’m immediately turned on because she’s a naked girl. What I’m asking is, is it like that with him? He’s a naked guy … or it’s because he’s a naked Starsky.”

“Naked Starsky. Naked guys don’t turn me on.”

“Okay, so, next then … does his dick get you hot or is it the sex you know you’ll get from it that turns you on?”

Hutch laughed with his confession. “This conversation is turning me on—just thinking about his dick.”

“His dick or him?”

Hutch tried for a different angle to make sense of Davis’ question. “Does every tit you see turn you on? I mean, would you be all in over, say, an 84-year-old tit? Or would you argue that only certain tits cause specific feelings?”

“Okay, I hear you. So it’s a specific dick that turns you on—because it’s attached to a specific person. What I’m asking is, does the visual of his dick make you hot for him, or is it—even without that visual—that you’re hot for him?”

“I’m hot for him, no matter how he looks: dressed, naked, pissed off, sick, half-dead—”

“Right, so, it’s about him that does it for you, not that he’s a guy. The person who does it for you just happens to be one. Isn’t that what you told me when we were across the ocean?”

“Most likely.”

“So, for me to get turned on by a guy, he’d have to be someone like that, someone special to me, somebody I was fond of.”

For some inexplicable reason, their conversation paused at that moment. Hutch didn’t think Davis was trying to tell him anything, but he did always know Davis was fond of him. But that fond of him? Well, it was possible, perhaps. And, under the influence of alcohol, or even some rare life experience—the way it had been for Starsky—Davis might be capable of crossing such a line, too.

They ate quietly for a few minutes, closing in on what remained of the pizza, eating slower, drinking a third beer each, and contemplating the conversation in their own time and in their own ways. Davis eventually said, “I haven’t gotten laid in eight months.”

“Eight months?” Hutch asked, not certain he’d heard that correctly. “You’re young, smart, got a good job … you’re handsome … fun to talk to. What’s the matter with you?”

Davis shrugged, seemed to sober in that moment, and then opened up about his recent past. “I started having breakfast here; I live only about six blocks from this place, an easy walk. Got familiar with one of the waitresses and found myself coming here every morning just to see her. Then I started having lunch—at that table by the window. Every weekend. Like clockwork. She was my waitress; her name was Karen. Anyway, sometimes she’d join me for a meal, you know? After a while, one thing led to another, and she’d come down to my place after work for a little relaxation, if you know what I mean.”

“But, then?”

“Her father got killed in a car accident and she went back to Missouri to take care of her mom. She decided to stay and start life over in her hometown.”

“Meaning, there wasn’t enough here for her to come back to.”

“I guess not.”

“And not enough there to make you follow her.”

“I guess not to that, too.”

“And all of that broke your heart.”

“For a while, naturally. But then it got me thinking: I’m not all that good at relationships—despite that I’m, how did you say it? young, smart, handsome…” He was genuinely disappointed in the relationship that had recently failed him and it showed itself in his more solemn tone of voice. “When you can’t make it work with all those assets, you have to wonder what the problem is, don’t you?”

“Why do you think you can’t make it work?”

“I don’t know. Man/woman, maybe. I’m not being facetious when I say that this ‘boyfriend thing’ you got going might be the ticket.”

“It’s not without its troubles,” Hutch said, reflecting on the most recent one.

“Yeah, but at least you get regular sex out of it.”

There was no point in diluting the importance of sex, not with a man. “True.”

“And I know gay guys who’ve been in relationships longer than most of the straight people I’ve known.”

“True that, too,” Hutch agreed, having heard and read about such stories over the years.

“And then there are these two straight guys I know who’ve been in a relationship longer than people I know who’ve had dogs since they were puppies—or pigs posing as puppies.”

Hutch laughed. “But I don’t know what to tell you, Davis. I didn’t exactly have award-winning success with relationships. My marriage failed, too, remember.”

“Exactly. You failed on the relationship stage with women, but not with this guy you know. One might even say, so did he.”

One could—with the exception that Starsky seemed to get women whenever Starsky wanted women. Even when he didn’t want a woman, he seemed to get one. But Hutch didn’t want to think about Starsky’s stray into the arms of someone else—and he certainly didn’t want to give a single thought more that night to the way that made him feel. Or why he felt it. The pain was more than he cared to handle. Pizza, beer, a good friend, conversation about sex, all that, was the perfect escape for him that night.

“Maybe you just have to get older,” he decided for Davis. “Maybe it’ll take more experience, more practice, if you will. You’ll get better at what you want, what you can live without, how to judge a situation more carefully, not be driven by your dick so much.”

“You think that’s what drove me with Karen?”

“Maybe. I mean, we’re all guilty of that, aren’t we? We see something pretty and we’re on it. We find out later it was a bad choice. Ask me about Diana sometime,” he added with a shudder. “My point is, you’re young, but you’ve got all the right things going for you. There’s still time to meet someone that you really get to know before you surrender your heart.”

“I think about that, too. One of the reasons I like the idea of this safe house up there is because maybe I’ll meet someone who’ll be helping me with it—other than you two guys—and I’ll get to know her, and she’ll like kids as much as me, and she’ll want to do this kind of work as much as me, and all that. Then, like you say, with time … things’ll happen for us.”

“Just never say never, okay?”

“I’d never dream of it,” Davis replied, laughing. He finished the last slice of pizza. “But, in the meantime, I have to get myself laid.”

“Yeah,” Hutch agreed. He couldn’t not. “Eight months is definitely too long.”

“So, one more beer?” Davis asked. “You’re not planning to drive home tonight, right?”

“Right. One more beer, sure.”

“And then you’ll stay at my place,” Davis said with certainty. “Besides, I have another question for you when we get there.”

* * *

“That didn’t sound like a friendly goodbye.”

“He hung up on me,” Hutch said. He’d just sat down on the sofa beside the phone in Davis’ living room to speak with Starsky and he barely got into the conversation before his partner abruptly disconnected the call. As tempted as he was to call Starsky back, he was also fairly certain that their next conversation was better had in person.

“What did you say to piss him off?” Davis asked.

“Just that I’d done what I came down here to do.”

Davis walked the rest of the way into the room, handed Hutch a small plate with toast on it, and then sat in the armchair near him with a breakfast bowl. He opted for cereal while Hutch asked for toasted bread with avocado, hummus, and red bell pepper—all ingredients Davis had rattled off to him from the kitchen when he asked Hutch what he wanted to eat that morning.

“I set him up,” Hutch confessed about Starsky, staring at the colorful food in front of him, but suddenly not feeling hungry, “and I think it just backfired on me. I could hear it in his voice.” The knife he felt in his heart right then was one he’d placed there himself. “I took this retribution thing too far.”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened. Maybe I can help you figure it out.”

Davis was a good detective, had been and still was a great friend, and he seemed to be able to cut through chaos rather effectively—something both Starsky and Hutch could also do, except sometimes not with each other. Davis was still dressed in his robe and slippers, mussed hair, unshaven, not appearing the consummate professional he was known to be, but his voice was steady, and he wasn’t judgmental, and he invited Hutch to purge his thoughts and feelings.

“He had an affair a few weeks ago,” Hutch blurted. There was no point in hiding where the break had occurred.

“Oh,” Davis said, obviously taken aback.

“Well, not really an affair,” Hutch corrected himself. “More like … a fuck—for the sake of a fuck.”

“With a guy or—?”

“With a twenty-something girl babe.”

“Oh,” Davis said again, not sounding as stunned as he did the first time. “So, he’s still got that straight urge then.”

Hutch looked over at Davis, made eye contact with his friend’s innocently expressive light brown eyes, and let their unspoken questions burn off some of his hostility. There was merit to allowing Davis to play the objective observer. “Yeah,” Hutch reluctantly said, “I guess he’s still got that ‘straight urge’—except it doesn’t explain why I don’t have it anymore.”

“Oh, I think you know why you don’t.”

Hutch was already dressed for the day in jeans and tucked shirt, socks and shoes, had shaved and showered. He sat forward on the sofa, set his plate on the coffee table, and dropped his face into his hands. In a quick survey, he could list a host of reasons as to why he didn’t feel an urge for anyone else: he was more in love with Starsky than the reverse; he’d never been as hungry for vagina as Starsky had been over the years; he was better at commitments; his sex drive was nowhere near the level of his partner’s; and, of course, the one that probably mattered the most—and was the real reason—because he’d lost Starsky once and he knew the gravity such a loss had been in his life. Losing Hutch wasn’t anything even remotely close to an experience Starsky had endured, despite their respective near deaths.

“I’m more proprietary,” Hutch said after he came out from behind his hands. “Ever since he got home from the island, and as much as I don’t want to believe this about myself, I’ve been more possessive of him. I mean, I didn’t have a jealous streak in my body when he was laying Grace. I couldn’t have cared less.”

“Plus you knew her,” Davis injected, not unkindly. “And she was already a friend of his before you crossed the sex line with him. There were different ground rules then.”

All of that was true. Different ground rules. It forced Hutch to examine the new ones. “But now that he’s back, and for as long as he’s been back—like a sort of resurrected-from-the-dead kind of back—I’m sensitive to every and any little thing that might get in the way, whether it’s his heart being broken over a couple of pigs to his having a ‘straight urge’ for a sexy young thing that lasted barely five minutes. I know in my head that nothing can come between us, but in that region of my heart where fear dares to tread…”

“Losing Starsky nearly cost you your life,” Davis remembered. “I’ve never known love like that. I probably never will. But you know what they say … where there is great love, there is great…”

Hutch thought the rest of the phrase used the word ‘disappointment,’ but he knew Davis meant something much deeper than that; it was always much deeper. Even Davis realized it enough to not finish his sentence.

“I’ve been doing better,” Hutch defended himself—against himself; he didn’t feel admonished by Davis. “I’ve come a long way in letting go of so much since he’s been back. But then he makes me these unbelievably beautiful promises about how ‘no man shall put asunder’ our relationship, and I buy into it—because I desperately want to.”

“Were those his words? ‘No man shall put asunder’? Or did he say—”

“Yeah, I get it. I actually think his words were ‘no one.’ So now I end up thinking I can’t trust his promises.”

“But this babe didn’t come between you. Sounds like she was just a means to an end. Pity her instead.”

“I do feel bad for Ashlee,” Hutch confessed. “She got hurt, too, and she didn’t have to. I wish he would just learn how to think through his actions more carefully before he does shit like that. He was sober at the time, for crissakes.”

“Sober, maybe,” Davis countered him, not trying to make light of it, all while speaking to a sadly humorous, truthful point, “but, in the end, the dick gets what the dick wants.”

“Don’t think I don’t understand that.”

“So, it sounds to me like it’s not a twenty-something girl babe that got in the way. It doesn’t even sound like Starsky’s dick got in the way. What gets in the way is Hutch’s heart-fear.”

Hutch couldn’t argue the objective truth, so he didn’t try.

“I’m not saying he was right, mind you,” Davis concluded. “You wanna be able to trust the person you’re in a romantic relationship with. But I was there when he was dead, and I know you’d have given anything, including letting him dictate your lives by his rules, even ones he made up along the way, than have his being dead be the reality.”

“I can’t argue with that, either.”

“You just wish he didn’t take advantage of your generosity.”

Davis was a wise man for one so young. “You nailed it,” Hutch agreed. “And that’s probably what hurt so much: that I had to find out on my own that he’d strayed, but mostly that he took advantage of knowing—no matter what he does—that I’ll forgive him anything.”

So, what, then, was the point of the reprimand? Teaching Starsky a lesson had never been the answer. Why couldn’t Hutch have known that before he threatened Starsky, before he drove those two-hours into the city, before he spent the night in another man’s company? Sure, he enjoyed his time with Davis, and especially the warmth he felt in Davis’ home. They’d shared comfortable conversation at the bar—some of it was even titillating—good food, drink, companionship and friendship. They then drove the six blocks from the restaurant to Davis’ house, where Hutch had spent the night on the eve of their travel to Australia, the only other time he’d been to Davis’s residence.

After changing from his jeans and shirt into the sweat clothes he’d brought with him, Hutch retired to the sofa, sitting on its relatively new cushions, his feet on the coffee table, crossed at the ankles, his hands folded over his belly, sinking his weight into carefreeness, feeling the lightness in his head that alcohol had created—and still agreeing to a ‘night cap’ that Davis poured for them.

The ambient lighting was soothing and, while Davis found soft music of his liking to fill in the background silence, Hutch looked around at the room’s furnishings, the framed nature pictures on the walls, the complimentary colors and textures Davis had chosen to decorate his home. With those classy tastes, Davis would definitely turn the Grace House into an inviting sanctuary; he had the touch.

“So,” Hutch eventually said, easing into his question, only because he remembered it at that moment, “you said you had something else to ask me when we got here.”

“Oh, yeah,” Davis replied, seeming to only recall it when Hutch triggered his memory, and sitting on the coffee table to face Hutch, appearing eager and interested, much the way Hutch and Starsky often used the table furniture to get as close to each other as they could. “My question is, Starsky never had puppies? They were pigs? You have to tell me this story.”

And so Hutch did.

But now he listened to Davis eat his cereal that next morning, while also hearing his own breathing, reminding him of other times when Davis told him to take a breath. Hutch slowly inhaled, deeply, allowed it to calm his mind, let out his breath, looked at his breakfast while he confronted his new reality, and spoke from his heart. “So I set him up,” he repeated. “I made him think I came down here last night to even the score.”

“But he knew to call me to find you,” Davis realized. “What was he doing? calling all over town, looking for you?”

“I told him I was going to use you to do it.”

“To do it? to even the score?”

“That I would ply you with enough alcohol to seduce you into a mutually good come.”

Davis tried not to laugh—it wasn’t funny—but he wasn’t able to completely repress his reaction, either. “Dream on, buddy.”

“I didn’t need to dream it; I just needed to say it to him, so he’d think it was possible, and that you and I were both capable of it.”

“But you don’t really think he believed you.”

“Probably not.”

“But you fucked with his mind just the same.”

“I did. And when he asked me just now if I’d done what I came down here to do, I said yes—because fucking with his mind was what I planned, and I’m pretty sure I succeeded in that.”

“And now?”

“And now I realize … all I really did was hurt him. I maybe even scared him—and we all know fear is pain.”

“Which wasn’t the plan, to scare and hurt him.”

“No, and not the way I did it—especially now that I think about it in an after-the-fact state of mind. I only meant to teach him a lesson—one not worth the effort.”

“Call him back. Explain it.”

“I’ll wait until I get home. It’s better we have a heart-to-heart in person.”

“Then why don’t you eat and go? We can postpone the furniture move to another day.”

“I’ll help you get the stuff into storage. I said I would and I will. I told him I wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours anyway. Let’s just get something productive done on the Grace House before I leave, huh?”

“Sure thing, buddy. But do eat that mash I made for you, that weird concoction of stuff you call breakfast.”

Hutch grunted as he picked up the first slice of bread. “Don’t laugh,” he said, biting into it and immediately savoring the pleasurable mix of flavors, “avocado on toast might be a thing someday.”

* * *

Hutch could tell that Starsky did everything in his power to not burst into sobbing; it showed itself in the nearly self-harming way Starsky bit his subtlety trembling lip, stared at Hutch from behind his dark sunglasses, seemed paralyzed and speechless—that’s how overwhelmingly relieved he was: completely stunned and immobilized.

But a tear eventually emerged at the top of his cheek from below the rim of his glasses. Hutch wiped it away with a comforting stroke of his fingers. He was tempted to taste the pain in it, but Starsky quickly cradled Hutch’s hand in both of his own, gently kissed the inside of Hutch’s palm, and held them in that tender affection with each other for a suspended period of time. Another minute passed before Starsky eventually let out his breath, but only slowly, and one Hutch didn’t realize Starsky had kept until then.

“You have to know I’m sorry,” Hutch said, unable to sound more apologetic, even if he’d given it all he had. “I wanted to piss you off, Starsk, not hurt you, especially not this much.”

Starsky continued to press Hutch’s hand to his lips, no doubt with closed eyes, and seeming not to care what motives Hutch had leveraged against him. Water under the bridge.

“Remember how pissed off at me you got when you thought I’d topped the spa boy after he came over to fix the oxidizer on our hot tub? Remember that, Starsky, how pissed off you were about that?”

Starsky still didn’t move from the position he was in, nor did he let go of Hutch, or say a word.

“I thought if I could piss you off like that again,” Hutch continued, “you’d remember it the next time you fell under someone’s spell—and it’d stop you in your tracks.”

Only then did Starsky express an acknowledgement of Hutch’s words; he barely nodded—more like the acceptance of a memory for him than the overall appreciation of Hutch’s intent.

“But I never meant to hurt you,” Hutch added, “not hurt you, darling, and not like this. Forgive me.”

Starsky leaned forward, embraced Hutch around his head, and pulled him tightly to his chest. Hutch lost his balance in the maneuver and fell into Starsky’s strong arms, up against him, in between his legs, while his own knees harmlessly hit the porch boards. He laughed, its sound muffled in the sleeve of Starsky’s sweatshirt, the one Starsky had earlier borrowed from Hutch’s dresser.

“I knew you hadn’t done it,” Starsky said, a softer cry in his voice—as if, only then, did he truly believe it. “I knew you wouldn’t. It’s not in you to be like that, not the Hutch I know; he’s not that mean.”

“I’m sorry, Starsk—”

“It’s okay, partner. I had it coming. Besides, you didn’t hurt me; I hurt myself.”

“The irony is … that makes two of us.”

When Starsky released the tight hold he had on Hutch, Hutch sat back on his heels, his butt to the porch, almost comfortably, still inside Starsky’s legs, but Starsky wasn’t finished with the affection. He leaned over and gently held Hutch’s face in his hands, repeatedly kissed him—his eyes, his nose, over his forehead, along his chin, his cheeks, his lips—and back again, all while his labored breathing sounded as if he still purged tears. And Hutch could only think to tell him, with every delivered kiss he felt from Starsky’s warm lips, just how utterly sorry he was.

“I’d give you anything, Starsky,” he said. “Anything. Anytime.”

“It’s never going to happen again.”

“Just tell me after you do it next time, so I don’t have to wonder what—”

“I said, it’s never going to happen again.”

More kisses. Starsky apparently didn’t want to argue the point that he deserved such generosity.

“Starsk, if you need sex from—”

“Stop talking,” Starsky told him, pressing lips to Hutch’s lips to silence him, and ending both their words.

The kiss evolved into a sensual exchange of soft, wet sucks and warm tongues. They inhaled deeply, drinking in each other’s familiar and masculine scents, consuming their pasts into their respective hearts—the good and the bad of them, because every minute they’d spent in each other’s lives, from the moment they’d met, had made them who they were and what they were together. Those truths never got lost on them. They never would.

The kiss was also an addictive drug, the high from which neither of them could get enough of in those lengthy, feverish minutes as they drove further into the sexiness between them, their respective desire for the healing exchange growing in intensity with every pass they handed off to the other. Hutch was aroused and fairly certain his partner was, too.

They only broke apart because they mutually needed to take a natural breath, to draw life-giving oxygen into their lungs and blood, but they still ached for the forgiving touch, so they leaned into each other afterward, forehead to forehead, laughing lightly at themselves, Starsky clinging to Hutch’s shirt to keep them joined.

“I don’t know why I did what I did,” Starsky eventually said in a contrite voice. “It’s not like I wanted her—or anybody else.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hutch replied. He raised Starsky’s sunglasses to the top of his head so he could see his eyes, admiring their piercing blue and the light reflected in them, despite how reddened they also appeared.

“And none of it was worth the pain I caused you,” Starsky explained. “I mean, I figured it would fuck with us—that’s why I didn’t tell you about it, because, like I said, I didn’t want something that stupid to be in our way until the end of days.”

“It’s over and done.”

“But I can’t live with myself for betraying you, so much that you would want to piss me off even for a second. Or that I could be so thoughtless and hurt you so much—you, the everything to me.”

“That was just stupid on my part. I’d give you anything, Starsky.”

“I know that, buddy, I know that, but I don’t need more than you.”

“I felt taken advantage of; I think that’s what hurt most. Well, I mean, that’s what made me retaliate. What actually hurt more was seeing you cry just now. I figured you’d be mad, but I had no idea I so deeply hurt you—least of all to this degree—no idea until this morning, when we were on the phone and I heard it in your voice.”

“I had it coming.”

“Not like that you didn’t.”

“Even my worst come with you was a hundred times better than—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hutch said again. “You followed a primal urge.”

“You’ll never trust me.”

“Implicitly and forever.”

“Why should you?”

“Because what I fear is that something or someone comes between us, but what I know is that you can’t live without me.”

“You got that right.”

“And I believe it from all these years of knowing you—and the sacrifices you’ve made for me—and today from your tears.”

They paused briefly and long enough that Starsky tried a smile while they looked into each other’s eyes. “Are we going to argue about this all day?” he asked, sounding playful and surrendering at the same time.

“It’s not exactly how I want to spend my time,” Hutch pretended to admit with a light laugh. Oh, how that Starsky smile melted him, and those sultry eyes, that still-furrowed brow, black eyelashes, his familiar face, blemishes and all. “Your idea about how I should have collected on a debt was better, anyway,” Hutch reminded him.

“And what was that?”

“That you give me a fixed number of blowjobs without reciprocation—so it’s just me, selfishly enjoying all that glorious receiving.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Starsky said with a mischievous grin. “I suppose you still want to collect?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

“How many am I going to have to give before you call it even? I mean, how many am I going to get to give?”

Hutch shyly smiled at Starsky’s self-correction, and then pulled a number out of thin air. “A dozen?”

“You drive a ‘hard’ bargain.”

With a wink, Hutch said, “I was going to say a hundred, but I thought that might be greedy.”

“That’s some good detecting.”

“You mean, deduction.”

They paused again, that time to gaze into each other’s eyes, tell the other every unsaid thing he had to say without using verbal words, agree, together, that they’d both suffered, albeit in different ways for different reasons, over something frivolous and inconsequential in the scheme of their lives, and that they’d always rise above and into the me-and-thee that had defined them.

“No matter what you do,” Hutch said in a whisper, “you’ll never change how I feel about you.”

“You’re my Knight,” Starsky said, “and I’m never going to tarnish your armor again.”

“Then do me a favor?”

“Give you Blowjob #1?”

“Well, that,” Hutch replied sheepishly, adding with an affectionate smile, “but … before then … may I have my ring back?”

“Oh, yeah,” Starsky said with a snap of his fingers as if he’d forgotten it. He abruptly stood, pulled Hutch to his feet, turned them both around, and pushed Hutch into the chair. Then he reached into his left sweatpants pocket, removed the gold band from it, and knelt between Hutch’s legs. “Marry me,” he said, half-joking, but looking deeply into Hutch’s eyes. “Marry me and have my babies?”

Amused, and with a laugh, Hutch asked, “Were you expecting I’d want my ring back just now, or is that where it’s been since I returned it?”

“I wanted it on me at all times so I could give it to you the moment you asked for it.”

“So you assumed I’d want it back.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Because you love me.”

Hutch mussed Starsky’s hair, his only means of retaliation for having been so well read. “That I do, buddy. That, I do.”

“Like I said,” Starsky replied, but not smugly. “Because you love me. So … to the question.”

“Will I marry you?”

“And have my babies.”

“You jest.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s not the point. The point is—”

“Yes,” Hutch said emphatically, to play along. “I’ll marry you and have your babies.”

They snickered together. And then Starsky took Hutch’s left hand in his and slid the ring onto his finger. “With this ring—”

“Let’s not get carried away.”

“Will you let me finish?”

“Pardon me.”

“With this ring,” Starsky repeated, adding, “I promise to never fuck up again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Then … I promise to try harder to never fuck up again. You like that better?”

“I do.”

“I do, too. See? We’re married.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Well, anyway,” Starsky explained, “the thing is, I’m not wasting a second of getting back to where we were and what it meant to us when I first gave this ring to you. That’s a promise I can keep.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Hutch said.

They spoke volumes in the silence—blue eyes to blue eyes, hand in hand, soul to soul—about loyalty, trust, love, and how much they believed in those things with each other.

When he felt the depth of their mutual respect fill his bursting heart, Hutch grabbed Starsky by the front of his sweatshirt and pulled him up close. “Kiss me,” he said. “Kiss me like you like me, like you love me, like I’m the be-all and end-all of your life.”

“You’re my everything,” Starsky said, in a voice that couldn’t be taken more seriously. “This’ll be the easiest thing I’ll ever have to do.”

* * *

EPILOGUE

“Have a seat,” Starsky said.

Hutch decided to play games with his partner by looking around the living room as if he didn’t know what Starsky meant, and—mocking-innocence—asked, “Any place, in particular?”

“The armchair,” Starsky replied, sounding only mildly frustrated by Hutch’s question; he busied himself closing the two window curtains and didn’t see Hutch’s pretend-indecisiveness. “Where else would you sit, numb nuts?”

“The sofa?”

“The sofa isn’t built for it.”

Hutch didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he wasn’t done razzing Starsky, either. He sat dutifully in the chair, watched Starsky draw the last of the curtains—and lock the door—and waited for the inevitable sigh of disgust he was certain he’d eventually hear from him.

On cue, Starsky faced into the room, noticed immediately what Hutch hadn’t yet done, and said in a patronizing voice, “Well, take your clothes off first, will ya?”

“Oh, right,” Hutch said, as if he’d just thought of it. He removed his shoes without untying them, kicked them to the side, and then stood to unzip and lower his jeans to the floor. “Why didn’t you say so, Starsk?”

“You’re pulling my leg,” Starsky insisted, ignoring Hutch while Hutch undressed, but probably aware that Hutch’s already swelling and exposed penis gave away his more honest feelings. “I might do stupid things, Blondie, but I’m not stupid.”

“I pull your leg, you pull my dick. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go?”

“The second part, maybe.”

Hutch sat in the chair again, that time fully nude, feeling the cool air tickle his skin and anticipating Starsky’s approach, but not before he realized Starsky had gone to the end table for their bottle of almond oil. The wave of eagerness that shot through Hutch purely from the memory of the lubricant’s pleasure-giving attributes almost made him feel guilty. How could he possibly receive such orgasmic bliss without returning the favor? But Starsky stopped in front of him and they locked gazes, forcing Hutch to accept that his partner meant serious business—and didn’t have time for further shenanigans, or deep thought, even if it was only Hutch’s.

“Well, isn’t the Big Guy a sight for sore eyes,” Starsky said, admiring Hutch’s blood-filling penis and eagerly devouring it with his eyes.

“You saw it yesterday morning,” Hutch reminded him, not feeling shy, but definitely conscious of his nudity and sexual arousal as he sat in a cushioned armchair in a closed-curtained room and awaited the firm hands and warm mouth of his still-dressed, sex-giving lover. “In fact, I believe you experienced the Big Guy then, too.”

“In a different way.”

They’d had mutual intercourse, ending Hutch’s desires with last-minute masturbation.

But Starsky wasn’t interested in the past. “Hey … even though this is a tit-for-tat,” he said, snickering over his choice of words, and kneeling on the area rug between Hutch’s feet, “I swear I’ll make it last.”

“Don’t tease me,” Hutch begged him. His shaft had swelled considerably, purely from dialogue and anticipation alone, emerging from its protective foreskin to nest against the smoothness of his lower belly, already pleasing him. “I mean … don’t be cruel to me.”

“Sucking you dry will be the kindest thing I’ve ever done,” Starsky promised him with a wink. He gave Hutch that closed-lipped grin and a double raise of his thick eyebrows. “I have some making up to do, buddy—and, by golly, I’m going to do it right.”

Starsky had never done it wrong.

Hutch sank further into the cushions under and behind him, rested his hands on the chair’s arms, allowed his knees to fall open against them, and gazed fondly into Starsky’s blue eyes. He watched while Starsky made certain to examine every inch of his beefier lover, sweeping his focused line of sight over Hutch’s lightly haired legs and his hairless scrotum, not missing the small patch of kinky blond hair between his shaft and his navel, nor the titillating picture of his erect and pinker nipples, the broadness of his chest, his bulging and muscled biceps, his shaven, perfect face, and slowly back across it all to his bare feet.

“If I sucked everywhere you make me wanna put my mouth,” Starsky explained, “we’d be here all day.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Well … me neither.”

Something in those last few words gave Hutch a moment of reflection, one so fleeting he was unable to grasp it as it passed by—and not because he couldn’t, had he been given the time, but because he was immediately distracted by the feel of Starsky’s warm hands on each of his inner thighs.

“Open your legs,” Starsky said.

Hutch’s legs were already relaxed against the chair arms and couldn’t go any further. He frowned at Starsky to tell him he’d been asked the impossible.

“That’s not what I meant,” Starsky replied to Hutch’s silent comment. “I mean … hang them over and then scoot closer.”

Even those words were vague, but the idea was clear, so Hutch lifted his legs and hung them over each arm of the chair, respectively, while he maneuvered his buttocks to the front edge of the cushion. The position made for an even more intimate closeness with Starsky, and also exposed him further, which was probably Starsky’s intent.

“How the hell did I live without you all those years?” Hutch wondered, his voice soft and subdued, expressing the way he felt, despite his hardening penis, and not leaving the eye contact he held with Starsky’s warm gaze. “I’ve never been happier. I couldn’t be now.”

“All those years?” Starsky asked. He kissed the inside of Hutch’s knee—momentarily distracting them both. “You mean, your boy years?”

“My boy years.”

“We weren’t ready to meet each other, I guess,” Starsky assumed, kissing the inside of Hutch’s other knee and audibly inhaling the scent of his skin. “We had to go through all that childhood bullshit and get out from under it the way we each did. We had to be where we needed to be in life before we could run into ourselves.”

Starsky had obviously missed the larger point of Hutch’s conveyance, which was that Hutch simply intended to say that his happiness was utterly and completely dependent on Starsky—past, present, and future. But the new lip caresses Hutch felt along the inside of one thigh, and then the other, kept him from further commentary. He dropped his head back to the chair cushion, closed his eyes, and gave himself permission to feel Starsky’s warm lips as they placed teasingly gentle kisses inside his legs from his knees to his groin. He heard himself exhale, long and slowly, and then immersed himself in the physical touch while he anticipated a sexual one. But right before he expected Starsky’s mouth to reach his scrotum, or even his anus, he felt the breakaway and heard Starsky’s voice instead.

“Wouldn’t that have been something, though?” Starsky asked, sounding suddenly excited by the idea, “to have grown up together?” His hands still remained on the inside of Hutch’s legs, and he was still very much up-close-and-personal, but his mind had definitely wandered. “All the kid shit we could have done with each other, hm?”

Well, yes, Hutch thought, unable to say it aloud because he was in the middle of an unexpected gulp for air, but let’s get back to the adult shit right now, shall we?

“We’d have played baseball, maybe,” Starsky said retrospectively. He gently nuzzled Hutch’s sac with his nose and drew another long inhale. “And we’d have done it long before we played with each other’s balls.”

“Get to it then,” Hutch said, his eyes still closed, his penis eager for contact beyond where it nested against his belly. Even the nuzzle had excited him into believing Starsky would resume.

“Or maybe not,” Starsky said in obvious reflection—and as if he didn’t hear a word Hutch had begged. “I mean, maybe we’d have experimented back then like I hear boys do, you know? Maybe we’d have spent the last 30 years jerking each other off … sucking each other’s peenies—”

“Let’s make up for lost time, okay?” Hutch encouraged him, opening his eyes and making contact with Starsky’s. Hutch would have wiggled his hips to draw attention to his stiffened penis, had his legs, locked over each of the chair’s arms, not prevented the action. Instead, he was left, frustrated, with only words to get Starsky off his reminiscent fantasies—that, and he waggled his penis after trying to hit the end of Starsky’s nose with it, but his partner was just out of reach. “Can we stop with the talk and get on with the suck?”

“Talk of dick-sucking isn’t doing it for ya?” Starsky asked, mocking surprise.

“Talk of anything isn’t doing it for me.”

“So no pillow talk then.”

“Just shut up and suck me.”

“That’s not a very romantic thing to say.”

“Says the King of Crass.”

Hutch then noticed the furrow over Starsky’s thick eyebrows and wasn’t certain it was pretend. Had he just hurt Starsky’s feelings with his eagerness to sexually satisfy himself or by his impulsive sarcasm? Were they still on fragile ground with each other? “In my defense,” Hutch quickly said, “I thought this was supposed to be all about me—and you already know how hard that is for me.”

“Oh, don’t think I don’t know how hard it is,” Starsky replied, breaking eye contact to gaze adoringly at Hutch’s erection, and proving that he’d never been hurt or offended. “But I thought maybe my talk would help to make it harder. Let me check.” Without pretense or warning, he took a quick swipe of Hutch’s shaft with his tongue and then licked his lips as if to measure the organ’s rigidity.

In the unexpected contact, even as brief as it was, Hutch momentarily closed his eyes to savor the warmth of the feel. He drew a long breath, too. Then, to play along as best he could, he said, “There’s no way you could gauge anything as profound as Dick Density with such a short lick. You should try again, longer next time.”

“You should mind your own business.”

But, on that note, Starsky abruptly took Hutch in oiled hand and then swallowed his aching-for-touch penis into the whole of his mouth.

“Jesus,” Hutch swore from the surprisingly pleasurable suddenness of Starsky’s nonverbal action. The sensation had also taken Hutch’s breath away; all he could do was watch Starsky—and feel the benefits of Starsky’s gratifying strokes: the ones from his hand, the accompanying ones from his mouth, the invisible but keenly felt strokes from his tongue, a mix of pleasures from each end of his shaft to the other, repeatedly and well-timed. It never occurred to Hutch that Starsky had opened their almond oil bottle and coated his hands in the emollient before he laid one on Hutch; that’s how distracted Hutch had been—or how skilled Starsky had become.

And Starsky looked so good in the giving. Perspiration lined his brow, his eyes were closed in a blissful expression all his own, and the visual of Hutch’s rigid penis entering and leaving Starsky’s fisted hand and snug mouth with such perfect fit and ease seemed all the more natural for them both. That Starsky was still fully dressed somehow made the joining all the sexier; Hutch was truly the recipient of such pleasure.

He dropped his head to the cushion back, unable to see when his vision abruptly blurred and the heated blood within him washed throughout his entire body in a blanketing wave of delirium. A compelling ache of desire rose from the depth of his groin and promised him an ecstasy-filled conclusion when it reached its peak. If Starsky’s grip were any tighter, Hutch could finish in a moment’s time, but he couldn’t convey his need for that added pressure. He was speechless and overwhelmed, weak and ineffective, panting for breath and wordlessly impatient. All he could do was wait for it and enjoy the journey.

On an upstroke, Starsky’s hand and mouth came off him, together and at once.

The leaving was sudden, unexpected, ill-timed. Hutch impulsively moaned—and not because he felt good, but because he felt inexplicably abandoned and confused. “What?” he whispered with frustration. He needed an explanation, but was too far gone into the demands made on him by his body that his brain couldn’t say more than just the one word. And it didn’t seem as if Starsky even heard it.

“Do you think we’d have had dogs back then?” Starsky asked. “I mean, do you think one of us would have had a dog when we were kids? Maybe we’d have shared one, you know, like we do beer, hm?”

“What?” Hutch asked again, more audibly that time. He felt the room air cool his perspiring skin and the blood drain to his feet—though it hadn’t yet left his penis.

“Dogs,” Starsky said. “Do you think we’d have had a dog growing up?”

Hutch was finally able to open his eyes and lower his chin to look Starsky square into those blue ones. They appeared inquisitive and innocent, genuinely curious about an answer to the hypothetical question. But, breathlessly, Hutch asked, “What the fuck are you talking about?” Starsky’s mental wanderings could have waited, couldn’t they have? What possible importance could they offer in a moment like that one?

“Dogs.”

“What about them?”

“Do you think we’d have had one? How many times do I have to ask you about this?”

Hutch wasn’t annoyed or angry, but he was definitely frustrated and confounded. “Yeah,” he said mindlessly, “sure, we’d have had dogs.”

“But not two dogs, right? I mean, we’d have shared one dog, wouldn’t we? Kind of like a bond between our bond?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.”

Hutch’s breath was quieter, but his belly still slowly heaved, making intermittent contact with the crown of his penis, a perfectly rounded cap that was swollen with his heated blood, cozied in its nape of foreskin, and reminding him of his unmet desire. Couldn’t Starsky appreciate the limbo he’d left him in? Maybe it hadn’t been obvious. Hutch stole a glance at his erection, noticing how it glistened in the room light from its coat of almond oil, seeing its raised veins, engorged and invisibly pumping—indisputably presenting the evidence of Hutch’s excitement. What didn’t Starsky see?

Hutch wasn’t given time to answer that question, even for himself. He felt Starsky’s hand on him again, seemingly firmer that time, as if he knew to be, to prevent the interruption from losing ground. Starsky’s mouth was on him, too, in tandem with his open, but firm fist, providing those desperately needed strokes to Hutch’s hyper-charged penis. Hutch felt Starsky’s deep breaths on him, heard Starsky’s soft moans of pleasure-giving, and immersed himself in Starsky’s wet lips, oiled hand, lubricious strokes. Oh, the gifts that man gave him—in sound, sight, sensation.

Hutch lost control after a while, gave himself over to Starsky’s sucking; he closed his eyes and listened to those quiet smacks, as if giving enjoyment was his lover’s end game, and he allowed the resumed building of his orgasm, reaching a more heightened awareness of bliss when Starsky added sensual kisses to that exquisitely sensitive frenulum on each of his upstrokes. Starsky knew where and how to touch him, how to please him, how to deepen Hutch’s need for an ejaculation; the man was so well-practiced, but mostly he was so perfectly in tune. Each devouring of his shaft—the length of it that could comfortably fit into Starsky’s mouth and hand at one time—brought Hutch closer.

But that cresting pulse—that last pounding throb of an orgasmic wave, the one to push him over the edge—never materialized. It simply wasn’t strong enough to do its job when Starsky’s hand and mouth left him again on what would have been the crowning upstroke. The interruption was so profound, it left Hutch incapable of carrying through on his own, though he did try. Under heavy breath, and after a whispered cuss of “dammit,” he reached for his penis, to give it that final propulsion into a coveted climax. But Starsky stopped him when he inexplicably grabbed Hutch’s arm and pinned it to the chair.

“What’s your favorite kind of dog?” Starsky asked. “I remember that Firehouse dog—”

“What’s the matter with you?” Hutch answered him in a confused, but also irritated voice. “If you’re not into this, goddammit, say so.”

It was then Hutch noticed the mischievous expression emerge in Starsky’s blue eyes—and he realized he’d been played. He should have known Starsky had been very much into the sex; it was apparent in the glistening sweat over Starsky’s brow, in his heavy and labored breaths and expressive moans, and mostly in how perfectly timed Starsky’s delivery had been, including those exact moments he chose to disrupt them.

“You’re fucking with me,” Hutch said conclusively.

“Yep.”

“Because?”

“It’s fun?”

“Payback will be a bitch.”

“Yeah?” Starsky replied with a wink. “I’m counting on it.”

It was in that moment, despite the playful banter, that Hutch unexpectedly viewed them in context. Why that particular dialogue triggered his reflections, he would never be able to guess. But there he sat, comfortably, in the living room armchair, his legs hanging respectively from the knees off each its arms, fully nude and intimately exposed, his penis engorged still from an oral and manual stroking and hoping for the resumption of both, glistening with almond oil and Starsky’s saliva, his entire body slightly perspiring from the internal warmth of his arousal, and yet he found a moment to reflect. Maybe it wasn’t so much himself he contemplated in private thought, but Starsky.

That dark-haired 40-year-old boy with the thick black eyelashes and piercing blue eyes, whose long, but perfect face and all its blemishes was more familiar to Hutch than any other’s, who was as sexual and sexy as he was smart and honorable, knelt on the area rug between Hutch’s legs, so close that his light breath cooled the sweat over Hutch’s skin. Starsky’s expression was one of flirtatious good-naturedness, expectantly waiting for Hutch’s retort to his sportive ribbing. But he was also obviously invested in the sexual exchange between them, if only as the provider; he glowed with a hint of exhaustion coupled with an unseen vigor, a weakness to the flesh, despite his energetic intention to maximize and prolong the experience for his lover.

How had Starsky come to such a moment? The answer, of course, had already been discovered: months of therapy with Dr. Steven Jade had unearthed its trigger—but none of it was possible without the underlying bedrock of Starsky’s true character, his authentic self, his ability to rise above what had been expected of him since birth, to embrace who he was and who he’d become in the arms of the man who loved him most. What a waste of time and energy and effort and emotion to have had relationships with others, with women, in particular, when the one who had been destined for them lay right under their noses. Why did it take so long to come to such a revelation—besides the obvious reasons, of course? In the end, it was everything to be grateful they had each other in those ways at all.

Hutch should have known, or at least suspected, that such a relationship for them was in the makings on that very day they met, more than a decade earlier, in a classroom, aisles across from each other—in what was their very first eye contact. It had unsettled him then—both Starsky’s attention to him and his own anxiety about why he felt compelled to seek more of it. They had been foreordained—by the stars, as Hutch often said. That such a seemingly benign exchange of eye contact ten years ago could have led them to the moment they shared on that lazy afternoon was remarkably prophetic, despite how blind they had been to its existence in their lives.

They were grown men, men with experience in relationships, even failed ones, men of honor and integrity, fallible and human, saviors and superheroes. Their jobs saved lives, prevented pain and suffering, solved crises and gave closures—duties that sometimes nearly cost them their own lives, and each other. But in their quiet moments, in those down times, in the intimate and personal life stories they shared with each other, they had unintentionally found their way into each other’s arms—beyond the emotional, the brotherhood, and the ultimate ties that bound them together. Forever.

“What?” Starsky asked, trading his hell-bent control over Hutch’s sexual resolution for his own curiosity and suspicion. “What’s that sudden look on your face mean?”

Hutch found humor in the question, but more of a contemplative one. It was Starsky’s previous expression, his smugness with how well he held Hutch captive—even without ropes or handcuffs—that had triggered Hutch’s brief trip into their past and how it brought them to their present, leaving him with nothing but admiration, fondness, gratitude, and love for the man. “Nuthin’,” he said, mostly to keep his thoughts from derailing Starsky’s gift-giving. “I’m just waiting on you.”

Starsky didn’t seem so certain. He squinted at Hutch, as if doing so would force the truth out of his partner’s mouth, but it didn’t work; Hutch didn’t say another word. “Yeah, well,” Starsky said with a growl to disagree, “I think you’re wanting to tell me you love me.”

Hutch couldn’t help himself; he tousled Starsky’s hair, then stroked his face, feeling its aliveness and warmth. “You couldn’t be further from the facts,” he said, belying his affection, “and yet you call yourself a detective.”

“I call you a liar.”

Hutch laughed. Starsky had, yet again, bested him. “I’ll tell you about it later,” Hutch said. “But, first, buddy, you have a job to do.”

The words had barely left Hutch’s mouth when Starsky swallowed Hutch’s penis in his—and then sucked it as if the pleasure were some kind of punishment, pleasing the head, sucking the edge of its crown, licking its smooth cap, all while pumping the oil-slicked shaft in his firming hand. Starsky seemed determined to bring Hutch to orgasm as quickly as possible, to put an end to the play so he could be permitted to go. Hutch didn’t care. It felt too good to care about Starsky’s motives.

But, in the end, none of that was ultimately true: Starsky was as excited by the fellatio as Hutch was overwhelmed by it. He licked Hutch’s erection to a new and glistening wet, tickled its frenulum with each upstroke he made, tongued it along the way, moaned with the desire it gave him in the giving, breathed as deeply and laboriously as Hutch had been forced to gulp for air. Hutch’s already heaving belly, his deep inhales and moans, his willing helplessness, fueled the fire between them. He immersed himself in the absolute pure enjoyment of Starsky’s tight lips, firm and oiled hand, and especially in his skilled timing—all designed to bring him to climax—and he didn’t care if he was interrupted again, put on pause, teased for more. It simply felt too powerful and intoxicating to deny.

Starsky didn’t retreat.

“Oh,” Hutch moaned in a cadence of repeats, rolling his head from one side to the other as the cresting began, and grimacing with sheer immersion in the moment. The sensations made him dizzy and further crave that glorious ending. “Don’t stop me, Starsky, please don’t.” Starsky seemed willing to oblige; he showered Hutch’s scrotum and his penis, intermittently, but with apparent design, with wet licks and kisses, with firm, lubricious, and well-timed strokes, increasing the pace of his caresses as Hutch’s urgency drew nearer to ecstasy. “Let me—” Hutch said, unable to finish the rest of his sentence; his orgasm cut him off while the room immediately spun behind his closed eyes. The only sound he could make were the ones forced out of him, the lengthy and fervid moans of passion from deep within him as the bliss of his ejaculation overtook all rational thought and action.

Wave after wave of pleasure, powerful and unyielding, washed over him; he convulsed and spasmed, unconsciously crossed his arms to squeeze the last of it from the depths of his sac, though it felt much deeper than that, and continued to cry in soft, plaintive sighs of delight and delirium as his heart wildly pounded. As the euphoria ebbed, he sought Starsky with his hands, found his head, buried his fingers in his wavy hair, held him in place, joined as they already were—Hutch’s still-hard penis in Starsky’s tight, wet mouth—and there they remained for more than a minute.

Sound changed from something of a muffle to clarity. He heard Starsky’s breathing, still deep and heavy, matching his own. He became aware of the physical contact between them, where they touched—inside his legs, in Starsky’s hand, within that swallowing warmth, safe in the contentment and comforting escape. He felt the cushions of the chair cradle him, hold his weight, provide the union they experienced. The first emotion Hutch could distinguish in the mix of his feelings was gratitude. He combed Starsky’s hair with both hands. The man could have let him go at any time, but didn’t. He stayed with Hutch until the end. He didn’t interrupt those final and necessary moments. Starsky had also given him oral pleasure in all its completeness, making up for all those times Hutch didn’t get to have it when he was with women.

But it was more than that, too. No other lover had read him so well, so meticulously, nor enjoyed the orgasm he was given with the appreciation and empathy Starsky no doubt shared with him. Was it mutual? Had he ever lived up to the occasion as perfectly as Starsky did for him?

Starsky slowly withdrew—from Hutch’s penis as well as from his hands—when Hutch exhaled that final deep breath. They had finished the first of a dozen promised fellatios without reciprocation, a notion that made Hutch chuckle, if only to himself. Starsky rose to his knees, bent over Hutch, his clothed body warm to Hutch’s bared skin, and kissed Hutch on the cheek. “I’ll see you in a minute,” he said in a quiet voice—and went to stand. But Hutch grabbed Starsky’s forearm and stopped him from a full rise. “Where are you going?” he demanded to know.

“Cold shower,” Starsky said breathlessly.

In the pause that followed, Hutch racked his brain to understand, and then, when he did, he said, “Oh, no. My boy isn’t going to have to take a cold shower.”

“That was the deal,” Starsky argued, obviously not thrilled with it, but accepting the facts.

“The deal was you’d suck me off, twelve times over the course of our lives, and I don’t return the favor.”

“Right. But now I have to—”

“You ‘have to’ nothing … mission accomplished for B.J. Number One.”

“How do you figure?”

“You sucked me off—in case you missed it—and I didn’t return the favor.”

“Right,” Starsky said again, sounding confused. “But don’t think it didn’t turn me on, and now—”

“Oh, I know it turned you on, buddy. That little fact came through in the getting I got, so—”

“So now I have to take a cold shower to climb down off this high.”

“No,” Hutch said, realizing Starsky still didn’t understand, “now you fuck me.”

“I’ve sucked you off a lot and didn’t get a return—and vice versa—so I don’t see how what I just did is punishment for Ashlee if I still get to come.”

“There is no score to settle. We may blow each other without reciprocation, but we always come with each other.”

“Exactly. It’s not punishment if I get to come.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“All I know is I have a hard-on right now and I have to get rid of it.”

“So, fuck me.”

“But the cold shower is the penalty, don’t you see, hm?”

“There is no penalty, Starsk. You aren’t paying attention. You said you owed me for Ashlee and I came up with a ‘debt collection’ to my satisfaction. I never said you couldn’t come. I said I’d take a dozen blowjobs without reciprocation. As of today, that means I won’t be sucking you off eleven more times that you suck me—and not that I’ve ever minded it, you understand—so you’re going to have to fuck me to get yours. I won’t leave you hanging.”

Starsky’s face was one of bewilderment and uncertainty. He was also speechless and halfway through standing, still in Hutch’s grasp. “I think I’m confused,” he finally said.

“Well, how about you fuck me right now and we talk about it after? I’ll clear it all up for you. It’s not like we don’t have the rest of our lives to figure it out.”

Starsky’s want was apparent. Hutch first felt it in Starsky’s physical melt, in his weakness as he sank into kneeling between Hutch’s legs, never breaking eye contact with Hutch, not even to treat himself to the visual appeal of Hutch’s nudity before him. He was also obviously quite warm: still dressed in Hutch’s sweats, still rather breathless, still perspiring from the exertion he’d granted Hutch in the fellatio. But he was also tentative and anxious about the misunderstanding—or the new understanding, as it were.

“Look at me,” Hutch said. He pressed his hips forward as best he could, squeezed the muscle in his groin, flopped his still-rigid penis against his navel. “I’m stark naked—and in the prone position.”

“Well, I can see that,” Starsky agreed, finally rolling a lengthy gaze over Hutch’s intimate passiveness, his nudity and his ebbing arousal, and certainly making a mental inventory of his lover’s finer features.

“Take me while you got me.”

Starsky lifted his eyes to Hutch’s, seemed to wait for the punchline, and then eventually asked, “Are you sure?” He kissed the inside of Hutch’s thigh as if he could coerce Hutch into the right answer by touch alone.

But Hutch didn’t need convincing. “C’mon, buddy,” he said. “Mount up, pal. Don’t keep me waiting. I’ve just had mine and there’s a small window here where you have to act.”

“Are you sure?” Starsky asked again, but he stood, using Hutch’s knees to push himself off the floor, and then removed the sweatshirt over his head. “You’re not going to be mad afterward, right?”

“I’m going to feel ravished afterward, if you do it right.”

Starsky winked at him—and then lowered his sweatpants, stepped out of them, and showed off his erection by wagging his penis from side to side.

Hutch couldn’t ignore it; it was familiarly swollen to near-bursting, not as long, but definitely wider in girth than Hutch’s. Even Starsky’s nipples, almost hidden in his chest hair, were erect. And there was something quite appealing to Starsky’s arousal, even beyond what met the eye. That he could be that excited—from both what he’d sexually given Hutch only minutes earlier and by the prospect of having follow-up intercourse with his male partner—titillated Hutch so much, he wondered if he might himself ejaculate again, if only a little one. “But kiss me first,” he said when he felt the stirring ache in his penis and noticed how generously Starsky dribbled almond oil over his own shaft. “I mean, you know, ease in.”

Starsky giggled. They were of the same thought that Starsky’s firming penis could be lethal if he wasn’t careful; it was indisputably that hard. “Have I ever hurt you?”

Hutch didn’t want to remember. “Just don’t hurt me now.”

Starsky dropped the oil bottle to his feet, and then stepped closer, drinking in Hutch’s sexy beauty with his eyes and the hiss of inhale it caused him, all while licking his lips in anticipation, even though it was his penis he’d engage, not his mouth so much. But as he went to join their hips, he quickly straightened. “This chair isn’t going to work as well as it did to suck you,” he noticed, almost to himself, looking about the room, as if he sought a different place for their position. “But don’t go anywhere.”

Hutch lightly stroked his newly emerging erection while he waited for Starsky’s return, watched as his partner chose the smallest pillow from the nearby sofa, and then came back to where he’d left Hutch.

Starsky appeared even more excited—at least his big grin said as much. “Lift up,” he ordered when he was between Hutch’s legs again. When Hutch raised his hips to the best of his ability—somewhat awkwardly in the position he was in and not without a brief struggle—Starsky pushed the pillow under him. “I think that’ll help,” he said suredly. He mocked a penis-to-anus entry as a sort of test run, made friendly eye contact with Hutch, winked, and asked, “You going to be okay like this?”

His legs over each arm of the chair, his buttocks lifted off its cushion by a small sofa pillow, the heat and excitement of his turned-on lover, and Hutch was quite certain of what he was. “You’re going to go so deep, buddy, I’ll have to dive in when you’re done just to get you back.”

Starsky laughed. “It won’t be for lack of trying,” he muttered audibly to himself, focused instead on the action between their legs. He spread the oil over his penis again, coating its head more thoroughly, slightly bent his knees, and pushed into the indentation between Hutch’s buttocks. “I’ll ease in,” he promised in a quiet voice, making brief, reassuring eye contact. “Hurting you is the last thing I ever want to do. I’d sooner … eat a praying mantis.” He laughed, as if he was funny, but sobered when he realized Hutch was bracing for impact. “Relax,” Starsky told him. “You’re just nervous because you’re not in the heat of the moment like usual.”

Hutch begged to differ while he stroked his own penis, feeling its slow rise, but he was, admittedly, tense with anticipation, though he could never say why; his unconscious impediment was most apparent to him when he felt Starsky push into him, and he was able to gauge that he wasn’t as inviting as he expected himself to be. Maybe Starsky was right: the time between their ejaculations would be longer than normal and Hutch’s mind was already more in play than his body. He consciously relaxed his groin muscles, watched Starsky watching himself, one hand on Hutch’s opened leg, the other guiding his penis, and was finally able to allow the entry without resistance.

Starsky moaned with pleasure from the easy slide into Hutch, and pushed all the way in before he lifted his eyes to greet Hutch with a friendly, albeit unspoken, hello. “My dick’s in your ass again,” he said playfully. “What do you make of that, hm?”

And that’s when Hutch realized what had been missing. “I told you to kiss me first,” he said, not unkindly. “But you just couldn’t wait.” He abandoned his self-caresses to gently sweep his hands over Starsky’s haired chest and heaving belly, his strong forearms and his pressing hips, knowing the gentle touches enhanced the overall pleasure for his lover—and to diminish his admonishing words. “I won’t take it personally.”

Without withdrawing or taking a single thrust, Starsky leaned over Hutch, warm skin to warmer skin, and kissed Hutch’s receptive lips, longingly and with heartfelt passion. From the outside, it may have appeared to be an awkward position, two fully naked men: Hutch on his back on a cushioned chair, his legs over its arms at the knees, widely spread; Starsky half-crouched between them, his bared buttocks in full view, his penis buried deep inside Hutch’s anus while he bent over him, sandwiching Hutch’s erection and his sac where their bellies met, their mouths joined in a passionate lovers’ kiss. But, for Hutch, at least, the union never felt more natural.

He sucked Starsky’s warm, wet tongue, deeply inhaled his masculine scent, felt his moist skin in all those places they touched, and was orgasmically stimulated by the fullness of Starsky’s erection deep within him. He’d initially believed only Starsky would enjoy the coupling, but as Starsky finally began to slowly thrust inside him, Hutch’s head began to spin, his heavy breathing echoed Starsky’s, and his blood reheated in his veins. Somewhere in the tingling mix, his erection enjoyed the contact at their bellies, and especially when Starsky picked up the pace.

The coupling didn’t last long enough to bring Hutch to orgasm; maybe it never could have, despite his new want for one. It wasn’t expected of him, so Starsky had no reason to pleasure Hutch to that end. He may have assumed he shouldn’t linger, lest he hurt Hutch in some way. Or perhaps he was simply overwhelmed, from the sexual arousal he experienced while orally pleasing Hutch, to the talk of intercourse, from the visual beauty of Hutch in his welcoming position in the chair, and because Starsky needed the conclusion sooner for his own emotional reconnection to Hutch.

Hutch didn’t slow him, didn’t ask anything of him; he merely enjoyed Starsky’s slippery entries and withdrawals, the fullness Starsky’s hardened erection provided him with every thrust, its filling and relieving sensations leapfrogging over each other. He melted in the notion that he gave himself completely to the man he loved most, for a bonding sexual rejoining they both desperately longed for after the pain they’d caused the other. He relished the warmth and desire of Starsky’s lip-sucking and tongue-probing, mouth to unyielding mouth, kisses of passion and devotion, unabated and uninhibited. Hutch savored his physical senses as much as he did the audible ones: Starsky’s heavy breathing, his moans and soft cries of desire as they ratcheted up with every thrust he delivered into Hutch. And there was that sound, too: the slap of skin each time Starsky’s hips made repeated contact with Hutch’s buttocks, accelerating in rhythm.

Hutch had to break from the kissing to catch his breath; how Starsky had gone that long without needing one, he’d never know. But Starsky immediately obliged him, pushed off Hutch’s chest and belly, rocked back on his feet so he could watch the movement between their legs, noticed Hutch’s enlarged shaft, its head having emerged from its foreskin, and took Hutch’s penis in his open, oiled fist. He pumped Hutch with his hand while he stroked Hutch’s anus with his hardened penis, only making eye contact briefly, as if to read his partner’s comfort more than his arousal. But Starsky’s motives didn’t matter to Hutch: he was too immersed himself in the unexpected pleasures Starsky gave him—in his anus, his penis, and in his heart-of-hearts.

“I’m gonna come, Hutch,” Starsky said between labored breaths. He repositioned, but only slightly, enough to get better traction and a more fluid angle. “Hutch,” he said, repeating the man’s name with every newly delivered thrust. “Hutch. Hutch.” Beads of sweat had broken over his brow. “I’m gonna—”

And then he did.

He snugged tightly into Hutch, threw back his head, eyes closed in indescribable bliss, and moaned loudly as his orgasm paralyzed him in its grip. Hutch could feel Starsky’s pounding heartbeat even from that distance; it pulsed through him by way of Starsky’s penis as each convulsion emptied Starsky’s sac of its semen. Hutch placed his palms on Starsky’s chest to feel the lifeblood more closely, more keenly, with a deeper appreciation for the man’s love and life. It was because Hutch had earlier ejaculated that he was aware of Starsky’s climactic experience, despite that Starsky’s sexual pleasure had been pleasing to Hutch, too. But Hutch’s wits were sharper—so he got to revel in Starsky’s euphoria in a way he hadn’t before.

Beyond imagining the actual powerful waves of ecstasy Starsky felt in his blood-filled penis, Hutch was able to see those same vibes throughout Starsky’s body: in his tightly closed eyes, in his glistening, sweating skin, in his slightly bent-at-the-knees posture, deeply penetrating Hutch with his sex organ, in Starsky’s lengthy moans and familiar whimpers, in his mussed hair, in the grips his hands had on Hutch’s knees, and in his pleasure spasms. Hutch was also able to witness the follow-up joy, the one that swept through Starsky as the more intense feelings subsided, the happiness that overtook him in that moment and materialized in his inevitable, light laugh. The ending giggle.

Starsky lowered his head, opened his eyes, looked into Hutch’s blue ones, playfully huffed a forced breath, and found the strength to speak. “As I was about to say,” he said, snickering at himself, “‘I’m gonna come, Hutch.’”

“I somehow figured it out,” Hutch replied, smiling at him. Could Starsky be more adorable in such a moment? Oh, probably.

“My dick’s still in your ass.”

“Leave it there as long as you like.”

“Yeah? Can I walk around like this?”

No reply was warranted. Hutch just shook his head at him, out of scorn, not from the obvious and impossible logistics of Starsky’s stupid question.

“You always expect me to be smart after a good come,” Starsky defended himself. He bent over Hutch, still deeply penetrating him, and seeming as if he’d never leave the position, to kiss Hutch’s responsive lips. When Starsky eventually broke away from the French kiss between them and straightened, he dropped his attention to between his legs, and then gently, slowly, and with obvious carefulness, withdrew himself from Hutch’s body. Once out, he met Hutch’s eyes again. “You spent me,” he said.

“You spent yourself,” Hutch playfully debated him. “I love how you get so into it.”

“You mean, how I get into you.”

Hutch laughed lightly. “You do have a way.”

Starsky swept his gaze over Hutch as Hutch continued to lay before him on the chair, his legs wide open, his penis lying toward his right hip above his bulging sac, having lost its obvious stiffness, but still full with blood. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to come again,” Starsky said, stroking Hutch’s shaft with a single finger. “I didn’t think you could, but it seemed like you wanted to.”

“I did want to.”

Starsky pursed his lips, expressing his disappointment for Hutch without words. But he continued to look Hutch over: his chest and his arms and his belly and his groin and his legs and, finally, his face. “You’re beautiful,” he said when they made eye contact again. “And you’re sexy, too. I can’t believe how much you turn me on.”

“Is it me,” Hutch asked, “or what I do for you?” The question was the echo of Hutch’s earlier conversation with Davis in which he’d been asked if it was Starsky who aroused him or the sex he shared with Starsky that enabled him to cross the heterosexual line. “I mean, do you think you believe that because you know you get to fuck whenever you want to?”

Starsky frowned. “Like, it doesn’t have anything to do with you; it just happens to be you?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, hell no. You turn me on. First, you’re goddamn gorgeous. A person only has to be human to see that. And you’re so beautiful that it doesn’t matter that you’re a guy. It’d be like looking at a beautiful horse. You don’t have to want sex with it in order to see how absolutely beautiful it is, know what I mean?”

“You’re saying I’m a stud.”

“Well, sort of,” Starsky said with a laugh. “But, c’mon … I just got laid—and it was a good come. My hardest comes have always been with you. You think I’m saying any of this because I’m hoping to get my dick sucked right now?”

Hutch realized Starsky’s comments had been unprovoked and that, as he just pointed out, they weren’t motivated by any kind of manipulation into sex; Starsky had just had it. “No. I don’t think you’re bullshitting me.”

“But, let me say it another way. Long before we were having sex with each other, I’ve known—and even told you—that you’re beautiful, right? So, there’s that. I’ve also known you for fourteen years, so I know you’re beautiful in all the other ways, too: what you think, how you feel, where your heart is. I don’t always show it. I’m not always the sharpest tool in the shed. And even though I’ve had to live it at times, I can’t imagine going a day without you.”

“I’m like a ray of sunshine.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.”

“I’m feeling embarrassed by the love, that’s all. I didn’t mean for it to come across like—”

“Yeah, okay. But let’s get back to your question. You turn me on in those other ways: in the mental ways—”

“Intellectually.”

“Right. And emotionally—like, I mean, you’re the one who can cheer me up when things are at their worst, and you’re the one who can break me, too. Nobody else runs that range.”

Hutch wasn’t completely happy with the compliment; breaking Starsky was the last thing he’d ever want to do, but he understood it because Starsky had been the only one to break him. Or ever could.

“So, if you can turn me on in all the other ways of what it means to be alive,” Starsky finished, “then why would you wonder if it’s you or the sex that’s turning me on when we’re naked like this, having sex, hm?”

“I never looked at it like that before,” Hutch admitted, “not in the context as you’ve explained it.”

“Well, stick with me, Superman,” Starsky replied, stepping away, “and I’ll keep your mind straight.”

“Just so long as you don’t keep my sex straight, I’ll be happy.”

Starsky giggled as he lowered himself to the floor. “Don’t you ever worry about that, buddy: I’m here to keep your dick straight, too.”

Starsky mumbled something else as he rolled over on the area rug, but Hutch didn’t hear it because he’d lowered his legs from the chair arms and finally sat up. When he noticed Starsky’s back to him as Starsky lay on his right shoulder, Hutch took the moment to savor the look of his naked lover and think about what he’d just learned from him. There was definitely something to Starsky’s conclusions: if they aroused each other intellectually and emotionally, then it followed that they, not the sex between them, is what turned them on sexually for each other.

Hutch stood, stretched, and then lay down behind Starsky, scooted close to him, spooned him from head to foot, put his arm around Starsky’s waist, and hugged him closer still. He was naked and warm. “Are you awake?”

Starsky pulled Hutch’s arm up to his hairy chest and squeezed it to him. “I am now,” he said sleepily.

“Thank you for laying that to rest.”

“What’s that?”

“That you turn me on into having sex with you, not that the ‘getting to have sex’ is what turns me on.”

“You’re welcome.”

Hutch kissed Starsky’s bared shoulder. His chuckle was soft, but also heard because Starsky lightly laughed with him.

Starsky then turned over inside Hutch’s embrace to look into his eyes. “I’m never going to fuck up like the way I did a couple of weeks ago,” he promised. His voice hinted toward a repressed emotionalism. “I mean, I might fuck up again—because fucking up seems like a way of life for me sometimes—but it won’t be like that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hutch said, momentarily holding Starsky’s chin to force a deeper eye contact with him. “Permission to fuck up all you want—in all ways you want to.”

“But, I mean, that wasn’t a way I wanted to. It really was an accident I saw coming, but didn’t stop in time. I’ve gotten so spoiled having sex with you, but you were really sick that day, and you weren’t going to be up for fucking for some time to come, so—”

“Answer me this: In all the ways you’ve been with women, have you been likewise with me?”

“How do you mean?”

“Is there anything you’ve shared with women that you haven’t experienced with me? Any kind of take on a relationship, or a sexual fantasy, or lifestyle that—”

“I’ve done everything with you that I’ve done with women—and then a whole lot more. I mean, I’ve risked my life for you, gone to the mat for you, died for you.”

“And sexually?”

“I’m more myself with you. I say things in sex I’d never say to a girl. I play with you—like when I edged you today—that I’ve never done with anyone else. I can be loud and I can be nasty with you. I can tell you in one minute to go fuck yourself and then, in the next, be fucking you.”

Hutch laughed. That was definitely an ability they had with each other that they could never bring into a relationship with a woman. “We get each other.”

“Exactly,” Starsky said. He kissed each of Hutch’s fingers. “I can say anything to you; I mean, most of the time. I know I can say anything to you, except when you’re in a bad mood and I don’t want to make it worse, but I know in my heart I can say anything.”

“And you can do anything, too, Starsk. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. These feelings you have for me—and that I have for you—will never change. They’re the most honest and real ones we’ve ever had with another person and there’s no turning them back.”

“Add to that that we’d never want to.”

“So, no matter how many rabbit tracks you take, no matter what you say or what you do or how you might feel about someone else—have all the ‘sneezes’ you want to have and I promise you I won’t be an asshole to you again over any of them—in the end, all roads, every single one of them, lead back to me. I’m not afraid anymore that you won’t want me someday or that you’ll leave me.”

“No?”

“Because, in the scheme of what is our lives—and given that the most real place on earth that you could possibly ever be is where you are when you’re with me—I know now, in the depth of my soul, Starsk, that you’re not going anywhere. You prove it that little bit extra every time you have sex with me.”

Starsky pulled them into a lengthy kiss, into inhaling the essence of each other in their familiar scents, into sucking each other’s lips and tongues, into feeling the warmth of their nude and muscled bodies still joined as one. Hutch tasted Starsky’s mouth of almond oil and semen, and was reminded, again, that he and Starsky crossed a line that only a great love could enable them to cross. And only a great love could have caused them the deep pain they’d recently suffered at each other’s hands.

But all roads that either of them took elsewhere would eventually and forever lead back to the other one.

“Home is where the heart is,” Starsky said in a singsong voice when the kiss eventually ended, his eyes shimmering in the afternoon light. “And you will always be home to me. I know that in the depth of my soul, Hutch, because I spent two months on an island in the South Pacific without you. That’s where I left Grace. That’s where I knew there’d be no life for me without you.”

Home is where the heart is. That, Hutch had finally come to believe. He could see it most vividly in the undying love that shone for him in Starsky’s blue eyes.

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Next: Book Eight From Dandelion Series 1: A Time Peace.