Table of Contents
A Starsky and Hutch Slash Novel
A “Lost Classic”
My Lover My Hero by Alana Searle, was published by Flamingo, ©October 10, 2003, premiering at Zebracon 16. Letters of comment can be sent to Flamingo.
This is a slash novel with adult material and was not sold to anyone under 18 years of age. This is an amateur publication created for entertainment only. There is no intent to infringe on any rights held by any holders of rights to Starsky & Hutch.
Edited and proofread by Flamingo. That means all errors are mine alone!
Originally printed by Bel-Jean Printing, Beltsville MD.
Starsky & Hutch fandom has a rich fanfic history going back to when the show was still on the air (1975-1979). Among some of the earliest works are stories that were handed from fan to fan and never published in any “official” form. Today, with the Internet and the ease with which fans can instantly publish any writing on fan fiction lists or story archives, it might be hard to imagine fiction that was considered so private, so personal, that it could only be comfortably shared friend to friend.
The novel and two short stories in this zine were written around 1981. The first story written was The Incorruptibles, which was produced for a limited-edition challenge zine called The Phone Booth published and shared only with contributors and select friends. But the scope of the story was far bigger than could be contained in that short piece. The novel, My Lover My Hero, developed and enriched that earlier story. After MLMH was completed, it remained in manuscript form, shared among friends, and was never published as a zine or made generally available to the fandom. Shortly after, a follow-up story, In the Gym, was published in a small slash letterzine called Hanky-Panky, Issue #3. Letterzines included letters, short fiction, art, news about the show or the stars, and anything else the publishers saw fit to print. They were mailed only to subscribers, and had a very limited press run. They’re collectors’ items now.
Those of us who are passionate about our fandom are always looking to share our treasures and find new ones. Once I learned of the existence of these rare manuscripts, I sought them out. They were usually found in the collections of long-time fans, the copies faded, worn, and much loved. When someone finally shared their copy of My Lover My Hero with me, I fell in love with it. Finding the two companion stories was an unexpected bonus. I consider these stories “Lost Classics.” These stories are also very much in the theme of my Dangerous Lives, Dangerous Visions slash anthologies. The storyline is one of the most unique in the fandom, the topic different and daring. These stories will not be to everyone’s taste. But they will always be some of my favorites.
So many of the writers of those rare hand-to-hand manuscripts have left fandom, disappeared, or passed. I was fortunate to meet with the writer of these stories and while discussing them with her, asked her permission to make them available to today’s readers. She had reservations about the stories and concerns about some rough edges that she felt she could improve. However, she was also concerned that with her current real-life obligations she would never get finished if she tried a re-write now. I assured her that the stories are complete and satisfying in their present state, and that other fans, like myself, had sought them out. I was very happy when she agreed to let me publish them.
A note about the order of the stories: Even though The Incorruptibles was written first, its events actually take place long after the action in My Lover My Hero. Because of this, and because that first story reveals much of the action of the later novel, which could destroy the dramatic suspense of the novel, I’ve placed The Incorruptibles after My Lover My Hero. In the Gym is the final story in the collection.
I hope you will enjoy these stories as much as I have.
Flamingo
flamingoslim@ourlakehouse.net
CHAPTER ONE
“Starsky, get your butt in here.” Lieutenant Holmes’ abrasive voice grated on Starsky’s nerves as he walked into the squadroom of the Narcotics division and stared around at the unusual sight of empty desks and chairs. What was going on? Where was everyone?
“Starsky!” Holmes’ voice again and Starsky sighed and sauntered into the small office adjoining the squadroom.
“You wanted me?” he inquired.
“Under normal circumstances the answer would be no.” Holmes was equal in rank to Starsky but senior both in years and experience. The younger man knew he was unpopular, both with Holmes and with other members of the squad, but the knowledge left him unmoved. “Right now,” Holmes continued, “I’m glad to see anyone.”
“Oh yeah? Everyone down with some kinda bug?”
“I wish they were.” The man’s worry was evident. So was his bewilderment.
Starsky frowned. “You gonna tell me or make me guess?”
“Christ! Haven’t you heard?”
“No. Obviously. Heard what?”
For an answer, Holmes pushed a piece of paper across the desk and Starsky scanned it swiftly. It was a list of names from the head of Narcotics downwards. Names he knew: Roker, Hernandez, Frickley, Scott, Venner, Gale. He noticed that his own name and that of Holmes were missing, but the list seemed to encompass around seventy per cent of the personnel of the whole department.
“So?” He looked back at Holmes.
“The ones above the red line,” Homes said tightly, “are under arrest. The others have been suspended.”
“What?”
“You heard me!” Now Holmes’ anger blistered out. “We’re down to you and me and a few others. I’m the most senior officer….”
“Jesus Christ!” The impact of the statement began to make itself felt on Starsky. He blinked and scanned the list again. “But… what the hell’s going on?”
“I don’t know. The list came from IA… goddamn them!”
“IA?”
Hutch.
His mind echoed the familiar name and the soft whisper from the past made him flinch inwardly.
“You gone deaf?”
“No.” Yet his brain refused to click into gear. A combination of bewilderment, lack of sleep, scotch, and Tony. “What’re we gonna do?” he asked, sitting heavily in the chair on the other side of Holmes’ desk and letting his eyes run over the sheet of paper again. He sent up a private vote of thanks to the gods that he was not the most senior officer present and looked at Holmes expectantly.
“I’ve called in the rest of the department.” Holmes seemed to relax slightly, possibly relieved, Starsky thought wryly, that his authority was not being challenged. “All those not on the list. I’m told IA will be in touch….”
“Is this just us or all the departments?” Starsky asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Starsky wondered about Dobey and Johnson and Valdez and his other friends on the force.
And Hutch. What about Hutch?
“So what the hell do we do?” Suddenly he felt helplessly out of his depth. “We got cases… people to see. Scott should be in court….”
“I know.” Holmes looked harassed. “I know all that. Maybe we should go through the files… get some sort of picture….”
“Jesus! That’ll take forever!”
“You got a better idea?”
Starsky hadn’t. He shrugged and got to his feet, still unable to take in the enormity of the situation. It was the sight of the empty desks, the abandoned piles of paperwork, the curiously forlorn pipe in Roker’s ashtray, the picture of Will Caron’s wife and children that forced him to see the truth. These people would probably only return here once more to collect their personal belongings. His department was almost defunct, unable to operate, out of commission. What the hell would they do? He picked up a stack of files and began to go through them mechanically, but his mind kept skipping back to one person. To Hutch, who had been a member of IA for the past three years.
The last time he had seen him had been nine months ago, in this very room. Starsky cupped his chin in his hand and stared abstractedly at the wall. It had been such a strange meeting, under the eyes of people who had heard about their partnership and had probably wondered how they would react to one another. There had been no reaction. Hutch had been imperturbable and as cool as the frosty blue of his eyes, nodding to Starsky and then turning his attention to his ex-partner’s senior officer. Starsky had felt rebuffed and disappointed, unable to believe that his old friend should virtually ignore him, and he had responded by turning his back on the smartly clad figure and concentrating on the reports on his desk.
The door opened and Starsky, interrupted in his daydream, jumped.
“Morning, Starsky.”
“Hey, Cap! What are you doing here?” Starsky got to his feet. Captain Knox had retired six months before, and Starsky was relieved to see his old superior officer, guessing why he was back even as he asked the question.
“I’ve come to organize what’s left of my fucking department,” Knox said sourly. “Somehow I’m not surprised to see you still here.” It was a backhanded compliment, but Knox had never been known for praising people.
“What do you want me to do?” Starsky asked.
“I want you to get out on the street and look obvious. Try to make like there’s ten of you.”
“Yeah.” Starsky could see the logic. The news would be out by now. A police presence had to be maintained or the city would decay rapidly into chaos.
“So go, man. What are you waiting for?”
“I wanna know what’s going on.”
Knox’s face set into even grimmer lines. His jaw stuck out aggressively and Starsky waited for the explosion. Knox was famous for his bull-like roar.
“Can’t tell you much, laddie.” The deep voice was surprisingly mild. Knox had Scottish forebears and was proud of them. “I’ve got six other retired officers coming in to take care of the paperwork. But we need as many cops as possible out on the street.”
Starsky wanted to ask about Hutch. It was suddenly important that he know what had happened to his ex-partner. Surely he was all right. Hutch was incorruptible. Or he had been three years ago. Was he still? Did the White Knight still ride, or had he been seduced by the power invested in him by IA? Starsky doubted that Knox would know, and one other point also worried him.
“Cap…?”
“What?”
“This is okay, isn’t it? I mean, it isn’t some kinda….” Starsky was not sure what word he should use. “…Rebellion?” he finished. “It’s so weird….”
“It’s okay, Starsky.”
Knox’s former bulldozer manner seemed to have been softened by his retirement. “This isn’t anarchy. IA is taking the rotten apples outta the barrel. That’s all. We’ll keep you up to date. Now get going.”
“Yessir!”
Starsky went meekly, collecting his car from the half-deserted police garage and wishing that he still had the Torino. No one would have missed that car. This three-year-old coupe was a sober navy blue, with just a thin line of white streaked along its side to emphasize his individuality. He had sold the Torino as soon as he’d come out of the hospital after those last traumatic gunshot wounds that had nearly killed him. It had been a part of his old life and he had wanted to put all that behind him.
He drove out of the garage and turned towards the section of the city that he knew best, and where the people knew him. There were enough black-and-white police cars around for Starsky to have judged it to be a normal day if he had not known better. Yet, one patrol car was being driven by a desk sergeant who looked close to retirement, and another by a captain. It looked as if they were pushing every available man onto the street.
As Knox had promised, he was kept informed, and as the news filtered through he began to get a better picture of what had happened. He had always known that corruption existed in the force. He had accepted the fact knowing it to be a part of life, and while he hated the idea and would cheerfully arrest any crooked cop, the extent of this clean-up operation was a surprise. His surprise turned to shock and bewilderment and then anger as some of the names began to leak through. The Deputy Chief of Police, John Mirren, heads of departments including his own Narcotics division, captains to patrolmen, rookies to men with twenty years’ service.
IA was running the force, at least for the moment, and Starsky found that piece of knowledge unpalatable. He did not like IA. He had never liked IA. He distrusted them and suspected their motives, and his personal encounters with them had been inflammatory. And since Hutch was a part of them, his ex-partner was not to be trusted either. Simple equation of facts.
Sometimes Starsky hated facts.
It was going to be a long day. He put his police light on top of his car to make himself more conspicuous and drove for miles, always on the move, making sure that he was seen, visiting bars and pool halls and places where people gathered.
The heat of the day pounded against his shoulders whenever he left the car and the upholstery of his vehicle provided a sticky welcome whenever he returned to it.
He sensed a tension in the city that he called home, but it was an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty rather than violence. Television broadcasts and radio news now covered nothing but bulletins about what was happening on the force. William Parker, the Police Chief, and Alexander Terry, head of IA, were both interviewed and their calm reassurance, Starsky decided grudgingly, carried confidence.
Knox caught up with him at five in the afternoon, meeting him on a street corner in his own station wagon. Starsky climbed wearily into the passenger seat and shut his eyes for a moment.
“How’s it going?” Knox asked.
“Not so bad.” Starsky shrugged. “Quiet.”
“Too quiet?”
“I don’t think so.” Starsky tried to judge the mood of the streets. “There’s plenty of black-and-whites around. I guess most people don’t realize how bad it is.” He shot a quick sideways glance at his superior officer. Knox looked tired. “It is bad, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” The older man passed him an envelope. “Read that.” Starsky was conscious of Knox’s eyes on him as he slit it open and read the letter inside. Then he met faded blue eyes. “Promotion?” he said stupidly. “Captain?”
“As from this moment. Congratulations, Captain.”
“Yeah, but….” Starsky could not believe it.
“You’ve got the ingredients IA is looking for, laddie,” Knox said gruffly. “You’re straight and you’re experienced….”
Oh Christ! Starsky thought wildly, if only he knew!
“…I’m only staying ’til things are halfway back to normal. Then it’ll be up to men like Holmes and you. It’ll be a big job.”
“Yeah.”
Starsky went back to his letter. Two things had startled him. One was the promotion itself, and the other was the signature of the Deputy Head of IA, Kenneth J. Hutchinson.
Deputy Head? Hutch?
What had happened to his ex-partner during the last three years to cause this rise in status? What had Hutch done?
Once again Starsky remembered the grave-faced stranger who had stalked into the Narco squadroom nine months before, and now he wondered what had lain behind the quiet exterior. How much had Hutch changed? Would he now know the man with whom he had shared so much? Would he be able to understand his ex-partner as he had understood and loved him three years before? Partner, friend, brother: that’s what Hutch had been, but it all now seemed a long time ago. Had Hutch sanctioned, even recommended him for this promotion?
“You’re too damn quiet, Starsky,” Knox observed.
“Sorry, Cap, I was thinking.”
“Yeah? Well stop thinking and start driving. You got another couple of hours on the streets, then I want you back at Metro for a conference.”
“Sure.” Starsky was not certain that he fully understood all the ramifications of the situation in which he found himself, but to his surprise he found the thought of a new challenge exciting.
“Get going then.”
“Yeah.”
* * *
Starsky finally drove home at four in the morning, disillusioned by the events of the day and too bone-weary to be proud of his elevated status. He was torn in half by a desire to be alone and an inner urge to seek company, even if it was only a warm, willing body that he could be close to for a little while. Tony was out of town, but Starsky was relieved. The man was not what he needed. Tony was not a listener and never a comforter. Tony was only concerned with his own problems.
His apartment, his home for the last three years, seemed empty and echoing. Starsky took a beer from the icebox and wandered out onto the sun deck to watch the sky begin to lighten in the distance.
He was disturbed, both by the events of the day and by memories that had lain dormant for many months now, stifled by his determination to bury them forever. Now they were struggling for recognition again and he was too tired to fight them. He sat in one of the garden chairs, closed his eyes and allowed his mind to drift backwards.
It had all begun one dreary morning after he had been discharged from the Intensive Care Unit and was fighting against the boredom of his recuperation period:
“How’re you doing?” Hutch walked into the hospital room and Starsky flung down the magazine he was reading and turned a welcoming face towards his partner.
“Okay.” The pain was an ever-present, nagging ache, but he didn’t mention it. Hutch would know. “You?”
“Busy.” Hutch dropped onto the side of the bed and the backs of his fingers brushed against Starsky’s arm as he settled himself comfortably. It seemed an accidental, casual contact, but Starsky knew better. Hutch did it every day, in some form, and it was just for reassurance that his partner was still alive, that blood still pumped in his veins, that his body was still warm and vital. Neither of them said anything, and Hutch made no attempt to excuse his need for that gentle touch of skin-to-skin, but Starsky enjoyed the feeling of being cared about and having that concern transmitted into a physical action.
“I want to talk to you,” Hutch continued, and Starsky looked into the open, handsome face and marveled again that such a gentle-looking man could be so hard and so ruthless when the occasion demanded.
“Sure,” he agreed easily.
“I’ve got bad news.”
Starsky felt his stomach lurch as though he were dropping in a high-speed elevator. Only one kind of bad news could bring that look of anxious worry into the sapphire eyes.
“Oh yeah?” It might not be what he was dreading. It might not be. But he knew that it was.
“The doctors wanted to tell you…” Hutch’s sensitive fingers plucked at the counterpane, “…but I thought I should do it….” and the blue eyes dropped.
“Tell me what?” But he didn’t want to know.
“I don’t think I can say it.” The fingers smoothed the creases in the material. “Oh damn!”
“I think you should try.”
“Okay.” The blond head came up and Hutch met his eyes levelly. “You aren’t going to be fit enough to go back on the streets. Oh…” the quiet voice hurried on, “you’re gonna be okay. But the doctors don’t think you’ll be strong enough to… to… well, to take any more punishment.”
“They don’t think?” Starsky emphasized the last word.
“They know,” Hutch said definitely.
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Believe me, so am I!”
There was a short silence after that while Hutch kept his head bent and Starsky eyed the shining blond hair and fought to keep the tears out of his eyes. Why was he being so rough on his partner? Hutch had done nothing wrong. He could have spared the blond having to endure the last few moments if he had just told him that he knew what his physical condition was. Of course he wouldn’t go back on the streets. With the injuries he’d received, he’d be lucky if he could ever run ten yards again without hurting inside.
“What’m I gonna do?” he asked helplessly.
“Me ‘n’ thee!” Hutch’s head came up. “It’s what we’re gonna do.”
“I’m scared.” Starsky would have made the admission to no other person in the world. Only with Hutch could he let down all the barriers because his partner knew him and understood his weaknesses and his strengths. He trusted Hutch and he reached out and grasped the restless fingers tightly, stilling the blond’s nervous movements and asking, without words, for reassurance.
“You don’t have to be.” Hutch spoke quietly and his hand turned within Starsky’s so that Starsky found his own fingers held. “I’ve got it all worked out.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” Hutch’s blue eyes were suddenly alive with excitement. “I’ve joined IA. There’s a place for you too.”
“IA?” Starsky repeated blankly. “You in IA? Me in IA? Me?” His voice rose. “Are you outta your skull?” He snatched his hand away.
“Listen to me!” Hutch reached for him again, urgency written into every line of his face. “It’s a chance. A chance for us to work together the way we have been….”
“In IA?” Starsky’s tone reflected his outrage. “You know what we think of that outfit.”
“So now we’ve got a chance to change it.”
“Change it?” Starsky could hardly believe what he was hearing. “How?” And then, “Oh Jesus Christ, is this another crusade? Huh? Is the White Knight riding again? Hutch, when are you going to learn that you can’t change the world?”
“Starsk….”
Yes, he was hurting his partner. So what? Hadn’t he suffered? Hadn’t he endured more pain than any man should be asked to? Starsky banished the twinges of guilt engendered by the pale face before his eyes and hardened his heart.
“No,” he said angrily. “I don’t wanna listen.”
“Starsky, please!”
“No!” He snapped the word out arrogantly. “You join IA if you want to. Christ, you already have, haven’t you? Well, not me, buddy. Not me. I ain’t gonna spy on other cops… run witch hunts….”
“It won’t be like that.”
“No?” Starsky made the words into a sneer. “What will it be like then?” Silence. Hutch bent his head and seemed to be studying the pattern on the counterpane while Starsky waited for an answer. “Well?” he demanded, and the air became thick with unspoken questions and emotions.
Hutch looked up and their eyes locked, will battling with will, loyalty struggling with loyalty.
“Join me.” Hutch’s lips suddenly seemed too stiff to form the words properly. “Please.”
“No.” No, he would not allow Hutch to order his life. Why couldn’t they have discussed this and decided their future together? Why had Hutch taken such a step alone?
“Okay.” The blond stood up abruptly. “Maybe I should give you some time to think about it. Maybe you’re tired.”
“I am not tired!” But he was. His chest hurt and his head ached and his eyes felt hot and dry. He wanted to cry and he wanted the luxury of being weak and being comforted. It was pride that kept him silent.
“Think about it,” Hutch advised. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
This was a man Starsky did not know. A cold man, a man who had made up his mind and was not going to change it. Where was the warm, compassionate side of Hutch’s nature that had been such an integral part of the man? He needed that loving care and the blond was denying him.
“I won’t change my mind,” he warned. “You’ll have to change yours. If you want us to stay together.”
He knew he had struck a nerve. Hutch, poised at the door of the room, flinched. Then he shook his head.
“I can’t, Starsk,” he said gently and anguish stared out of the expressive eyes. “I’m sorry.” And then he was gone.
Starsky rolled his head wearily against the back of the chair. After three years the hurt had subsided to a dull, niggling ache, but tonight the memories seemed more vivid than ever. He could remember so clearly the very last meeting between them, and the terrible constraint that had held them apart. His partner had asked him once again to join IA, and once again Starsky had refused. Contemptuously. That had been the last time Hutch had visited him, and the rift had been complete.
Looking back, Starsky could see how the estrangement had slowed his recovery. He had been without his anchor, rudderless and adrift on a hostile sea, unable to make sense of the thoughts that scrambled his brain or the depression that in the end had threatened his sanity. He had been too proud to get a message through to Hutch that he needed him. The fighter in him—that part of him that gritted its teeth and refused to admit defeat—had insisted that he could survive without his partner. He had been abandoned, left to bear his pain alone, forced to turn in on himself so much that in the end he had not been able to communicate with anyone, turning into a mindless, agonized robot who ate and slept and exercised according to instructions, but who cried inside. All the time.
Like a lost child. Finally, defeated, he had been forced to seek the help of a psychiatrist and, little by little, he had dragged himself out of his massive depression, extricating himself from his morass of self-pity and slowly getting back into the real world again.
Starsky got up from the garden chair and winced as the pain lanced down his left side. He knew he would never become accustomed to the limitations that his body set upon his life-style. Now he was being warned that he had worked for too long and must have rest. He decided to lie down, even if the sleep he courted did not come to him, and he doubted that it would. Tonight his head was full of memories of his partner; memories of how they had been when they were younger and he had been fit and active. Memories triggered off by the events of the day.
The knock on his door startled him and he glanced at his watch automatically, wondering who could be calling on him at such an hour. Well, he reflected philosophically, if they wanted him back at Metro then they would have to wait. He had to get some rest.
The man at the door was a stranger. Starsky kept his left hand—the hand holding his gun—hidden, and only relaxed a little when the man produced his police identity.
“Carl Reiner,” the young man said. “May I speak to you, sir?”
“What d’you want?”
“I got someone in the car… my boss… who’d like to see you.”
“And just who the hell is your boss?”
“Commander Hutchinson.”
“Commander Hutchinson? Where did that title come from?”
“IA is being re-structured, sir.”
“Why can’t he come up here?”
For a moment the younger man hesitated. “It’s safer,” he said at last, enigmatically. “Will you come, sir? Please?”
“Aw, fuck him!” Commander or no commander, Hutch was not going to order him around. “Go tell your boss to….” Memories of a younger man, a partner who had laughed with him and shared his life, made the words stick in his throat.
“Same old Starsky.” The husky voice startled him and he peered into the gloom to see a familiar figure slowly climbing the stairs towards him. His guts contracted painfully and he had to restrain the impulse to turn and run, to slam the door on all of them before the specters could rise again to haunt him.
“Sir… you said you’d wait in the car,” Reiner muttered.
“Yeah…” a ghost of Hutch’s old laugh, “but you don’t know this guy….”
“It isn’t safe.” Reiner slipped behind Starsky and snapped off the porch light. Starsky approved. Two more steps upwards would make Hutch a perfect target. But for whom?
“Jesus, Carl, you’re like an old woman.”
“I’ve got my orders, Commander.”
“And so have I.” Another figure came up behind Hutch. “Please come back to the car, sir.”
“Is he any safer there?” Starsky was bemused by it all, but he was conscious of one pair of blue eyes watching him steadily.
“Bulletproof glass,” Reiner said shortly. “Please, Commander!”
“No.” The single word was snapped with an authority that Starsky did not recognize. “I want to talk to Captain Starsky. “So just back off, the pair of you.”
“Can’t you go inside?” the second man asked.
“No, I can’t. Now will you do as you’re damn well told?”
The two men retreated a little and Starsky watched them for a moment before turning his attention to his ex-partner.
“Bodyguards?” he asked.
“Not my idea.” Hutch shrugged.
“So what do you want?”
Hutch leaned against the doorframe and Starsky watched him narrowly, sensing that the casual pose hid a weariness that matched Starsky’s own fatigue.
“I’d like to talk to you.” Hutch’s voice was no more than a whisper.
“Oh yeah? After three years?” Starsky could not restrain the bitter little comment.
“I know.” The blond head nodded slowly in acknowledgement of all Starsky’s unspoken words. “I know it’s a hell of a lot to ask, but….”
“But what?”
“Please.” A hesitation, and then the words that Starsky could not ignore. “For old times, huh?”
“Old times?” Seven years of memories wrapped up in this one man.
“Yes.” And then again, “Please, Starsk.”
“Okay.” A tremor in the quiet voice alerted Starsky even more than the whispered plea to the fact that something was terribly wrong. “Come in.”
With the door closed and locked behind them, Starsky switched the light on again and turned to look at his ex-partner. Hutch stood quite still under the intensive scrutiny, but color tinged his face and Starsky had to control all his emotions in order not to betray his feelings.
“You look terrible,” he said briefly.
“I don’t feel too great.”
“You wanna sit down?”
“Thanks.”
Hutch dropped heavily into an easy chair and Starsky went straight to the bottle of brandy that he kept in his cabinet. He needed those few minutes with his back to Hutch to bring his chaotic feelings back under control and to assess what he had seen.
Hutch looked old. Old and grey and totally and absolutely defeated. There was no life in the blue eyes, the big, sensitive mouth was bloodless, and the blond shining hair that Starsky remembered so well was clinging damply and dully to his skull, making his face look even more drawn than perhaps it really was. Hutch looked like the walking dead and it hurt Starsky to see him.
He poured a generous amount of brandy into a glass, poured a smaller measure for himself, and turned back to his ex-partner. Immediately he was struck by a desire to touch him; touch his shoulder or his hair or the vulnerable nape of his neck, and simply tell him that it would be all right. But it was too soon for that. Much too soon.
“Drink this,” he said abruptly, and he sensed that sympathy would help neither of them. Hutch might break down, and Starsky knew that he might join him, out of sheer pity for the wreck of the man in the chair.
“Thanks.” The glass rattled against Hutch’s teeth, but Starsky restrained the impulse to steady the shaking hand.
“What is IA doing to you?” he asked quietly. “Man, you look as if you’ve just come down off the cross.”
“I’m tired.” Hutch took another gulp of brandy. “That’s all.”
“Tired?” Starsky laughed mirthlessly. “Jesus Christ! You looked at yourself lately?”
“Don’t. Please.”
“Sorry.” Starsky perched himself on the arm of his other chair and the two men stared at one another for a few moments in a silence that made the dark-haired man writhe inwardly. They had been so close—once. Had it all gone? Did they have nothing to say to one another? Where was the closeness of spirit, the empathy that three years ago would have told him what Hutch was thinking?
“Why did you come here?” Starsky asked quietly.
“I didn’t have anyone else to go to.” Always so damned honest! Why couldn’t Hutch have lied? And yet the words were spoken without any kind of self-pity. They were a statement of fact.
“What about your friends outside?”
“Bodyguards. That’s all.”
“Don’t you have plenty of friends in IA?” The question was irresistible but Starsky regretted the sneer he put into his voice as soon as the words were uttered.
The empty glass was set down with exquisite care. “I’ll go now,” Hutch said colorlessly and he got to his feet slowly and with an obvious effort.
“Don’t be such a damn fool!”
“I shouldn’t have come here. It was stupid.”
“Why?” Starsky faced his ex-partner squarely, demanding an answer. This time he needed Hutch to tell the truth.
“Why?” A death’s head smile crossed the gaunt features. “Because three years was too long. I shouldn’t expect you to… to….”
“To what?”
“Never mind.” The flash of arrogant fire in Hutch’s voice was immediately quenched by his exhaustion. “It doesn’t matter.” His voice dropped to a whisper.
“Oh, yes, it does. Tell me.” Starsky was pushing the man beyond his limits and he knew it, but this was important. He might not get a straight answer when Hutch was less tired.
“I shouldn’t expect you to care what happens to me.” And Starsky knew that he was hearing the truth.
“No, you shouldn’t,” he agreed quietly and then, as Hutch turned away, “but I’m still damn glad you came.”
“Yes?” There was a slight lift in the soft voice but Hutch’s eyes as he looked back over his shoulder remained lifeless.
“Yeah. So go and get undressed and get into bed. You’re staying here tonight with me. I’ll tell your goons.”
“I can’t….”
Starsky played his last card. “Walk out of here now,” he said slowly and distinctly, “and you need never come back. Never. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“So do as you’re told.”
Hutch just stood there and looked at him, and Starsky realized that his ex-partner needed something more than a bed for a few hours. He had to have something to help him just to get through the night and remain sane, and Starsky was shocked as the word skimmed into his brain and stayed there like a neon sign. Was Hutch really so close to the brink?
It was not a time for clear judgment. It was a time for instinctive action. Starsky closed the gap that separated them and put his arms around the taut frame, holding Hutch tightly and pressing the blond head to his shoulder. The man was so thin! He could feel Hutch’s boniness, and the slender body seemed frail, as if he could snap Hutch’s spine if he hugged him too fiercely.
“You’re gonna be okay,” Starsky whispered. “You’ll be fine. Trust me. You’re safe here.”
The blond sagged, and it seemed as if it was only tension and stress that had been keeping him on his feet. Starsky braced himself against the weight and then half-led, half-carried the slumping figure into the bedroom, cursing the pain in his chest brought on by the maneuver and thankful when he eased Hutch onto the bed.
“Get undressed,” he said. “Can you manage? You’ll feel better if you don’t sleep in your clothes.”
“I can manage.” But Hutch was obviously making a supreme effort.
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Sure.”
As Starsky turned away, Hutch grasped his wrist and held onto him. “Thanks.” There was no need for any more than the single word and Starsky guessed that they both knew it.
“It’ll be okay,” he whispered, shaken by the unexpected emotion inside him caused by the fingers on his skin and that one word. “Don’t worry.”
He left before he could say too much, before the intensity of the moment could loosen his tongue too freely, but all the way to his front door he could feel the grip of Hutch’s hand imprinted on his flesh.
“Reiner?” He called the name softly and when the younger man appeared out of the shadows, he spoke authoritatively. “Commander Hutchinson will stay here tonight. And he’ll stay here tomorrow if he isn’t fit for work.”
“But Captain….”
“But nothing!” Starsky snapped. “The man’s only one step away from a breakdown. Couldn’t any of you see that? You tryin’ to kill him or something?”
“Sir….”
“There is one door out of this apartment,” Starsky swept on over the man’s interruption. “This one. You can stand and guard it. Your partner….”
“Vandam, sir.”
“…Vandam can cover the back. But I’m taking the phone off the hook and I’m not going to answer the door until Commander Hutchinson looks less like a zombie and more like a human being. Is that quite clear?”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”
“You’re very welcome.” Starsky closed the door and slid the chain across victoriously. It seemed that his new rank might be an asset after all.
Back in the living room he stared at the half-open bedroom door and sighed, wondering what he had done with his impulsive offer of help. He pitied the man in the other room with all his heart. Pitied him and was worried to death about him—and loved him. When he eventually went into the bedroom he saw that Hutch was already asleep, lying on his back with his arms flung above his head, and he stood and looked down at the unconscious man with that love filling his heart.
Hutch.
His Hutch. His beautiful, blond, ex-partner. How long had he loved him? More important, how long had he been in love with him so that one smile could make his heart beat fast and one touch of Hutch’s hand could make him want and need and desire so badly? He was not sure. All that he was sure of was that he still loved him. In every way that it was possible for one human being to love another.
The blond looked as exhausted in sleep as he had done while he was awake. Starsky watched him compassionately, noting the deep lines on his face that sleep could not ease away, and the grey pallor of his skin that not even his tan could hide.
What did the rest of him look like? Starsky remembered reaching a stage where he did not dare to be in the vicinity when Hutch was dressing or undressing in case he forgot himself and went down on his knees in adoration of the perfect male body. What did Hutch look like now? Suddenly he wanted to know.
Carefully he inched the bedclothes away from the sleeping man, aware of a feeling that he was taking advantage of his ex-partner and half ashamed of his curiosity. He looked, he assessed, he tried to be objective—and he failed. He was appalled, his eyes confirming what his arms had told him earlier. Hutch was so thin, so damn thin, so terribly, awfully thin. Gone was the clear, healthy sheen of flesh. Now he was looking at the wreck of a man, a man worn down by attrition, a man who seemed to have given his body as well as his mind in doing his job. Did he ever eat? He obviously did not take care of himself.
Starsky felt the tears fill his eyes. He could see the outline of the man’s bones, as if Hutch were already a skeleton. He could almost count his ribs, and his pelvis was clearly outlined by the taut flesh stretched over it, flesh that looked dry and parched where once it had been satiny.
Gently Starsky lowered the covers, hiding the ravages from his sight, and left the room slowly to find blankets and make up a bed for himself on the couch. His head was full of thoughts, full of memories, but the pain he felt in his side was a grim reality and he knew from past experience that if he did not lie down soon, it would get worse. God, if only he was really fit! Now, now of all times he needed his strength, both for his work and for Hutch’s sake.
He could still hardly believe, as he stretched out on the couch, that he and Hutch were really under the same roof. After three years it seemed like a miracle, and he was filled with a sense of completion that made him feel smug and safe and protective all at the same time. If Hutch would stay then he would look after him; make the sweet lips smile again, bring a sparkle back to the lack-luster eyes and color back to the white face. How he had loved to hear Hutch laugh! It had been such a joyful sound, full of the vigor of a man in the prime of his life, and so infectious that everyone around him had smiled too.
What had happened to the men to make him look the way he did? Why hadn’t someone done something about his physical condition? Starsky moved restlessly on the couch with the knowledge that no one could answer the questions but Hutch himself, and that if his ex-partner chose to walk out of the apartment in a few hours’ time, there would be nothing that he could do about it.
Yet Hutch had come to him. He hadn’t gone to a woman or to any other friend, but back to the man from whom he had been estranged for three years. It had to mean something and Starsky glowed with the thought that despite his pride and his position in the force, Hutch had still returned to his oldest friend and had asked to stay.
Stay forever!
If only it could be like that. Starsky snuggled a little further under the covers and took his mind back to the moment when he had lifted the bedcovers to look at his partner’s naked body. Defenseless in that nakedness and completely relaxed, Hutch had displayed an exquisite, fragile maleness that Starsky found just as alluring as the physical toughness of Tony.
Tony.
Jesus Christ, what was he going to do about Tony? He could never explain him to Hutch and, conversely, how could he possibly expect Tony to understand the new, intricately precarious relationship that he now had with his ex-partner? Tony had to go. There was no question of choice. There was no choice. Tony was just Tony but Hutch was someone very precious and very special.
Starsky turned onto his side and winced as the pain throbbed through him again. It was bearable, but he could not prevent his mind from inventing a wistful little scenario in which he was lying in bed with Hutch and hurting. He imagined Hutch laying his hand gently over the scars and the pain receding as if the cool fingers were drawing it out through his skin and into Hutch’s own body. He wriggled as he became more absorbed in his reverie and visualized that wonderful, sensitive mouth being pressed to the marred skin of his chest as Hutch replaced pain with pleasure. There would be no need for words. He would look into eyes one shade lighter than his own and Hutch would complete the healing by signaling his love.
I love you.
In his head, in the secret darkness of his bedroom, he had sometimes—when he was too tired and weak to fight it—dreamed of seeing Hutch’s face soften as he said the words and then hearing his partner make an answering declaration of his own.
What would Hutch be like to make love to? Starsky had always imagined a body as strong and as muscled as his own, but the Hutch he had seen tonight was not like that. Now he only had to close his eyes to remember tautly stretched skin over pelvic bones and the first signs of the wasting of the muscles of arms and thighs. Yet Hutch was still desirable. Starsky recalled the soft cock nestling in a curly mat of blond hair as his hand crept down to his own groin.
He tried to imagine the feel of Hutch’s mouth closing over his straining organ, sucking and sucking until he was sent spinning into a whirlpool of shuddering delight. Swiftly his mind rearranged the scenario as his fingers fumbled with the zipper of his pants and drew out his hardening cock.
There was a better fantasy. He was about to enter Hutch’s body, poised like a diver on a high board and knowing a moment of thrilling anticipation before he cast himself into the stifling heat of the waiting body below his own, cleaving flesh and muscle as a diver finds a clean, flashing entry into water. And, like the diver, the contact took his breath away so that he was drowning in pleasure, unable to breathe or see but conscious of his power and the wonder of his own body and the one beneath his.
Starsky’s hand moved more quickly. He and Hutch were gasping out their love together, using the rhythm of their bodies to underline their unity, and taking and giving in a harmony that was too wonderful to be born. Hutch was begging him to do it faster, harder, harder, and in his mind Starsky could hear the husky voice urging him on. He shuddered as his orgasm hit him, spewing semen over his hand and onto the blanket, making him bite his lip to prevent himself from crying out as the pain in his side advanced again.
Gasping, sweating, he succumbed to the ominous warning that his body could stand no more and relaxed bonelessly. Yet, despite the discomfort and the stickiness on his skin, and the restriction of the couch, he was happy. Hutch was here, only a few feet away, and for the first time in three years. Starsky felt fully alive again. Alive and content and happy.
CHAPTER TWO
When Starsky awoke it was afternoon and the sun was beating against the closed drapes. He opened one eye and glanced at the watch that he had forgotten to take off his wrist the previous night. Then, he remembered Hutch.
The blond lay almost as he had left him and Starsky wondered if he had moved at all during the night. He was still deeply asleep so Starsky slipped from the bedroom, went to the bathroom and then pulled on jeans and a tee shirt and went barefoot to the front door to open it and peer out.
Reiner sat in an unobtrusive sedan. He was watching the house and when he saw Starsky he got out of his car and crossed the road towards him. Starsky waited impassively, assessing the man, and he realized that Reiner was older than he had first taken him for. Probably just over thirty, thin and intense looking, his hair neatly trimmed and the business suit that he was wearing looking totally unruffled despite his night in the car. Starsky was not sure what the man’s attitude would be, but he was determined to protect his ex-partner at all costs.
“Cap….” Reiner ran lightly up the stairs. “How’s Commander Hutchinson?”
“Asleep,” Starsky said succinctly. “And looking like he won’t wake up for a week.”
“Oh. Fine.”
“Yeah, but be won’t be going any place today.”
“Whatever you say.”
This was not quite what Starsky had expected. He had thought he might lose his promotion before he had properly gained it if IA took exception to his arbitrary behavior.
“Chief Terry’s compliments, sir,” Reiner continued, “and he’d be obliged if you’d call him when you have the time.”
“Oh… sure.” This, too, was unexpected. IA was not noted for making requests or for politeness.
“I’ve got orders to do anything I can,” Reiner said, and suddenly he seemed less remote and hard than Starsky had at first thought. “Can I suggest that you keep your drapes pulled?”
“Sure.”
“You want anything?”
Starsky remembered the wasted frame beneath the bedcovers.
“You could arrange to get me some food in,” he said. “I don’t want to leave here right now.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.”
It was all too easy. Starsky wondered if it was the fact that he was a captain that was making Reiner so amenable, or the fact that he had IA’s golden boy inside his house. He suspected that Reiner’s eagerness to please was due to Hutch and not to him, but that didn’t matter. So long as he got the help he needed for his ex-partner, he did not care where it came from.
“I’ll want milk.” He thought quickly. “Steak, eggs, fruit, and beer. And could you get some clothes from Commander Hutchinson’s apartment?”
“No problem.” Reiner smiled. “He looks like he could use some good food, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the chief wants you to do what you can for him.” Reiner shrugged. “The worst of his job’s over now.”
Starsky wanted to ask questions about what Hutch’s job had been, but he checked himself. He would ask Hutch. He had so many questions, but many of them were emotive and he wasn’t sure how he should approach his partner, ex-partner, or even if Hutch would open up to him at all.
“Anything else?” Reiner asked, after Starsky had found the key to Hutch’s apartment and handed it over.
“No, I don’t think so. Just leave him in peace, will you?”
“Yes sir.”
Starsky closed the front door quietly and turned back towards the bedroom. Hutch was sitting up in bed, arms hugged around his knees and the bedclothes carefully tucked around his waist. He looked sleepy, but he smiled when Starsky walked towards him.
“Hi,” Starsky said cheerfully.
“Hi, yourself.” The voice was still a little husky, but Starsky didn’t care. It sounded more like the Hutch he had known three years ago than the desperate man who had come to his door the previous night.
“I’ve lent Reiner your key so he can pick up some fresh clothes for you,” Starsky said conversationally. “Okay?”
“Sure.”
“You wanna talk, eat, or get some more sleep?” He crossed to the bed and sat on the edge of it.
“I’m not hungry.”
“No?” Deliberately Starsky let his eyes rest on his partner’s naked chest. “Do you ever eat?”
“Of course.”
“Oh yeah? How many pounds underweight are you?”
“I’m….” Hutch shrugged and laughed a little. It was an embarrassed sound. “I’m fine. Don’t fuss, Starsky.”
“How about a glass of milk and some crackers?”
“Yes, okay. Thanks.”
While Starsky went into the kitchen he heard Hutch close the bathroom door and he smiled. There was a hint of intimacy in the domesticity of their situation. Outside the apartment IA was waiting on them and protecting them. Inside it was just himself and Hutch in an oasis of calm. It might be only temporary but Starsky decided that he liked the arrangement. It was good to feel close to another human being—twice as good because it was Hutch.
When he got back into the bedroom, the blond was just getting back into bed, and Starsky had a tantalizing view of long legs and pale flesh before Hutch pulled the covers around him.
“Here you are.” Starsky handed over the milk and Hutch thanked him with a grin before suddenly and unexpectedly putting his left hand up to his mouth and then swallowing some of the milk immediately afterwards.
“What the hell…?” Starsky reached for the slender wrist and grasped it roughly, pulling sharply downwards. “What have you taken?” he demanded. “You… you dumb bastard, what’ve you just swallowed?”
“Can’t a guy take an aspirin without getting yelled at around here?” Hutch asked mildly, but his voice lacked conviction.
“It wasn’t aspirin. What was it?”
When Hutch shrugged, Starsky got up and, looking around him, saw that Hutch’s jacket had been moved. He went through the pockets swiftly, ignoring the startled protest from the man in the bed, and brought out the plastic container of pills with a triumphant grunt.
“You don’t need these!” Starsky read the label, looked at the pills and pulled a face. “Goddamn it, man, you’re dead on your feet.”
“I do need them.” The blue eyes that had been blank the previous night now had a little life in them. “Can’t sleep without them.”
“Oh, Hutch!”
“Don’t ‘Oh, Hutch’ me!” A little of Hutch’s old fire returned for a moment. “You don’t know the facts. If you did then you might not be so god-almighty superior.”
“So tell me.” Starsky sat down on the side of the bed again. “I want to understand.”
“Not now.”
Hutch had perhaps been about to open up a little, but Starsky realized that he had pushed him too hard. He would hear the whole story eventually, if he had to tie Hutch down to get it, but lines of fatigue still marred the young-old face and Starsky felt his own expression soften.
“Okay,” he said good-naturedly, “but you’ll have to tell me sometime.”
“I owe you that.”
“Yes, I think you do.”
Starsky met the weary gaze steadily and acknowledged, with the smallest of nods, all the unspoken grief of the previous three years.
“I don’t remember much about last night,” Hutch changed the subject abruptly. “But I do want to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For helping me when I needed it.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Suddenly it seemed important to Starsky that he get a truthful answer to his question.
“I honestly didn’t know.”
Starsky wanted to tell his partner that he loved him; that he had always loved him even when they had been apart, although he had denied it to himself over and over again. He said nothing. He simply smiled and held out his hand in an involuntary gesture of comfort and Hutch took it quickly and eagerly. For a while they sat in a comfortable silence and then the blond’s eyelids drooped and Starsky released him and watched as he slid down under the covers.
“Sleep well,” Starsky said softly.
“Thanks.” Hutch seemed almost too tired to talk, but he made one last obvious effort to speak clearly. “Don’t sleep on the couch again….”
“What?”
“You look tired too. This is a big bed.”
“Yeah.”
Starsky sat where he was, quietly and patiently, until he was sure that Hutch was asleep. Then he left the bedroom, closed the door and telephoned the head of IA.
“Captain Starsky….” As soon as Alexander Terry identified his caller, his sharp voice became more mellow. “How’s Commander Hutchinson?”
“Sleeping.” Starsky wanted to make accusations but he closed his mouth firmly. He might tell Reiner and his colleagues what to do, but Alex Terry was a different matter.
“Well, that’s good,” Terry said cheerfully.
“Is it?” Starsky asked bleakly. Then he added, “You wanted to talk to me?” He would not call the man “sir.” He did not deserve it if he could let an officer under his command fall apart in front of his eyes.
“I thought we should discuss Hutch.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. I want to know how he is. I never guessed he’d go to you last night. Officially, Reiner and Vandam were his bodyguards, but that was partly an excuse to make sure Hutch had someone with him. He was in a strange mood.”
“He’s close to some kind of breakdown,” Starsky observed neutrally.
“Yes.” Quiet agreement from Terry.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“He came to you last night,” Terry said. “Back to his old partner. You let him sleep at your place. From what you’ve said to Reiner and me, I assume you’re worried about him….”
“Anyone with eyes in his head would be worried!” Starsky snapped. “He’s underweight… God knows how long he’s been living on his nerves… he’s a sick man!” It would not be right to mention the pills. Loyalty to Hutch kept him silent.
“I know.”
“So why didn’t you fucking well do something about it?” Starsky tried to gulp back his anger.
“You should know the answer to that better than me, Starsky. You know Hutch.” Terry’s voice became sharp. “And have you given any thought to the fact that if you had joined IA like your partner asked you to, you might have been able to help him during these last three years?”
It hurt. Starsky had acknowledged the truth of that to himself already, but he did not need Terry to remind him of it.
“He’s sick,” he said, more quickly.
“So do something.”
“Like what?”
“Look after him.”
Starsky found that he was breathing more quickly, but he sensed a deeper intent behind the simple words.
“You wanna tell me more?” he asked encouragingly.
“It’s very easy.” Terry’s voice became businesslike. “As you’ve said, he’s sick and he needs help. He obviously trusts you. Will you help him?”
“You gonna suggest how?”
“Keep him with you. Make him eat. Let him rest up and get his strength back.” Terry paused and then his voice became edged with anger. “Do you think I haven’t tried? You think we all haven’t? None of us could do anything for him. He wouldn’t listen.”
“You think I can do any better?”
“I want you to try. Will you?”
Starsky knew that he wanted to be responsible for Hutch’s life. He wanted the satisfaction of seeing the slender body fill out to the same superb proportions that he remembered from three years ago. He ached to take the hunted shadows out of the blue eyes and he wanted—oh, he wanted so much! Much more than Alexander Terry could imagine. He wanted all of Hutch. Heart and mind and soul and body. All of Hutch.
Terry was talking. Starsky listened to the reasons why Hutch was in danger until after the trials and he heard about the men who would like to take revenge on the blond for what he had done. He listened to Terry’s elaborate schemes to keep his partner safe, but his mind kept wandering to remember again the way Hutch had looked as he slept. So painfully thin. So vulnerable. Starsky felt helplessly protective towards his ex-partner; protective and strong and filled with a desire to help in any way that he could. Terry was giving him that chance. He brought his attention back to what the man was saying.
“You’re needed in Narco,” Terry continued, “needed badly. But I want you to stay home for three or four days with Hutch.”
“Yeah?” Starsky interrupted. “Suppose he has other ideas?”
“That’s up to you.”
“You want me to tie him down to keep him here?”
“Whatever it takes.”
Whatever? What would Terry say if he knew that his new Captain Starsky had seduction on his mind? If Hutch would only let him, Starsky knew he could keep the big blond happy and satisfied. He knew he could. Only Hutch was straight, not gay. Hutch liked women, not men.
“Okay.” If he could have Hutch in his home for a few days maybe he could do some good. Maybe they could at least regain a part of the old, deep friendship that he had relied upon so much in the days when they had been partners.
“Fine.” Terry hung up and left Starsky feeling aimless and a little bewildered. He had been given carte blanche to do as he thought best, but what would be the best? Would Hutch react more willingly to coaxing or to orders?
He decided to prepare a meal for his partner when he woke up again, and he worked quietly in the kitchen wishing that he had a book on nutrition to tell him what were the most important things for Hutch to eat. Protein he knew about, and vitamin C, but vitamins D and E meant little to him. He would have to find out.
When he was finished, Reiner arrived with his groceries, and after that he sat for a while and read, not really concentrating on the words but trying not to make plans. He did not know if Hutch would stay. Maybe, when he was not so tired, his partner would want to return to his own home. Maybe he wouldn’t want Starsky’s friendship.
He sat until it was almost dark again, but still Hutch showed no sign of waking and eventually, after a huge yawn, Starsky realized that he was still tired himself. He hesitated for a few moments when he had finished showering and then went into the bedroom, sliding carefully under the sheet but determinedly staying in his own half of the bed and trying to resist the lure of the naked body beside him.
Hutch trusted him enough to share his bed. He would not betray that trust, but as he closed his eyes and forced his body to relax, Hutch muttered something unintelligible and rolled over towards him as if drawn by the sudden, unexpected warmth in his bed. Starsky found himself with the blond curling up beside him, a heavy head coming to rest against his shoulder as Hutch made himself as comfortable as he could.
Again Starsky hesitated for long, long moments, but the temptation was more than he could bear. He wriggled his arm away from his side to slide it gently and carefully around the blond’s shoulders and draw him still closer. Smiling to himself, supremely content, Starsky rested his cheek against damp, soft hair, closed his eyes and slept.
* * *
When he awoke, after only a few hours, it was dark. He lay quietly and listened to Hutch’s breathing, realizing that his ex-partner had pulled away from him as they slept although he was still close enough for Starsky to feel his body heat.
So good, so right, this closeness. The way it was meant to be; the way he had always dreamed that it might be. Starsky was still sleepy, but not too tired to know that he was deluding himself. This was as close as he would ever be allowed, and this present intimacy was only because Hutch was exhausted and weak. When he was stronger he would leave and Starsky would be abandoned with his dreams.
To touch. Just once. To have one memory deep inside him to comfort him when he was alone. Couldn’t he have that? One swift, light caress over shoulder and chest, one fleeting, tactile impression of a curving thigh, feeling flesh and muscle. It couldn’t hurt Hutch if he didn’t know about it.
Slowly, stealthily, Starsky turned onto his side, shifting his torso inch by inch so that he should not disturb the sleeping man by his side. It was agony to school his body when his mind had decided upon action and he trembled as his excitement mounted. Yet he made himself move slowly, tortuously, until he lay facing the man he still called partner.
The room was too dark to see anything clearly, but he could feel Hutch’s breath sigh softly between his parted lips, and his cock stirred into life as his heart beat faster.
He stretched out his hand slowly towards Hutch’s shoulder and when he finally touched warm, firm skin, he let out his breath in an almost painful gasp of relief. He had done it! He was touching Hutch as he had wanted to for years, and as his shaking fingers moved across to his partner’s throat with a caress so delicate that it was barely making contact at all, his body reacted strongly so that he arched away in case Hutch should feel it.
From the center of Hutch’s throat his hand slipped downwards, marveling at the smoothness of the skin and how different it felt from touching Tony, whose body had as much hair as his own. This could almost be a woman he was feeling except that where there should be the swell of breasts, there was nothing except a very slight curving. Hutch’s small nipples did not harden to his touch, but the downy softness of fine hair led him downwards until his fingertips splayed outwards onto Hutch’s stomach, noting that there was not one ounce of spare flesh and wincing a little as one finger touched the bottom of his partner’s ribcage.
How long would it take to reduce Hutch’s air of fragility that was so new and so alien to him? How long before this too-thin body returned to its normal weight and Hutch looked as he had done three years before?
Lightly the palm of Starsky’s hand curved around to his partner’s thigh. There was still strength there and Starsky was glad to feel it, but he did not dare to investigate further. His body was screaming for release and for a moment he wished that Hutch was Tony.
“Don’t stop….” The voice was sleep-drugged, a mere mumble of sound, but Starsky drew in his breath in a hiss of disbelief and made an involuntary movement backwards as if to escape from the bed that had suddenly become a prison. “No….” A hand reached out for him and flopped over his waist. “…Don’t go ‘way.”
“Hutch….” What could he say? He had been caught.
“Come closer.” What was Hutch looking for? Comfort? If he moved nearer then Hutch would feel his erect cock and he would know. Did Hutch even understand what he was saying?
“Hush,” he said softly. “Go back to sleep.”
“Don’t want to.” Hutch’s voice was less slurred now.
“Yes, you do.”
“No. Come here.” The hand tugged at Starsky but did not seem to have the strength to force him to move. Starsky resisted.
“You don’t understand,” he said helplessly.
“Yes, I do. I know about you and Tony….”
“What?” Shocked, Starsky was torn between surprise and anger. “How?” He did not think to deny anything.
“I investigated you. Didn’t need to ’cause I knew you wouldn’t be involved in this mess, but Terry wanted you checked out. Guess I investigated more that I needed to….” The voice trailed off into a sigh.
“Hutch….” Never in his life had Starsky felt so lost for words. He wanted to ask questions, make explanations, tell Hutch that Tony meant nothing to him beyond being someone to sleep with, but his voice refused to work.
“Look….” Hutch’s voice in the darkness sounded anxious and nervous. “I don’t know when you’re expecting to see this Tony of yours again, but I’ll be gone in the morning. I promise. But… just for tonight… could you pretend that I was him?” The last word faltered away into silence. Then Hutch struggled again. “Oh Jesus, why should you? I shouldn’t ask you. Got no right. I just want to be close to you for one night. Just one night….”
“How close?” Starsky found that he was smiling. He shifted nearer. “This close?” He moved again and deliberately allowed his rigid cock to touch Hutch’s thigh. “This close?”
“Christ!” Hutch gasped the word and pulled away in a sudden vigorous movement. “Don’t!”
The pain of rejection lashed through Starsky and he bit down into his bottom lip to stop himself from crying out. Wrong! He had been wrong and now he would have to pay. Hutch needed him as a friend, nothing more. His blond did not want to be reminded that he was a man too, and gay.
“‘M sorry.” Hutch’s voice trembled. “Shouldn’t’ve asked. Can’t…. Couldn’t….”
“Can’t think of me that way?” Disappointment sharpened Starsky’s voice. “Well, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have been so goddamn quick to stick your nose into my affairs. I ain’t gonna apologize for being gay.” And yet he wanted to be perfect in Hutch’s eyes.
“It isn’t that.”
“So what is it?”
“If I… if we….”
“The word you’re looking for is fuck,” Starsky snapped, patience fraying as embarrassment made his face burn in the darkness.
“Okay, okay!”
“So what do you want to say, damn you?”
“I’m trying to tell you that I might want to fight Tony for your time, and… and… oh Jesus, let me outta here!” The covers were flung back but Starsky was moving before they hit the bed.
“Come here, you!” He lunged towards Hutch, caught the blond around the waist and hauled him back across the bed and into his arms. “Say that again.”
“Leave me alone, goddamn you!”
“No.” He wrestled Hutch’s arms to his sides and pinned them there. “Are you trying to tell me that you want me?”
“No.”
“No?” Starsky laughed in his throat, a husky, satisfied purr of sound. “I think you’re a liar, partner.”
“Oh, Christ!” Hutch stopped his ineffectual struggling and Starsky heard him catch his breath in a sob. “Starsky, let’s stop this now. Please. I’ll only hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” Starsky leaned over his partner and let his mouth hover above that other vulnerable one. “Don’t worry, I’m a big boy now. But I won’t let you fight Tony for me.”
“Why do you think I want to go? I don’t wanna fuck up your life.”
“Fuck it up?” Starsky laughed shortly. “You’re crazy! You should have thought of that before you knocked on my door last night.”
“So, let me go.”
“No.”
No, not without at least a kiss. He had to find out if those soft, beguiling lips would, could, respond to his own; if they could taste and feel as wonderful as he had dreamed.
“Starsk… my Starsk….” Hands tangled themselves into his hair, “please let me go….” Hutch’s words said one thing, but his hands said another. Starsky lowered his head to the waiting lips below his.
At first he thought he had made the wrong decision. It felt all wrong, awkward and, oddly embarrassing, and he sensed no real response in the pliant mouth under his own. It was warm and gentle and willing enough, but there was no hint of desire in its acceptance of him. He gave more, moving his lips seductively in silent, passionate entreaty for the love he wanted so desperately, and then suddenly it happened. Hutch seemed to melt, to flow upwards into his arms, to yield to him, and then the generous mouth opened wide beneath his own and sucked the breath from him.
I love you! Starsky tried to hold tighter, harder, tried to show his emotion in the lengthening kiss. I love you and I need you so badly.
Would Hutch let him do all the things he wanted to do? Would he be allowed to let his hands and his mouth roam freely over the too-slender body? What would Hutch expect? He took the first step and edged his tongue carefully into the tempting depths of Hutch’s mouth. First real intimacy beyond the kiss, prelude to other thrusting that he would like to perform upon the beautiful body.
Hutch tore his mouth away with a groan, and Starsky was so surprised by the unexpectedness of the action that he allowed it. The blond turned his face to one side and Starsky hesitated and then relaxed. His body was urging him onwards but his mind told him to slow down, to let Hutch set the pace of their loving. If there was to be any loving at all.
“I… have to tell you something,” Hutch whispered, “and you’d better listen.”
“What?” Secrets already? Starsky liked the idea of anything being shared between them. It could only serve to bring them closer together. He kissed the frowning forehead and tried not to mind when Hutch pulled away fretfully.
“It’s difficult.”
Hutch had been alone for three years, Starsky reminded himself. He had got out of the habit of confiding his hopes and fears to anyone.
“Let me make it easier.” He had to be gentle. He had to be strong for both of them. He moved and settled Hutch so that the tousled blond head lay against his shoulder and he could sprinkle kisses into it. Then he entwined the fingers of Hutch’s hand with his own. “There,” he said softly. “Is that better?”
“No. You’re just making it harder.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re too close. Because I want to say things to you that…” Hutch hesitated, “…that I should have said to you before you kissed me.”
“There ain’t nothing you can’t tell me.” But Starsky realized that responsibility for the touching of their mouths had been laid on his shoulders.
A short, harsh, bitter laugh grated on his ears. “No? Well, answer this: what do you want from me?”
Starsky hesitated. He would much rather have shown his partner what he wanted. So much better than words.
“I want you,” he said carefully. “All of you. But there’s obviously something wrong and I guess we have to talk it out before we go any further. But I want to be your lover, babe.”
“I’m sorry….”
What did he mean? Surely after the kiss they had just shared, Hutch wasn’t going to change his mind.
“What do you mean?” Starsky asked carefully.
“It’d be better if you kicked my ass outta here right now.”
“Kicking your ass isn’t what I got in mind. I’d rather stroke it and….”
“Oh, Christ, this is impossible!”
“No, it isn’t. Just relax and tell me what’s wrong.” Starsky was beginning to suspect that the problem that he was facing was not simply the bewilderment of a straight man confronted by a situation in which he was attracted to another man who was gay. Hutch was attracted, Starsky was sure of that, but there was some fear, some major obstacle, that was worrying the blond and it had to come out into the open if they were to move any further forward. “Please tell me.” He spoke coaxingly, reminding himself once again that Hutch was at the moment frail both in mind and body. “What can be so bad? I care about you….” Yes, all that and more.
“All right.” Hutch seemed to relax suddenly and the blond head snuggled itself gratefully against Starsky’s shoulder. “But you have to be honest with me. Give me tonight with you… please… but if you don’t want to see me after that, then I’ll leave. No problem. I won’t make any trouble. But I don’t want you feeling sorry for me.”
A glimpse of the old, proud, spirited Hutch. So he wasn’t completely lost. Starsky smiled.
“How could I feel sorry for Commander Hutchinson, Great White Hope of the IA?” he asked teasingly, but then he changed his voice back to soft cajoling. “C’mon, babe.”
“I’m jealous as hell of your Tony,” Hutch whispered. “He’s close to you. The way I’d like to be. Only I don’t have the right to say that, do I? Because I left you when you needed me.”
“Forget that.”
“I’d like to be what Tony is to you. Only I can’t.” Hutch took a deep, shaky breath. “I’m impotent, Starsk. Have been for over eighteen months. I could only be half a lover for you.”
A giant hand took hold of Starsky’s guts and squeezed. Tightly. His first instinct was pity, his second outrage that IA should have done this to a strong, virile man, and his third was to reassure. But how?
“Tony doesn’t mean a thing,” he said levelly. “Never has and never could. It’s you I want and no one else. But if you can’t get it on with me for a while… well, okay…. I can wait.”
“Damn!”
“Now what’s the matter?”
“I thought you’d say that. Guess I can still read you. How long can you wait, Starsk? How long before it gets to you the way it got to me at first?”
“At first?”
“I gave up on sex a long time ago.”
“My poor babe!” Starsky thought that his sympathy might be resented, but Hutch just moved his cheek against his shoulder and sighed.
“I had plenty of other things to think about.”
Starsky was tempted to see Hutch’s impotence as a challenge to his own prowess as a lover, but he tried to put the thought aside. He would not use Hutch like that. He would be gentle and loving and he would give his partner everything he could, without regard for his own needs.
“I won’t say that it doesn’t matter,” he said hesitantly. “That’d be stupid. But I still want you…. I want whatever you can gave me. However little or however much.”
His answer was a soft sigh that might have been regret or satisfaction. He was not sure which it was and it did not matter. Something had been settled between them, something that went deeper than words.
“You have to promise me something,” Starsky continued quietly, “and it’s important.”
“What?” Hutch released his hand and laid it flat on Starsky’s chest, rubbing the palm gently over the skin above his heart.
“I want you to let me take care of you.” In his turn Starsky let his fingers trail over Hutch’s ribcage. “You’re beautiful… but you’d be even more terrific if you weren’t so damn thin!” For a moment he waited to see if Hutch would be embarrassed at the word beautiful, but the blond just turned his head and kissed Starsky’s shoulder, so Starsky continued lightly: “I’m scared to touch you in case you break in half.”
“I won’t.” Hutch laughed, but the sound held no amusement. “A few have tried that, but I don’t break easy.”
Starsky wondered fleetingly what hell Hutch had endured during the past three years.
“I want you to promise to let me take care of you,” he whispered. “Good food and no more pills.”
“I can’t sleep without them.”
“Oh, yes, you can.” Starsky let his hand slide a little lower to the narrow waist. His body wanted him to hurry, but there was a thrill in the anticipation of what was to come and Starsky found that he was enjoying it.
“You think I like taking them?” Hutch’s voice took on an edge of irritation. “You know me. You think I’d take them for fun?”
“No. I just don’t think you’ll need them anymore. You’ve got me now. If you can’t sleep then I’ll stay awake with you.” Starsky ran his finger across Hutch’s waist. “But I’m hoping to make you very tired, babe.”
“How?”
“You gotta ask?”
“No. Dumb question.” Hutch’s hand had been copying the action of Starsky’s. Now it lay lightly on Starsky’s stomach. “You feel good,” the blond murmured. “Can I…?”
“You do whatever you want to do.”
Starsky held his breath as the cautious touch circled his navel and then spread out to caress his hip in a curiously hesitant gesture of exploration. He wanted Hutch to know his body as well as his blond had always known his mind. He wanted no secrets between them, wanted the intimacy of being naked and free with the man he adored, and wanted the joy of coupling with him in the name of love.
The hand was slipping a little lower now, the tips of Hutch’s fingers touching the thick hair at his groin, but when the knuckles just grazed his cock—and Starsky was sure that it was accidental—he could not restrain the gasp of pleasure that escaped his lips. Just one touch, that was all it took, and this beautiful, slender man could reduce him to a blind, deaf, mute, quaking body that needed so badly it was intolerable.
“You’re shaking,” Hutch whispered. “Kiss me?”
Starsky rolled onto his side so that they lay facing one another and Hutch’s hand went back to Starsky’s waist without having made deliberate contact with his rigid cock. Starsky was disappointed but not discouraged. It was all new to his blond. It would take time.
“Yes,” he breathed. “I’ll kiss you. I’ll kiss the heart out of you…” and he gathered Hutch close and sought the waiting mouth eagerly.
It began carefully, tentatively, and swiftly grew in intensity and depth. Starsky had always been sure that his partner was a passionate man, and the lips that demanded and surrendered, that moved under his and gave the promise of greater intimacies to come, that were tender and greedy all at the same time, were sensuous beyond his wildest dreams.
Hutch began to moan quietly in his throat, and Starsky answered the soft cries with a groan of his own as Hutch’s tongue probed his mouth, learning his taste, and fenced gently with his own in a touch-teasing that was sweetly erotic.
Hutch’s hand moved downwards. Starsky shifted his body slightly and felt his cock touched and then grasped firmly in the blond’s thin fingers. He gasped in relief and, on impulse, slid his hands down Hutch’s back and gripped the cheeks of his ass firmly, drawing their bodies tightly together and trapping Hutch’s hand between them.
They were still kissing, mouths wide open to express their willingness for further sexual closeness, but when Hutch rolled onto his back and pulled Starsky on top of him, opening his legs and curling them around his partner’s, Starsky was not sure if his blond understood the implication of the action.
This was how he had dreamed of taking Hutch for the first time. On his back, so that Starsky could watch the beautiful face in the grip of passion and then the final throes of orgasm. Only then would he know if he could hold Hutch or whether he would have to walk away from him. The expressive face would not be able to feign pleasure and desire if it was not being genuinely experienced. Yet if Hutch were right, then there would be no orgasm for the blond that night and even if it had been possible, Starsky knew that his dream was simply a fantasy. It would be too much, too soon.
“Babe….” He did not know what words to use to explain what Hutch had implied with his gesture.
“I know,” the blond whispered.
“You don’t.”
“I do.” The husky voice was firm. “When I found out about you and Tony, I read up about being gay. If this is to mean anything, then you have to fuck me.”
“You think I need some kind of proof?” Starsky began a trail of tiny kisses from one side of Hutch’s mouth to the other.
“Yes. I would if I were you.”
“Not the first time.” Starsky knew that he was arguing against his own inclinations, but he had to remember Hutch’s weakened condition. “It’s… too much. The first time it should be….” He searched for the right word. “… Easy. You know?” He was struck by the thought that maybe Hutch would be happier with just the minimum of contact on their first time. “Use your hand,” he said gently. “I’d like that.”
“It’s not enough.” Hutch’s head rolled on the pillow and his legs opened wider. “I want more than that. And so do you. God knows I can’t give you very much, but this… this I can give. And I want it.”
“Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”
“Yes.” In the gloom Hutch’s eyes met his steadily. “I know. I know that I want you. I know that I want to feel you inside me. Why do you think I asked you to share the bed with me?”
It sounded so easy, Starsky thought. Fall in love, consummate that love, live happily ever after. Only it would not be like that. They would have problems. They had one right now for he could feel that Hutch was not turned on. Starsky’s own rigid flesh was rubbing against the blond’s cock and it was totally unaroused by the contact.
“Are you sure?” he asked softly. “Do you know it could be painful for you?”
“Yes.” The candid eyes were clear and steady.
It was not a time to ask why, even if Hutch could give him a clear and truthful answer. The man had been alone for three years, set apart from other members of the force by his job with IA and isolated from women by his impotence. He guessed that Hutch was desperate for physical contact with another human being to ease his loneliness, but he knew he could give so much more than that. Closeness of body was easy. Starsky wanted the deeper satisfaction of easing the damage that he sensed had been caused to the blond’s spirit.
“Okay.” He wanted to call his partner by every beautiful name he could think of, but it was too soon for that. Although he was lying on top of Hutch’s body in a close embrace, and they were warm and comfortable in their bed, Starsky sensed a lack of intimacy between them. Hutch was holding back, not giving all of himself, creating a restraint between them that should not be there. Was he scared or was he not capable of feeling anything very deeply anymore?
“What are you waiting for?” Hutch whispered. “Fuck me….”
“In time, babe. In time.” Maybe he could create the mood and make Hutch relax. “Leave it to me.” He slid to the side of the thin body and kissed Hutch’s lips lightly. “I’ll make it good,” he promised. “Just relax.”
Hutch’s skin felt as smooth and enticing to his mouth as it had to his fingers earlier. He covered the warm chest with kisses, trying to transmit a sense of tenderness into his actions, and he was pleased when Hutch reached for his hand and gripped it tightly. He left the small nipples until last, letting his lips get close to them, breathing on them and then moving away, saving the moment of contact with the delicate buds of flesh. When he finally touched the tip of his tongue to the left one, Hutch twitched as though jolted by electricity. It was a good sign. Starsky drew the hardening nipple into his mouth and sucked on it, and Hutch gasped and arched his body upwards for closer contact as his fingers clenched Starsky’s in a grip of steel.
So his partner could respond to him physically. Starsky would have smiled if he had not been so busy. He teased the other nipple with his fingertips and when it, too, confirmed his thoughts by tightening under his touch, he felt his cock throb slightly with the need for release.
Starsky turned slightly and squirmed further down the bed, pushing the covers away as he did so, and letting his tongue glide down the almost invisible path of downy white-gold hair that led to Hutch’s stomach. He used every trick he had ever learned from every lover he had ever had to try to create an unbearable sense of anticipation and desire in Hutch while he, himself, was balanced on a knife-edge of agonizing desire. Yet it was not enough. When his lips touched the blond’s cock it was soft, and although he used his mouth and tongue slowly and teasingly over the unresponsive shaft, he could do nothing to make it harden.
“I think it’s dead,” Hutch said, but his voice shook.
“No.” Starsky gave the unwilling organ a last gentle kiss and raised his head. “It’s just asleep. It’ll wake up when it’s ready.”
“Optimist.”
“Pessimist. Shut up and let me love you.”
Starsky bent to Hutch’s genitals again, and while one of his hands remained tightly within the blond’s clasp and his mouth engulfed the whole of the soft shaft, he let the fingers of his other hand work their way gently towards the cleft of Hutch’s buttocks, feeling carefully for the tight entrance. Hutch’s grip on his hand increased and Starsky returned the pressure reassuringly.
“S’okay….” He mumbled the words with his face buried happily between the parted thighs, and as the clenched muscle of Hutch’s anus relaxed a little, he eased his finger inside.
“Christ!” Hutch jerked under the careful invasion, but when Starsky moved his finger gently, the expletive died away in a choked-off cry of surprise and pleasure.
“Babe…?” There was one question that Starsky had to ask and have an answer to. “…Has any other guy ever had you like this?”
“Huh?” Hutch seemed disorientated.
“I’m not trying to pry but I ought to know. Have you ever been fucked before?”
“No!” Hutch seemed shocked by the question.
“Okay.” It would be his first time. If it wasn’t good for him, there might not be a second. Starsky reached for the small bottle of lubricant that he kept in the drawer of the nightstand and carefully oiled his cock, aware that Hutch was watching him with fascinated eyes and unable to restrain a little smile as a groping, uncertain hand reached out and grasped his organ firmly.
“You’re big.” As Starsky watched him, Hutch touched the head of his cock lightly. “Can I really…?” The blond broke off but curiosity seemed to overcome his reticence. “…Will you be able to…?”
“I hope so.” Hutch was a grown man, not a kid to be given meaningless reassurances. “But I won’t do anything you don’t like. I promise you that.” And I’m no amateur, my blond beauty. I’ve had asses as tight as yours before. But I better not tell you that. “I’ll be very careful.”
He slipped one greased finger into Hutch’s anus and provoked another low moan, working with all the skill at his command until his partner relaxed enough to be able to accept the insertion of a second finger.
“Please!” Hutch whispered the word huskily. “Please…” his thighs opened wider, provocative invitation, but his eyes were squeezed tightly shut. Starsky wondered why. Was it because Hutch could not look into the face of the man who would be fucking him? Was this some kind of price the blond was prepared to pay to be close to someone again?
Without speaking, Starsky put his hands under Hutch’s thighs and lifted his legs upwards. Obediently, the blond bent his knees to his chest and Starsky positioned himself carefully and then pressed forward slowly.
“You gotta relax.” He whispered the instruction lovingly as he slipped between the curving cheeks and then felt his entrance impeded. “I won’t do anything you don’t like… I’ll try my best not to hurt you….”
“Don’t care if you do.” Hutch’s eyes remained closed.
“I care,” Starsky said firmly. “Very much.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Because I’m in love with you.”
The eyelids flickered upwards and the wide mouth curved into a smile of joy. Hutch’s whole face changed dramatically and became soft and vulnerable.
“You love me?” the blond whispered incredulously. “I mean, you really love me?”
“Really and truly. So much, babe.” Starsky had never seen such a look of defenseless wonder on his partner’s face and it touched him deeply.
“So make love to me.” Hutch’s arms reached out to him and drew him close. “I’ve been dead for three years, Starsky. Make me live again.”
Had it really been so bad? Had those years really been so sterile for Hutch? Had there been no pleasure and no happiness at all?
Starsky felt his partner make a deliberate effort to relax and pierced him tenderly, moving the head of his cock carefully into his body and knowing by the sudden surprised delight in his blond’s face that he was welcomed and needed. Hutch’s hips moved to his gently probing rhythm, Hutch’s hands held him, Hutch’s mouth begged for his kisses and Starsky honored every pledge he had made to himself to give this man all the love he had inside him.
Their love dance was slow, sensuous, and to Starsky very revealing of his partner’s feelings. The man was starving for love, hungry for the touch of another human being, and his response to every caress was eager and passionately grateful. It was not exactly what Starsky had expected and not entirely what he wanted, yet it was curiously satisfying. He was giving to Hutch and the blond was taking what he offered, but he also sensed that the man beneath him was struggling to make their loving equal. Hutch’s whispered words were full of soft endearments that warmed Starsky’s heart.
He could not keep the tempo slow and gentle forever. Eventually, his cock still only partially inside his partner in his desire not to hurt him, Starsky’s control slipped a little and, against all his own wishes, he thrust harder and faster. Hutch cried out. Starsky felt the constriction around his cock ease a little and the impulse to sheathe himself more deeply in his partner’s body became irresistible. He moved forward, probed the hot tightness strongly and Hutch arched up under him with a second cry.
“Am I hurting you?” Starsky stopped moving.
“Yes.”
“Oh Christ!” And yet Starsky had known it was inevitable right from the start.
“No.” Sharp denial. “Don’t stop. It’s beautiful.” The hands that had been stroking Starsky’s body suddenly dug urgently into his shoulders. “Fuck me, babe. Do it hard!”
Starsky wasn’t sure. Hutch was new to the kind of love that they were sharing. It was the blond who decided for him as Hutch moved his body strongly downwards, impaling himself even more deeply, forcing a gasp from both their lips and invoking an involuntary response from Starsky that he could not control.
He lunged forward, felt Hutch embrace him in strong arms, and knew that his orgasm was close. He settled swiftly into a new rhythm, moving hard and fast inside the yielding, twisting body and hearing Hutch’s gasped sobs as he screamed with the pleasure of it. On and on. Starsky never wanted to stop. He felt a closeness of spirit with Hutch that he had never felt with Tony and he cried out his new lover’s name as the final spasms racked his body.
Exhausted, sated, he slumped, and Hutch’s arms were his haven, holding him securely until he could gain enough strength to withdraw and roll away from the panting torso that he had been lying upon.
“Hutch….” He enfolded the blond with arms that did not really want to move. “…I love you.”
A weary head came to rest against his shoulder and snuggled against him until it was comfortable.
“You’re beautiful,” a soft voice answered him. “Talk in the morning?”
“Yes.”
They slept.
CHAPTER THREE
Starsky checked the casserole in the oven, looked at his watch and sighed. Nine o’clock and Hutch still wasn’t home. What the hell was he doing? Here was he, Starsky, doing his best to bring the Deputy Head of IA back to full health while the department itself seemed determined to kill him. No one could work a fourteen-hour day seven days a week with no visible effect on his health, and Hutch was not as young or as fit as he used to be.
He heard the sound of a key in the front door and smiled. It had only been four weeks since Hutch had walked back into his life and already Starsky was finding that the memories of those three years without his partner were fading. Such a domestic sound, that latch being lifted, as Hutch came home, and he always seemed so grateful to find Starsky there, almost as if he expected him to have walked away.
“Hi.” Hutch crossed the kitchen eagerly and Starsky turned to be hugged in an embrace that was made intimate by a deep, searching kiss as Hutch invaded his widely-opened mouth with his tongue and held Starsky’s hips tightly against his own. “You are so damn good to come home to,” Hutch said at last, but his lips still hovered above Starsky’s. “I wish you’d let me do my share of the cooking….”
“If we had to wait for you to get home to cook, we’d starve.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. They shouldn’t work you so damn hard.”
“Yeah, but it’s all taking shape.” There was a zealous gleam in Hutch’s eyes. “Things are settling down… working themselves out. It’s going well.” A pause, then: “How’s it going with you, babe?” As if Hutch had to make a conscious effort to remember not to be selfish.
“Pretty good.” Starsky turned back to the oven. “But I’m damn sure I could do a better job than Holmes.”
“Maybe you’ll get the chance.” Hutch fetched silverware and the bowl of salad and put them on the table. “You like Narco? Better than Homicide?”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
“Well, you could run Narco in a few years if you really wanted to. Knox reckons you’ve got more potential than Holmes.”
“You been talking about me behind my back?” Starsky ladled out spicy chunks of meat onto two plates and tried not to sound annoyed.
“Yes,” Hutch answered honestly and Starsky felt two long arms reach around his waist and hug him, at the same time as a moist mouth pressed a kiss into the nape of his neck. “I want you to do well, babe. I want you to be a success.”
“Oh yeah? How high would you like me to go? Chief of Police?”
“If that’s what you want.” A wet tongue washed his ear. “If you’ve got the ambition, you could make it.”
“Optimist.” Starsky finished serving the meat. “Now stop eating me and eat your dinner.”
“Yes, mama.”
Hutch still had little appetite for food. Starsky watched him struggle gamely with the meat and the salad and bent his head to his own food to stop his partner seeing the glum expression on his face. As fast as he fed Hutch with as much protein and as many vitamins as he could, the blond seemed to use it up in nervous energy. He reckoned that Hutch had been around thirty pounds underweight and that he had only succeeded in replacing a few of those pounds in three weeks.
“Can’t you manage a little more?” he coaxed after a few more minutes, and Hutch gave him a long look before returning to the food on his plate.
In some ways he was better, Starsky reflected. The blond hair now gleamed with a sheen of health and Hutch’s hands no longer shook. On the surface he seemed quiet and contented, happy and contented, and only Starsky knew that this was not entirely the case. It was a façade, and it was only with his partner that Hutch let his defenses down. Because Starsky was the only person he was close to.
In some ways it was an artificial existence. They lived inside a prison. Starsky’s apartment now had bulletproof glass at all the windows and security devices guarded the door, with a member of IA always on duty in a parked car. Hutch had refused to have a man actually outside the door and Starsky knew why. There was a telephone tap and their mail was monitored and they could do little without someone knowing about it.
Starsky finished his meal and sighed as Hutch also laid down his fork.
“I got cheesecake,” he offered. “Lemon. You like that.”
“Thanks.”
Starsky rose and cut a small portion for Hutch and a larger one for himself. On impulse he carried the two plates over to the couch and sat down, grinning impishly at Hutch, and after a moment’s hesitation the blond moved to join him. Starsky set his own plate aside and picked up Hutch’s, turning so that he faced his partner.
“You gonna feed me?” Hutch asked good-naturedly. “Treat me like some kinda baby?”
“Yes.” Starsky cut a small piece of cheesecake and held the fork out to his partner. “Now open up, sweetheart.”
Morsel by morsel he fed the cheesecake to Hutch, and as each small piece was swallowed, he kissed his lover’s mouth as a reward, tasting the lemon on Hutch’s tongue and loving the intimacy, which was for a purpose. He was trying to create an atmosphere of closeness, trying to give Hutch new memories to replace those of the past three years. Somehow he knew he had to give Hutch a sense of stability, a home and someone who could show him love.
Hutch ate his cheesecake. All of it. Then he ate art of Starsky’s portion and the dark-haired man felt he had won a victory. He even let Hutch make the coffee while he finished his own meal and cleared away the dishes, and then they sat in a companionable silence in front of the television until Hutch’s hand reached over to Starsky’s crotch and squeezed it, none too gently.
Hutch’s voice was seductive. “Let’s go to bed.”
* * *
Later, very much later, Starsky lay sleepless in the darkness as, coldly and bleakly, he reviewed his lover’s behavior of the past hour.
It was like going to bed with an animal. Hutch seemed to throw off his inhibitions along with his clothes, and the outwardly civilized deputy head of the IA with his business suit and briefcase became a desperate savage as soon as he was naked.
An animal? A savage? Was that really the way to describe Hutch in bed? No, Starsky decided, it wasn’t. There was nothing bestial about the blond, just something that Starsky found vaguely frightening. Hutch always seemed so intense, so hell-bent on satisfying him, as if he thought Starsky might leave if he didn’t make it good all the time, every time.
Starsky knew that Hutch was a frightened man. Scared of being left alone again, terrified of not pleasing his lover in some way and yet at the same time curiously determined to get something out of the relationship for himself. Still impotent, unable to possess his lover physically, Hutch found his gratification in ways that Starsky did not like.
He sighed and absentmindedly his hand stroked Hutch’s shoulder gently as the exhausted blond lay curled up in his arms. No pills for Hutch now. He seemed to need only the comfort of Starsky’s embrace to relax him after their lovemaking and invariably it was Starsky who lay awake, courting the rest that would not come.
It was proving to be a stormy relationship, something that Starsky had not anticipated. In the mornings and in the evenings it was good. A happy and secure friendship whose ties went back many years. It was only when they went to bed that their relationship became turbulent and Starsky felt himself pulled into a maelstrom over which he had no control.
He understood at least part of it, of course. Now that he had heard Hutch’s story, told simply and unemotionally as they lay in one another’s arms one evening, he knew what the blond had gone through. Quickly he let his mind run over the details again, looking for more clues that might explain Hutch’s behavior more clearly.
Gunther. End of one trail, beginning of another. Gunther the catalyst, precipitating Hutch into a new inquiry after the blond had found a batch of papers on his desk that implicated high ranking officers in the LAPD in a web of corruption unparalleled in the history of the force. Gunther was dead, the poison already in his system when Hutch had arrested him, but he had left a legacy to the blond that might have killed him as surely as the gun that Gunther had pointed at him.
Hutch had found himself, after reading the papers, in possession of damning, dangerous documents, and he had recognized the danger to himself. In the wrong hands they would have signed his death warrant.
He must have been so scared! Starsky shifted restlessly and provoked an inarticulate murmur from his blond as Hutch moved and sought the curve of his neck to bury his face into. Vulnerable Hutch. Beautiful Hutch. Starsky laid his lips against the silky hair and sighed.
He recalled how his partner had realized the importance of the papers in his possession but had felt utterly alone and isolated, not knowing whom he could trust. The only man upon whom he could have relied totally had been confined to a hospital bed and, because of that, Hutch had decided not to confide in him. Starsky was sorry about that. It hurt him to realize the awful secret his partner had been carrying around while he still tried to cheer up his grumpy and morose friend. Finally Hutch had taken all the precautions he could think of to protect himself and had gone to the head of IA with what he knew.
On the face of it, the rest of the story was uncomplicated. Hutch had joined IA, his knowledge making the new job a fait accompli, and had headed his own investigative team for almost three years, culminating in the triumph of organization that had led to the arrest and suspension of so many officers and men three weeks ago. Hutch had done it all. And he had done it without his partner, alone in a hostile world where—as a man from IA—he was hated and reviled by his fellow officers. Estranged from his partner of many years with no one close that he could turn to, Hutch had become introverted, and he could admit to it.
When Hutch had accepted the job in IA, he had expected Starsky to join him, but it had been one of his new department’s stipulations that his partner agree without knowing the reasons why, and Hutch had been warned to say nothing of what he knew. That warning had been enforced by IA’s insistence that Hutch should wear a wire when he talked to his partner and now Starsky understood the hint of reserve that he had detected on that occasion.
Hutch had been confident that Starsky would accept the offer of the new job. Starsky squirmed in misery as he recalled once again how disastrously he had let his partner down. He would never allow himself to forget that. Maybe that was why he was indulging the man now; trying to assuage the guilt he felt.
Physically he knew what toll that three years had taken on Hutch. Mentally he could only guess at the agonies the man had gone through. Hutch had always been the idealist. Starsky could well imagine that his partner visualized them riding into battle side-by-side, pennants flying, to slay the dragons. His refusal to join his partner must have been a body blow to Hutch, and Starsky was not sure he knew how the blond had found the courage to go on alone. Hutch himself had admitted that he had been horribly scared of leaving his partner, but he had been given no choice. Starsky felt even more guilty every time he remembered that he must have added yet one more burden to those weary shoulders.
Now both of them were making up for the separation. Starsky smiled as he recalled how they always needed to touch one another for their mutual reassurance and how they liked to be physically close whenever they were alone.
“Starsk….” Mumble of sound, muffled in his neck.
“I thought you were asleep,” Starsky whispered.
“I was. Had a weird dream.”
“Oh yeah?” Starsky turned onto his side and enclosed the blond in both arms, protecting and comforting him. “Like the last time?” he asked.
“Mmm.”
“Poor babe.”
“Just hold me, will you? I’ll be fine.”
“I got you.”
Waking and sleeping Starsky knew that his body and his mind dwelt on Hutch, anticipating his moods and his needs, and now he sensed that his lover wanted an exchange of secrets in the quiet, dark, warm intimacy of their bed.
“I want to tell you something,” Hutch whispered and his hand slipped upwards to touch Starsky’s cheek. “Couldn’t before, not like I wanted to.” A breathless whisper of a laugh. “You wouldn’t call me shy, would you? But… well, I guess some things don’t come easy. Like telling you that I love you. Really love you.”
“Babe….”
“Oh, I know I’ve said it before. But this is different. Now all of me loves all of you. You know?”
“Yes, I know.” Triumph. It had not been said before and he had been waiting.
“But I can’t help wondering…” the quiet voice took on an edge of strain, “…how long it’s gonna last. You and me.”
“How long do you want it to last?” Starsky countered.
“For the rest of our lives.” Hutch’s arm reached down and curled around Starsky’s waist to draw him closer. “Is that selfish?”
“No more selfish than me never wanting to let you out of my sight. I love you.”
“Yeah, but I’m not making it easy. I know it and I keep trying to change, but it’s difficult.”
“You’ve been through hell, babe.” Starsky began to stroke the strong, smooth body gently. “I understand that. You need time? I’ll give you time. The rest of my life. Just stay with me… that’s all I want.”
Starsky realized that the lateness of the hour and his own tiredness was making him more emotional than usual, and he resolved to guard his tongue, not sure that the kind of tenderness and the loving words that he wanted to use were, in fact, what Hutch needed.
“I’ve got this dream,” the blond said softly. “Only I dream when I’m awake, too. I lie in your arms and think about you and me and….”
“And what? Tell me.”
“I’m scared. I don’t know what you’ll say.”
Secrets in the dark. Starsky knew that he wanted Hutch’s confidences as a further tie between them. Every bond was precious and he needed every tenuous link to bind them more closely together.
“Tell me,” he said again. “Share it with me. What do you dream about?”
“You and me in a home of our own. Not yours and not mine but ours. I dream about walking in through the front door and finding you waiting for me. I dream about letting you sleep late on the mornings you aren’t working and me making your breakfast and bringing it to you in bed. Kinda domestic, huh?”
Possibly it was domestic, but Starsky understood. It was Hutch crying out to him once again for some kind of stability.
“You want us to buy a house?” he asked softly. “Okay, we will. Soon as you like….”
“Christ!” Hutch’s arms surrounded him in a grip that knocked the breath out of him. “Really?”
“Yes.” Starsky eased the suffocating grip slightly and tipped Hutch’s jaw back so that he could kiss the parted lips. “There’s nothing I’d like better. Only what d’you think IA will say? I mean, gay cops aren’t exactly popular….”
“After what we’ve just had, two gay cops won’t worry anyone. So long as you don’t kiss me in front of Alex Terry….”
“Promise.”
“I love you.”
Starsky kissed his partner again, more deeply this time, and Hutch responded eagerly and passionately, long legs twining around Starsky’s, his mouth opening wide and inviting the intimacy of Starsky’s tongue.
The dark man’s hand crept downwards, stroking its way past Hutch’s flat stomach to the thatch of curly hair at his crotch. Hutch’s cock lay dormant, soft and vulnerable to Starsky’s touch, and he repressed a sigh. He had hoped that maybe the fact that Hutch now knew his future was more secure might have made a difference, but it seemed that his partner was still unable to respond.
“Maybe you should think again about buying that house.” There was suddenly an edge in Hutch’s voice. “You wanna be stuck with a lover who can’t give you anything?”
“You give me plenty.”
“Yeah?” The edge was more pronounced now as Hutch hated himself. “What happens when you wanna get laid? I know it works both ways….”
“It’ll be okay.” Starsky realized that his trip of exploration had been a mistake, reminding Hutch once again of his impotence. “Don’t worry, love.”
“Maybe you’d be better off with Tony.” Abruptly Hutch pulled away from Starsky’s restraining arms. “At least he could screw you through the floor. I never saw the guy, but….”
“Aw, for Christ’s sake shut up!”
“Why? Isn’t it true? Did he have a big cock? Did he make you scream the way you make me scream?”
Starsky hated these moods of depression. He could understand them, of course he could, but they still hurt. How could he prove to Hutch once and for all that he loved him? As far as he knew, there was no way.
“Come here, you stupid bastard!” He rolled across the bed and reached out for the blond. It wasn’t the first time Hutch had asked questions about his previous lover, and the jealousy was nakedly obvious. “Tony never meant anything,” he said soothingly. “You know that. Sure, he was a good fuck, but I never loved him.”
“Shit!” Hutch turned into his arms and Starsky hugged him. “I’m sorry, babe. Sometimes I can’t get my head together….”
“You need a vacation. A long one.”
“After the trial.”
Everything was after the trial. Trials plural. But the big one would be the prosecution of John Mirren, Deputy Chief of Police, with Hutch as the star witness. And Starsky was scared. The threats to Hutch so far had been clumsy and ill-contrived: a letter bomb, intercepted by Hutch’s own men in IA, and menacing telephone calls that never got through but had to be reported to the blond on his insistence. Hutch merely shrugged them off as if he was used to them, but they made Starsky nervous.
“Babe….” Hutch slipped down the bed a little and rested his head against Starsky’s chest, sighing softly. “…Maybe we should talk.”
“Okay. What d’you want to say?”
“I want you to know exactly what you’re getting into.”
“You think I don’t?”
“I’m not sure. They could get to me through you. If they don’t realize we go to bed together by now, they might soon. It could make you a target.”
“I know that.” Starsky ran his fingers through the sleek, blond hair, raising a few strands to his lips and then blowing them into disarray.
“Yeah? Well, you’re my price, babe. Did you know that? I’d give anything… do anything… to keep you safe.”
“Do you resent that?” Starsky touched the nape of his lover’s neck, enchanted by the softness of the hollow.
“No.” Hutch kissed the skin close to his lips. “It’s beautiful. Having someone to care about means so much to me. I just want to make sure you know the risks.”
“I know.”
“It isn’t going to be easy.” Now there was a definite note of warning in the blond’s voice, as if he suspected Starsky of under-estimating their difficulties.
“Nothing worthwhile ever is. We’re gonna have to work hard to keep us together.”
Hutch’s mouth caressed his nipple, soft kisses that were not meant to be arousing, but which still made Starsky shiver. “Will you let me put a guard on you?” Hutch asked. “Please. I’d be a lot happier.” Starsky wondered if his jealous lover didn’t have an ulterior motive. It would effectively prevent him from meeting any other men—if he wanted to. “Hey,” Hutch said softly, “I don’t wanna check up on you….”
“Well, you can. I’m the faithful type, babe. One lover at a time.”
“You know something? When I saw you standing in your doorway four weeks ago, you looked the same. Three years and you haven’t changed. Jesus, I love you!”
Starsky held his partner tightly and closed his eyes. There had been a note of desperation in Hutch’s voice and loving. To Hutch, their affair had to be lived hard, each moment used to the full, as if every day might be their last.
Hutch loved with all of himself, Starsky knew that, but the intensity of their relationship was always at white heat and it was not easy to live with.
Tony had not been easy either. Casually and frequently unfaithful, he had nevertheless been possessive towards Starsky and jealous of the time his lover gave to his job. He had been furious when Starsky had dropped him. He had been vindictive about Hutch and he had vowed that Starsky would be sorry. Starsky realized that Tony might not be so far from the truth. He loved Hutch, loved him very much, but it was not an easy love.
“You wanna get it on?” Hutch’s voice was sultry.
“I hate to turn you down, lover, but I’m getting old and I’m tired.”
“You’ll never be old.”
“Have you seen the grey hairs?”
“I don’t care.” Hutch sounded petulant. “You’ll always be young and strong and beautiful to me.” His tongue flicked over Starsky’s nipple again, but this time it was done deliberately to seduce, and Starsky tugged teasingly at the silky hair.
“I am tired,” he said gently.
“If you worked the hours I did….”
“…I’d be even more tired. C’mon babe, we ought to get some sleep.”
“I can’t.”
Starsky remembered his promise to stay awake with his partner if Hutch could not sleep.
“Okay,” he said, “c’mere you…” and he pulled the blond beneath him and bent to his mouth.
CHAPTER FOUR
The harsh, pain-edged breathing rasped in counterpoint to the regular crack of flesh meeting flesh and the bruising sound of knuckles against tender skin, while the cotton sheets rustled as the man on the bed writhed and twisted.
Starsky sat back on his heels and surveyed the prostrate body in front of him, shaking a little as his fury subsided leaving an ache of regret inside him.
Again. It had happened again. He had been goaded into losing his temper and had once again satisfied Hutch’s lust for pain.
Hutch lay quietly on his stomach, head buried in his arms, the still-thin body glistening with sweat. Starsky let his eyes roam downwards from the damp blond hair, over the wide shoulders and down the tanned back to the rounded slope of Hutch’s ass and the smoothly muscled thighs. Beautiful body. Abused body. Sweet-fleshed body that should be treated with love and adoration, not beaten and used as an object of revenge.
Revenge. Starsky could almost taste it sometimes when the taunts and contempt of his lover battered his senses. Hutch knew what words to use. Hutch knew exactly how to inflame his outrage and his temper and push him beyond the limits of his patience.
“You bastard!” Starsky spoke between his teeth. “Why do you do it to me? Every time… every time I tell myself I’m not gonna play your little game anymore, but you always get to me, don’t you?”
Hutch did not answer. He just lay on his face and breathed deeply, almost as if he were in a world of his own, and Starsky felt his temper rise again. Impulsively, he raised his hand to bring it down onto Hutch’s buttocks as hard as he could, and then he stopped. What good would it do? Hutch might enjoy it as punishment, but it wouldn’t turn him on. It seemed that nothing could.
“Turn over.” He uttered the command harshly and as Hutch rolled onto his back, Starsky was sickened by the look of anticipation in his eyes. “I wanna talk to you….”
“Don’t we have better things to do?” Hutch stretched out a slender hand and Starsky bit his lip as his fingers trailed desire along the length of his cock and over the sensitive head.
“Oh, I’ll fuck you,” Starsky promised. “Just the way you like it….”
“You objecting?”
“Trying to make a point.” Starsky captured the teasing fingers and pressed them against his mouth, biting into the knuckles gently. “You only like it when I hurt you… but I don’t want it to be that way….”
“It’s the only goddamn way you’re gonna get it!” With a contemptuous gesture Hutch indicated his flaccid cock. “I’d screw you if I could. Screw you through the bed and through the floor.” His free hand rubbed roughly against his limp organ. “You think I don’t want you that way? Well, I do.” The even voice rose and became passionate. “I wanna hold you down and fuck you so I can call you mine.” The blond head turned on the pillow in a fretful negation of his own words. “Does that sound weird… soapy? Yeah, well maybe it is. But it’s true. You won’t belong to me until….” The flushed face twisted into a bitter smile. “…Until I can make love to you.”
It might be never. Starsky knew that. Never to belong to Hutch. Never to know what it was like to be possessed by that golden body or to accept his partner’s cock in the name of love. Suddenly the world was a bleak and inhospitable place.
Hutch must have seen his face change because he seemed to reach some kind of decision.
“Listen….” The blond scrabbled to his knees so that they faced one another. “…It isn’t too late. We’ve had some great times together, but we can finish it now….”
“What?”
“…Before we decide on a house. Starsk… I don’t think it’s going to work.”
“Fuck you! Of course it’s gonna work!”
“You sure? It’s a one-sided game, Starsk. I take and you give. It won’t work that way forever. It can’t. I love you, but I just can’t give you what you need.”
“I only want you.”
“Can’t even give you that. Not completely. Babe….” The eyes that looked into Starsky’s were honest and painfully candid. “I’m scared of what we’re getting into because I can’t trust you….”
Starsky hit him. His fist surged upwards to smash into his partner’s jaw, connecting squarely and viciously against bone and flesh with as much of Starsky’s weight behind it as he could manage. Hutch pitched backwards, arms flying out in a desperate attempt either to save or protect himself, but he was taken too much by surprise and he slid awkwardly off the bed to land with a thud on the floor.
“Bastard!” Starsky was off the bed and around to his partner’s side before Hutch could recover from the shock, and his fist lashed out again. “Fucking… selfish… hypocritical… arrogant… cocksucking… bastard!” Each word was punctuated by a punch or a slap and the blows sent shock waves up his arm that he tried to ignore. He wanted revenge for those three terrible words that were branded into his soul. Can’t trust you. He could bear not being loved as he wanted to be loved—just—but it was intolerable that he should not be trusted.
The blue eyes were hidden from him and Hutch’s head lolled weakly under the force of Starsky’s next blow as blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. But he was smiling and once again Starsky realized, shatteringly, that he had been tricked into using violence. Sickened, saddened, he let his arm drop to his side as he stared at the crumpled man before him, at Hutch’s slender nakedness, at the tumbled blond hair that fell over his forehead, and he felt like weeping for the waste of a good man.
“Fuck me!” The words were whispered through swollen lips. “I want you. Love me….”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word!” What Hutch wanted was a ghastly travesty of the emotion. A mocking voice inside Starsky urged him to give Hutch what he really wanted. Why not? What he, Starsky, wanted didn’t seem to matter. Hutch was right. This was a one-sided affair.
He slapped furiously at the long legs until they slid apart and the slim hips lifted helplessly to meet his brutal, preparing fingers. Starsky entered his lover pitilessly, not sparing tender flesh, not listening to the blond’s scream of pain, not hearing his own conscience telling him that what he was doing was wrong. He forced Hutch to yield to him, to cede to his strength and the power of his cock, and Starsky tasted the sweet victory of the conqueror as he invaded the hot, sweating body still more deeply, pushing Hutch’s knees back to his shoulders and controlling the thrashing body easily.
It was exciting. Blindly, urged on by wild desires that he had never experienced before, he thrust hard and fast, feeling himself being carried on the crest of a wave to his orgasm and riding it like an expert surfer until he was satisfied. At that moment he did not care about Hutch’s needs; all he wanted was sexual gratification for himself. Yet as soon as it was over and he withdrew from his lover’s body to slump by his side, the feelings of guilt began.
He could not look at Hutch. He knew what he had done, and for the moment he could not face the evidence of his loss of control.
“I’m sorry.” The words caught in his throat and he almost choked on them. “I’m so goddamn sorry.”
His answer was the uneven gasping sobs of a man in pain, but he still could not bring himself to turn and help his partner. If he did then he would cry and Hutch didn’t need his tears. Hutch needed something, some intangible thing, from him that he did not understand. He rolled onto his back, still without looking at his partner, and stared at the ceiling.
“You know something?” he said quietly. “Something weird? I don’t think I love you as much now as I did when you first walked back into my life those few weeks ago. And you know why? Because that first time I was there for you. You needed me to hold you so you could feel safe and I understood that. It felt so good, just holding you. Simple and easy and so damn beautiful.” He blinked away an onrush of tears and stared hard at a crack in the ceiling while he fought to keep his emotions under control.
“But now it’s difficult for me,” he said at last. “I know you need help… aw hell, I don’t just mean your impotence… it’s more than that, isn’t it? But I don’t know what you want. You want me to punish you for something? Can’t do it anymore because sometimes I think you’ll get me mad enough to kill you and that scares hell outta me. You know exactly what buttons to push, don’t you?” He sighed. “I want to be there for you… like on that first night but though you let me fuck you… beg me to… I still don’t feel close to you.”
Was he talking himself out of a love affair? After he had finished speaking, would he be shut away even more from Hutch’s thoughts and heart? What was going through the complicated mind of the man he called lover, and for whom he would give up his life, cheerfully and without thought? Hutch was breathing more quietly now and Starsky guessed that he was listening, but the silence stretched and stretched until Starsky felt forced to break it again.
“Can you tell me what it is you need?” he asked quietly. “I can only guess. I do know what I want to give you, though, if you’ll let me. I want tenderness, babe. I want you to let me love you the way I did that first time. Gently and slowly without hurting you. I want to touch you the way I’d touch a baby that’s all soft and warm… and I want to hold you and rock you and whisper beautiful things to you….” Oh God, the tears were too damn close again! Starsky gulped them back and gritted his teeth and stared very hard at the crack in the ceiling that kept wavering in front of his eyes.
“There’s room for good sex in our lives.” He tried again. “I know that. We’re both tough and strong and we aren’t gonna break in half if one of us gets a little rough, but can’t there be a place for gentleness too?”
He wondered about the man. About Hutch. What had his life been like during the past three years? How had he reacted deep inside to the pressures and stresses of his job? Had the core of this idealistic, romantic, tilter-at-windmills remained untouched, or would Hutch always be tainted by what he had endured—the loneliness, the barren emptiness, the corruption that he had fought against? Was there anything left of the younger, laughing, sometimes carefree man or was he desperately in love with an empty shell?
Starsky felt his fingers touched and instinctively sought the comfort of the contact, clasping the hand held out to him across the divide of his uncertainty and Hutch’s silence. He did not want to talk anymore. He wanted the peace of just holding his lover’s hand and listening to his own breathing and Hutch’s, and hearing, in the distance, the noise of the traffic that was not a part of his world at that moment. His truth and his only reality lay in their fingers so trustingly and confidently entwined.
So tell me, Hutch. Tell me what you feel. Tell me what you know. Tell me what you are. Why do you lie so quietly without speaking to me? Don’t you understand that I must have words to make me sure of you? To give you what you must have. Make me know you again like I used to know you. I hurt inside and you’re the only one who can make it right.
He turned his head slowly towards his lover and found that Hutch was watching him. He saw the bruised and bloodied mouth, the dark smudge of purple on his cheekbone, the graze where his ring had snagged into skin, the drowned blue eyes. He saw Hutch crying.
Silent tears. Tears that were pain and shame. They rolled slowly down his face, unchecked, and mingled with the blood staining the white pillowcase against which the blond head rested.
With a sense of shock, Starsky realized that he had never seen Hutch crying since their reunion. Never. No matter how much pain he had inflicted upon his partner, nor what insults he had hurled in his direction, Hutch had not shed a single tear. His proud, stiff-necked lover had never allowed himself to show this kind of weakness before. And now Starsky did not know what to say.
He acted, drawing Hutch against him and muffling against his chest the sobs that seemed to be drawn from deep inside the blond.
“Hush.” The gasping distress of his partner moved Starsky as nothing else could have. “Hush, lover, hush.” But part of him was grateful for the tears. Maybe they would help. And suddenly he felt close to Hutch again, just like on that first night.
“Sorry.” The word was almost lost in a gulp of misery.
“My sweet love.” Starsky had never dared to utter such an endearment to Hutch before, fearing that he would be saying things that his partner would not want to hear. “Beloved babe, if you wanna cry, then cry. You think I mind? If it’s gonna help you, then you go ahead.”
“I don’t deserve you. You should kick me outta here.”
“Oh no.” Throw Hutch to the wolves? Send him out of his haven to exist by himself in an uncaring world? No. No matter what happened. “Let me clean you up,” he suggested as the deep sobs died away. “Don’t know if you’re gonna be able to go to work tomorrow, lover. No one’s gonna believe you walked into a door.”
“That bad?”
“Well….” Starsky tipped the blond head back and stared into the battered face. “…Yeah,” he admitted with a sigh. “I’m afraid so. If you go out like that, people are going to ask awkward questions.”
“Aw hell!”
“My fault.”
“No. I asked for what I got.” Soft, bruised lips covered Starsky’s and while he tasted blood, he also reacted to the sweetness of that kiss, opening his mouth wide and feeling Hutch’s tongue explore him and slide gently towards his throat. This was the kind of tender intimacy that he had needed and been denied. He stroked Hutch’s back soothingly, letting his hands convey their own message of love, and he fell asleep suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of the embrace, lulled by Hutch’s warm presence.
* * *
“Wake up, lover!” Starsky felt a line of kisses being trailed along his shoulder to his throat and he turned towards the pleasure of the touch in sleepy wonder. “C’mon, babe.” Hutch’s voice urged him back to consciousness. “Got your breakfast ready for you.”
Breakfast? No, he had to clean Hutch up; bathe that bleeding face and make sure he hadn’t hurt him with that near-rape.
“Starsk? You with me?” A cool hand rubbed his stomach gently in a gesture that reassured and roused him. “Wake up, boy!”
Starsky opened one eye and then the other. Hutch was leaning over him, smiling, and his face didn’t look as bad as it had a few hours before.
“Morning?” he asked stupidly.
“That’s right. You slept in my arms all night.”
“I did?” It should have been the other way around. Hutch had been the one who had got hurt.
“Yes.” Hutch came closer, kissed the tip of his nose, and then withdrew quickly as Starsky reached out for him. “Sorry, lover boy, we don’t have time for that. Get outta that bed and get moving, will you?”
The blond moved away and Starsky propped himself up on one elbow, blinked the sleep out of his eyes and wondered how he had managed to go to sleep in the middle of being kissed by his lover. He must have been tired! He was still wondering when he sat at the breakfast bar and watched Hutch serve him with ham and eggs and potato waffles and coffee.
“You’re spoiling me,” he remarked.
“You deserve it.” Hutch’s hand ruffled his curls, still damp from the shower. “Eat up. We don’t have all day.”
Starsky noticed, with a jolt of pleasure, that Hutch had served himself with a breakfast very little smaller than his partner’s, and that the blond ate hungrily.
“You think you’ll get away with going to work like that?” he asked. “I mean….”
“I know what you mean.” The blond grinned. “I walked into a door. You think anyone’s gonna try to prove otherwise? Who’d believe me if I said you’d hit me? Don’t worry.”
“Whatever you say.”
They were just strapping on their guns when the knock at the door warned them that Reiner was ready to drive them down to Metro. Starsky had given up driving his own car because it worried Hutch and the blond had enough on his mind. The same bulletproof car that took them to work now brought Starsky home when he was ready and then returned to wait for Hutch.
“Okay?” Starsky opened the door while Hutch stood out of the line of fire. Standard procedure. Precautions. Necessary.
“Yeah.” Hutch pushed the door closed again, touched his lover’s face and then kissed him lightly. “Have a good day, babe.”
“You too. Take care.” It was a familiar warning, but Starsky always said it fervently because the danger was real and he never wanted them to be lulled into a feeling of false security. He smiled into Hutch’s face and then jerked his head for his partner to move back before he opened the door again.
“Morning, Carl.” Starsky nodded to the younger man. “Everything okay?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Fine.” Starsky stepped out of the front door of his apartment and calmly and leisurely surveyed the scene before him. Hutch would not emerge from the house until he was as sure as he could be that it was safe. Every person in sight had to be checked out, everything had to look one hundred per cent normal.
Hutch hated this part of the operation, disliking what he called hiding behind the protection of other cops when he was the most senior officer present, but he did as he was told because it was sensible and because Starsky told him that he must.
Starsky let his eyes run over every house, every apartment, every vehicle and every human being within his sight, checking for the slightest thing that could be off-key or out of the ordinary. Hutch’s life was in his hands and his lover was relying on his vigilance.
“Okay, sir?” Reiner asked.
“Just a minute.” Starsky always took his time. He would not be rushed. This was too important. He checked out the department’s other man, Ray Vandam, recognized the girl walking the dog fifty yards away as a neighbor, and the man getting into his car across the road as another local resident. Two bikes lay on the lawn of the man’s house, had probably been there all night, and Starsky sighed inwardly at these, the only people on the street whom he did not like.
They were noisy and their six children ran wild around the neighborhood. Once or twice he had considered leaving his apartment to get away from them, but he could never be bothered to make the effort to find another place. His gaze fell on a toy pistol lying near the foot of the steps. More toys from those damn kids! He’d have to talk to their father about it.
The thought upset his concentration and he had to make one more careful sweep of the territory before he was satisfied. Then he nodded and Reiner tapped on the door again, the signal to Hutch that it was safe for him to come out. Without turning his head, Starsky felt his partner at his shoulder, and although he knew that it was his job to protect this man, he still sensed that Hutch saw the task as a two-way deal. As it had been in the old days.
They went down the steps slowly and steadily. Reiner leading, then Hutch, then Starsky. Procedure. And Starsky’s gun was tucked in the belt of his pants close at hand. The car was by the sidewalk, door already open, and Vandam stood by it, his eyes roving the quiet street.
Reiner reached the bottom step and Starsky relaxed just a little. The worst was over. Soon Hutch would be safe, or comparatively safe, within the protection of the car and then police headquarters. He grinned appreciatively as Reiner kicked the toy gun out of the way.
It exploded.
Christ! Starsky did not have time to speak the word aloud. It just echoed inside his head as he flung an arm around Hutch’s waist and threw him to the ground, wriggling his own body on top of his lover’s and keeping the blond’s head pressed flat to the sidewalk as he heard the shouts of Vandam and the shrill scream of the girl with the dog.
“Get him in the car!” The order pierced his senses that had been assaulted by the deafening noise, and at once he saw the logic of it.
“C’ mon!” He rolled off his partner and tugged Hutch to his feet, running him the few paces to the car and pushing him headlong into the back, slamming the door after him. Then he scrambled into the driver’s seat and swung the car away from the curb, taking with him a small, vivid picture of Reiner lying sprawled like an untidy, ugly rag doll on the sidewalk with his legs bending at odd angles and blood pumping from them. They were leaving him and he could be dying.
“We have to go back!” Hutch shouted the words. “We can’t run away!”
“Keep down!”
Starsky glanced in the rear view mirror as he slewed the car around a corner and saw Vandam bending over Reiner’s body. He reached for the radio and relayed a terse message to the dispatcher, then turned his head swiftly to look at his partner in the back seat.
“I told you to keep down!” he snapped.
“We’ve got bulletproof glass, Starsky.”
“Shit!”
“We can’t leave him.”
“Yes, we can. You’re the important one, not him.”
“He’s my officer! Now turn this fucking car around.”
“Sorry, Commander, I’ve got my orders.” And then, to inject a little softness, a personal note into the tension of the moment, “Hutch… I want you safe. Please….”
“You cold-hearted bastard!”
That hurt. And it wasn’t true. Did Hutch really think that he wanted to leave an injured man when he might be able to help? Starsky’s hands were trembling and sticky with sweat as the thought of Reiner made his guts churn. What gave Hutch the right to condemn him like that?
“I’m sorry.” The words were whispered but they carried such a ring of sincerity that Starsky gulped down a lump in his throat.
“It’s okay,” he said gruffly.
Hutch’s hand touched the back of his neck, rubbed it gently, slid up into his hair and then fell away.
“I’m scared.” The statement was made with a kind of flat grimness that Starsky understood. He knew the feeling and he knew it wasn’t an easy thing to admit to.
“So am I,” he said quietly. “I get scared every time we walk out of our front door.”
“Why don’t we run away together?”
“What?” Starsky glanced in the mirror and found sapphire eyes watching him.
“Find a deserted beach… just you and me. A desert island. Would you like that? Could you be happy if you only had me for company?”
“Very happy.” Was Hutch trying to take his mind off what they had seen?
“I’m frightened that we’ll never get out of this mess. I don’t want to have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life.” It was a terrible thought. Starsky shivered and at once Hutch’s fingers touched the skin at the base of his hairline again in a comforting gesture. “Why d’you think I keep saying that I should get the hell out of your life?” the blond asked quietly. “I don’t want you to live like that. You should have better….” And then, with a flash of horror, “…You could have come down those steps first! You could have….”
“I know.” The same thought had occurred to Starsky. “Don’t worry about it. It could just as easily have been you. But I’ve still got you. And I’m keeping you, so get that into your beautiful blond head.”
“I love you.”
It was said quietly and yet with such conviction that Starsky smiled and nodded.
“I know,” he said, and further words did not seem necessary.
* * *
At Metro Hutch was hurried into the building while Starsky locked up the car and took the elevator to his own division. The implications of the incident, beyond the fact that it was a bomb, were beginning to frighten him, and he was pre-occupied as he walked into his office and started to go through his mail; mail that had already been vetted before it got to him, on Hutch’s orders.
Tony’s familiar writing caught his eye on a small, white envelope, and he gulped down a sudden surge of panic as he took out the single sheet of paper. What the hell had the guy said? Anything that could be used against him if it became known that he was gay?
It was mercifully short! “Call me or come and see me. We have things to talk about.”
They had nothing to talk about. Starsky tore the note to pieces and threw them in the wastepaper basket. Tony was piqued because he had been supplanted in Starsky’s life by another man, but he had never considered that he had to be a faithful lover while he was with Starsky and now, looking back, Starsky recalled that there had been no affection between them in the months they had known one another. It had been a totally physical attraction that had drawn them together and nothing else. He had been more honest with Tony than Tony had ever been with him.
The phone rang. He picked it up and tucked it in between his shoulder and his neck as he fumbled with the next piece of mail.
“Starsky,” he said shortly.
“Hello, Dave.”
Tony. Starsky put down his letter and concentrated on the voice at the other end of the wire.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” he said quietly. “Not one thing.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ve got something to say to you. And you’d better listen, Captain Starsky.” The emphasis on his rank made Starsky’s eyes narrow.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “I’m listening.”
“I called because I knew you’d throw my letter away. I want to see you. My place. Tonight.”
“Sorry. If you want to talk, you’ll have to come and see me.”
“Yeah? What about Commander Hutchinson?”
So he knew who Hutch was. “Come at eight.” Hutch was never home before nine. “And you better have something worth saying.”
“Don’t worry. I have.” The line went dead and Starsky replaced it with a frown. He had performed intimate, erotic acts with Tony in the dark heat of the night, but he really did not know the man. Not the way he thought or the way he would react in a certain situation.
The phone rang again. Oh Jesus, not Tony again. “Yeah?” he snapped into the mouthpiece.
“Get up here, Captain.” It was Alexander Terry.
“Yes, sir.”
Five minutes later Starsky walked into the chief’s office and nodded coolly to Hutch. He was still shaken by their narrow escape, but it would not be a good idea to show any emotion in front of Terry. The man missed nothing and Hutch’s bodyguard should not show fear.
“Sit down.” The head of IA nodded towards a chair and Starsky sat quietly and divided his attention between Terry and his partner. Hutch’s expression indicated a controlled alertness that Starsky found oddly reassuring, and as he looked at the blond, Hutch smiled faintly.
Then Starsky looked at Terry as the man fiddled with a pencil on his desk. He saw a man of forty-five with a thin, intelligent face and slate-grey eyes. Terry’s skin was tanned a deep nut-brown, and it was topped by a thatch of startlingly white hair. Rumor had it that the man had suffered some kind of trauma years ago, but for as long as Starsky could remember, that distinctive head of snowy hair had always made the man stand out. At five feet nine inches, Terry was not an impressively built man, but he commanded attention simply by walking into a room and standing there.
“I think we have some decisions to make,” Terry said quietly. “Commander Hutchinson can’t stay in your apartment any longer.”
Oh no! No, they couldn’t take Hutch away from him! Not now! He was doing him good. His partner was putting on weight and he was happy and secure in their small apartment. No longer did Starsky think of it as his home, but theirs. Hutch was no longer a visitor but a co-tenant with his lover, and the blond had insisted on handing over a check to pay half the rent and food. Starsky intended having it framed.
“What do you want to do?” Starsky asked quietly.
“Hutch tells me the two of you are buying a house.”
“Well yes, but….”
“We’d like you to drop the idea for a while. We want to move both of you to a safe house.”
Both of you. Starsky felt happier for those few words. But a safe house? The words were synonymous with bleak apartments above shabby shops, impersonal motel rooms, uncomfortable surroundings. Surely IA could not expect the Deputy Head of its department and his bodyguard to have to endure such conditions for any length of time.
“I can see from your face that you don’t like the idea.” Terry seemed amused. “Don’t worry. I know you’ve seen your share of safe houses. We have something a bit better than just one room in mind. This place is self-contained, you can do your own cooking, and no one’ll disturb you….”
“Oh yeah?” Starsky was sure that there was a catch to this. It sounded too easy, too good. “Where is this place?”
“The Penthouse suite of Metro. Right on top of this building.”
“I didn’t know there was one.”
“Well, there is. One bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and a foldaway bed in the living room.”
No more having to guard Hutch every time he went out into the open. No more bulletproof cars. Starsky nodded slowly, seeing the good points of the idea. Hutch would be safer this way.
“There’s just one problem,” Terry said levelly. “Hutch won’t agree to it.”
“Why?” Starsky switched his attention to his partner. “What’ve you got against the idea?”
“Because I might as well be in San Quentin,” Hutch answered bluntly. “It’d be like a prison….”
“You’d be staying alive,” Starsky interrupted quietly.
“Maybe. But living and working in the same place, never going anywhere… what kind of life would it be? I’d go nuts! And I couldn’t expect you to do it, too.”
“The bodyguard goes where the body is, sir.” Starsky realized that he should be giving his lover the title. He was a captain and Hutch was a commander. And that last sentence of Hutch’s had sounded a little too personal.
“Don’t call me sir!” the blond snapped irritably.
“It’s unnecessary in this office anyway,” Terry agreed. “I know as well as everyone else that you two were partners for a long time. That’s why you’re being consulted, Starsky, instead of just being told what to do. But outside this office….”
“…Hutch must have the respect due to his rank,” Starsky finished. “I know.”
Alexander Terry had a reputation for being able to freeze a man with just one stare. Starsky met the ice in those slate colored eyes and found that he was unable to maintain his gaze.
“Let me tell you something,” Terry said quietly. “Hutch was your partner. Okay. And your friendship with him off-duty is your own affair… yours and Hutch’s. But in this building he is Commander Hutchinson… and by God, he’s earned his title!”
Starsky could not believe that he was hearing this; listening to another man defend his partner against him. And then he was ashamed. Hutch had fought almost impossible odds, both at work and in his personal life, and it had almost destroyed him. He should be proud of his ex-partner’s achievements—he was proud, damn it! He raised his head and looked at his lover, seeing the high color in the fair face and smiling a little at the vulnerable embarrassment.
“I’m sorry.” He addressed Hutch directly. “I never meant to… to put you down.”
“I know.”
But did Hutch know? He would tell him later, make him understand that his respect for his partner was deep and lasting.
“There are other considerations,” Terry steepled his fingers and seemed to be satisfied with Starsky’s quiet apology. “From what’s happened this morning, it seems quite clear to me that whoever’s doing this doesn’t mind who they kill or injure. A child picking up that gun could have died… and it could quite easily have been a child. I don’t think it was a serious attempt to kill you, Hutch. More like another warning.”
“How’s Reiner?” Starsky put in the question swiftly as Terry paused.
“Alive.” Terry shrugged. “Severe injuries to his legs. He’s in surgery right now. A bomb team’s looking at the device they used.”
“It’s a scare campaign.” Hutch looked directly at his partner and Starsky nodded his acknowledgement of the statement. “It could get worse,” the blond continued. “You should know that.”
“Of course it could.” Starsky nodded. “But I’ll do my very best to keep you safe….”
“I know you will, but….”
“Someone has to do it.” Starsky looked directly at his partner. “I think it should be me. I think I have the right and it will be an… an honor.”
My lover. My hero. Starsky saw the fair face flush again and Hutch dipped his head a little as if embarrassed by the sincerity in the words.
“You have a way with words,” Hutch said quietly.
“Yeah, and I’m practical too. We can’t stay where we are because it just isn’t safe. That penthouse sounds fine by me.”
“I am not going to be a fucking prisoner!”
“And I don’t want to have to bury you. No way. So please take the penthouse, sir.”
“Starsky….”
“Hutch?” They locked gazes and Starsky tried to tell his partner, without words, that he could make it all right, that he could give Hutch enough to make his life good.
“Okay.” The blond nodded but Starsky was more interested in the slow smile that spread across Terry’s face. “We’ll try it,” Hutch continued, “but I’ll have to get out sometimes.”
“I’ll fix that.” Starsky nodded. “We’ll get away weekends maybe.” Win some, lose some. Terry was looking worried again, but they could discuss Hutch’s parole when the blond got restless. For the moment he was content to leave things as they were.
Terry showed them a plan of the apartment, pointing out the elevator which ran solely to the penthouse apartment and would be guarded by an IA man at all times. He pointed out the television camera that would monitor the elevator doors, to be controlled by another IA man, and the system of signals in the apartment that could either warn of visitors or summon help.
“That’s fine,” Starsky said at last. “But I got one point. I don’t want your men to know when they’re gonna be guarding Hutch. If one of them was blackmailed… had his wife and kids held hostage….” He shrugged. “…Well, if they don’t know when they’re on duty or who with, it’ll be safer.”
Hutch was smiling. Terry was staring at him with a quizzical expression on his face, but Starsky was confident that he was not going to be put in his place. His suggestion was valid and he knew it.
“Okay,” Terry said at last. “You make your point very clearly, Starsky. But how do I know I can trust you?”
The answer was so simple that Starsky wondered why Terry bothered to ask, but it was Hutch who answered him.
“Because I do, sir.”
“And that’s supposed to be good enough?”
“It is for me. And it’s my life.”
“All right.” Terry laid his hands flat on the table and stood up. “Collect your stuff tonight. I’ll have a squad of men cover you. We’ll continue to monitor your calls and your mail. We don’t want any more little presents like the last one, do we Hutch?”
“No.” The blond grinned boyishly.
“What was it?” Starsky could not restrain his curiosity.
“Tarantula.” Terry said the word with relish. “Didn’t Hutch tell you? Very much alive.”
“Jesus!”
“Yeah. Got loose in the department for a few minutes. Apparently there was chaos until they killed it. Our friends have a sense of humor.”
“Funny kinda humor.” Starsky was not amused. He hated spiders.
“Depends on your point of view. Now….” Terry became the policeman again. “…I suggest you both go and look over your new quarters while I make the arrangements.”
* * *
The penthouse was bigger than Starsky had expected it to be. Simply and comfortably furnished, it was bright and airy, and with a few personal possessions brought from his own place and from Hutch’s, Starsky felt they could make it into a home. Hutch needed a home.
“Bugs,” Hutch said succinctly, and while Starsky stared at him in total non-comprehension, the blond started to check the pictures in the room.
That kind of bug. Why should IA check up on them?
Was Hutch becoming paranoid?
“Okay.” They searched the place thoroughly and the apartment was free. Starsky stood in the middle of the room, hands hanging loosely by his sides and watched Hutch nod in satisfaction. “That’s fine.”
“Why should anyone bug this place?”
“We aren’t the first ones to use it. Terry had his men check it over before we came up here… in case the move had been anticipated… but they could have left one of their own bugs behind. Terry is a good boss, but he’s also a grade one bastard.” Hutch grinned. “He might just bug the place to keep tabs on us.”
“I see.”
“Come here.” Hutch held out his arms in a simple gesture of need and welcome and Starsky felt his face break into a smile of delight. He crossed to his lover and slid his arms around the still slender waist, drawing the blond close to him.
“I was so damn scared this morning,” he whispered. “You’re too vulnerable, babe.”
“Not now.”
“I hope not.”
“Don’ t worry, Starsk.”
“I’m gonna worry ’til this is over.”
“Did you notice we’ve got a waterbed?”
“Yeah. Wanna try it out?”
Hutch laughed aloud. “No, babe. Tonight. I should be home earlier now. Won’t have to go so far.”
“I’d thought of that. And I can come and get you, if you’re late.” Christ, and he was supposed to be meeting Tony at eight! How was he supposed to organize that now?
“Got something to tell you,” Hutch said quietly. “Last night I said I didn’t trust you….”
“I don’t blame you.” Starsky put the words in quickly. He wanted no justification of the statement.
“Shh. Listen. You never let me finish. Sometimes you’re just too damn quick off the mark. I was going to say that I couldn’t trust you to walk away if it didn’t work. You’ve got too much loyalty and you’re too damn good… for that. I’d hate you to feel you were tied to me….”
“You’re the White Knight, Hutch, not me.”
“Yeah? It was you who brought me in out of the cold.”
“I’m sorry about last night.” Hutch was right. He had been almost disastrously hasty. “Did anyone say anything about your face?”
“No. I guess they thought it must have happened when I hit the deck this morning.” Hutch smiled at the thought of having fooled everyone. Then, “One kiss?” and Starsky felt his partner’s hand slide around his shoulders to his jaw, and fingers stroke his cheeks lightly. “Just to keep me going ’til tonight.”
It was good to hear that Hutch needed his touch like that, and good to know that his lover could ask. Starsky watched as Hutch’s eyes closed and his lips parted in anticipation of the mouth-to-mouth closeness.
“Beautiful!” He breathed the word reverently as he pulled the blond head down to brush each closed eye gently before finding the mouth that waited for him.
Sweet kiss. Loving kiss. Cherishing kiss. Starsky drew the man still closer and tasted him with all the confidence of an accepted lover, re-confirming his memories of the contrasting textures of soft skin and hard, smooth teeth. He knew Hutch now. Knew him more intimately, more erotically, than any other man or woman ever had. No other human being had ever been allowed to penetrate that guarded entrance and find pleasure within the depths of Hutch’s generous body. Starsky was proud of that. Proud to be the first, proud to have been given something not yielded to anyone else.
He moved against his lover, fitting thigh to thigh, pelvis to pelvis, chest to chest, and let his mouth move slowly on Hutch’s in a kiss of increasing intensity. And then he felt it. A stir of movement at Hutch’s groin; a fluttering, uncertain swell against him that was barely discernible with the intervening layers of cloth.
“Hutch….” He murmured the name against moist lips and his partner purred softly as strong hands held Starsky’s head immobile.
Want to tell you. Can’t you feel it? You’re turning on to me. Hutch, don’t you know what’s happening? At last you’re waking up… coming alive.
Starsky could not talk, but his hands were free. He forced his left one between their tightly pressed bodies and let his fingers curl around the slight bulge of flesh, lightly rubbing at it with the palm of his hand, trying not to show his desperation for a more positive response to his touch.
Turn on to me. Please show me you want me. I want you to want me.
“Hutch….” He tore his lips away from those other clinging ones and panted the name. “…Babe, can’t you feel it?” He pressed his palm harder against the firmness, letting his excitement rise in his voice.
“Didn’t think it could ever happen again.” Hutch sounded bewildered. “Christ, it feels weird!” Almost timidly his hand went down towards his crotch, and Starsky took the trembling fingers and pressed them against the hardening organ, and then rested his own hand on top, rubbing gently.
He began to imagine his mouth full of rock-hard, pulsing cock. Taking it into his throat, letting it choke him, feeding greedily on it until he took his reward and could, at last, drink from his lover. It would be so damn beautiful and he would make it so good for Hutch.
He dropped to his knees and replaced their hands with his cheek, wrapping his arms around hips that had filled out a little in the last weeks and sighing. Heaven. Heaven was close. He tilted his face backwards to see the lines of strain on the handsome face above his own.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“Feel kinda strange. Feel like it could hurt any minute now….”
“Maybe it’s like old machinery… needs oiling.” With his tongue and lips.
“Thanks.”
“Let me see….” Indirect touch was not enough now. He wanted to look at this miracle, kiss it, feel it grow within the safety of his mouth, hold it and love it and nurture its uncertain growth. How big would Hutch be? It didn’t matter really. He was no size queen and he would be grateful just to get Hutch to orgasm. His ass began to ache in anticipation of a fulfillment that he did not have the right to expect yet. Hutch would need to get back into practice before they got ambitious.
Starsky unzipped the pants, wrestled impatiently with the thin briefs beneath, and then the awakening cock was free, still only half hard but, Starsky smiled to himself, the most beautiful sight in the world.
He cradled it between his hands and bent his head to study it, as if he had never seen a man’s cock before. He had seen, touched, sucked more men than he could remember, but this—this was different. This was Hutch. This was positive proof that he could turn on the one man in the world who was important to him.
He heard a groan from above him and glanced upwards.
“Okay?” he asked again.
“I….” The blond seemed to have run out of words, but his eyes were big and luminous in his blanched face. “…Please… not now!”
Not now? Not now, just when his lover’s organ was beginning to respond to fingertip caresses? Not now when his tongue was all ready to glide over the velvet-soft head and taste his beloved partner? How could be stop now?
“Tonight,” Hutch whispered. “When we’ve got time. When it’s safe and I don’t have to go back to work.”
No. Please no. I’ve waited so damn long. Suppose it doesn’t happen again! Oh God, it must! Again and again and again because I’m never going to get enough of you. Never.
“Please, Starsk.” A hand stroked his hair in a gentle caress. “I know how much you’ve done for me… got no right to ask… but please! Tonight. I can’t relax now.”
He had every right to ask. This was something so special, so intimate, that Starsky understood Hutch’s wish for more time for them. But, God, how would he get through the rest of the day with the anticipation of the night filling his mind? He would be permanently hard as he remembered this moment and replayed it over and over in thrilled wonder.
One kiss. He had to kiss it just once. He pressed his lips to the silken head of the still growing cock and the temptation to let his hungry mouth have more was a real pain inside him.
A buzzer sounded.
CHAPTER FIVE
When the buzzer sounded, Hutch uttered a brief, harsh expletive and pulled himself free of Starsky’s restraining arms to push his cock back into his pants. Starsky stood up and glanced around him.
“What the hell was that?” he asked.
“Elevator.”
“You mean anyone can just walk in on us? Jesus, I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Guess if we don’t want company we can jam the doors open.”
“Hmm.”
They surveyed one another swiftly, making sure that they were dressed properly and that they looked as calm as possible.
“Love you,” Hutch whispered and Starsky grinned weakly.
“Would you call that being saved by the bell?” he asked.
“Yes.” Hutch nodded and then they both turned to look at Alex Terry as he stepped out of the elevator.
“Okay you two?” Terry inquired. “Thought I’d come up and show you some of the gadgets we’ve got here. There’s a whole system of electronics and if you flip this switch, the elevator doors won’t open. This is bulletproof….” He rapped the small glass window set into the door. “…And the door is bombproof. Every visitor will be announced by the guard before he sends them up here, but if you don’t like the look of them you can inform the guard and send them back down again. He can hold them inside the elevator until he’s got reinforcements.”
“Not so much an elevator, more a trap,” Starsky said quietly. “Suppose someone tries to trap us? Suppose some guard shuts us in with a grenade… or someone booby-traps it with gas?”
Terry looked at Hutch. “Some partner you’ve got there,” he said neutrally, but Starsky had the feeling he had passed some kind of test. “Is there anyone you do trust, Captain Starsky?”
“Yes. Hutch.”
“Best piece of news I’ve heard all day.” Terry suddenly smiled broadly. “You have a point, Starsky. And now I’ll show you the rest of the tricks. By tonight these doors…” he tapped them with his knuckles, “will open to a single word command by your voices and your voices only. You can never be trapped. So choose your word carefully. Only you two and I will know what it is.” Starsky could have sworn that amusement lurked at the back of the grey eyes. “Guess you’ll have to trust me that far, Captain.”
Hutch had trusted the head of IA three years ago and Terry had not let him down. Starsky nodded.
Terry showed them the comprehensive communications system, the metal ladder that could be dropped down the outside of the building in case of fire, the television and video, the Hi-Fi and the small, modern kitchen. He was plainly proud of the place, but Starsky was acutely aware of his lover’s closeness as they dutifully followed Terry around, and when the head of IA bent to demonstrate the small home computer, his left hand snaked out and ran possessively over Hutch’s ass. Hutch glared at him, but behind the sapphire blueness of the eyes, Starsky saw the ache of longing. The need was there for both of them. Tonight, if he was very lucky, Hutch would consummate his love for his partner in a physical mating that would complete their commitment to one another. Starsky did not know how he was going to be able to wait.
Terry had made all the arrangements for them to move their personal possessions. A small truck, teams of IA men, a careful timetable, and secrecy. Starsky estimated that he would have fifteen minutes with Tony before the van and Hutch arrived. It would have to be enough.
As they stood in the elevator again, he frantically tried to estimate times and to calculate what Tony could have to say to him. Hutch’s hand groped for his as they stood behind Terry and Starsky smiled across at his partner and was grateful for the contact. Tonight, after he had seen Tony and moved into the penthouse, he would have cut all ties with his old life. Gladly and happily. The penthouse would be a new beginning for both of them. He clasped Hutch’s hand tightly and smiled again.
* * *
“I can make a hell of a lot of trouble for you,” Tony said quietly. He sat on Starsky’s couch, feet propped up on the coffee table as if he were in his own apartment. Starsky resented the man’s casualness and confidence while, at the same time, becoming aware of a chill of unease that slid down his back.
“Yeah?” he drawled. “How?”
“I know you’ve got your old partner living here now. Commander Hutchinson. And I figure either the two of you are crawling into bed together or you’re doing contortions to pretend you’re straight.”
“None of your fucking business.”
“You think the LAPD would like the idea of a gay guarding one of their finest?”
Starsky was silent. If Tony opened his mouth he could hurt both himself and Hutch. How could he be stopped? Strange, he had not realized that Tony was a vindictive man. Was this a bluff? Should he call it?
“Look,” he said quietly. “We’ve had some good times….”
“Haven’t we just? You got a great ass, Davey-boy, and you know how to use it. I’m not about to give you up because you got the hots for some blond. Does he screw you through the floor? Is he better than me?” A short laugh. “I doubt it!”
“Fuck off, Tony.”
“It isn’t that easy, lover. I don’t like being given the brush-off. Not when I think I’ve got something good going for me.”
“Yeah? Good?” Starsky laced his voice with sarcasm. “Wasn’t that great for me.”
“No?” Tony threw back his head and laughed. “Coulda fooled me, sweetheart. You used to beg me for it.”
Resentment burned deep in Starsky. Was there anything more obscene than discussing a dead love affair? What the hell had he ever seen in the man who lolled on his couch, arrogantly sure that he would not be rejected? It hadn’t even been a proper love affair. He had never loved Tony.
Strength? Yes, at six foot three and broadly built, Tony was a powerful man. Sexual attraction? With his closely cut beard and long hair, Tony had a piratical air that Starsky knew would have made most people look at him twice. He had to admit that Tony was attractive.
“Get the hell outta my life,” he said between his teeth. “It’s over. Can’t you let it be?”
“No. Get your ass over here and I’ll make you change your mind.”
“Like hell!”
How long since he had been laid? How long since he had felt a big cock pumping heavily and deeply inside him, forcing him into submission, making him yield and enjoy the sensation of ceding to another, more dominant male? Could Hutch ever do that for him?
“I’m no good with words,” Tony said. “I let my cock do my talking for me. Come and get it, beautiful.”
Tony was good in bed. Damn good. Earthy and vital and inventive, and always ready for sex. Hutch did not have that kind of raw sexuality. His way of loving was—Starsky groped for the word—different. In some ways just as aggressive but, unlike Tony, there was a streak of gentleness in Hutch. Because Hutch was a man in love and Tony did not know the meaning of the word. Starsky resolutely shut out of his head the violence that had also been a part of their loving. That was all over now. And Hutch’s gentleness extended beyond the bed into the rest of their lives. Tony never touched him unless he wanted him.
Starsky looked at the man, at the big powerful frame and the now conspicuous bulge in the front of his jeans, and he was tempted, hating the disloyalty that his traitorous body was spurring him to. He loved Hutch. With all his heart. So why did this man still draw him?
“You want it, don’t you?” Tony’s even white teeth showed in a grin of understanding. “You really want it bad. Haven’t you told him how you like it? Huh? You’re a fool!”
“Starsky!”
The familiar voice, the singing happiness in it that Hutch was not bothering to hide, made Starsky jerk his head around. Oh Christ, not yet!
“Oh.” Tony’s eyes showed a sparkle of malicious interest. “This your new lover then? Does he know I’m gonna be here?”
“Please!” The thought of a confrontation between Tony in his present mood and Hutch who was so happy, but who would also be tired after his day, was frightening. “Leave him alone!”
“Who, me?” Devilish innocence.
“Tony, please!”
“Starsky… have you gone to sleep in there?” Irritated comment but Starsky heard the concern behind the sharp tone. He was leaving Hutch to stand out in the open where it could be dangerous. He opened the door.
“Geez, babe, you took your time!” Hutch slipped into the room and then stared at Tony. “Hey… sorry. Didn’t know you had company.”
Starsky cast a last agonized glance towards the old lover and turned towards the new, realizing that although Hutch had heard about Tony, he had never seen him before.
“I’m almost ready,” he heard himself saying. “You all set?”
“Yeah.”
Tony got to his feet in a slow, deliberate movement calculated, Starsky was sure, to focus both pairs of eyes on him.
“Is this him?” he asked softly. “You gave me up for… him?”
Starsky hated the look of startled comprehension that crossed Hutch’s mobile face, followed by the watchful wariness of a man on his guard. Tony’s voice had been full of contemptuous surprise.
“Just get the hell outta here,” Starsky said wearily. “I got nothing to say to you.”
“Oh yeah? Well I’ve got plenty to say to you… and him.”
“I take it…” Hutch said carefully, “…that this is Tony.” The distaste in his voice made Starsky feel sick.
Tony ignored the remark. “Well, he ain’t bad,” he commented to Starsky, as if Hutch was not even in the room, “but really, baby, I can’t see him giving you what you need.”
“I’ll see you in the car, Starsky.” The initial revulsion was slowly becoming cold anger and Starsky knew that his partner was hating this confrontation with all the depths of his fastidious nature.
“Oh, come on!” Tony crossed the room with all the grace and fluidity of a big cat. “Let’s be civilized about this. You’ve got what I want.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Hutch said shortly, but he stood his ground before the sheer bulk of the other man.
Starsky compared them. Hutch did look almost frail beside Tony, his blondness a perfect foil for the bigger man’s dark hair and tanned skin. The old and the new. They were facing one another squarely, like boxers in a ring, but their expressions were at variance with their tense bodies. Tony looked amused and Hutch looked calm and almost contemptuous. Starsky sensed that his partner, at least, would refuse to indulge in any kind of verbal sparring.
“You think you’ll hold him?” Tony asked, when the silence had lengthened until Starsky wanted to scream. Hutch said nothing. “Okay. I’ll give you a piece of advice, thought I don’t know why I should.” His expression became wolfish. “He likes it hot and heavy, blondie. Does he beg you for more? Well, give him more. Screw him to the bed. And then maybe… just maybe… he’ll stay. For a while.”
“Fuck off!” Hutch snapped the words, but as Starsky watched in silent fascination, a tide of red crept up his open face until it vanished into his hairline.
Starsky had not realized that Hutch would be embarrassed by a little plain speaking, but then he remembered his lover’s difficulties and knew it was shame that was causing that painful, hectic flush. Because Hutch had been unable to make love to his partner at all.
“Get out, Tony!” he said between his teeth, and the urge to protect his lover over-swept every other emotion.
“Okay. I’ll be seeing you….” Now the big man’s eyes shone with a predatory gleam. “…But remember what I told you, Davey-boy. I know all about you two… I can make trouble….”
“Starsky, come here.”
“What?” Starsky swung around to face his lover, startled by the sudden authority in Hutch’s voice.
“Come here.”
Some kind of proof of whom he belonged to? He could give that proof. The momentary weakness that had swayed him towards Tony’s animal magnetism had drained away leaving him feeling so ashamed of his disloyalty that he would do anything to confirm that his love lay with the blond. Quietly, confidently, he crossed to Hutch’s side and his partner slid an arm around his shoulders, claiming him openly.
“What d’you want?” Starsky asked.
“I just want to tell your Tony something….”
“Not my Tony,” Starsky denied quickly.
“Whatever.” Hutch faced the big man. “What you’ve just said sounds like some kind of blackmail.” His tone was cold and hostile. “I hope it wasn’t because all I have to do is yell and two guys’ll come busting in here. They’ll see Starsky protecting me….” He pushed the dark-haired man in front of him and Starsky felt Hutch’s hands squeeze his shoulders. “…And they’ll shoot first and ask questions later. If there is a later….”
“You’re kidding!”
“Watch me!” There was something so deadly, so cold and final in Hutch’s voice that Starsky shivered inside and felt his guts turn to water. Unexpectedly he now found himself drawn to Hutch in a way he recognized as being the same kind of sexual excitement that he had felt earlier for Tony. He hardly recognized the voice of the authoritative man standing behind him, and it was with a sense of shock that he realized Hutch was capable of carrying out his threat for their protection.
“Okay!” Tony threw up his hands in a mock token of surrender. “You win. You keep him, Hutchinson. He’s an awkward bastard and you seem like a cold type of guy. I hope you’ll be very unhappy together.”
When the door slammed and only the two of them were left in the room, Starsky turned nervously away and began to pack a last few albums into a box.
“Why don’t you go with him?” Hutch asked neutrally.
“Because I don’t want to.” Starsky added a pottery ashtray to his packing and looked around the room, avoiding Hutch’s eyes.
“Why don’t you want to?” Hutch’s question was put quietly and steadily.
“Because I don’t love him… or even like him. I love you.”
“Is it love or pity?”
There was a measure of pity in his feelings for his partner and Starsky had always known that, but it was all mixed up with his desire to help his lover in whatever way he could, and by his own feelings of guilt. If he had joined Hutch in IA three years ago, maybe the man would not have suffered so much.
“I don’t want you feeling sorry for me.” Still that same emotionless voice. “I can live without that.”
“I love you.”
“Yeah?”
“You must know that I do!”
“I don’t know anything.”
Poor bastard, Starsky reflected, he probably didn’t. It would hurt a sensitive man like Hutch to be involved in a sordid scene like the one he had just been a part of. And all he, Starsky, could do was to talk about love without any feeling in his voice as if he were ashamed of it. Where was his compassion and his understanding? Had he been so upset by Tony’s words that he could not find it in himself to give Hutch the reassurance he needed?
“Let’s go to the penthouse,” he said quietly, but he kept his head averted. “We can talk there and it’s safer.”
Why was there this terrible tension between them? Why couldn’t he just put his arms around his lover and give him the warmth of his body? Maybe it was Hutch himself who was inhibiting him with his quiet, even voice so that he did not have the courage to show his partner how much he loved him. He waited on his knees by the packing case for Hutch to voice his disgust at what he must have seen as a degrading scene.
“Whatever.” Hutch did not sound as though he cared about anything. “Let’s go.”
Like a prisoner to the scaffold, like the condemned man being taken from death row to the unknown. What, Starsky wondered, was the matter with both of them. Why was there this awful restraint! Starsky did not understand his own feelings. Was it because he was scared that if he let the barriers down, Hutch might ask questions about Tony? Questions that he would not want to answer?
He raised his head and caught Hutch watching him. Oh God, the fear in those wonderful eyes! Fear engendered because of a bastard named Tony and a fool named David Starsky.
“It’ll be okay,” he said softly. “When did I ever lie to you?”
“Never.”
“I’m not lying now.”
So why was there no hope in those expressive eyes? Where was the happiness and the other emotions he should he seeing? Where was his Hutch?
* * *
“So what did you tell that fucking gorilla?”
Confrontation. Standing amidst the jumbled disarray of their belongings, the words spewed from Hutch’s lips as if he had been forcibly holding them caged behind his teeth. “Did you tell him about me? Did you pour out all your goddamn frustrations? Did he kiss you? Did you…?”
“I did nothing!” Starsky spat out the words. “And I said nothing.”
“So why was he there?”
“He wants me back.”
“So tell me something I don’t know.”
Hutch, don’t break our hearts over this! Christ, where are the words? Why can’t I say what I feel? Why do you reduce me to a shaking wreck just by the way you look at me? Have you been thinking about what happened? Yeah, I bet you have. And it’s gnawing away at your guts so now you’re gonna take it out on me. Okay.
“The guy means nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”
“Oh yeah? He told me a few things, didn’t he?” Hutch stood like a statue, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, proud jaw tilted upwards. “How long since you’ve gotten laid? Huh? Oh…” Harsh, bitter laugh. “…I’ve been screwed. Royally. Never thought anything could be so good. But what about you? What’ve you gotten out of it? A guy who can’t return the favor. A guy who’s so fucked up he can’t… oh Jesus, what’s the use? You’ve gotten a bad bargain, Starsky. You’d be better off with Tony.”
“Will you stop throwing that name at me?” Starsky did not want to look at his partner. The ugliness of the scene in which he found himself, the fact that he was close to losing his own temper, all contributed to a feeling of helplessness. How could they survive with this kind of anger between them? “How many more times do I have to tell you…?” What was the point? He turned to the nearest packing case and lifted out a pile of his books. Goddamn! The top one belonged to Tony and had his name inside. Was the guy going to haunt them?
“Have you ever thought that maybe you aren’t gay at all?” he asked casually, taking the books over to a chest and setting them down. “Maybe you’d do anything to have some kinda close relationship with someone. Maybe I’m the only one who’ll put up with your bitching. So you suck my cock and make me think you like it. Jesus…” The word was half lost in a choke of laughter. “…You don’t even do that too often, do you? And you’ve never… ever… brought me off that way. Do you go to bed with me and suffer like some goddamn martyr?” He swung around and faced Hutch squarely. “Would you rather sleep with me without the sex?” he asked bluntly. “Is that what you really want?”
“No.” The word was a mere thread of sound. “I’m just trying to point out to you that you’ve gotten a bad bargain….”
“…A shop-soiled Hutchinson?”
“If that’s the way you want to put it.”
“Weird, isn’t it….” Starsky was appalled to hear his own voice break. “…How I’d rather have a less-than-perfect Hutchinson than a perfect anyone-else. I must be nuts!” A straight and a gay. Weren’t those relationships always doomed? Weaving a course through the chaos, he sought refuge in the bathroom, rattling the bolt across and leaning against the chill of the tiles.
“Starsk….” Soft, coaxing voice from the other side of the door. “…Come out and let’s talk about this.”
“I’m not coming out ’til you promise never to mention that man’s name again.”
“How can I? He was your lover. You threw him over for me.” Hutch’s voice dropped still more. “I’m jealous, Starsk. I coulda killed the guy!”
Did that explain the constraint, the feeling of withdrawal that he had sensed in Hutch?
“I keep telling you that I love you,” Starsky said huskily. He turned towards the door and pressed his hands to the wooden panels. “You just don’t seem to want to believe me. What else can I say? What words do you want me to use?”
“It’s too one-sided.”
“Not for me.”
“The guy said I was cold….”
“Well, we both know he’s wrong, don’t we?”
“I’m scared.”
“What of? Of me… of loving… or of life in general?”
“Not being good enough.”
Starsky had to open the door then. There was a note of leaden desolation in Hutch’s voice that tore at his heart.
“Not good enough?” Hutch was just outside and he put his arms around the tall frame and hugged his partner tightly. “You got an inferiority complex?”
During their three year separation, Hutch had taken to wearing heeled boots. It gave the blond a two inch height advantage and Starsky wished the disparity was the other way around. He wanted to protect his lover, but being smaller did not help to convey that impression. He had to be content with holding him in a rib-crushing embrace.
“D’you know, I think you’ve put on a couple more pounds,” he said contentedly. And then, “Jesus babe, this feels good.”
“I hope it always does.” Hutch sounded despondent. Maybe he was tired. “I want to be a good lover, Starsk.”
Starsky knew that Hutch did not simply mean the physical side of their relationship. It was more than just an affair and his blond was intuitive enough to realize that. Their love-partnership was complex and full of emotions that were sometimes difficult to deal with. Hutch would want a rich, full, rewarding relationship for both of them and his uncertainty did not worry Starsky. It was a sign that his partner was conscious of the problems and thinking about them.
“You just have to relax a bit more,” Starsky said softly, and he began to rub the long back soothingly. “Don’t take things so seriously. Forget Tony. I don’t mind you being jealous, but you’ve got no cause for it. What worries me more is the way you feel about yourself.”
He saw that there was a need for discussion between them sometime soon. Hutch was an intelligent, articulate man, but it seemed that the subjects of love and sex made him inhibited and afraid to speak out.
“Tell you what,” Starsky continued. “It’ll take us about an hour to sort this stuff out. I got some groceries so we can eat when we’re ready. Then we’ll talk.”
“You think I need straightening out?” Hutch had a sense of humor and it always bubbled up when it was least expected.
“I think you need some loving care, angel-face.”
“You’re beautiful!” Cherishing hands cupped his cheeks and gently turned him to meet a soft, questing mouth. Hutch could disarm him so quickly and so easily with one touch of his lips, turning him from hard cop to a man who needed love with every fiber of his body.
“You… are… sexy.” The soft words seemed to vibrate from Hutch’s throat. “Let’s go to bed now.”
It was a temptation and yet Starsky was scared of the idea. Suppose the first stirrings of desire that he had felt at his lover’s groin earlier in the day were not repeated. What then?
“No,” he said. “No, let’s wait. I just want you to think about it, lover. Think about it and want it.” He could torment his man with his body and his words until Hutch could bear it no longer.
“I think you’re a cock tease,” Hutch said, and his lips trailed fire along Starsky’s jaw.
“Got it in one, sweetheart!”
Hutch inclined his head, accepting the words meekly. “So let’s get working, lover-boy.”
Starsky found a hundred opportunities to fascinate and disturb his man in the two hours that followed. He had never hustled before, but for his lover he played a teasing game as they unpacked their belongings, making sure he bent over the crates on several occasions to give Hutch a good view of the thin denim stretched tightly across his buttocks. He reached upwards to storage closets and knew that Hutch’s eyes raked his body, and he moved close to Hutch as the blond crouched by a pile of albums, swaying his crotch close to the man’s bemused blue eyes. Hutch did make a grab for him then, but Starsky danced away and flung an impish grin at him as he strolled into the kitchen.
While he was out of Hutch’s sight, he rubbed his cock lightly through his jeans and thought about his lover naked and beautiful on their bed. When he strolled back into the living room, the bulge was satisfactorily pronounced and he was aware of hungry eyes feasting on his profile as he turned sideways and stretched his body provocatively.
With the microwave oven to help them, dinner was quickly prepared and Starsky drew the cork on a bottle of rich burgundy and poured a glass for each of them as they sat on either side of the small oval dining table. He smiled at Hutch.
“Your very good health, my lover,” he purred, raising his glass to salute his wide-eyed companion.
Hutch toasted him silently, but his lips formed the three words Starsky most wanted to hear, and the glasses clinked together solemnly.
Starsky continued his teasing while they ate, thrilled by the knowledge that Hutch could not take his gaze from his partner’s left hand as Starsky played with the long stem of his goblet, letting his fingers slide up and down the cool glass as if he was caressing his lover. Starsky played on the parallel provocatively and enticingly, lifting the glass to his mouth and sipping from it slowly, letting the wine moisten his lips and then licking them thoughtfully and with as much casualness as he could muster.
Innocently he looked through his eyelashes at his blond, and saw the blue eyes glaze and slide out of focus as if Hutch was indulging in his own private and erotic fantasy.
“You having some good thoughts?” Starsky asked softly.
“You’re seducing me!” The accusation was tinged with surprise.
“Who, me?”
“Yes, you. You’re exciting the hell out of me and you know it.”
“Do you like it?” Starsky tilted his head back and let the last of the wine trickle down his throat. Already the alcohol was mellowing him and he felt that he was basking in a glow of contentment.
“I think it’s very… sensual,” Hutch whispered. “I feel like you’re stroking me with a velvet glove. Feel like I wanna stretch and purr like a cat.”
“Good.” Starsky refilled both their glasses with the last of the wine and leaned back in his chair. “That’s just the way it should be. When I make love to you tonight, I want my babe all warm and relaxed.”
“If I relax much more, I’ll go to sleep.”
“Oh yeah?” Starsky challenged the statement with his eyes and his mouth as his lips formed a soundless kiss.
“Well, maybe not.”
They ate the rest of the meal in silence although Starsky was acutely aware that Hutch was watching every move he made as if he had never seen him eat or drink before.
“I’ve got some good brandy.” Starsky broke the peace reluctantly. “You want some?”
“Please.”
“Okay.” Leisurely Starsky got to his feet and walked to the kitchen, rummaging for glasses and returning to see Hutch still in his seat, staring out of the window. “Sweet love.” He crossed to the motionless man, put down bottle and glasses and stood behind his partner’s chair. “What are you thinking about?”
“You and me.”
“What about you and me?” Starsky linked his arms loosely around the wide shoulders and Hutch leaned back against him, covering Starsky’s wrists with his fingers.
“I wish this time… now… could last forever. I never thought food could taste so good or that I could enjoy a glass of wine so much. And it’s all because you’re here to share it with me. Soapy, huh?”
“No. You feel happier now?” Starsky bent his head and kissed silky hair lightly. The grip on his wrists tightened for a moment.
“Yes,” Hutch whispered. “Because of you.”
“Ah babe, that’s good to hear.” Hutch’s head rested against his chest, welcome weight close to his heart, and Starsky felt impossibly content. If only all moments could be like this. He felt a communion with his lover as if their pulses beat to a single rhythm and their lungs were perfectly synchronized to breathe as if they were one person instead of two. No need to tell Hutch he loved him; happiness hummed through his veins and his blood echoed the song of exalted joy. Hutch would know how he felt.
He was reluctant to suggest going to bed yet, but he longed to try to rouse his chosen mate and could not believe that he would fail. Not tonight. Tonight was perfect.
“Come and be lazy with me.” He took Hutch’s hand and led him to the big, comfortable couch that was placed close to the window so that they could look out over the city. He poured a generous measure of brandy for both of them, and was then content to twine his fingers in those of the man next to him and sip his drink in contemplative reflection of the big waterbed in the next room.
Unobtrusively he had prepared everything. Oil to massage Hutch’s back and chest and thighs, if it should be necessary to relax his man still more, and ultimately to stroke onto the cock that Starsky hoped so much would be hard and potent. Towels to clean them, one single candle to light their lovemaking, and a joss stick to overlay the room with the rich fragrance of incense.
Hutch finished his brandy and turned sideways so that he could lie along the couch with his head in Starsky’s lap, looking up into his face.
“This is heaven,” he said. “And this is probably the closest we’ll get.”
“It’ll do for me.”
“Me, too.” A satisfied smile ghosted over the well-shaped mouth and then Hutch closed his eyes and snuggled a little closer to Starsky’s crotch.
Idly, Starsky fiddled with the top button of Hutch’s soft, cotton shirt, and the material fell open a little as it came undone. The second button yielded just as easily and he saw the smooth tanned skin and felt his cock stir into life. He began to run his fingers around the edge of the gap made by the open shirt and Hutch sighed.
“Seducer.” The single word was a throaty murmur of sound.
“You complaining?”
“No.”
“Good.” Starsky slipped his hand inside the shirt and let his fingertips drift idly over the small bud of one nipple. Feather light soft caresses that circled the nipple and then only touched it gently before moving away again. “You are so beautiful,” he murmured. “I’ve always thought that.”
Heavy-lidded, dreamy eyes met his own. “Always?” Hutch asked softly. “How long is always?”
“Oh… for years, babe. Hush now.”
“Mmm.” The eyes closed again and Starsky continued his touch-teasing, glancing down the blond’s body to see if he was causing any reaction to that so-desirable crotch. Hutch was wearing loose drawstring pants. It was difficult to tell.
“Time for bed,” he murmured.
“Oh… yeah….” But Hutch’s face suddenly took on a look of worry; a hunted, haunted expression of a fear that could not be voiced. Starsky saw. Starsky understood.
“It doesn’t matter.” He smoothed away lines that had suddenly appeared in his partner’s forehead. “Don’t worry about getting turned on. If it happens, it’ll be incredible. But if it doesn’t, well now we know it’s possible and we’ll have a thousand more nights like this.”
“What if…?”
“Don’t!” Starsky stopped the words with his fingers on Hutch’s lips. “It’ll happen when you’re ready. I promise you it will.”
“Oh Christ… I love you.”
“So come to bed.”
While Hutch stripped, Starsky was careful to avoid watching him. He lit the candle and the joss stick and turned back the covers of the bed so that it looked inviting. Then, as Hutch scrambled in on his side, Starsky began to undress slowly.
It was not a strip tease, but it was something close to it. He pulled his tee shirt up over his head, sucking in his stomach as he did so, and then bent to pull off his sneakers and socks. Just jeans, then, and he wriggled slowly and sinuously out of them to stand naked beside the bed.
In the three years that they had been apart, Starsky had kept himself fit. His body was still hard and lean and there was not an inch of surplus fat. All his old lovers had liked to look at him and Hutch, although he said nothing, betrayed himself with his eyes.
Turn on to me. Starsky said the words silently. Look at me and want me. Want me like you’ve never wanted anything more in your life. Want me so bad your teeth ache!
He watched Hutch and the blond smiled slightly.
“You gonna come to bed?” Hutch asked. “Or are you gonna make like a statue all night?”
“I was waiting to be asked.”
“I’m asking.”
“I’m coming.”
The sheets felt cool to Starsky’s hot skin, but Hutch was in his arms before he had stretched out properly, and Hutch’s lips joined with his in a long and satisfying kiss.
“You know something…?” Hutch moved at last to find his ear and explore it with his tongue. “…You have a beautiful body. I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful before.”
“But I’m a man,” Starsky reminded him softly.
“I’d noticed. And you’re gorgeous. All of you.” Hutch’s hand slid downwards past Starsky’s chest and stomach to cover his crotch in a claiming touch. “And this is mine. All mine.” His fingers encompassed Starsky’s swelling cock, but for once the dark-haired man did not relax and enjoy the feel of the knowing fingers. He sensed, without having any justification for the thought, that Hutch was trying to shift the emphasis away from his own problem. Starsky did not intend to let that happen.
“Remember that first time?” He hushed his voice to match the peace of the room. “It was so gentle. I want it to be that way tonight.”
In the flickering light of the candle he saw the sculpted features relax, and for a moment he was taken back more than ten years to the time when he had first met Hutch. His partner looked so much younger in the soft glow of the candle, the lines smoothed away from his face by the kindly light, and his eyes shining with the clear innocence of youth.
Starsky knew that he was seeing Hutch as no one else ever saw him. To every policeman in the city he was The Incorruptible. Put on a pedestal, totally above reproach, revered and respected. To his enemies he was a man to be hated and feared, and to his friends he was a pleasant and likeable companion. With Starsky he was different; a man who liked to be held and protected, who liked to let down the barriers and be weak in the presence of another man who was his friend as well as his lover. Starsky felt trusted.
Hutch had drunk wine and brandy. Starsky guessed that he had not imbibed enough to make him drunk, but he hoped the alcohol would make his lover pleasantly happy. Lover? Hutch wasn’t really his lover yet. Their affair had been one-sided, with only one of them able to make any kind of physical commitment. Starsky hoped that tonight would see a change, yet he was scared of seeming to be too anxious for that change. Making Hutch worry could only frustrate the mood of easy tenderness that he was trying to foster.
They lay in one another’s arms, Hutch seeming content with the quiet closeness, and all Starsky did was to stroke the big body within his embrace lightly and caressingly. Then:
“I know what you’re trying to do, babe,” Hutch whispered. “And I love you for it.”
“And?” Starsky knew he did not need to amplify his question.
A small, delighted laugh. “Well, I think you’ve still got some work to do, but….” Starsky’s hand was grasped and drawn downwards. He felt the heat just before he reached the mystery of his lover’s crotch, but the hardness was there again as Hutch’s cock nestled against his palm.
“Beautiful.” There was no other word to describe that first lingering touch of his fingers against the strange duality of softness and rigidity. He touched and touched and touched again, learning all that he could with his hand but delaying the moment when he could replace tactile contact with the delight of more intimate caresses.
“Can I look at you?” he asked. The sheet covered them both and he had an irrepressible desire to see Hutch naked and aroused. It was a pleasure that had never been granted to him before, for the brief intimacy of the morning had been hurried and hampered by the encumbrance of clothes.
“If you want to.” For a moment Hutch sounded unsure.
“Are you shy?”
“Scared would be a better word.” A finger touched the pulse that beat at Starsky’s throat. “I mean… I think you’ve got the most fantastic cock in the world, but suppose you don’t….” A short, embarrassed, half-laugh. “…Oh hell, I guess I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed with mine.”
Did Hutch know that he’d be disappointed? Starsky tried to quell the unworthy thought and struggled to take his mind back to the moment when he had released Hutch’s cock from his pants. He had not noticed anything but his own wonder that a small miracle had occurred. How he wished frantically that he had not had so many daydreams about the blond’s naked body. Those erotic fantasies had always included an erect cock that was long and thick. Oh God, he had to know! It wouldn’t matter. He swore to himself that it wouldn’t matter. Hutch was Hutch. Hutch was his only love.
Slowly he pushed back the sheet and Hutch made no move to stop him. Down the golden body it slid, lower and lower, until it was resting against Hutch’s tanned thighs. Starsky looked, looked again, and then raised his eyes to Hutch’s flushed face.
“You’re dumb,” he said wonderingly. “It’s beautiful. Just the way I always dreamed it would be.”
The cock rose gracefully from its nest of curls, still not completely hard, but striving for that goal. Starsky stretched out his hand and touched the silken head, sliding one fingertip delicately over it and watching more excited color creep into his partner’s face.
Starsky knew that he would be loved that night. He would bring Hutch to orgasm with his mouth and then, when they had rested, he would arouse him again and, this time, guide him to a consummation of their affair. He would mate with this man, and when it was over he would belong to Hutch as surely as Hutch belonged to him.
“I didn’t think it would happen,” Hutch said, almost inaudibly. “I thought that part of my life was over. I didn’t know what to do….”
“I know.” Starsky leaned over his partner and kissed the parted lips lingeringly, delighting in the dazed astonishment that he could see in the wide eyes. Then he concentrated all his attention on that beautiful cock, crouching over it to feast his eyes on it, inhale the scent of sweat and musk and soap that rose from between the blond’s thighs, and then begin a touch-teasing with his fingers that made Hutch moan softly and screw up the sheet with his hands.
Time for the kiss. Starsky leaned closer, curled his arm over firm thighs that had not yet parted for him and bent his head to press his lips to the smooth head of Hutch’s cock. Claiming kiss of ownership; kiss of thankfulness that his time of patient waiting was over.
Then he parted his lips and began to take it slowly into his mouth, inch by precious inch, savoring the familiar but still contrarily different taste. No two men tasted quite the same, he had learned that, but now he wished his knowledge was not so wide. It had helped Hutch to have his first love affair—his first gay affair, Starsky corrected himself—with a man with some experience who could understand how he was feeling. Yet, contrarily, Starsky wished he could have been as innocent as the man he was now loving. He did not feel tainted by the bodies he had enjoyed before Hutch, but he did wonder how the blond felt about them. He had not been promiscuous, he did not believe that of himself, but he had enjoyed sex and he had enjoyed a number of men.
The organ was still engorging, still growing in his engulfing mouth and Starsky felt triumphant. At last! He was bringing his nearly-lover closer to climax with every stroke of his tongue, every drop of his saliva that made his lips slide smoothly over textured flesh, and every movement of his mouth that was designed to coax and encourage and excite.
Hutch was big. All and more than Starsky could have hoped for, and despite the fact that the blond was not yet up to his correct weight, Starsky knew the wiry strength would be more than enough to satisfy him when the time came for Hutch to penetrate his body. He worked harder, sucking more determinedly and trying to ignore the way his name was being whispered.
“Starsk!” The voice again, and this time it was more insistent.
“Hmm?” He did not want to stop.
“Will you come up here?”
Starsky shook his head slightly.
“I’ve got something to prove to you….”
“What?” Reluctantly Starsky raised an inquiring face to his lover.
“You said I don’t give you head. I wanna show you that it isn’t because I’m scared or because I don’t like it. It’s just that I thought you liked fucking me better. And….”
“And what?” Starsky was curious.
“Christ, it sounds selfish!” Hutch laughed shakily. “I guess it’s the way I like it best.”
“Sexy bastard!”
“No. You’re the sexy one. I’m just dumb….”
“I’ll make a deal with you….” The mood Starsky was trying to create was beginning to drift away and he wanted to snatch it back. “…Let me bring you off now and then you can do me.”
“Deal.”
Starsky bent to his task again, the candlelight, the comfort of the bed and the love in his heart combining to give him the confidence and the sensitivity to understand his man’s needs.
It did not take him long to recoup the lost ground. Within a minute Hutch’s breath began to come in great gasping sobs that tore their way out of his throat and made his body heave with exertion. Starsky could not speak, but he moved one hand to rub it soothingly over his partner’s chest, feeling the heart hammering under his palm as if it was trying to batter its way through the restraining rib cage.
The sheets rustled. Starsky glanced sideways and saw that Hutch had flung his arms above his head and was gripping the headboard until his knuckles flared white. He was close. So close that Starsky did not dare to try and hold back the incipient orgasm. Not with Hutch’s eighteen months of celibacy at the forefront of his mind. This was no longer a time for teasing and tantalizing, but a moment for uninhibited release.
He sucked harder, cheeks hollowing with the effort, and Hutch cried out, thighs sliding wide apart in a gesture of abandonment as the blond placed the soles of his feet flat against the waterbed, knees bent, and his hips lunged upwards.
Starsky was ready. On a knife-edge of anticipation for whatever Hutch might do, he slid his hand under the bunched muscles of Hutch’s ass and began to encourage the now grinding pelvis to move rhythmically.
Let it come, Hutch. He could not speak but his mind pleaded with his partner. Let go, sweetheart. We both want this so bad. Please… please… relax and let it come. Let me love you.
Hutch began to call out his lover’s name, quietly at first as if he were afraid of being overheard, but then more loudly and more frantically as his body caught the tempo of his chant and Starsky’s helping hand. His legs opened still wider and the name he was uttering began to tumble from his lips in a crescendo of sound that made Starsky work desperately to try to keep the bucking body under just a little control.
Now! Oh God, now! Now and now and now and now. Powerfully the wild, free orgasm came as Hutch screamed his lover’s name and Starsky felt two hands suddenly clamp themselves into his hair, holding his head immobile as the pumping cock rammed deep into his throat and Hutch’s spine arched under the uncontrollable spasms. Semen filled Starsky’s mouth, forced its way down his throat, trickled towards his jaw and still Hutch strained against him as the shuddering body summoned every last ounce of energy to maintain its thrusting until the very end.
Victory. Starsky tasted it with the liquid that flooded his mouth and let his senses reel before the physical onslaught of his lover and the inner happiness that overwhelmed him. They were home free! Hutch had made it and he had been there to help. Starsky knew that his own release was near but he ignored the sensations in his groin and stayed with that shaking body until, with a last shudder that seemed to ripple up from his toes, Hutch slumped back onto the bed and lay still.
Starsky tried to stop his own orgasm but could not. With a sharp bark of pleasure he rubbed his aching cock against one hot, hard thigh and the relief was immediate and almost painful. He spent himself against that firm flesh and collapsed with a sob of content by Hutch’s side, reaching for his lover’s hand and holding it tightly. He wanted to take the blond into his arms, but he had no strength left. He closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing, hearing the rasping gasps from the man by his side but unable to help.
Slowly, as if in a dream, he became aware of arms reaching out for him, drawing him close and holding him as if he was a very small child, and he responded to the unspoken love in that enfolding embrace and sighed.
For a while they lay silent and then Starsky began to wonder what Hutch would say when he first spoke. Were there any words in the world to fit an occasion like this? Hutch was an articulate man. What would he say? What words could possibly encompass such a wonderful happening?
“Until now,” Hutch said huskily, “I never really understood what the word love meant. Now I know.”
“You’re happy?” Starsky snuggled deeper into the embrace of his lover, knowing the answer to his question but needing the words.
“Very happy.” Hutch laid a kiss against his hair. “I swear, I don’t think you know how much you’ve done for me. Those last three years were hell. If I’d known how ill you were after that last time I saw you, I’d have come to you. I feel I let you down so damn badly. But I had to go to New York. I kept asking how you were and everyone kept telling me you were fine.”
“I know.” All this had been explained to Starsky before and he had wondered if IA had deliberately tried to keep them apart.
“We’ve both had a rough time.”
“Yes.” Starsky acknowledged the truth of the statement. Then he asked a question that had been on his mind for some time. “What would you have done if I’d turned you down that night?”
“I don’t know.” There was a very subdued note in Hutch’s voice. “Those three years, all I thought about was the day when the net would close. Some kinda D-Day. In fact, we called it that.” Hutch laughed softly. “I thought of it as David’s Day. I knew how you hated crooked cops. I was doing it for you as well as for me. I thought about you a lot, you know. I missed you.” There was a little silence, then Hutch sighed. “Well anyway, when the day came I was suddenly empty. It was over and I had nothing left. Nothing in the world but the memory of your face. So I came to you. I think you saved my life.”
“If you could have seen yourself that night….” Starsky began to stroke the smooth chest. “…I’d have had to have been totally heartless to turn you away. You know,” he smiled into the darkness, “…I’d often dreamed about having you in my bed, but I never thought it would be like it was. My Rip Van Winkle. I thought you were never gonna wake up.”
“I’m awake now.”
“Don’t I know it!” Starsky moved his hand lower, not really expecting Hutch to be erect again, and was delighted when the flaccid organ stirred against his palm. “Oh?” he asked teasingly. “What’s this then? You getting hot for me again?”
“I’ve been hot for you since that first night. I know I couldn’t show it, but the first time you touched me… something gave way in me. I don’t know what. I felt so alive. And all because of you. My love. My David.”
“Will you make love to me tonight?” Starsky did not know why he should feel shy, but he did. “Remember what you said about belonging? I want to belong to you. More than anything.” He reached up and touched his lover’s face gently.
“I promise.” Muted whisper against his searching fingers. “But I’ve still got something to prove to you. The next time you come… I want it to be in my mouth.”
“Deal.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Starsky… not again!” Alexander Terry protested. “The trial’s too close and this is the third time in as many weeks.”
“I know that, sir, but it’s necessary.” Starsky sat on the other side of the big desk from Terry and tried to put a note of calm authority into his voice.
“How the hell can it be necessary?”
“You want Commander Hutchinson to go out of his skull because he feels trapped?”
“It’ll soon be over. When the trials finish….”
“He’ll still be trapped,” Starsky finished quietly, “and you know it. Too many people hate him. He can never be completely safe. Did you warn him about that when he began all this three years ago?”
“He knew the risks.”
“Long term? I doubt it. Sir.”
It was not the first tine Starsky had crossed Alex Terry and he guessed that it would not be the last.
“Why isn’t Hutch asking me about this weekend?” Terry asked, changing the angle of his attack. “Why is it always you who comes to me?”
“Because I’m responsible for his safety,” Starsky said calmly. “I have to think of another way to get him out of this place so no one knows. I need your help.”
Starsky knew that Terry would agree to his plan eventually. He might fight it out of a sense of duty, wanting Hutch to be where he was at least fairly safe, but while he was basically not a compassionate man, even he had to see what the restricted life was doing to Hutch.
“So soon?” Terry got to his feet restlessly. “I mean, the two of you have been away for the last two consecutive weekends. Can’t you persuade him to stay here?”
“I have tried, sir. He won’t.”
“No?” Terry perched on the edge of his desk and lit one of the long, thin cigars that he liked. “I thought he had everything he needed in the penthouse.”
Now what did he mean by that? Starsky did not know. Did he suspect? What if he did? Did it matter?
“Well, he doesn’t,” he said flatly. “And he needs to get out or else he’ll go nuts.”
“Don’t you think you’re over-dramatizing the situation, Captain Starsky?”
“No.” Starsky hesitated then decided to confide at least a part of the truth to Perry. The man should know. He was Hutch’s superior officer and although Starsky did not like the man, he believed him to be trustworthy. “Okay,” he said. “I think you’d better listen to me….”
“Starsky!” There was an ominous note of warning in Terry’s voice.
“You listen!” Starsky said fiercely. “And I’ll tell you why your deputy needs to get away weekends. He starts work at eight-thirty. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, well he would start at seven-thirty if I didn’t keep re-setting his alarm clock. Living on top of the job has its disadvantages, you know. Hutch never gets away from it. Anyway, changing the alarm call makes him mad, but I have to do it….”
“Isn’t it your duty?” Terry asked coldly.
As a lover, yes. “As a bodyguard?” Starsky queried, just as bleakly. “Hardly! Anyway, I get down to work at nine and come back up at six to six-thirty. Hutch gets back at half-past eight… and he brings his work up with him. He reads while he eats, then he reads ’til he goes to bed.” Careful, Starsky! “He goes to sleep and then he goes through the files in his sleep. I can hear him from the next room.” I can hear him even better when I’m lying next to him. “Sometimes he even wakes up scared because he dreams he’s made a mistake and Mirren and the others go free.”
“Are you saying that he’s obsessed?” Terry demanded.
“It’s as good a word as any. I’d got him off the Quaaludes and the tranquilizers, but now I’m wondering if he shouldn’t start taking some kind of drug again. As the trials get nearer, he gets worse.”
“I see.” Terry inhaled deeply on his cigar and wandered over to the window. Starsky watched him closely.
I had to tell him. He had to know. Can’t keep this to myself. And I don’t know if I can hold Hutch together for much longer.
He had given only the bare bones of the story. He could not talk about the times when he woke in the middle of the night to find Hutch poring over his files again and unwilling to be coerced back to bed. Bed had suddenly become a place where the blond could make love, with an almost mindless frenzy, but where he could find no peace. In bed their couplings were full of an urgent passion that worried Starsky and exhausted them both, but was still not enough to make Hutch sleep.
Neither could Starsky tell Terry about the hours that he had held his lover in his arms, compassion and a sense of terror at the blond’s utter dependence on him almost swamping the deep abiding love that he had for his partner. Hours and hours of patient, gentle crooning to the restless man sometimes, just sometimes, allowed Hutch to drift off into sleep, but more often than not seemed to do little to ease the awful tension. And it was getting worse.
Hutch needed him. Starsky knew that. In bed and out of it. Desperately. They were in love, so much in love, but fear and stress and Hutch’s obsession stalked them in the apartment that should have been their sanctuary from the rest of the world. It had been that, at first, but it was becoming a cage that was too small to contain the two of them and Hutch’s terrible tension.
“He seems okay when he’s with me,” Terry said reflectively. “Yeah, sure, he’s a little stressed right now, but I guess that’s natural. He has a big job to finish. But aren’t you making too much of it?”
“This is my partner we’re talking about,” Starsky snapped. “How long have you known him? Three years? Me, I’ve known him for over ten. I know him better than you ever could….”
“So what are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m trying to tell you that he’s cracking and there doesn’t seem to be one thing… one motherfucking thing that I can do. Except to get him out of this place for a day or so every week if that’s what he wants. At least if he’s out of here he can’t work.”
And yet it was a bitter and unpalatable pill for Starsky to swallow. The fact that Hutch was not content in the penthouse, the fact that he insisted that they leave it on weekends, the fact that his influence was not enough to make the blond stay where he was safe, all combined to make Starsky feel inadequate.
“Is it really that bad?” Terry turned, hands in. the pockets of his jacket. “I mean… are you sure?”
“Now look….” Starsky got to his feet and laid his hands flat on the big, teak desk “…I don’t like this anymore than you do. I guard him and feed him and keep him company….” And I bed him and fuck him and roll over for him. “…I do everything I can to make him happy, but it isn’t enough. He needs some freedom. I know him well and I’m telling you the truth, sir. I’m his friend and I’m scared for him.” I’m his lover and I’m terrified!
“What d’you think would’ve happened if he hadn’t gone back to you?” Terry changed the subject abruptly and Starsky did not understand why. Yet once again he told the truth because, mentally and physically, he was too tired to dissimulate.
“I think he’d be dead,” he blurted out. “I think he’d have killed himself.”
“Oh, come on!”
Starsky wondered what he had to say to convince this hard man that the danger to Hutch came as much from Hutch himself as from any outside influences?
“You said it yourself.” He sat back in his chair and tried to relax. “The first time I spoke to you. Something about Hutch being in a strange mood, which is why you ordered Reiner and Vandam to stay with him. You admitted that he was close to a breakdown. Remember?”
“Maybe you aren’t the right man for the job.”
What the hell was Terry trying to do?
“So fire me!” Starsky glared at the man. “And see what Hutch has to say about it!”
“Okay.” Terry nodded and suddenly some of the tension began to dissipate. “I got the picture… and the message. I do believe you. It’s just that I guess all this business of going out on weekends doesn’t tie in with the concept I had of the two of you.”
“Oh yeah?” Starsky made a deliberate attempt to keep his body relaxed as he leaned further back in his chair, and he was pleased with the disinterest in his voice.
“I had you both figured as gay.”
How should he react? Was it better to have the truth out in the open or should he protect both himself and his partner? No time to consider the matter. Terry was watching him closely.
“Gay?” he repeated blankly.
“Yes. There were stories about you two while you were partners, but no one ever proved anything.”
“There was nothing to prove,” Starsky said quietly and his voice held a note of conviction. It was, after all, the truth.
“No? Well, the way you take care of him, the way he relies on you… your closeness… it did make me wonder.” Terry smiled. “You two must have one hell of a friendship. And the fact that Hutch wants to go out on weekends suggests to me that he goes looking for women. Right?”
“That’s Hutch’s business.” Evade, confuse, keep this man guessing.
“Sure.” Terry was smiling but Starsky still felt uneasy. “I guess he has a right to some privacy. But you’re an inventive guy. Can’t you fix it for him to have women in the penthouse? I mean… the guys on duty don’t have to know. They might guess, of course, but Hutch is human after all.”
“Pimp for him?” Starsky asked coldly. “Jesus Christ!”
“Yeah, well….” Terry did not seem disconcerted. “…I’m only thinking about his safety.”
There was no point in prolonging this interview. Terry was obviously not the kind of man in whom he could confide anything but the barest details of Hutch’s emotions. Probably the man did not have the capacity to understand.
“He’ll be okay,” Starsky said firmly, and he got to his feet to conclude the discussion. “I just wanted you to know how things were.”
“Appreciate it, Captain.”
* * *
The door of the lift opened silently and as Starsky stepped into the penthouse, his eyes turned to the left, to the big desk where Hutch always worked when he came up from his office.
Yes, there he was. Pouring over a file, the thumb and forefinger of his left hand propping his head at a comfortable angle as he read, the fingers of his right hand drumming a quiet but insistent tattoo on the table. It was a habit that grated on Starsky’s nerves.
“Hi,” Starsky called, and while a hand was waved in the air to acknowledge his presence, Hutch did not stop working.
Resentment, unbidden and yet not unreasonable, rose up in Starsky’s mind. He had been delayed by his own department in a big bust, a bust that Hutch had known about. He was late. He was tired. And all he got was a wave of Hutch’s hand. No inquiry as to how his day had gone, and no concern for the state of his health. It was as though nothing that he did was of interest to Hutch while he, Starsky, had to go over and over the forthcoming trial with his lover until he knew some aspects of it almost by heart. Where was Hutch’s compassion for him? Wasn’t he entitled to some loving care?
And yet Starsky knew that they were in love. Deeply in love. The sense of isolation that he felt was probably, he reflected, half his own imagination and tiredness and half due to the stress under which Hutch was living. It would be all right when the trials were over.
He went over to the kitchen area and got himself a beer, remembering that there had been a half-full glass by Hutch’s elbow, then looked back at the hunched figure in the chair.
What more can I do for you, babe? Tell me and I’ll do it!
In the practical sense he did everything: from the domestic chores of clean clothes, clean linen and washing dishes to the simple task of changing the alarm clock to give Hutch extra time in bed and cleaning and oiling the blond’s gun. He did everything he could to smooth his partner’s path and give him less to worry about.
Physically, he had long ago ceded his body to his lover. Twenty-four hours a day he was attuned to the blond, submerging all his own needs in favor of Hutch’s. He gave passionately, with all his heart and soul, because he was a man in love. Simple as that. Maybe, he reasoned, if he could give still more, his precious love would be happier and more at ease, but his instinct told him that he had not reached Hutch at the deepest level of all. Inside himself the blond was totally alone, untouched by the new relationship. Starsky wondered what he could do to capture the essence of Hutch’s spirit that had so far remained inviolate.
He crossed to the slim figure and linked his arms loosely around bowed shoulders, reaching down to flip the file shut.
“Enough,” he said firmly. “Let it go for a while, babe.”
“Another half hour. I just have to….”
Hutch leaned his head back against Starsky’s chest and gently the dark-haired man began to massage the delicate skin at Hutch’s temples.
“Think I’m gonna have to see an optician soon,” Hutch muttered. “All this damn reading makes my head ache.”
It wasn’t the reading, it was the stress. Starsky knew that there was so much going on inside Hutch’s brain that he was not surprised the pressure manifested itself in pain.
“Don’t do any more tonight,” he said persuasively. “Come and drink a glass of wine with me and listen to some music.” His fingers continued their gentle stroking.
“I love you.” The declaration was made quietly and without emphasis and Hutch tipped his head back so that Starsky saw his face at an odd and intriguing angle.
“And I love you.” He tried to smooth away the deep furrows that ran along Hutch’s forehead, starting his fingers in the middle of the wide brow and bringing them out to the hairline and down the sides of his face.
“You’ve got good hands,” Hutch whispered, and, he seemed to relax a little. “Oh babe, you’re wasting your life with me….”
“Don’t say that!” Whatever happened in the future, Starsky knew that his life would not have been wasted. He had been able to give something to this man that he had given to no other human being. Love. Love pure and simple. “You’re becoming a fatalist, sweetheart.” He bent his head and brushed his lips to the furrowed forehead. “All you’ve worked for… three years of your life… and it’s all coming good. You ‘n’ me… we’re gonna get those bastards! And when it’s all over, I’m gonna take you off to that desert island and lie in the sun all day with you. Does that sound good?”
“You know it does. But it’s a dream.”
“No!” Starsky knew that he had to stop that thought now. He went around to the side of the chair and dropped to his knees. “We will do it,” he said, slowly and emphatically. “I swear to you that we will. We’ll find an empty beach and we’ll make love. Swim and catch the sun and make love. It’s no dream, Hutch. We can make it happen.”
Slim fingers combed their way through his hair, teasing at tangles, caressing his scalp with a sure touch. Starsky bent his head under the loving hands and laid his cheek against Hutch’s thigh. He sighed. This was when he felt closest to his partner; when they found the time to be tender with one another. Those too precious, too rare occasions when he was struck dumb by the wonder of his love for this man, and by the warm blanket of affection that Hutch bestowed on him.
Right now, quietly and caringly, they were taking the time to reassure one another and Starsky was deeply moved to realize that Hutch had slipped an arm around his shoulders and was holding him protectively.
If only it could be like this all the time. Starsky rubbed his cheek against the soft material of Hutch’s pants and remembered the time when he had told Hutch about wanting their love to be gentle sometimes. And Hutch had cried.
“Did you talk to Terry about the weekend?” Hutch asked.
Over so soon? Ah, Hutch, why didn’t you give me a little longer? I don’t need much… just a bit like a stray dog who just needs a pat on the head to make him grateful. But you’ve got a terrible habit of holding out your hand and then taking it away before I get my reward.
Starsky shook his head mentally at his own fancifulness. He got enough. He got good sex and a man who, despite his near-obsession with his job, still had enough intuitive humanity in him to know that moments like this were important, even if they were too fleeting and too infrequent.
“Yeah, I talked to him,” he answered neutrally. “It’s okay. I’ve arranged to lift you off by chopper like the first time, but I’ve made different arrangements at the other end.”
“Thank you, my love.” The hand still in his hair tugged gently at his curls. “You are good to me.” And then, more quietly: “Maybe this’ll be the last time.”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t want to, you know.” An edge crept into Hutch’s voice. “But I must….”
“I know.” Swiftly, Starsky raised his head and his fingers stretched out to halt the tumbling words. “I know. Don’t say it. In a weird kind of way I do understand. Kind of. But I don’t wanna hear you talk about it.”
“Sweep it under the carpet, huh?”
“If you like.” Yes, but not out of my mind. It’s always there and it hurts me.
“It will stop, Starsky.” Hutch was holding his hand now in a painful grip. “I swear to God it will. We’ll go to your island and we’ll be happy.”
He’s promised me. Hutch has never broken his word. Not ever. Starsky found the strength to force optimism into his voice.
“Of course we’ll be happy,” he agreed. “When this is all over.”
“I’ve got our dinner in the oven,” Hutch murmured, after they had been silent for a few moments. “Vandam got it from Corelli’s.” But he did not seem inclined to release his partner and Starsky hunched closer and shut his eyes.
Vandam was Reiner’s partner. A thin, ultra-quiet man of medium height and penetrating blue eyes, he was a few years younger than Starsky. Since the bomb incident that had incapacitated his partner, he had made himself responsible for Hutch’s welfare, backing up Starsky and standing in for him as number one bodyguard on the rare occasions when the dark-haired man had to go out. He got food for them, did shopping for them, and always seemed to be around when he was needed.
Hutch seemed to inspire loyalty. It had not taken Starsky long to realize that all that remained of Hutch’s own personal team of investigators, the ones who had been with him during his three year struggle, genuinely liked and respected their boss. And the sentiments were returned. Hutch’s concern over Reiner and his rehabilitation after the loss of one leg was not feigned. He visited the hospital regularly and ignored Starsky’s concern for his safety.
“If we don’t eat soon, we’re gonna have a burnt meal,” Hutch murmured. “Shall I get it?”
“No. Let me.”
The two meals were sealed in foil containers. Starsky sniffed as he opened the oven door and wondered what they were going to be eating. He heard the clink of silverware as Hutch laid the small table and put the hot containers on the worktop while he got two plates out of the closet and then, with careful fingers, he loosened one of the foil lids.
The rat, its head partially severed and its entrails spilling out over its stomach, was not the worst sight in the world, but its unexpectedness made Starsky’s guts lurch and a clammy sheen of perspiration break out on his forehead. The ugliness had entered their home and he felt violated; his vision of the penthouse as an oasis of peace and privacy and safety shattering like a smashed mirror that distorted shadows and made reflections seem grotesque.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Starsky jumped at the sound of Hutch’s voice and automatically pulled the foil lid back over the gruesome reminder of their vulnerability.
“Dinner’s off,” he said shortly. “We’ll have to have something else.” He turned abruptly, and met Hutch in the doorway of the kitchen. He put his hands on his partner’ s upper arms and tried to push him backwards, but Hutch resisted.
“What’s going on?” And then, more sharply, “You’re shaking!”
“Yeah…” Starsky tried for lightness, “…well someone’s got funny ideas about what we like to eat.”
“What?” Hutch understood immediately and the single word was a bark of incredulity. He tried to push around Starsky to get to the foil container.
“No!” Starsky pushed back more firmly. “Leave it alone.”
For a moment they struggled, Hutch with a grunt of exasperation but Starsky silently and determinedly. His job was to protect and it was, in his eyes, a wide brief that included sparing Hutch the sight of a disemboweled rat in their kitchen just as much as using his body to save his partner’s life.
“Will you stop it!” Hutch said irritably. “I’m not a kid.”
“I know that. What I don’t know is what’s in the other container.”
“Ah.” Hutch was still, seeing the sense in the statement. “What do you think?”
Starsky met level, curious, unafraid blue eyes and shrugged.
“If it’s a bomb, it’s a nice warm one,” he said. “Another rat? Who knows?”
“A rat! Jesus!”
“Yeah. Really. I’m gonna call security.” Starsky pushed Hutch backwards into the living room. “Stay clear, will you, lover?”
Hutch was not foolhardy. As Starsky reached the telephone his partner retreated with him, reaching out and holding him closely, silent comfort against Starsky’s worry. Starsky raised his hand and touched the pulse that beat erratically at his lover’s throat as Hutch caught his fingers and kissed them. When Starsky put down the telephone, Hutch took his mouth in a hard, demanding kiss and Starsky clung to his lover, feeling that for once Hutch was stronger than he was. It was a good feeling and Starsky enjoyed it, leaning against the blond and moaning softly as Hutch probed deeply with his tongue and clasped Starsky’s buttocks tightly in his hands.
“It’ll be okay.” Hutch released him as the buzzer announced the arrival of the elevator. “Love, it’ll be okay.”
“I know.”
* * *
In the hour that followed, Starsky was at first astonished by and then respectful of his lover’s coolness and authority. Hutch took charge. Hutch gave his orders. Hutch interrogated a white-faced and shaken Vandam with a ruthlessness that made Starsky feel slightly in awe of this decisive questioner who spoke without emotion but with a penetrating understanding of the problem and its ramifications. It was a Hutch that Starsky had never seen before; a Hutch who commanded respect. Suddenly, the rank fitted the man perfectly. Commander Hutchinson. Starsky found himself filled with pride and also, with a slight sense of shock, turned on by this stranger. He wished they would all go away so that he could have his man all to himself. Their waterbed suddenly seemed very inviting.
As the questioning went on, Starsky became convinced that Vandam was not implicated. No man could act that kind of miserable helplessness. The man had failed in his job and he knew it. He had collected food so many times from Corelli’s that he had not checked it. Starsky felt guilty too. They should have changed the place from where they got food far more often than they had done. With Hutch in his present mood, he half expected to be told off himself.
Then Alexander Terry arrived and suddenly the penthouse seemed crowded. The food was removed, but the message sent up told Starsky that the second container had revealed an equally unpleasant offering that made Alex Terry stare balefully at Vandam.
“Get the hell outta here,” he told the hapless detective. “Be in my office at eight tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
Starsky waited for Hutch to intercede on the man’s behalf but his partner said nothing, turning the whole affair over to his senior officer by simply going over to the couch and sitting down to pick up a glass of whiskey. When just the three of them were left, Alex Terry looked at Starsky.
“It could have been a bomb,” the head of IA said quietly.
“Yes,” Starsky agreed and they both looked at Hutch.
“What do you want me to say?” the blond asked. “I know it just like you do. I know what they’re trying to tell me.”
“What?” Terry seemed to be watching Hutch intently and Starsky wondered if he was remembering their conversation of earlier in the day.
“You wanna sit down?” Hutch had not offered his superior officer a seat but Starsky felt awkward leaving Terry standing.
“Thank you.” Terry glanced around and subsided into an armchair. “What d’you think they’re trying to tell you, Hutch?” He returned to his original question.
“That they can get to me any time.” The blond shrugged. “If they were desperate, then it would have been a bomb. It’s all some kinda game. They want to make me sweat.”
“They made it look fucking easy,” Starsky agreed. “But the evidence against Mirren and the others is pretty strong and Hutch has made his reports. I swear I don’t see why they’re so keen to kill him. Even without him the evidence is damning….”
“Yeah, but it’s his presence and his voice that’s important,” Terry said. “He, himself, will carry a lot more weight than just a statement.”
They talked for a while, trying to think of ways to tighten security still more and agreeing that food should be brought in from different places at random each day. At last Terry looked directly at Hutch.
“I hope you’ve changed your mind about getting out of here this weekend,” he said quietly. “We can’t protect you outside this building.”
“You aren’t doing too good a job inside either!” Hutch snapped irritably. “I’m going, sir. If I don’t get out then I’ll go insane.”
“It’s a hell of a responsibility for Starsky,” Terry pointed out. “It all rests on his shoulders because you won’t let anyone else go with you….”
Starsky saw Hutch frown, saw indecision cross the mobile face and made the answer for both of them.
“We’re used to looking out for one another, sir,” he said quietly. “Guess it’s kind of second nature.” He wanted to go to Hutch. He wanted to show Terry that his silence of the morning had been a denial of something good; something that he was not ashamed of. He wanted to lay his hands on his partner’s shoulders and kiss him as one lover should kiss another. For Hutch’s sake he did nothing. “We’ll be okay,” he promised, and he saw Hutch relax.
Well, he’d had his chance, Starsky reflected philosophically. He could have stopped Hutch from going with just a few well-chosen words. He could have and maybe he should have, but he was not sure he could have coped with a captive Hutch, caged by his surroundings and his desires. And if Hutch was right and the threat to him was so great, then did it matter, all that much, where they went?
“I’m going home.” Terry levered himself out of his chair. “When this is all over, Hutch, you and Starsky must come and have dinner with my wife and I.” The stern features relaxed a little. “We’ll open a bottle of champagne and celebrate putting Mirren away.”
“Sure.” Hutch acknowledged the calm confidence that he would have a future in which to drink toasts, but Starsky was appalled by the chill of fear that trickled down his spine, and after Terry had left and the elevator doors were secured against intruders, he turned into the blond’s arms.
“This is scary,” he murmured. “Those bastards….”
“Don’t let them get to you.” Hutch’s hands rubbed his back in long, soothing strokes from his shoulder blades to his waist. “We can only try to stay alive. Both of us. I don’t wanna die right now, sweetheart. I’ve got too much to live for.”
“Oh yeah? What?”
“You.”
“It was said so simply, but it overwhelmed Starsky and once again he felt the tug of magnetic power that the duality of this man’s nature held for him. On one side, Hutch the man, who had been his partner for so many years, with a compassionate, gentle streak to his nature and a loving heart. On the other side, Commander Hutchinson, who was a cold, dispassionate, authoritative man with all the warmth completely hidden.
“Stay alive for me,” Starsky whispered. “We need one another. We always have, haven’t we? Even when we were just friends we had to be close. I wish we’d been lovers then.”
“It’s a beautiful word.” Hutch’s hands continued to stroke his back. “Lover. My lover.”
“Love me now!” After the fright he had had, he needed the ultimate intimacy of flesh sliding into flesh, and since Hutch’s re-awakened sexual powers, the blond had become an ardent and eager lover. Starsky felt he needed that enthusiasm to reassure him.
“Yes.” The arms tightened a little. “We haven’t eaten yet.” But the voice seemed torn between amusement and passion.
“Eat me.”
Lips nuzzled his ear, nipping the lobe and tonguing the inner recesses.
“What part of you shall I eat?”
“Dumb question. Did you know you’ve got the most wonderful mouth in the world? You can turn me inside out with that mouth of yours. Did you know that?”
“I kinda suspected.” The mouth slipped below Starsky’s ear and kissed the skin of his neck with great tenderness. “You’re pretty fantastic yourself, babe.”
“Not fantastic enough.” Starsky could not repress the words or the edge that crept into his voice. “If I was so wonderful then you wouldn’t need to go out this weekend.”
“Don’t!” There was anguish in the single word. “We’ve been through all this….”
“Yeah, I know that.” Starsky’s earlier resentment, his fear and distaste at the discovery of the dead rat, the unpalatable and hard-to-face reason for their weekend outings all bubbled to the surface. “I know we’ve talked about it, but I still feel so damn… inadequate.”
“Dear God, you aren’t inadequate!”
“Oh yeah?” Starsky laughed, but the sound held no humor. “So why are we leaving town this weekend?”
“It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. All mine.” Hutch held him tighter, as if afraid that Starsky would break away from him. “Don’t blame yourself. Please!”
“I have to.” Depression flooded over Starsky like a rip tide. “We’ve called it all sorts of fancy names, but it comes down to one thing. I can’t satisfy you.”
“That isn’t true!”
“Then I repeat… why are we going out this weekend?”
Starsky knew that he should not be harassing his lover. So they had a problem. So it just happened to be a sexual problem. They’d already had one of those so they should be used to it. Yet this was different. He felt threatened, as if his prowess as a lover was in question. It wasn’t. He was loved and he knew it. So why was he pushing Hutch away and why was that interminable ache inside him sharpening to a physical pain?
He crossed the room to the big picture window and, reflected in the glass, he saw Hutch standing where he had left him, hands hanging loosely at his sides, staring into the glass too.
“I won’t go,” Hutch whispered. “I can’t hurt you like this. I love you, but I’m going to lose you if I don’t stop this craziness now.”
“It’s just as much my fault as yours.” And that was nothing less than the truth. “I agreed to it in the first place. I’ve got to be as insane as you.”
It was dark outside. Dark inside, too. Funny, he had always thought that love would make him happy; that when he and Hutch were together life would be one long day of sun and blue skies. Romantic slush. Soapy dreams. Sometimes he wondered if he wouldn’t have been better off without the reality.
“Starsk… talk to me.”
“Sometimes I think we might get on better if we did less talking,” he muttered morosely and he ran his hand over his face tiredly. “Besides, I’ve cleared it with Terry.” He grinned crookedly at Hutch’s reflection in the glass. “Did you know he had us pegged as gay? But all these weekends… Terry thinks you’re doing it so you can get it on with a woman. He figures we can’t be gay because if we were, you wouldn’t need to….” His voice died away and he swallowed hard. “…Well, anyway, it’s a good cover.” He could not say the words that should have finished the sentence.
“If we do go… nothing has to happen.”
“We’ll see.”
Starsky did not want to discuss it. He had begun their relationship as a cool, assured, mature man who felt he could deal with life as it came along. But his life now, with Hutch inextricably enmeshed in it, was complicated beyond belief. So many fears, so many frustrations, so many hang-ups, and all of them emanating from the man who stood watching him in the window glass.
Maybe Hutch wasn’t real at all. Maybe that was all he was—just a reflection in a mirror, a figment of his imagination. Maybe he had wished so hard for Hutch’s love that now he was deluding himself, and hallucinating. Had he perhaps imagined all those hot, passionate nights when his world had narrowed to the dimensions of his bed and the man who had demanded all his love?
Was he getting old? The idea of living quietly, peacefully, and anonymously with Hutch in a small remote house was infinitely appealing. This… this crazy need to be with his lover—in him, around him, close to him, part of him—was the intense passion of a younger man, a man with more stamina than he possessed.
And yet the energy was there. That was the inexplicable part of the whole affair. He felt like a young man, he was acting like a young man, with all the characteristics of immature youth: jealousy, a desire for exclusivity, a need to hear his chosen lover’s reassurances. He and Hutch made love with a frequency and an enthusiasm that made him feel like a twenty-year old again. Yet it was still not enough.
“What are you thinking about?” Hutch asked.
“I’m wondering if you’re real or just a figment of my imagination.”
“I’m real enough.” As Starsky watched, Hutch took a couple of paces forward. “Do you wish I weren’t?”
“There are times,” Starsky admitted, “when I wish I could wave a magic wand and make you disappear.”
“I can get out of your life in five minutes flat.”
“Terry would just love that!” Jesus Christ, why wasn’t he turning and throwing himself into his lover’s arms?
“Terry can go fuck himself.” Hutch’s voice sounded strained. “It’s what you want that’s important.” And then, after the silence had lengthened and lengthened into a teeth-grinding agony, “Starsk?”
“Why don’t you call me David?”
“Why don’t you call me Ken?”
“Yeah. Stupid question.”
Another silence, then Hutch’s impassioned voice. “Aw Christ, this is impossible!”
I’ve got what I always wanted. Why can’t I make it work?
“Starsk, please tell me what you’re thinking.”
I’m thinking that you’re the most beautiful man in the whole fucking world.
“Aren’t we ever going to talk to one another again?”
I think I’ve just run out of words.
“I’m going to get packed.”
The reflection in the class vanished as if by the magic that Starsky had wished for earlier. Had he imagined those last words of Hutch’s? How could it end so tamely, like a firecracker that had fizzed but not ignited?
No, that was wrong. Their love had lit up the night sky like a shower of exploding rockets. So how could he let it end? His anger sparked. How dare Hutch walk away from him so calmly! The blond needed him. Couldn’t do without him.
Oh yeah? A small voice in his head jeered the words. Who can’t live without whom? You’d be dead without him. Like the burnt out shell of a building. How can you let him go? And the sane small voice answered him. You can’t.
He found Hutch throwing clothes into a suitcase. He could not see his partner’s face but his back was stiff as if he was repressing a desire to crumple onto the bed.
“Don’t go,” Starsky said softly. “I need you.”
“I think that should be my line.” Hutch did not turn around, but his hands plucked nervously at a shirt, creasing the material between his fingers.
“Why?” Starsky asked sharply. “You’ve got a monopoly on needing? I need you, damn you! Take those fucking clothes out of that fucking suitcase.”
“Issuing your orders, Captain Starsky?”
“You got it, Commander Hutchinson. Now do as you’re fucking well told!”
“You sound like a little dictator, my friend.”
“Really? I’d sound like a lover if I thought that was what you wanted. I don’t know what you want any more.”
“I haven’t changed.”
“Jesus! Who d’you think you’re kidding?”
Talons extended, claws and teeth ready to tear and gouge and rip. Why? Why were they acting like this?
“Well, I guess you’re right.” Hutch went to the chest where they kept their clothes in a happy jumbled mixture of his and his sweaters and underwear. He dragged out a fistful of socks and threw them towards the suitcase. “I came to you for help and finished up getting fucked….”
“You wanted me to do it!” Starsky defended himself angrily. “Christ, anyone’d think I raped you! You wanted it, sweetheart! You asked me. Remember?”
“Okay. Okay.”
But Starsky was not to be stopped. “You aren’t such a great lay, Hutchinson. Don’t kid yourself. I’ve had better. You’re too selfish.” Yes, that’s right Starsky, destroy the man! Kill his confidence. You trying to make him impotent again? And you’re a fucking liar!
“I’ll soon be out of your way.” Hutch found a pile of shirts and added them to his packing. He still would not show his face to Starsky but his voice betrayed his hostility. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a disappointing lover. But I guess if you talk nicely to Tony….”
“One of those shirts is mine!” Starsky interrupted.
“Take the whole fucking lot!” The shirts were flung into Starsky’s face, colored linen cascading to the floor as the dark-haired man made an attempt to catch them and they evaded his grasp. “Anything else you want?”
“No.” Starsky made an effort to control his temper. “Isn’t this a stupid thing to be doing, Hutch? This is your safe house, not mine. I’m the one who should be leaving….”
“So leave!” Hutch swung to face him for the first time and Starsky saw the deep lines in his face and the ugly, sardonic twist to his lips. “I can do without you. You think I’m gonna fall apart if you go away, don’t you? Well, I won’t. I’ve lived without you before and I can do it again.”
Proud Hutch. Arrogant Hutch. Starsky was infuriated to find himself drawn to this angry man. Damn him! Damn his blue eyes and his beautiful mouth and his irresistible body. Starsky cursed his own eager cock, too. It was betraying him, responding to the harsh tones, waking to the need to possess and be possessed.
“Hutch….” He closed the gap between them, his guts knotting at the expression of contempt on the handsome face.
“I’m not asking you to stay.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“Oh? I can ask Terry to have you taken off your duties here.”
“Pull rank?”
“If necessary.”
“Commander Hutchinson kicks Captain Starsky out of the penthouse.” Starsky laughed, but the sound held no amusement. “Kinda lying to yourself, aren’t you? This is a lover’s quarrel. You tryin’ to say I don’t do my job right? You think Terry’ll believe that?”
“I don’t give a fuck what Terry believes.” Hutch stood his ground as Starsky came nearer. “And if this is your idea of a lover’s quarrel… Jesus everlovin’ Christ!”
Starsky stepped a little closer. “We are lovers,” he said softly. “A few minutes ago you liked the word. And we are fighting, aren’t we?” One more step forward and the heat from the blond’s body was a radiated force that he could not resist. “Everyone fights.” He made it a statement of fact. “But at least do me the… the courtesy of making it an equal contest.”
“Sorry.”
“I’ll make you sorry.” If he was any closer he would be climbing up the man’s body. “Now unpack that case or shall I do it for you?” He did not wait for an answer. With one sweep of his arm he pushed the whole suitcase and its contents onto the floor, and in a second gesture he grabbed Hutch around the waist and pulled him down onto the waterbed. “Neither of us is going anyplace,” he said. “We’ll work this out here and now.”
“Does sex solve everything?” Hutch whispered, but his mouth was opening for the kiss, his arms reaching out to encircle Starsky’s shoulders, and his body arched hungrily upwards.
“No.” Starsky bent to the waiting lips. “But that’s a lesson you still haven’t learned, and right now I don’t think we have anything else.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sounds coming from the next room were obscene. The grunting noises of animals in rut, the slapping sound of body colliding with body, the loud, strident breathing of men aroused to heights of lust that overran sense or any other feeling.
Starsky lay on his bed, hands behind his head and ankles crossed, trying to concentrate his attention on the flickering television set. He could turn the sound up, but he knew he wouldn’t. He had to be able to hear what was going on in the next room in case Hutch needed him.
Ugly pictures, ugly words traversed his mind; he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and stared at it. How many years since he had smoked? Not since he came out of ‘Nam. How long since he had been tempted to buy a bottle of scotch and drink it all? That, at least, he could not do. He had to be alert in case he was needed.
Needed? He smiled grimly. Right now he was totally and utterly redundant. He had been forced to fight for the dubious privilege of remaining in the room where he was at present. The bodyguard was never off-duty, but tonight he was deliberately allowing the body he guarded to be misused by others.
A loud groan made him turn his head towards the almost closed door that linked the next room with his own. Hutch’s voice. Hutch was obviously enjoying himself. And then he heard the voice of one of the two men in there with him.
“Can’t get enough, can you, blondie?” There was a moment’s silence, a rustle of sheets and then another groan from Hutch. “You like that? Huh? Again?” Another rustle, another moan, and then a harsh laugh from the other man.
“I think he likes it.”
Jesus God, what were they doing to him? Starsky let his head roll back to the television and tried not to allow his imagination to run riot, because the images inside his head were too grotesque and hurtful to be born.
Hutch called them the surrogates. The stand-ins. He had promised Starsky that they meant nothing, that when he was with them, he thought only of the man he loved. Starsky didn’t believe him. If he went into that other bedroom he would see his partner wrestling with two other men, and his eyes would not be closed.
Starsky turned on his side away from the door and closed his own eyes. Strange how two men could make love in a sordid, dingy, third-rate motel with the paint peeling off the walls and broken mattress springs, and something in that coupling could lift them out of their surroundings and make their loving good and special. On the other hand, two men could get into bed with one another in the most beautiful room in the world and because their reasons for doing it were wrong, the act would be defiled. Everything the straights said that gay love was. Every dirty word.
What Hutch was doing in that room next door was wrong and Starsky knew it. It denied their love, made a mockery of it, and yet he had given his agreement to it, compounding the fault and endorsing the madness. Hell, it had been his suggestion! Starsky winced as he recalled his laughing idea that his lover was wearing him out and that putting Hutch onto the streets to hustle might be the answer. Hutch seemed to need sex like other men needed heroin.
The cry of anguish and delight from next door made Starsky shudder. He knew that sound, just as he knew every other noise that came out of that room. Intimately. The two hustlers must be good, judging from the increased desperation in Hutch’s voice as he begged them to fuck him again.
Shut up! Shut up! How was he to get through the next hours without bursting in to that room, dragging the two hustlers away and throwing himself down on top of that beautiful, golden body? That body was his, only now it lacked the innocence that had so fascinated him at the beginning of their love affair; the kind of awkward, hesitant uncertainty that he had found so endearing. Hutch knew it all now.
Stop it! Could any situation be more bizarre? Starsky rolled onto his stomach and bunched the pillows up around his ears. It inhibited his breathing but it muffled that terrible, aural evidence of his lover’s infidelity. Infidelity that he, David Michael Starsky, was forced to condone.
There was, after all, a limit to the number of times a man could get it up in a week, however much in love he was. Starsky found the job he was now doing in Narco, with its increased responsibilities and problems, when added to his duties of bodyguard to his lover, was making him tired. Very tired. He wasn’t hurting, at least not much, and every time he felt a twinge of pain he took the pills that he generally scorned. He simply could not afford to be sick.
Hutch wanted sex all the time, never totally satisfied, always wanting more. Like a bitch in heat. Like a man with an itch that he could never quite reach to scratch. They had talked about it honestly because that was so much a part of their closeness, but the answer had been painful to decide upon and accept.
“You want it now, blondie?”
“Please….”
“What about this?”
“Christ!”
Shut up! Starsky screamed the words into his pillow. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
What choice had he had? If he had refused to take part in this arrangement then Hutch would have become more and more frustrated. His nerves were already stretched to their limits and Starsky had seriously feared for his lover’s sanity before this solution was agreed upon. And at least this way he had some control over the situation. He was close by and he could monitor the men who went in and out of the room. He was close by and he wanted to be a million miles away; somewhere that was safe and quiet and Ken Hutchinson did not exist.
He had given all that he could. All that was left to him was to allow Hutch total freedom if the blond could not live with him. Love had not been enough. Friendship and companionship were not enough. Not for Hutch. Hutch wanted the physical act of sex. It was his idol and his god, craved and yearned for.
“You ready for it?”
“Yes, goddamn you!”
Oh God, no! And he, Starsky, had been the insane fool who had agreed to it. It was he who arranged these quiet weekends at out-of-town motels where Hutch’s face wasn’t known, and he who fixed the discreet liaisons with other men and stayed to guard the body. An attempt to find a solution that would ease Hutch’s temporary problem—Starsky had to believe that it was only temporary—without losing the man himself.
“Oh baby, you’re beautiful!”
“Just fuck me!”
Yeah, just fuck him. Let the other guy have his turn again and then get the hell out of our lives.
When they had gone he would have to force himself to enter that room which would reek of sex and sweat and look down at the sated, exhausted, bruised body on the bed. Sometimes he had to make himself stay when all his instincts told him to run; to run away from the man who was no longer really his, whose body had been pawed by big, uncaring, strange hands, who was not the Hutch he loved.
Something deep inside him was being eroded every time they came away from the penthouse on these trips and Starsky knew it. Was his love for Hutch dying? How could he keep it intact? How could he preserve it and keep it as bright and shining as it had been at the beginning?
“Move your ass, blondie.”
Yeah, move your ass, Hutch. Let him have it all. Everything but your heart. That’s mine. That’s just about all that is mine. Christ, how I hate the smell of other men on you! Don’t you have any pride? No self-respect? Where’s my idealistic lover gone? Oh hell, it’s half my fault. I could have stopped you. Could I have stopped you?
A yell of triumph from next door made him roll onto his side and curl up in a ball of agony. Another man to add to Hutch’s list. How many did that make now?
Hutch, you’re no better than a… a what? Christ, I don’t know! What are you trying to do to yourself? Do you hate your body so much that you don’t care what happens to it?
The bed creaked and Starsky guessed the two men were changing places. Another body, another cock, another pair of hands that would be allowed to grope their way over the supine body. Obscenities streamed from the lips of the second man. Hutch would love that, just as he loved the rough treatment that would be meted out to him.
God damn him to hell! Starsky folded himself into an even smaller shape and wrapped his arms around himself as if to hold his pain safe from the rest of the world. To take his mind off the act that was taking place in the next room, he checked over the precautions he had taken to get these men for Hutch.
The most dangerous part of the operation came immediately after he had gotten his partner into the motel room, for he had to leave the man alone while he cruised the streets. He hated doing it, but taking Hutch with him was even more of a risk and, besides that, the blond refused to go.
So Starsky cruised alone, taking a different route in a different hired car every time, and looking for certain physical types. Hutch liked his men to be taller and broader than he was, which eliminated a large proportion of hustlers. Once Starsky had seen what he was looking for, he would circle the block a few times and watch the man carefully. As soon as he was satisfied that the hustler was what he seemed to be, then he would make an initial contact before the delicate business of negotiation began.
Starsky was used to it now, but the first time he had found it almost impossible. He had to explain to the hustler that he was just the intermediary and that there was a man who was waiting in a motel room. It sounded strange, but worse was to come. Starsky had to set out the limits of the coupling; that his man liked a little pain—not too much—and that his face was to remain unmarked. That he, Starsky, would be close by but not a part of the ménage.
That first time had been so hard. Two men had refused to go with him, obviously suspicious of the set up and not reassured by Starsky’s own hesitancy. When he had finally persuaded one man to go with him, and the financial side had been settled, Starsky had then had to overcome his own revulsion for the part he was playing. He felt he was betraying everything he believed in. Only Hutch’s obvious and eager need spurred him on, but he had cried quietly and tearlessly when the first act of unfaithfulness had taken place. He knew he had been crying inside ever since.
“Do it harder!”
Hutch’s classic command. Never satisfied, never penetrated deeply enough, never hurt enough. He would have liked more pain but Starsky always reinforced his instructions by giving the hustlers a look at his holstered gun. They knew he was listening and they did not disobey.
“Fuck me, you bastard! Come on! Come on!” Hutch cried out.
Getting it good, are you? My God, I ought to get someone to do a real number on you. Beat the shit out of you. Maybe that’d cure you. Maybe I should make you get your own men. Too fucking superior for that, aren’t you?
Starsky’ s emotions swung between anger and agony. They always did and he should be used to it by now. It was his terrible vulnerability that he loved Hutch, and it was that love which allowed him to find the strength to bear the infidelities paraded before his eyes.
The sounds in the other room went on and on. Starsky reckoned this second man must have some kind of awesome stamina, but then he was at least ten years younger than Starsky. Maybe that would be what Hutch would do in the end; find a younger lover who would satisfy him better than a tired ex-partner. It hurt Starsky to think that he might not be good enough.
“Well, how about this!” Soft drawl from one of the men. “Isn’t my cock big enough for you, blondie? I ain’t had no complaints before.”
“Maybe this one would like a little something extra.” The other hustler sounded amused, but Starsky frowned. What did they have in mind? What ‘something extra’ was in store for Hutch?
“You’d love it.” The first man again. “But you’ve got a bodyguard in the other room and he’s got a gun.”
“Do it!” Hutch’s voice was tense. Starsky could imagine the clenched fists, the eager, hungry expression of his lover, and he shuddered. Do what? He still didn’t know. Had the two hustlers either whispered to him or made some graphic gesture that Hutch understood but which still left him in the dark about what was planned?
“Yeah?” The first hustler again, and he seemed to be matching Hutch’s eagerness. “You think you can take it?”
“Yes.”
Did they have some kind of vibrator in there with them? Starsky rolled off the bed and went to the nearly closed door as the voices dropped to a low mutter. He had to know exactly what was being planned, and if they were going to hurt Hutch then he would have to put a stop to it.
“Yeah, he’ll love it.” Now it was the second hustler who spoke. “He’s got a real potential for pain. Some guys have.”
A potential for pain? Yes, that described Hutch perfectly. But why? Starsky did not know.
Hutch cried out; a low, choked-off moan that was part pain and part a very intense kind of pleasure, but muffled as if a hand had been placed over his mouth.
“Think you can take it?”
“Yes.”
Take what? It had to be some kind of vibrator or dildo. Starsky wondered, gloomily, why he had never thought of that. He could have given Hutch as much sex as he could possibly handle with an instrument like that.
Yeah. Great. Wonderful. Every time he gets itchy, I just shove a vibrator into him. Like giving a baby a pacifier. That’s no answer.
Starsky was so busy with his own thoughts that he almost missed it; the stifled, pain-laden scream of a man who was being hurt. Not slapped or punched but badly hurt. He opened the door of the room, stood in the entrance for a moment and stared. For one moment he was paralyzed as the high, keening sound of Hutch’s pain thrummed in his ears and his eyes took in the ugly little scene in front of him. And then suddenly his gun was in his hand, and one of the hustlers saw him and froze.
“Okay.” Starsky was surprised by the calmness in his own voice. “Do exactly like I tell you or I’ll blow your fucking head off. Slowly… very slowly… ease your hand outta him. I said slowly, goddam you! Very… very… slowly. And if there’s any blood, then I will kill you. And you won’t die easy.”
His instinct was to do murder. To put a bullet between the eyes of each of the two hustlers as he would have put animals down. That was all they were. Animals. And Hutch was no better.
He divided his attention between the two hustlers and the man who lay trembling on the bed. At that moment Hutch was nothing but a body to Starsky. Not a lover, not a friend, nothing but a shaking mass of flesh and bone and blood.
“I warned you!” He spoke the words between his teeth. “I warned you two motherfuckers….”
“He asked for it!”
Yes, he had. Starsky remembered. Starsky shuddered.
“Get the hell outta here.” To his disgust, his voice shook. “Before I change my mind and put a bullet where it’ll hurt the most.”
They had already been paid. Starsky stalked behind them across the floor to the door of the room and locked it behind their departing figures. Then he went back to the bed and, hands on hips, stared down at the rag-doll posture of the man he loved. Legs sprawled apart, arms stretched above his head and wrists secured to the bedrail, Hutch’s eyes were closed. Starsky suspected that the blond had not shut them because of shame but through total exhaustion. Rage swept through him like a wild brushfire.
What right did Hutch have to let other men use his body in this way? Deliberately, with disgust contorting his features, Starsky slapped his lover’s face with all his strength. Once. Twice. Three times. The crack of his hand against flesh was satisfying, but Starsky suspected that the punishment would mean little to his partner. Nothing seemed to touch the blond when his sexual hunger was at its height and nothing but pain seemed to bring any kind of satisfaction.
“You stupid bastard!” Starsky put as much venomous contempt into his voice as he could. “I think you’re going insane. D’you know that? I really think you’re gonna end up in a padded cell.” Hutch’s head rolled in what seemed to Starsky to be a gesture of unconcern. “Do you know what fist-fucking can do to you?” he continued coldly. “Do you have any idea what damage…?”
No, he couldn’t go on. In his mind’s eye, while his stomach lurched in protest, he saw the tender flesh being stretched beyond its limits to accommodate the hustler’s fist. The sight had sickened him and now he turned away from the ugliness of the memory.
“Did you really want it?” he asked wonderingly. “I mean, did you really know what could happen?” Hutch’s eyes remained closed and he did not acknowledge the question. “You fool,” Starsky said softly. “You dumb, stupid bastard! You’re gonna have to choose, you know. You think I’m gonna enjoy fucking a guy who’s been stretched the way you have? I like nice tight ass, baby.”
Starsky hesitated, knowing that Hutch could challenge the validity of part of that statement if he wished. Hutch said nothing so Starsky decided on some even plainer speaking. Now was not a time to talk about love or gentleness or caring. Hutch would not respond to that in his present mood.
“Do you want me to fist-fuck you?” he asked. “Would you really ask me to do that to you? Huh? Would you? You wanta get into some kinda SM kick? You want me to dress in some of that leather gear and beat the hide off you? D’you call that love?” He spat the word disgustedly. “You want us to buy some of those kinky toys? Do you want me to spend the rest of my life hurting you? Jesus, what a prospect!”
The lack of response was chilling. Maybe that was what Hutch did want. Maybe his experiences had warped his mind and his emotional stability was gone. Starsky sighed.
“Are you listening to me?” He sat on the side of the bed and looked at the bruised, swollen lips of his lover, the exhausted posture of his limbs and the purple bruises that stained his body. On impulse he stretched out his hand and slipped his fingers between the parted thighs, touching the wetness that oozed from between the blond’s buttocks. No blood. Nothing to indicate that Hutch had been hurt internally. Perhaps he had been lucky. Perhaps they had both been lucky.
“Do you know what you’re doing to me?” Starsky asked huskily. “Do you have any idea how much you’re…?” No, there was no point. Hutch couldn’t care. If he did then he would try to control his desires for his lover’s sake if not for his own. “I hate you,” he said flatly. “Do you know that?”
“You don’t hate me.” The words were slurred.
“Yes I do. You make me wanta throw up.”
“Go and do it in the bathroom.”
“You insensitive bastard!”
Hutch’s eyes opened slowly but they glared at Starsky. “You agreed to this.” It was an accusation as well as a reminder.
“Don’t try to make out it’s my fault!”
“Equal partners,” Hutch murmured. “In everything.”
“Fuck you!”
“Oh yes, lover….” The handsome face twisted into a wry smile. “…If that’s what you want.”
“No thanks.” Starsky put as much contempt into his voice as he could manage. It wasn’t difficult. “I was always careful with my choice of men. I….” What was the use of it? He could not change Hutch. Or himself. He still loved the man. “How many more men do you want this weekend? Five? Ten? Twenty?”
“Fuck off.” Tiredly Hutch closed his eyes again.
“Gladly.” Starsky turned and walked away, deliberately choosing to ignore the fact that Hutch was still tethered to the bed.
“David.” It was such a husky voice, thick with tears and soft with pleading that Starsky was rooted to the ground. “David… please!”
“Please what?” Starsky ached to be compassionate, to turn around and take the beloved man in his arms and comfort him. But if he did that then Hutch would exploit him. Again. It had been subtle reminders of how he, Starsky, had let his partner down three years ago by refusing to join IA that Hutch had used to rouse feelings of guilt in him. And those feelings had weakened him until he had agreed to this insane arrangement. Suddenly he was tired of being used. “What do you want now?”
“You have to help me….”
“But I’ve tried!” Starsky swung around on his heel and yelled the words. “I’ve done what you want. I’ve given you all the love I’ve got in me, but….” He heard his own voice falter and go suddenly very quiet. “…Obviously, it isn’t enough.”
“Starsk….”
“I’m going home.” Starsky overrode the whispered word. “You can do what the hell you like.” Who was he to talk like that? He had sanctioned this crazy, impossible arrangement. He had aided and abetted his lover. He must share the blame. “Are you coming?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Starsky went back to the bed and deftly untied his lover’s wrists. They were red and chafed but the blond didn’t seem to notice any discomfort. He stretched out his arms, but Starsky stepped back.
“I don’t want you this way,” he said honestly. “I do love you, I swear I do, but….”
“…But what? Would you like me better if I took a shower… got clean?”
“Not in this room, no.” Oh, my love, how could you let this happen to you? Three years ago you’d never have done anything like this!
It had been such a joy to lead Hutch into the wonders of loving and being loved. Such a great pleasure to watch the blond come alive to his hands and mouth and to see his lover begin to understand, mostly by instinct, what he liked. Now that almost child-like, wide-eyed quality was gone. Hutch’s face was almost hard as the blond watched him.
“Why are you doing this to us?” On impulse Starsky perched on the edge of the bed again and folded his hands in his lap. “You can’t really think it’s doing our relationship any good.”
“You agreed to it.”
“I know.” Starsky nodded gravely. “But that ain’t no answer.” He did not really want to touch Hutch, not in the condition he was in, but he did not draw away when Hutch took his hand. “I think we have to do something about this.”
“Like what?”
Starsky looked at their linked fingers lying on the sheet. Two strong, male hands joined in friendship and love. They should be able to sort out their problems. They had a long-standing friendship to sustain them and he could afford to be honest.
“It isn’t up to me,” he said quietly. “You have to decide. I’ll talk it over with you, but any decisions you make have to be all your own.”
“That’s not exactly helpful!” Sulkily Hutch tried to pull his hand away, but Starsky held on tightly.
“You’re a big boy now,” Starsky said. “I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“What would you say if I told you I wanted to stay here for the rest of the weekend?”
Trust Hutch to come to the point immediately without any subterfuge. That was the whole crux of the matter. Hutch was trying to find out what his reactions would be; maybe how far he could push before Starsky dug his heels in.
“I think I would tell you that….” What? What could he say? He did not want to go through any more anguish and could not face the thought of being shut out of his lover’s life again, but he was the bodyguard. Suppose he left Hutch and Hutch died. It would be the end not of one life but of two. He faced his partner squarely. “I can’t leave you,” he said simply. “You know that. But I can’t stay in another room any more. It’s killing me. If you must… stay….” He almost choked on the word. “…Then I’ll stay, too. In your room and in your bed with you. I’ll be right beside you while those gorillas you hire are fucking you. I’ll watch them ramming their cocks in and outta your ass. I’ll watch you give them head. And I’ll watch you, baby. Will you be able to look me in the eyes?”
He did not believe that his partner would allow such a thing to happen. He stroked his thumb along the length of Hutch’s and dropped his eyes from the astonished face to the hand clasped tightly in his own.
“You wouldn’t!” Hutch sounded shocked.
“I would. Watch me.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Maybe.” Yeah, crazy to be in love with you.
“Is this some kinda challenge?” Hutch’s voice was strong, but the lips that kissed the backs of Starsky’s fingers as the blond raised them to his mouth were gentle.
“No. I’m just giving you a choice.”
The teeth nibbled at his knuckles. “There is no choice and you know it!”
“I’m glad you’ve got some scruples left.” As soon as the words were out, Starsky regretted them. It had been an unnecessarily crass remark when he was trying to talk rationally to this highly-strung lover of his. He was not surprised when his hand was flung roughly away.
“You have a way with words,” Hutch snapped, but when Starsky glanced quickly at him, two bright flags of color burned high on the blond’s cheeks.
“Sorry.”
“Oh yeah?” Restlessly Hutch rolled off the bed away from Starsky. “I know you, partner. You tell the truth. Didn’t realize you had such a low opinion of me.”
“After what’s just happened, you’re damn lucky I’m still in the same room.” Starsky got to his feet. “Why don’t you take a deep breath and count to ten?”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself.”
Starsky tried to relax, but he watched the tense form of his lover pace the room with a hint of satisfaction on his face. Hutch was still putting on weight slowly and his body looked good. He moved well; gracefully, freely and totally unselfconscious of his nudity, and Starsky was captivated by the sight of the lithe, tanned body being paraded before his eyes.
“Okay.” Hutch stopped suddenly, close enough to Starsky for the dark-haired man to lean forward and nuzzle the heavy genitals with his lips if he wished. “Can you tell me why I’m doing this? I mean, you’re the expert….”
“On psychology or on being gay?”
“Being gay. You’ve been screwing around with men for years, haven’t you? Maybe I’m just trying to catch up.”
The conversation was taking an ugly turn. Hutch had never made any reference to his partner’s gay life before. Did he resent it? Too bad if he did. He, Starsky, had been left alone in the antiseptic environment of a hospital to fight and claw his way back to health. Alone. Hutch had no right to criticize anything he did.
“If we’re gonna act like bitch queens, at least get dressed,” he said quietly.
Hutch was disturbing in his nakedness. Starsky had been trapped by it before, conquered by a love for his partner’s perfect body that matched the way he loved Hutch as a person. If the blond didn’t move away, he might go on his knees and press his face against the tempting crotch, wind his arms around Hutch’s hips and cede to his lover’s body. Without reservation.
“Why don’t you get undressed?” Hutch asked sharply.
“Because I don’t like this room or this motel. I wanta get out of here.”
“And I want to stay.”
“Aw, shit!”
“Unoriginal but graphic.”
“Hutch, please!” Starsky knew that he was begging his lover to leave and he hated himself for it.
“Please what?”
Fury threatened to stop Starsky talking at all. Why couldn’t they discuss their problems without ending up screaming at one another? Did Hutch do it deliberately to decoy his partner away from the central issues?
“Are we gonna discuss this properly?” he demanded.
“Aren’t we?”
“No. You’re fucking everything up. Again.”
“If you don’t like it, you know what you can do. I’m not asking you to stay.”
It was so unfair! Hutch knew he had to stay! It was the beginning of another game. Hutch’s favorite. It was prove-that-you-love-me time again. Hutch had to be the most insecure man in the country.
“Get dressed,” Starsky said shortly. “We’re gonna eat and then we’re gonna talk.”
“You asking me or telling me?”
“Telling.” Starsky shrugged. “Looks like someone has to.”
“You know something….” Hutch’s aggressive manner disappeared as snow under the sun. He stretched out his hand and touched Starsky’s face. “…Not only do I love you, but I like you, too. Very much. You’re a good guy, Starsk.”
Starsky realized that he was going to be kissed. Going by Hutch’s previous form, his lover had probably sucked at least one of the two hustlers, and something in him rebelled at the idea of tasting a stranger on Hutch’s lips. And yet it was not a time to be difficult. Things were stressed enough without him being fastidious. He raised his face obediently and let Hutch kiss him, not rejecting the intimacy, but not really responding to it either. He raised his hand and touched Hutch’s shoulder, but the blond seemed to construe it as a rejection and Starsky found himself pushed away.
“I tell you what….” Hutch snarled the words. “…I’ll get Vandam down here and you can go back to LA. You’re lousy company anyway. You think you’re wearing some kinda halo? Jesus Christ, I don’t get much time away from my desk. You’d think I could have a little fun….”
“Fun?” Starsky echoed the word. “Is this what you call fun? Getting laid by strangers in a motel room… getting fist-fucked? Good clean fun, huh? Well, I think it’s sick. You’ve got a lover. Me. Aren’t I good enough for you? Obviously not. You’re cock-crazy, you know that? Okay….” He rolled over Hutch’s exclamation of fury. “…I know you had problems for a while. But you aren’t the first man to suffer in this goddamn world and you sure as hell won’t be the last. Don’t be such a fucking martyr!”
“What?” Hutch sounded outraged.
“I called you a fucking martyr. Can’t you hear good? You got me into this by making me feel guilty because I hadn’t joined you in IA. I kinda get the impression that you think all your problems are my fault. So I’ve put up with your bitching and your weird ideas and your selfishness….”
“What selfishness?”
It was turning into a love-wrecking row of gigantic proportions. Starsky knew he was going to regret speaking his mind, but the contempt in his blond’s face spurred him to further uncalculated words.
“Your fucking selfishness!” He spat the accusation out viciously. “I really thought… once you got it up again… that I’d get my share of being screwed. But no. Oh no. That’s not the way you want it, is it? In fact….” His eyes opened wider as a sudden thought struck him. “…We don’t get it on now as often as we did. And I never get screwed. You are selfish, Hutch!”
“You really think that?”
“Yes. What I want doesn’t seem to matter to you. When we were on the streets we were equal partners. Now you’re the boss and I’m the bodyguard and we aren’t equal any more… in bed or out of it. And I don’t like it.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way.”
Was this impersonal motel room going to be the only witness to the break-up of their love affair? Was it really love anyway? Maybe he had just been used by an ex-partner who had been looking for a shoulder to cry on.
“What are you thinking?” Hutch asked softly.
“I’m wondering if you really love me. If this is just some kinda crazy dream and one day you’ll wake up or I’ll wake up, and….”
The naked figure in front of him, familiar and alien at the same time, seemed to tremble, but Hutch’s voice was very even.
“I do love you. I don’t know how to prove it to you.”
“Come back to LA with me now.” Never be unfaithful to me again.
The smooth shoulders slumped slightly.
“You ‘n’ me… we seem to have backed ourselves nicely into a corner,” Hutch said. “I could… I will… come back home with you. But what about the next time? Is this some kinda addiction I’ve got? I seem to have all the symptoms….”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.” Hutch hesitated then the next words burst out of him in a flood of self-condemnation and regret. “I warned you right from the start, didn’t I? I’m just too fucked-up to be able to hang onto any kind of relationship. I want to be with you… God knows I do… but the price is too high….”
“Price?”
“Yeah. I can’t bear the look on your face every time I hurt you. I’m just not strong enough for you, Starsky. Either that or I don’t have enough will power to be what you want me to be. I’m not a good lover. You call me selfish. Yeah, I probably am. I don’t see that I have one good thing in my favor to hold you. I can give you nothing, Starsky.”
“Love….”
“Love. Yes, I love you. But I’m not faithful. You could force me to be faithful to you with my body, but I’d make it with a thousand other men in my mind. You want that?”
“No.” Starsky spoke honestly, but inside he was shaking.
“No, of course not.” Hutch turned away. “I wouldn’t, in your place.”
“What do you want to do?” Starsky fought to keep his voice steady. Whatever Hutch proposed, he would counter it. Did this crazy blond really think he was going to let their affair end without a struggle?
“I’m gonna disappear for a while,” Hutch said calmly. “No one knows I’m here with you. I can fly to any part of the country and lose myself until the trials. It won’t be for long.” Hutch turned back to his partner and Starsky saw a wistful, heart-breaking smile on his face. “Maybe I’ll come to my senses and realize exactly how much you mean to me.”
“What d’you suggest I tell Terry? He’ll crucify me!”
“I’ll square it with him.”
Starsky got slowly to his feet. He felt about a 190-years-old, vitality and life draining from him as if he had received a fatal gunshot wound.
“Square it with me first,” he said. “I always thought you were a fighter. You’re running away, Hutch. From me and everything else. It won’t help.”
“I’m too tired to stay. Everything I do just seems to put another line into your face. We can’t make one another happy, Starsk. I love you, but the way we’re living now….”
“It isn’t all bad!” No, there were moments of tenderness, times of easy domesticity, brief instances of simple, cherishing tenderness that Starsky kept sacred in his memory.
“Too much of it is wrong.”
“You’re making excuses.” Deliberately Starsky crossed the floor towards his partner. “And you ain’t going no place. You came to me, remember? You turned my life upside down. You can’t walk away from me like that because I won’t let you.”
The arguments were crazy and he knew it. A few minutes ago he had been threatening to go back to LA. Was it his pride that would not allow him to be the one who was left alone? Or was it that his bluff had been called and he either had to spell out his dependence on the blond or lay down terms for their future together?
They were caught in a frightening tangle of confused ideas and loyalties. He realized that, but he did not know how they should extricate themselves. Hutch did not seem to be living in the real world at all. He suspected that the blond’s motives for these weekend trips were too involved and too complex to be resolved just with words. Hutch was not an easy man to understand. Somehow he knew that the blond remained almost untouched by his sexual exploits. The men who pawed his body and fucked him into oblivion meant nothing; Starsky realized that suddenly. They were pawns; controlled by money and Starsky’s gun and Hutch’s own will. It was all artificial.
Maybe what Hutch needed was a situation where he was not in control. How would he react to the knowledge that there was no one to protect him in another room, that he was outnumbered and that he was there for someone else’s pleasure and not for his own? How would Hutch react to the true world of the gay man, precipitated out of the cocoon of cozy sex that was all he had experienced up to now?
“Get showered and dressed,” he said quietly. “We’re going out.”
“What?”
“Do as you’re told.”
Starsky went back to his own room without giving Hutch a chance to question him further, but before he changed his own clothes, he called Terry in Los Angeles, one of four brief calls he had to make every day to a special telephone in Terry’s office. What was the code word this time? Sometimes Starsky found Terry’s obsession with secrecy irksome.
“Brahms to Delius,” he said curtly, and he raised his eyes to heaven as he said the words. What would Terry think up next?
“Delius to Brahms,” Terry responded swiftly.
“Everything okay here.”
“Well, we’ve had a little excitement on this end,” Terry said. “Someone put a rocket through the penthouse suite.”
“A rocket?” Starsky thought hazily of a fireworks display and wondered if it were him or Terry who was going nuts.
“Yeah, a rocket. Ex-army, I think. Fired off a rocket launcher fixed in the back of a truck….”
“Jesus Christ!” That kind of rocket!
“Yeah. Well, we think we got all the people responsible but we can’t be sure. We need you to stay where you are for twenty-four hours until we can get a new safe house ready for you.”
“The penthouse?”
“Totally destroyed. The two floors beneath were badly damaged too. Someone’s head’ll roll for this. No wonder they thought they could kill you at any time… if they had access to equipment like that. Thank God you and Hutch decided to go ahead with your plan to go away.”
“Yeah.”
Not both of them. Just Hutch. If Hutch had not been so stubborn then both of them—or worse, just one of them—could be dead or horribly injured. Starsky sat down suddenly on the edge of his bed.
“You okay?” Terry asked.
“Yeah. You want me to call in again as usual?”
“Of course. You’re taking all this very calmly.”
“I think I’m numb. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Yes.”
After Starsky had replaced the receiver he lay flat on the bed and stared at the ceiling. As if he were in some kind of trance he saw the penthouse suite as he remembered it and visualized the two of them on the big couch with Hutch’s head in his lap. His mind could not imagine how they would first hear or see the rocket; all he could picture was Hutch’s mangled body, torn and bleeding from a hundred wounds, lying beneath a pile of debris. Suddenly he felt sick.
Hutch. He had to be with Hutch. Close to him, as close as he could get. Their earlier heated disagreements now seemed so trivial in the light of this new knowledge. Nothing was important but that he was alive and Hutch was alive.
He rolled off the bed and ran across the room, wrenching at the doorknob and staring wildly around him. He was ready to scream his partner’s name when he heard the sound of water running in the shower.
The pale gold body glistened under the spray and the blond hair was plastered and molded to Hutch’s skull as he stood, quiet and remote, under the falling water. Starsky just had time to see his partner’s face turning towards him in astonishment before he was in the shower stall too, the water beating down on his head and shoulders, soaking his clothes as he reached out for his lover and held him in a death grip.
“Oh babe… oh babe….” The water was warm but he still shivered uncontrollably, and as reaction to the news began to hit him harder, he clung more tightly and became aware of Hutch’s arms supporting him as his knees buckled.
“Starsky?” The blood was roaring in his ears and he felt disorientated. Surely he wasn’t going to faint. Jesus Christ, the bodyguard couldn’t faint! He summoned his failing strength but it was not enough. He slumped forward, not quite unconscious but unable to do anything but rely on Hutch to stop him falling.
His partner was equal to the task. He was held up, he was embraced, and he dropped his head wearily onto his lover’s shoulder as Hutch lifted him bodily into his arms and carried him to the double bed, laying him gently down on the covers, now straightened and made tidy again since he had last seen them.
“Gonna get a towel….” Hutch muttered.
“No….” If he held on, never let go, then they couldn’t kill Hutch without killing him too.
“Just one second.” Hutch’s hand stroked his hair away from his forehead. “Just one.”
“No!” But Hutch was gone, padding swiftly towards the bathroom and leaving Starsky to whimper in panic. The news had totally demoralized him in one fell blow destroying his confidence and his pre-occupation with what now seemed to be such a trivial affair. What did it matter if Hutch got laid by every man in the country? He was alive and he was breathing. Starsky saw his life in a new perspective where all that was important was being with Hutch. He caught his breath on a sob of fear.
“Hush, love.” Comfortingly Hutch wrapped him, still clothed, in a huge towel. “Don’t be scared. I’m here.”
Dimly Starsky wondered how Hutch had managed to pinpoint his panic so accurately. He stretched out his arms for his partner’s embrace and was not disappointed. Hutch immediately lay down beside him and held him firmly, and Starsky sank into the strength of the enclosing arms.
“Hold me.” His teeth began to chatter and the words were almost incoherent. “Please hold me. Tighter.”
“All right. I’ve got you. Feel me? I’ve got you, babe.”
It still wasn’t enough. Starsky wanted to have the breath squeezed out of him, wanted to have his bones crushed and his flesh bruised. It would prove to him that they were both still alive and that his lover understood his fear. He moaned in frightened despair because Hutch did not understand and he could not explain.
“Hush. Hush, my David” Instead of using his strength to comfort, Hutch was using gentleness and Starsky, oddly, found himself soothed almost immediately. “I’ve got you, my love you’re safe here with me.” Until the next bullet or bomb or rocket. Starsky shivered again. “Let me get you out of these wet clothes,” Hutch continued persuasively. “You feel so cold….”
Passively, because he did not have the strength to resist, Starsky allowed Hutch to peel off his shirt and jeans and then he wriggled closer, gluing his body to that other golden one, letting its warmth take the chill from his shaking limbs.
“What’s wrong?” Hutch whispered. “Here… let me get the covers around you… hold you closer. Gotta get you warm, sweetheart. You’re in some kinda shock.”
“Yes.”
Hutch’s hand rubbed up and down his arm slowly and the friction was calming. Starsky cuddled closer, twining his legs around his lover’s and slipping his arm around Hutch’s waist.
“Can you tell me?” Hutch asked.
“Some guys put some kinda rocket into the penthouse. Destroyed it and a couple of floors underneath.”
“Oh my God!”
“Yeah. We’re to stay here for another day and… and I’m scared! Terry says he thinks he’s got the maniacs that did it, but he’s not sure if he’s got them all.”
“So if we hadn’t come here…”
“Don’t! I don’t wanta think about it. We could be dead!”
Hutch’s mouth felt warm against his forehead. “We were lucky.”
“All because of you. I don’t know how long our luck can last.”
“Ah babe….”
“Shut up and hold me!”
Starsky was not sure when the holding and the reassurance turned slowly and sensuously towards thoughts of love. He was only aware of a sweet, drugged heaviness in his limbs and a pleasant throbbing in his loins. He turned his head slowly, tilting it backwards to look into Hutch’s face, and when he saw that the blue eyes were heavy-lidded and soft, he smiled.
No words were spoken. It was as if they knew one another’s minds and each understood what the other needed. Starsky took Hutch’s mouth with his own in a long, slow kiss that made them both breathe faster when it was over, and immediately join together in another deep kiss in which they both explored and re-discovered the taste of one another.
Starsky stroked smooth flesh and marveled that Hutch’s body should be so supple and so firm to touch. He was not a man in his twenties, he was approaching his late thirties, but his body was still young, as if time had not caught up with him. Starsky loved to slide the palm of his hand down Hutch’s side from armpit to thigh. Perfect skin, without blemish, and the smooth sweep of his lover’s flank led him, inevitably, to the neat, erotic curve of his ass. Oh God, how he loved that sweet, seductive ass! Loved to have it wriggled in front of his eyes, adored pressing his face between the yielding buttocks and then sinking his fingers or his cock into the hot, secret depths of his blond’s body.
Before Terry’s shattering piece of news he might have insisted that Hutch fuck him. Now he did not care. His lover lived and breathed. Nothing was important but being able to touch and feel and kiss his beautiful man and have those sensitive fingers travel his own body and drive him insane with desire.
The covers were thrown back. Starsky pulled Hutch partially on top of him and groaned softly as his lover’s mouth settled on his left nipple and fed from him with gentle nips and powerful sucking that sent ripples of delight coursing through his body. He wanted to beg, but he did not know what for. He wanted to scream with delight, but Hutch’s mouth clamped suddenly on his own and no sound would come out.
Oh please, babe, whatever you want! This is me, Starsky, not some nameless trick fucking you for cash. This is me, the poor guy who loves you. Make love to me the way we did when it was all new and your eyes were wide with wonder. Touch me. Yes, there! Oh God yes, just there! Make it come right again, Hutch, because I just don’t think I can. Don’t have the right words. I’m not bright enough to understand you. I only know I love you.
He felt Hutch’s hand slide between his thighs and sighed under the feather light caresses that made his testicles ache. There was no point in subterfuge. He could not pretend that the mouth that breathed a warm currant of air along the soft crease of his thigh and his crotch was not infinitely welcome. He spread his legs wide apart, heard the short hum of approval that greeted the move, and opened his eyes to see Hutch kneeling beside him, back curving as the blond nuzzled the hair at his crotch.
Such a perfect spine. Starsky trailed his fingers down it and wondered why the sight of it stirred him so deeply or why the tears should suddenly be in his eyes. Because Hutch, proud Hutch, was on his knees crouched over him in adoration of his body? Because he was not the only man in his lover’s life? Because he wanted so desperately to have sole rights to this complicated man of his.
The fingers had drifted between his legs and one long forefinger was beginning to circle the tight muscle between the cheeks of his ass. Involuntarily, Starsky bent his knees a little and parted his thighs still wider, knowing as he did so, exactly what he looked like. Exactly what Hutch would see. His posture was one of total and utter abandonment, and while his hands continued to stroke his lover, Starsky knew he was obviously and unashamedly begging for love.
Put your finger into me. Slowly. Feel what I’m like inside. Feel me take you and want you. Yes, lover, like that. Deep. Deeper. Now another finger. Ah Christ, that’s good! You know I love this, don’t you? Sure you do. Fuck me with your fingers, babe. Do it hard.
He wriggled, trying to get still deeper penetration and he groaned in satisfaction as Hutch rotated his fingers strongly and then bent to his mouth again. Starsky wanted to be screwed. Thoroughly and irrevocably and preferably for the whole night. When Hutch moved to kneel between his legs, he sighed with pleasure and raised his hips in silent invitation. He was going to get his wish and he raised his eyes to Hutch’s heavy-lidded ones and smiled.
“I love you.” He spoke the first words since they had become aroused. “Tell me you love me. I don’t care if it’s a lie. Just tell me.”
“I love you.” Hutch made the avowal quietly and steadily.
“Good.”
Starsky allowed his hips to be lifted and rested his legs comfortably over Hutch’s shoulders. Then he watched the blond as he waited for the penetration of his body, seeing Hutch slick his cock so that it gleamed, powerful and potent, trembling a little as the man he loved sat back on his heels and gentle hands parted his buttocks, exposing him to Hutch’s eyes.
“You are so beautiful,” Hutch whispered. “So very beautiful.” As Starsky watched him uncomprehendingly, the blond bent his head slowly and pressed his lips to that small, guarded entrance. “So beautiful,” Hutch murmured again, but before Starsky could even think of responding, the blond was poised above him and Starsky felt the pressure inside him as the long, thick cock began a slow, careful thrusting that was guaranteed to send him out of his mind with pleasure. He writhed under the controlled movements, wanting more, determined to have more, impaling himself on that relentlessly driving cock and crying out as Hutch answered his inarticulate plea.
Starsky, without intending to, found that he was losing control of himself. He had never done this with any man before, not even with Hutch, but he knew now that he was about to become mindless and totally uninhibited. He could regain some measure of stability if he fought hard for it, but his impulse was to let go and allow Hutch to possess him utterly.
Never with Tony had he relinquished those last vestiges of control and he knew it was because he could not bring himself to trust any human being completely, even in the close confines of his own bed. But he trusted Hutch and so he let go, screaming his joy at the freedom his mind gave to his body. He felt it twisting, arching up to that maddening, insistent pressure inside him, twining his arms and legs around honey-colored limbs, and all the time never taking his eyes from those others so like his own in color.
This was making love the way it should be done. There was the fire of desire in Hutch’s eyes, but they still remained soft. Eyes of a dreamer. Eyes of a lover. Those eyes told him he was truly loved, despite Hutch’s infidelity. Maybe better loved than even Hutch himself realized.
So long as they could look at one another like this, without pretense, then they might have a chance. If they could reach orgasm together with their eyes locked in an even closer embrace than their bodies, then they could still make it together.
Starsky had to feel optimistic. He had to be optimistic, and as his lover surged above him and around him and inside him, he cried out Hutch’s name again and again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Can you come up to my office?” That was the voice of Commander Hutchinson and Starsky frowned. What had Hutch suddenly found to tell him that couldn’t either have been said before they left their new safe house that morning, or couldn’t wait until they got home that night?
“Sure,” he agreed equably. “Five minutes?”
“Fine.”
So what did Hutch want? Starsky pondered the question as he took the elevator, passed the time of day with the guard who stood at Hutch’s door and then strolled into the big, airy room that was the blond’s office. He had only been here a few times before, but on every occasion he had been struck by the simple austerity of the furnishings and by the single Picasso-style painting on the wall. Somehow none of it seemed to reflect the Hutch he knew, almost as if the blond was trying to assume a different personality when he was at work. Not the hot, passionate lover of the evenings and the nights but a cool, assured, capable Commander of Police who stood for truth and justice and everything that was right. Starsky wondered how Hutch could bear that kind of pressure. No man should be asked to. No man was that perfect.
“Hi.” He made the greeting casual, then remembered that they were both on duty. “Good morning, Commander,” he said formally and Hutch smiled faintly.
“Starsk….” The blond stood behind his desk, seeming, in Starsky’s eyes, to be using it as a barrier between them. “…Sit down, will you?”
“Sure.” Starsky sat and hooked one ankle over his knee. “What is it?” Despite his casual pose, he was uneasy. He was never entirely sure how to treat Hutch when they were both on duty. He could never forget that this controlled, remote man who stood watching him gravely was the same man with whom he shared one wild tempestuous night after another.
“I want to offer you a job with IA.”
Whatever he was expecting, it was not that. Starsky wondered if he looked as surprised as he felt.
“What?” he asked stupidly. “What as?”
“Your title would be Assistant to the Deputy Head of IA.” Hutch smiled. “My deputy. Terry will be promoted soon and I guess I’ll be in line for his job. You could do this one….” The blue eyes shone with open affection, honesty, and pride. “…And you could do it damn well. I’d like to have you working for me. It’d be like the old days.”
“Yeah.” No, it wouldn’t. They had been equal partners three years ago. Now Hutch was asking him to take a job that would mean that Starsky’s lover would be his immediate boss. “Can I have time to think about it?” he asked weakly. “I mean, it is kinda sudden… and I do like working in Narco….” He realized suddenly that he liked it very much.
“Sure.” Hutch’s voice was neutral. “I didn’t expect an answer yet.” When Starsky looked at him he saw nothing in the open face but bland acceptance, but he guessed they both knew that he would turn the job down.
“I’ve got something else to tell you,” Hutch continued quietly.
“Oh yeah? About the trial?” It had now been scheduled and already Starsky sensed anticipation spreading throughout the entire building.
“No.” Hutch hesitated. “Something else. I’m not sure how to say this, but….”
This was the true reason for his visit to the office. In one swift glance Starsky took in the nervous fingers that twiddled a pencil around and around in a jerky series of arcs, and the sudden film of sweat that he could see on Hutch’s forehead. If they had been at home he would have taken the pencil away and held the sensitive hands tightly between his own while he kissed the lines of worry from the beautiful face, and even now he was tempted. It was only the barrier of that big, plain teak desk between them that stopped him. It seemed to him that Hutch was hiding behind it, using it as some kind of shield to keep them apart, and on instinct he stayed where he was.
“What is it?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know how to tell you….” The pencil moved faster. “…Starsky….”
“I’m listening.”
“You gotta see a doctor.” The words tumbled over one another in Hutch’s anxiety to get them out. “Get a shot of penicillin….”
For a moment Starsky simply did not understand. He stared into Hutch’s face, saw a tide of red sweep from the blond’s jaw line to the roots of his hair and heard the pencil snap. As it did—so did he.
“What are you telling me?” he demanded.
“I think you know.”
“I’d like it in words of one syllable, please. Are you telling me you’ve got a dose of the clap and given it to me?”
“Yes.”
“You bastard!”
“I’m sorry.” The flushed face turned a deeper red.
“Sorry?” Starsky heard his voice rising as he remembered, with a sense of shock, that good night of loving and how he had mentally acknowledged his lover’s total possession of him. He had given all of himself and now he felt betrayed. “Yeah, I’ll just bet you are!”
“Starsk….”
“Shut up!” There were millions of words inside Starsky’s head but none of them would come out. “I don’t wanna hear you or talk to you or even look at you. I don’t wanna be within five miles of you! I don’t even want to be on the same planet as you. Jesus Christ!”
Starsky wondered hazily why he always felt nauseous when he had received some kind of shock. With a sense of panic he felt bile at the back of his throat and his stomach contracted painfully. Hutch had a small bathroom leading off his office and Starsky ran for it, bolting the door in Hutch’s face and slumping against the cream-colored tiles.
His pulse was banging and the sickness was an imminent threat. At least he had not disgraced himself all over Hutch’s carpet.
Starsky turned his face to the coolness of the tiles and sighed. He did not want to think or to act. He just wanted to become a mindless zombie without feelings. Maybe that way he could not be hurt any more. It was, he reflected with a kind of sardonic humor, the second time he had locked himself away from his lover in the safety of a bathroom. It was getting to be a habit.
“Starsk….” Hutch’s voice was soft and anxious. “…Starsk, are you okay?”
No. No, he would never be okay again. He had bedded with a man who had betrayed him in thought and deed and he shuddered at the thought of what might now be invading his body. He was in no serious danger and he knew it; it was just the thought that Hutch could infect him in such a manner.
“Let me in.” The doorknob rattled. “Are you all right?”
“No!” Starsky shouted the word defiantly. “Fuck off!”
“This is my office… remember?”
“How could I forget? Sir.” He had a vindictive desire to wound. What would Terry say if he was told all the facts about his revered deputy? “Would sir like me to get my ass outta his john?”
“Starsky, stop it!” There was agony in the soft protest.
“Oh. Why? Scared of what you’d have to say if Terry walked in? ‘Please sir, I’ve given my lover a dose of the clap and he’s throwing up in the bathroom….'”
“David….”
“Shut up!”
“…Please let me in.”
“Why? You wanna fuck me in the shower… make sure I get it even if I don’t have it now?” Starsky had not known that he was capable of such bitterness. “I hope you’re not thinking of trying to be nice to me. Niceness I can do without.” He laughed, but it cracked into a sob. “Or are you going to tell me you love me? Jesus, what a joke! Love? Oh God, I think I am gonna throw up.”
“Please let me in.”
“Why?”
“I want to help you.”
“I can do without your fucking help.”
Starsky knew that he had to come out of the bathroom sometime. He could not stay there all day and his nausea had vanished to be replaced by a cold, vengeful, fury. He wanted to kill Hutch. He wanted to put his hands around that beautiful throat and squeeze until his lover was dead.
“You think I don’t feel bad about this?” The strain in Hutch’s voice was nakedly obvious. “You think I wouldn’t give anything… anything in this goddamn world… for things to be different?”
“I’m sure you would. I believe that.” Starsky took a deep breath. “I believe it because you’re gonna have to lay off sex for a few days… and that’ll drive you right up the wall. I hope. What makes me really sick is that I’ve got the clap because you’re a promiscuous bastard who doesn’t give any kind of damn about anything but getting screwed by… aw fuck, what’s the use?”
“Don’t cry, babe. Please don’t cry.”
“Cry? Me? You gotta be kidding! You ain’t worth wasting a single tear over, Commander Hutchinson. You’re a selfish, egotistical sonovabitch and I hate you.”
“You never tried to stop me….”
“No. That’s right. Because I loved you and I thought… oh Christ knows what I thought! I was trying to help you. That’s all.” Starsky said the words again, and this time caught the hint of hopelessness in them. “I was just trying to help you. I didn’t think you’d stay if I….” There was no point to any of this. He wanted to bang his head against the wall until oblivion surrounded him.
“Come out. Talk to me. We can make it right.” And then: “I love you.”
Love conquers all. Where had he heard that? Did it? If it did, why was it he couldn’t face seeing Hutch? And yet he had to come out of that bathroom sometime. With a little involuntary shrug of his shoulders, acknowledging the sense of defeat that he felt, he slid back the bolt and walked out into the office. Straight into Hutch’s outstretched arms.
“No,” he said quietly. “Let me go.” Immediately he was free of his lover’s embrace. “Just… don’t touch me.” As he looked into Hutch’s face, he saw him flinch.
“Babe….”
“I am not your babe. Not right now. I’m… nothing.” And that was how he felt. Degraded, bitter, empty, and yet so full of tears that every time he took a breath he felt like choking.
“You’re Starsky.” Lightest of touches on his shoulder. “You’re the good guy and I’m the fool.”
“Yeah.” Starsky turned away but not before he had taken in the stricken look on his lover’s face. Hutch looked old. Old and sick and guilty. “I’ll see you around.” He made his voice as casual as possible.
“Whatever you do… promise me you’ll see a doctor right away.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.” And Starsky walked away without a backward glance.
* * *
Starsky got through the rest of the day feeling like an automaton. He attended a meeting, made decisions, hauled one of his junior officers into his office and yelled at him in much the same way that Dobey had once ripped into him when he had been part of a team. The reminder hurt and he felt totally alone as he tried to work out what he should do.
The impulse inside him to give up—to walk away and cut Hutch out of his life—was strong. As far as he could see, they had nothing left. How could he forgive this latest development in their love affair? It seemed to Starsky, depressed and without hope, that he had no future with Hutch. He had tried to help the man, he truly had. Maybe he had done it all wrong. He wasn’t infallible. He could make mistakes. Maybe the biggest mistake of his life had been to take Hutch into his house and then into his bed. Maybe they should have stayed as friends.
He didn’t want to return to the safe house that night. The idea of being cooped up with Hutch in a three-room prison for the coming night was not pleasant. No chance of sex between them, not until they had been cleared by a doctor, and Starsky wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. One half of him never wanted to touch Hutch again. The other half wanted to tie the blond down and keep him tied down until he extracted a promise that Hutch would be faithful to him and him alone. Once he had that promise he need never worry again. Hutch was a man of his word.
Starsky could not decide what to do, and in the middle of the afternoon he rang Vandam and told him he would not be home until late that evening.
“You want me to stay with Commander Hutchinson until you come?”
“Someone has to. But I may be late….”
“That’s okay.”
Starsky was not sure how Vandam had come to be reinstated as one of Hutch’s guards. Hutch had said nothing but Vandam had reappeared at the penthouse just before they had gone away for their weekend.
“You sure?” He questioned the man, feeling a little guilty. “You’ll have put in a full day here….”
“Don’t worry, Cap, I’ll manage fine.”
“Okay.”
* * *
When the day was over, Starsky didn’t know where to go. In the end he chose a gay bar that he had visited before Hutch had come back to him, but as soon as he pushed open the door and his eyes became accustomed to the gloom of the interior, he saw Tony.
His ex-lover was the last man he wanted to meet. Tony was a charmer when he chose to be and Starsky knew that he was vulnerable. This feeling of lovelessness that he was suffering from was an emotion that he just might be tempted to assuage with the big man who was now getting to his feet and smiling a wide, slow smile.
Starsky nodded coolly to him and then deliberately turned away, walking over to the bar and ordering a beer. He had liked this place once. Quiet, out of the way, never thick with cigarette smoke, he had spent many hours here. It was here that he had met Tony. Was this why he had come back now? Had his sub-conscious guided him?
“Hello there, Davey boy.” The rich, soft voice was like a giant hand soothing his ruffled feathers. “On your own?” Fingers squeezed his shoulder.
“Yeah.” Starsky took a deep breath and turned round. “I just dropped by for a beer.”
“Oh yes? Called round at your place the other night. Didn’t realize you’d moved out for good.”
“Yeah.” Starsky suddenly had a yearning to be in his own apartment again.
“Not very communicative tonight, are we?” Tony’s eyes gleamed. “What’s the matter, Davey? Lost your lover?”
“No.” Yes.
“So how is your golden boy?”
“Fine.” Cock-crazy and got the clap. Wonderful.
“Still together?”
“Yeah.” He’s there and I’m here.
“Happy?”
“Sure.” No.
“David…” The large hand on his shoulder squeezed gently. “…You’re a terrible liar.”
Maybe, but he could not tell this man the truth. Too many years of loyalty to a good partner prevented that. Starsky looked dumbly into Tony’s grey-green eyes and wished that he could have called his ex-lover a friend. Even if he could not be honest, maybe he could have relaxed a little.
“You want something?” he asked neutrally.
“You could say that… but I’ll settle for a little conversation.”
“Talk away.”
“Uncooperative bastard!” The words were said affectionately but Tony’s hand dropped away. “I’ve missed you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Tell me what you’ve been doing.”
“Nothing much.”
“Oh come on! You’ve never been short of a few words before.”
“I’m tired.”
“Damn!” Tony turned his head away and ordered a drink and Starsky studied the long, curling brown hair with detached interest. His ex-lover had sounded angry. “You want another drink?” Tony did not turn back.
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“Would you think I was trying to rape you if I asked you to sit in a booth with me?”
“Of course not.” You might get more than you bargained for, sweetheart! But it would be nice to sit down. For the second time in the past few days he felt the ache of his old wound. He followed Tony docilely to a quiet part of the bar and slid into the banquette next to him.
“You want a shoulder to cry on?” Tony asked.
“No thanks.” Starsky pressed the cold glass against his forehead. It felt good. “I’m too old to cry on anyone’s shoulder. I make my own mistakes.”
“Oh? Made any recently?”
Tony was too quick witted and Starsky felt dull and stupid with tiredness and worry. His words had been careless and he knew it.
“Not that I’m gonna talk about,” he said stubbornly.
“Oh Davey… Davey.” Tony sighed. “I used to get so damn angry when you were like this. Now I find it very endearing.”
“Nice for you.”
“Yeah. Too late though. I never appreciated you when I had you. I didn’t make you happy and I don’t think your golden boy is doing much better than me.”
“His name is Hutch,” Starsky said quietly. “And I don’t like the way you’re talking about him.”
“Sorry.” Was he? Starsky knew Tony to be a devious man. Not dangerous, exactly, but clever in an obtuse kind of way. Starsky had never understood him, but admitted to himself that he had never bothered to try. “Would you like to hear something really dumb?” Tony continued. “I mean, really dumb. For me, that is?”
“What?”
“When you stood at the bar just now and said you were tired… I wanted to take you home with me and put you to bed and look after you. Crazy, huh? I’m not the mother hen type. I’m not looking for stray chicks….”
“…And I ain’t one,” Starsky snapped. “Sure, I’m tired. I’ve put in a long day. But I don’t need anyone to look after me.”
“Oh, yes, you do.” It was said with such gentleness that Starsky blinked in surprise. “Everyone does. Even guys like me. I thought I was happy enough tonight… until you walked in. Then—just for a moment—I thought you’d come to find me. Then I was really happy. Damn you, Davey, why didn’t you stay away?”
“I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“No. Of course not. Sorry.”
They sat in silence for a while after that while Starsky studied a framed photograph on the wall and wished he had found another bar to drink in.
“What are you doing with yourself?” he asked at last. He did not really want to know, but he was aware of Tony’s eyes on him and he wanted to lighten the atmosphere.
“Nothing special. Like you.” A muscled hand covered Starsky’s as it lay on the table. “Come home with me, Davey.” Tony dropped his voice, made it as smooth as a silken scarf. “How about it? Just for a few hours. I’ll make it good for you.”
“No. Sorry.”
“Dumb, loyal cop! I’d really try this time. We could make it work.”
Two men wanted him. Both had been unfaithful to him. Neither had considered his feelings, both had willfully ignored his unhappiness. Starsky wondered if there was something wrong with him. Why couldn’t he inspire the same kind of loyalty that Tony was accusing him of? Accusing? Wasn’t loyalty a good thing to have?
“Think about it, babe!” Tony moved closer and his voice became more urgent. “A few hours. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t.” Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. Hutch made the idea an impossibility.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Either. Both. Does it matter?”
“There is a difference.”
“Oh, fuck off, Tony! You’re too goddamn clever for your own good!” Starsky took refuge in anger. It was safer than trying to out-think the man. “Get off my back….”
“It isn’t your back I’m interested in.” Tony had a way with a phrase that made the most cliched sound sensuous. “I love your ass and your mouth and what you’ve got between your legs…. You know what I’d like to do to you?”
“No. And I don’t care.”
“I’d like to bend you over this table and….”
“Christ!” Starsky got to his feet abruptly. “Don’t you ever think about anything else?”
“The word love doesn’t come too easy.” Tony spoke so softly that Starsky barely heard him.
“Do you love me?” He sat down again and stared at his ex-lover. “Really?”
“What’s love, David? Does anyone understand it?”
“Who knows?”
“What I feel for you is a lot of things.” Tony smiled wryly. “I never understood until you left me. I could’ve killed that blond of yours.”
“Hutch can be a dangerous man. Don’t tangle with him.” Starsky felt oddly proud to say that.
“I’ve found that out already, thanks.”
Starsky remembered Hutch’s threat to his ex-lover and almost smiled. He had really turned on to Hutch when the blond had become aggressive.
“I have to go, Tony.” He didn’t, not really, but he was beginning to feel as if he was in some kind of vise. Hutch squeezing him on one side, and Tony beginning to squeeze him on the other.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. You’re crowding me and I don’t like it.”
“Actually,” Tony grinned widely, “I was trying to cruise you. Seems like I’m losing my touch.” He did not seem upset by what was happening but Starsky noticed absently that the big man was stroking the back of his hand with one broad finger. He could offer Tony no hope. He had none to give to himself and certainly none to spare.
“I’ll see you.” Conscious, suddenly, of the penicillin injection he had received a short time ago, and the humiliation he had felt, he was ashamed. He had to get away before he blurted out the truth, treating Tony like some kind of father confessor. Abruptly he got to his feet. “Take care, babe. Find someone good to love.”
He left the bar with Tony’s soft words echoing in his ears and the memory of grey eyes watching him sadly.
“I already did,” Tony had said quietly.
* * *
Still Starsky could not face that small house in the hills where, by now, Hutch would be waiting for him. He would have to wait. Cocooned in his artificial life-style, maybe it would be good for Hutch to sweat a little. Starsky drove down to the beach and walked on the sand, remembering happier times and thinking about Tony.
The man had made one valid point. Everyone needed someone. Starsky acknowledged to himself that he enjoyed the idea that Hutch needed him. He liked being strong for his lover, but he also knew that he wanted to be weak sometimes and, because of Hutch’s tension, that there was no place for his own insecurities to be voiced.
Yet Hutch had been there for him when he had really needed it. After they had heard about the bomb, when he had found the rat, and in the confrontation with Tony, Hutch had supported his lover and taken the initiative for him.
You always, in the end, come through for me. I can rely on you to hold me and give me all the protection you can. You understand. You always have. You know me and you know what gets to me. So why don’t you understand how much these weekends hurt me?
Hutch did know. He had to know. Yet something, some inner, driving force, was thrusting him on. Some compulsion was forcing him to misuse his body in his search for… for what? What was Hutch looking for? What was he trying to prove?
Dimly Starsky wondered if the fact that Hutch would not have anything to do with the pick up of the men he coupled with or the financial arrangements was an important point. It seemed to him that perhaps Hutch liked to pretend that the men wanted him for his own sake and not because they were being paid. Had Hutch suffered so much isolation and so much hostility from his fellow policemen that he would pay for the illusion of a few minutes closeness with a stranger?
Or was there a more simple explanation, one that Hutch himself had volunteered. Was it really that the blond’s lust for sex was a result of his impotence and that it was a biological urge rather than a mental problem?
Starsky remembered how he had protested, pointing out to Hutch that he already had a lover. And he also recalled how Hutch had said that the men he had sex with were not his lovers. He had taken Starsky’s hand and laid his lips to the palm in a gentle gesture that had moved Starsky deeply, and then Hutch had said that he only had one love. Starsky. The rest were a passing insanity. Something that he would have to fight and defeat.
Starsky kicked at the sand and thought about the one aspect of the whole affair that worried him most—Hutch’s liking for pain. Why? Why did his compassionate, humanitarian lover beg to be hurt? Starsky shuddered as he recalled with painful clarity, that if he had not intervened then Hutch would have allowed himself to be fist-fucked. How could he? How could he even bear to contemplate the idea, let alone ask for it? Didn’t he know how dangerous it could be? Didn’t he know he could receive permanent damage from such an action?
Starsky walked down to the edge of the ocean and stared at the shimmering water, mysterious under the light of the moon. One part of him wished that Hutch was standing by his side, holding his hand and gaining a sense of peace from the serenity of the scene. Hutch needed tranquility and perhaps he needed to get back to simple things to balance the complexities and the pressure of his working life.
Face it, Starsky. It’s time you did. Stop thinking about soapy scenes and start working on some hard facts. Hutch likes pain. Pain either before or during sex. Pain when he’s making it with another man. Any other man, including me. Because he feels guilty? He loves me. I mean, he really loves me. And he wants me. On the other hand he just happens to be the Deputy Head of IA and with a nickname that makes me wanna crawl into a hole. The Incorruptible. Jesus Christ! What do they expect from him? Total and absolute perfection. Yeah, that’s what they want, and my baby can’t handle it. Who the hell could? Hutch can never be perfect when he’s getting laid by his ex-partner and present bodyguard. Perfect men don’t let themselves get screwed by other men.
A ripple of water ran over Starsky’s shoes and he stepped backwards with a muttered curse.
Concentrate, Starsky. You gotta see what’s happening. You screwed him… no, goddamn it, it wasn’t that! It was making love… and he liked it. He’s proved to himself that he can get turned on by other men too, but he figures he has to pay a price for being gay. He has to be punished. With pain. So when he makes love, he has to have the pain to absolve himself. When I refused to hurt him anymore, maybe he figured he would get it from other men. Is that it? Oh Jesus Christ, is that what’s going through his crazy mind? What have I done to him?
His feet felt uncomfortable and he bent down and pulled off his shoes and socks, paddling through the water and wishing he could cool his head as quickly as his feet. He had an impulsive desire to walk out into the ocean and just keep walking until the water closed over his head. It was all too complicated; too many emotional nuances and too many problems that he could not see answers to.
Would it be best if I just… left him? I got good enough reasons. Wouldn’t have to explain anything. I could just walk away from him.
Yeah, Starsky? Wanna run the risk that he might do something stupid? Or is that the most monumental piece of arrogance that’s ever crossed your mind? He’s lived without you before, and he could do it again.
Hell, I don’t know. How am I supposed to know anything? I’m just a dumb cop. A dumb captain. Tony was right. What do I know about looking after a screwed up lover? What do I know about what’s happening inside that crazy guy’ s head? Somehow… without my knowing about it… he’s made me responsible for him. I don’t just guard his body; I guard everything else too.
So what do I say to him? How do I ask him if he feels he has to be punished every time he makes it with a man? He’d deny it. I know the man and I know he’d deny it. And I can’t force him to tell the truth.
Another thought struck him, and he kicked at the water in angry, bitter frustration.
Does he want all this sex because it’s the only time he can forget his problems? Is it that simple? He can’t sleep. I won’t let him have pills. He’s living on top of his job… Jesus, is he ever! And his poor tired brain can’t think of anything else but work. Is fucking the only time he can forget everything? Is it the only pleasure left? Poor bastard! If I asked him, he probably couldn’t tell me.
As he drove back to the safe house he tried to summon up Hutch’s face in his mind, wanting to re-kindle the rage he had felt earlier as a kind of armor against Hutch’s exquisite vulnerability. He was not immune to it, never would be. When those long-fringed eyelids flickered upward in innocent surprise he was lost. Hutch could look like a beautiful wanton child and Starsky was convinced that he was never aware of his allure. The blond really did not know that he had a sensuous, passionate mouth or a body that excited his lover beyond dreams.
Starsky’s cock, unaware of its quarantine, stirred, and Starsky gritted his teeth. He did not want to see Hutch in that light. He wanted to look beyond the sexual qualities of the blond to the man behind the face. It was difficult. When did they ever talk? They seemed to be either at work or in bed. When did they ever sit down and talk properly?
They would have to soon, Starsky decided. They could not make love and maybe that was a blessing in disguise. Now Hutch could not lure him into the bedroom by flaunting his beautiful body and enticing him with his sapphire eyes. For the next few days there would be no excuse for them not to sit down and discuss every facet of their relationship.
What did he actually know of Hutch’s activities during the last three years? Very little. The bare bones of the story. He did not believe the blond was keeping anything from him deliberately, but he wanted to get Hutch to reveal more of his emotional problems of that time, even if the memories hurt. He wanted to understand.
As Starsky parked in the driveway of the house, waving to the IA man who was stationed nearby, Vandam came out the front door. In the semi-darkness Starsky thought the younger man looked miserable, but when they came closer he put it down to tiredness. The man had been on duty for too long.
“Evening, Ray,” he said easily. Like Hutch, he had come to call the IA men by their Christian names.
“Evening, sir.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
“Night, sir.”
“Goodnight, Ray.” Was it his imagination or did the man look jumpy? Maybe he needed a vacation. Hell, they all did! Most probably Hutch had proved to be difficult company. Enough to make anyone nervous.
He entered the house quietly and walked straight into the living room. As he did, Hutch got up from his seat on the couch and the eyes of the two men met and locked.
“I wondered,” Hutch said softly, “if you’d come back.”
“I’m the bodyguard,” Starsky said bleakly. “And you’re the body. It’s my job.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You want coffee?”
“No, thanks. Why did you come back?”
“Who knows? A misplaced sense of loyalty… maybe I’m a masochist like you. Maybe I like being pulled through an emotional wringer every other day. Maybe I like getting….”
“Please, Starsk!” Hutch stepped closer. “You’ve got every right to yell at me, I know that. I wouldn’t have blamed you for not coming back, but….”
“I’ve come back to do my job,” Starsky interrupted. “I don’t need no self-pitying whining from you. You’re the boss. Do you have any orders for me, sir?”
“None that I could expect you to carry out.” Hutch rubbed his hand over his face in a familiar gesture of weariness. For how many years, Starsky wondered, had he watched that particular mannerism? It had never failed to move him with its simple lack of pretense and it did so now. He bit his lip and resisted the impulse to put his arms around the bowed shoulders of his lover and hold Hutch closely.
“I’m here to do as I’m told,” he said colorlessly. “You got something you want me to do? Sir.”
“I can’t order you into bed with me. I can’t order you to keep on loving me and forgiving me. How can I make you hold me tight and let me hold you?”
If he wasn’t careful Starsky knew that he was going to be trapped again by Hutch’s helpless, awkward defenselessness that was so endearing. Starsky knew that his partner’s guard was down. If he wanted to hurt, to kill forever the bruised and wounded love between them, then the time was now. He could do it. It would be so easy. Just a few words would be enough.
He couldn’t. He didn’t have the energy or the will or the depth of hatred necessary to destroy something that meant so much to him. Maybe he wasn’t as tough as he thought he was. He simply could not hurt the man who stood before him, waiting mutely for the axe to fall on his bared and unprotected neck. Hutch was not expecting him to be merciful.
Starsky looked directly at his partner and saw the unshed tears that hung like diamonds on the long, fair lashes, and the pearling of sweat on his upper lip.
“I won’t sleep with you,” he said quietly. “Not until you’ve sorted yourself out. I know you’re screwed up. I know it mostly isn’t your fault. But I won’t pimp for you no more and I won’t be one of a dozen men who fucks you….”
“I won’t….”
“No!” Starsky held up his hand for silence. “I don’t want any promises right now. I’m laying down terms and I want you to listen and understand. Okay?”
“Yes.” Hutch’s eyes, huge and sunken in his pale face, watched him steadily.
“If you want men,” Starsky said, slowly and deliberately, “then you can go and get your own. I don’t wanna know. When you feel you can come to me and say that you’ll never screw with any other man but me ever again, then we’ll talk some more. Maybe I’ll never be able to give you all you need, I don’t know. If you find someone you can love more than me… well, that’s a chance I must take. I won’t hold you….”
“…At least live with me,” Hutch said huskily. “Can you do that?”
“Without sex? What d’you think I am? Come outta the clouds, Hutch. I’m a man. I’m gay and I like sex. I’ll stay ’til the trials are over. After that I’m going back to my own place.”
Deliberately he turned away from his partner to hunt for the bottle of whiskey they had bought the day after they moved into their drab little house. The place had depressed them both, quashing the optimism Starsky had been trying to hang onto, and the scotch had been bought as a panacea for their miserable surroundings. They had drunk three-quarters of it and fallen into bed to make love with drunken tenderness.
“You wanna drink?” There was about two inches of whiskey in the bottle.
“No alcohol!” Hutch said sharply. “Didn’t the doctor tell you that?”
“Aw, shit!”
“You did see a doctor, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay?”
“Depends what you mean by okay.” Starsky put down the bottle with a bang. “All the years I’ve been gay, I’ve never… hell, this has never happened to me before. Lucky? I don’t know. But all the men… and I have to get it from the only man I’ve ever loved. Weird, isn’t it?” And again the humiliation burned deep in him.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” Hutch began hesitantly. “When all this started, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is. I did try to warn you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. And fool that I am, I didn’t listen.” Starsky swung around to face his partner. “I swear to God I didn’t think we’d fight like this… have so much trouble. I thought… ah Jesus, I don’t know what I thought!”
“Do your terms and conditions exclude a cuddle?”
“Oh, babe!” Starsky knew that he needed something. Forbidden to make love, totally insecure, depressed both by his surroundings and by the fact that he could not seem to find the right way to talk to Hutch, and aware of the danger that still threatened them, he was desperate for anything to help him. Hutch was all that he had. When the blond opened his arms he walked into them and rested his head against Hutch’s shoulder, sighing and rubbing his cheek against the soft material of his partner’s shirt. “What are we going to do?” he asked helplessly. “Seems to me we can’t live together… not the way we’ve been going on… but I’m not sure I can live without you either. It’s a mess.”
“I know. I know.”
Strong arms held Starsky, rocked him, cradled him safely, and although he acquiesced to his lover’s wish to comfort him and stood quietly in the embrace, even enjoyed it, Starsky knew that his anger still burned deep inside him.
He had not forgiven Hutch for what he had done. He might understand some of the reasons, might even acknowledge his own responsibility, but he could not forgive. Hutch had hurt him too much, destroyed his fragile, precious dreams, left him with little but a grim understanding of the way a love affair could go sour.
“Mirren’s trial begins in ten days,” Hutch said quietly. “It’ll take quite a while, but I’ll be happier when it’s over and that bastard’s put away for twenty years.”
“Me, too. Will you feel safer then?”
“I’d be a liar if I said yes.”
“What will you do?”
“Live with it. Nothing else I can do.”
Starsky wanted to say that he would be there to help and protect and guard his lover. He wanted to tell Hutch that he would never have to be alone again, but the words stuck in his throat. How could he make promises like that when he intended to spend the night on a foldaway bed in the living room?
“You feel so good in my arms,” Hutch whispered. “To hell with this place and what’s happened between us. Come and sleep with me. Just… sleep.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.” And it wasn’t even hard for Starsky to say. Miserably he wondered if his love for his partner was dead.
CHAPTER NINE
“You okay?” Starsky glanced sideways at his companion in the back of the big, black, bulletproof limousine.
“Sure.” Hutch spoke confidently.
“Not nervous?”
“No.”
He should be. Today he was to give evidence at John Mirren’s trial. Today, and probably tomorrow, and maybe the day after. At the moment Commander Kenneth J. Hutchinson was one of the most important men in the state. Guarded, watched by the media, agonized over by his ex-partner and ex-lover. Starsky sighed. Hutch was taking tranquilizers, he was sure of it, but the blond’s bedroom was out of bounds and he had no reason to go in there.
No reason? He had every reason! Hutch slept in there, alone and restless, and it was wrong. He should sleep in his lover’s arms and be comforted by his body. Starsky acknowledged to himself that he was failing the man, but he could not bring himself to take that first step which would lead him back into the double bed. He was not afraid, but he felt more secure alone. It was easy to fend off Hutch’s shy, tentative approaches and he had done so with gentle but decisive certainty.
The man by his side sat quietly and stared with seeming disinterest out the window. In his dark grey suit, white shirt and carefully conservative tie he looked like a successful businessman on his way to a meeting. On impulse Starsky stretched out his hand and let it lie on the seat between them.
“Good luck,” he said quietly.
“Thanks.” Hutch seemed pre-occupied with the view from his window and did not appear to see the movement.
Starsky wondered what to say next. It was just too easy to whisper ‘I love you’. They had both made that declaration and things had still gone wrong between them. There had to be something more. Something he could say that would tell Hutch they had shared more than a bed and a few days of closeness. Starsky sighed again.
“You’ll be able to move back to your own place soon,” Hutch said tonelessly. “I do appreciate all you’ve done….”
A glass window separated them from the driver of the car and Vandam who sat by his side. Starsky glanced at the partition and then turned to his partner.
“I’ve stayed because I wanted to,” he said firmly.
“Bodyguard guarding the body. You said that yourself.”
“No. More like a lover protecting the person he loves.”
Hutch laughed shortly. “Lover? You won’t be my lover! I want you, but you won’t let me near you!” He glanced at the partition as if afraid that he had spoken too loudly.
“Do you blame me!”
“No.” The spark of anger that had animated Hutch’s face died as quickly as it had been born. “No, I don’t blame you.” For a second the blond closed his eyes as if to hide some inner agony. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it now.” The quiet voice trembled a little. “I have to think about Mirren.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” Starsky hesitated. He did want to say something. Something to boost Hutch’s confidence and give him hope for the future. It couldn’t be over for them. Somewhere deep inside him the love must still be alive.
“When this is over….” He leaned towards Hutch and lowered his voice. “…We’ll talk. Work something out.”
“Like what?” Hutch turned his head and Starsky looked into bleak, wintery eyes. He flinched.
“I don’t want you to worry about it now,” he said firmly. “Go and nail Mirren good. But I’ll be in that courtroom, too. And I’m on your side. Look at me sometimes, if you can. Because I care about you. Lover, partner, friend, boss… they’re all my Hutch. My Hutch.” He moved his hand a little further along the seat. This time Hutch saw it, took it, and clasped it tightly. “You look so good, babe,” Starsky said gently. “I’m so goddamn proud of you.” Yes, that was what he’d wanted to say. That summed up his feelings.
“Thank you. I needed that.”
By this time Hutch should be needing more than words if his past history was anything to go by. Yet Starsky had seen no evidence of any sexual frustration in his partner and he had to wonder again about the tranquilizers. Hutch had seemed quiet in the past days. Too quiet. Grave, serious, somehow more mature. Was he back on Thorazine or Serax or Valium or Librium? Starsky knew he had thrown away all the medication that he had found, but Hutch could have obtained more through one of the police doctors. Was he hiding them away in his room? Well, if he was then Starsky knew it was his fault. He had promised Hutch that he would not need any drugs and had then withdrawn the physical support Hutch had needed to keep him off them.
“We’re here,” he said unnecessarily as the car pulled up outside the courthouse. “Are you sure you’re okay?” It was the second time he had asked the question and he squeezed the hand he was holding very tightly.
“Yes.” The face that he looked into was serene and calm. “Now.”
“Good luck, my love. I’ll be with you.”
“Thank you.”
The car came to a gentle halt and the IA men waiting for them moved swiftly into well-orchestrated positions. Starsky gave Hutch’s hand one last squeeze and stepped out of the car at the same time as Vandam, and they stood on either side of the door as Hutch alighted. Starsky winced as the sunlight glinted off the golden hair. It made Hutch too conspicuous, too vulnerable. Instinctively he stepped a little closer.
“Okay.” Vandam moved them forward in a solid phalanx of bodies, walking quickly but never ceasing to look around him. Starsky, too, was aware of nervousness as he kept as close to Hutch as he could. Only Hutch himself seemed totally confident as he strode, head up, towards the entrance of the courthouse, press and television men trying to crowd near him.
My gold warrior. My white knight in shining armor. My beloved Hutch. The thoughts jumbled around in Starsky’s head as he tried to watch every single person around them. Christ, why wouldn’t he let us get him in the back entrance? Oh yeah, I know why! Commanders of the force don’t skulk around in back doorways. They go in the main entrance with head held high and damn the danger!
They reached the steps to the courthouse and Hutch began to ascend them while Vandam and Starsky tried unobtrusively to make him move faster.
“C’mon,” Starsky muttered. “Let’s get inside, huh? This isn’t….”
Even above the hubbub of the crowd, the shots could be heard plainly. In a reflex action Starsky threw himself at his partner and the two men fell to the steps in a tangle of arms and legs with the dark-haired man on top. There was not one coherent thought in Starsky’s head, instinct was working more quickly than his brain was, and it gave him only one message—to protect his lover with his body. He followed that instinct, holding Hutch’s head down and lying on top of him. His head and Hutch’s both faced the same way, towards the courthouse. Amid shouts and jumbled commands and exclamations of fear and shock, Starsky turned to look the other way, surprised to find his gun in his hand when he did not remember pulling it from his belt. He tried to see where the shots were coming from. Beneath him, Hutch lay very still.
Footsteps running, people pressing around them, protecting them both, hoarse, shouted orders, all assailed Starsky’s ears, but all that concerned him now was the terrible lack of movement from the man beneath him.
“Hutch!” He hissed the name urgently. “You okay?”
Slight nod of the tousled blond hair, one single whispered word. “You?”
“Scared,” Starsky said flatly.
“Yeah.”
“Captain?” A hand on Starsky’s shoulder tugged at his coat. “Is the commander okay?”
“I think so.” Starsky got slowly to his feet and then immediately knelt on the steps by his partner’s side. “Come on, Hutch.” He could not be bothered with formalities. Death had been too close to them. “Let’s get you inside.”
“Yeah.” Hutch got to his hands and knees, shaking his head as if to clear cobwebs from his brain. For the comfort of both of them, Starsky put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing hard and keeping it there as Hutch turned and sat on one of the steps. They both saw Vandam at the same moment.
The top half of the younger man’s body was obscured by uniformed policemen, but there was an awful stillness to the way the legs were sprawled across the steps that told Starsky all he needed to know.
“Jesus!” Hutch struggled to his feet and his intention was obvious.
“Get inside!” Starsky made his voice as hard and authoritative as he could. “I’ll see to him.” And then, as Hutch swayed slightly, he pushed him towards the entrance to the courthouse. “Get outta here!”
“Van!” As Hutch turned obediently away, Starsky heard the whispered name and frowned, but there was no time to think about the strange tone in his partner’s voice at that moment.
“Get inside,” he repeated the order. “I’ll get to you as soon as I can.” He pushed Hutch up the steps and went to Vandam.
Looking back later, Starsky realized that the whole incident up to that point had probably taken only a few minutes. At the time it seemed like hours.
Vandam was dying. As Starsky knelt by his side, he had no doubt of that. He had seen enough gunshot wounds to be able to judge their deadliness. Vandam’s shirt was already soaked with blood.
“Ray?” The man’s eyes were open, but a thin trickle of very red blood ran from a corner of his mouth and he lay in what seemed to be boneless limpness. “Ray?” Starsky said the name again more loudly, as he wiped the blood away gently.
“We’ve got an ambulance coming.” One of the two uniformed policemen also kneeling beside him spoke softly, but the tone of his voice told Starsky that the officer shared his prognosis.
“Okay.” Again Starsky dabbed at the blood that ran down the dying man’s jaw. “Ray? Can you hear me?” The IA man turned his eyes and nodded imperceptibly and Starsky leaned closer. “We’ve got help coming. Hold on. You’ll be fine.”
Vandam’s eyes denied the words. The man knew he was dying and Starsky took the hand that moved feebly beside his knee and held it tightly. What other gesture of comfort could he give?
“Is… the commander… safe?”
“Yes. Quite safe.”
“Good. Tell… Carl….” The words were barely audible. Carl Reiner. Starsky knew the two men had been partners for a long time.
“I’ll tell him,” he promised gently.
For a few seconds after that there was silence as Starsky wondered what to say. What did he even know of this quiet, unobtrusive man? Suddenly he wished he had taken the trouble to find out. He had been so wrapped up with Hutch that there had been no time for anyone else. Even as the thought crossed his mind, the grip on his hand slackened gently, as if Vandam was letting go of life as discreetly and quietly as he had lived it.
“Ray?” Starsky spoke the name without any hope of getting a response. The man was dead. Carefully he laid the limp hand back onto the concrete of the steps. Hutch would have to be told, but was it wise to upset his equilibrium just before he was due to give such vital evidence? Would it not be better to wait?
“How is he?” Starsky looked up to see another uniformed policeman standing by his side. He shrugged and the man nodded. “Commander Hutchinson wanted me to find out. I’ll tell him.”
“No.” Starsky got quickly to his feet and absentmindedly brushed dust from the knees of his pants. “I’ll tell him.”
“Okay.”
Starsky found his partner—he could never think of him as his boss—and Hutch looked at him silently.
“I’m sorry,” Starsky said simply and when Hutch’s face twisted into a grimace of pain, he took the blond’s arm and walked him down the corridor a little way from the other groups of people.
“You know something?” Hutch said softly. “Three years ago I started off with a team of eight men. Five of them are dead now and Carl Reiner’s the sixth. Christ, I’m like the kiss of death!”
“No, you’re not!” Starsky hissed the words fiercely. “You’re doing a job. That’s all. You should be grateful that you’re still alive.”
“How many more people have to die?”
“As many as necessary.” Starsky knew it was a callous statement to make. Knew it, accepted it, and was prepared to live by it. Hutch might be flawed, no man was perfect, but he was needed. He was the epitome of all the police force stood for and the city he served needed a man like him to make them forget Mirren’s betrayal. Two men would face one another in court that day. Accuser and accused. Hutch would win. Hutch was the indomitable, invincible, incorruptible warrior who was fighting for justice. He would get it. The white knight would win the day.
“Ray wanted me to see Reiner,” Starsky said quietly. “But I guess he’ll know already. I think the TV cameras got it all. Still….”
“If he asked you, then you have to go,” Hutch said firmly. “I’d do it myself if I could.”
“I know. But I want to be with you.”
“Come back as soon as you can.”
Starsky was aware that people further along the corridor were watching them, but he did not care. He had a question to ask and suddenly it was important that he get an answer.
“Tell me something….” He lowered his voice still more. “…Do you need me here? I mean, do you really need me?”
“I need you.” Hutch made the statement quietly but very clearly. “Very much. I couldn’t have got through these past weeks without you.” Brilliant eyes met Starsky’s. “I love you.”
“Ah, babe….” If they had been alone, Starsky had no doubt there would have been a sweet and tender reconciliation. Hutch’s simple words brought his defenses tumbling down and it must have shown in his face because the blond drew in his breath sharply.
“We’ll talk tonight,” Hutch whispered. “Go and see Carl now. Do what you can. They were partners a long time. Like us.”
“I will.” Starsky smiled and turned away, knowing that if he stayed he would be tempted to hug his partner there and then. “See you.”
* * *
“I saw it on TV.” Carl Reiner said flatly when Starsky walked into his hospital room. “How’s Ray?”
“I’m sorry.” In all his years as a policeman, Starsky had still not learned how to break bad news. “He died almost instantly.”
“Damn!” Reiner seemed more angry than sad. “When I saw him last night he….” The detective broke off and bit his lip. “I told him to be careful!” he burst out. “I was always telling him. Poor, stupid bastard.” Reiner’s face crumpled. “He just didn’t give a damn….”
“Why not?” Starsky asked.
Immediately it was as though a shutter had come down over Reiner’s face, hiding the expression of angry frustration.
“It doesn’t matter now.” Reiner was in a wheelchair. His left leg had been too badly mangled to be saved, and he was waiting for the stump to heal before he could be fitted with an artificial limb. Awkwardly, he rolled the chair over to the window. “Thanks for coming,” he said gruffly and Starsky caught the note of strain in his voice. “I appreciate it.”
“He asked me to before he died.” Maybe it would do Reiner good to know that his partner had thought about him.
“Damn!” Reiner tipped his head back and Starsky heard him breathe deeply. So they really had been close, these two. He had wondered.
“I didn’t know him well,” Starsky said hesitantly. “He was a good cop… that much I do know. He did his job damn well, but….”
“…But you didn’t know the man,” Reiner finished. “No, I don’t suppose you did. In fact, I know you didn’t.”
There was something in his voice that aroused Starsky’s curiosity. Resignation, maybe even a hint of grim amusement, as if Reiner had a secret that he, Starsky, was ignorant of.
“Do you have something to tell me?” he asked bluntly.
“I don’t think so.” Reiner turned the wheelchair around.
“Okay. Let me put it another way. Is there anything I ought to know?”
“Ask our mutual boss.”
It was said flatly, without any kind of inflection, but Starsky felt a premonition of danger. Reiner had been badly injured in a bomb incident where the intended victim had been Hutch. Did he resent what had happened? Was he harboring some kind of grudge?
“I think you’d better tell me what’s on your mind,” he said quietly. “You can’t say things like that and get away with it. Not with me, anyway.”
For a moment Reiner hesitated and Starsky sat on the edge of the bed to bring himself down to the man’s level. If Reiner was to be a threat to Hutch, and through Hutch to himself, then Starsky wanted to hear about it.
“I can’t believe you don’t know,” Reiner admitted at last.
“Know what?”
“What Commander Hutchinson is. What Van is… was….”
“Oh, come on!” Starsky fought down his impatience with the man. “Say what you mean, will you?” No, he told himself immediately, slow down. The man’s lost his partner. What would you be like if it were you in that wheelchair and someone came to tell you that you’d lost Hutch? Give the guy a break!
“Van was gay,” Reiner said slowly, and as Starsky blinked in astonishment, the crippled cop’s head nodded slowly. “Yeah, he was gay. Took me a while to accept it, but when I worked out that he wasn’t going to jump me and that he could keep his private life separate from his working life, well….” A wry half-smile. “…He was a good partner. We got along fine.”
“What’s this got to do with Commander Hutchinson?” But he knew. The facts were there and Starsky drew their fine cobwebby strands together to form a rope of steel. Strong enough to hang Hutch. Strong enough to strangle their love forever.
“The commander’s gay too,” Reiner said quietly. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what happened or why,” Reiner continued. “They… Van… aw hell, they never had anything between them ’til a little while ago. Not until the commander moved into the penthouse….”
“And Vandam told you?” This was hard for Starsky to accept. Who else could the man have told? “Christ… he had a big mouth!”
“He did not!” Reiner seemed to rear up in his wheelchair in his effort to defend his dead partner. “I made him tell me. I suspected what was happening and I wanted to warn him. It was a crazy situation to get into….”
“And what did he say?” Starsky felt cold. A kind of numb, icy chill was invading his body, spreading deep inside him, freezing bone and tissue and organs alike.
“He knew it was stupid.” Reiner’s eyes watched him closely and Starsky tried to school his face into cool indifference. “But he said Hutch… Commander Hutchinson needed him. And he was half-way in love with the man. More than half-way.” The statement was made expressionlessly. “As far as I could tell he was hooked. He wouldn’t listen to me… he kept telling me Commander Hutchinson needed him. He’d… the commander, I mean… had a bad time.”
“Didn’t all of you?” Starsky asked coldly.
“Not like him. Not so… alone. I got my wife and kids. Van had a lover for a while. Van said he wished they could have gotten together sooner. I mean, the commander must have known Van was gay… don’t they know these things somehow? But he never made any move until he took over the penthouse.”
“I see.” No, Starsky thought grimly, he wouldn’t have. An impotent commander would hardly have admitted his problem to a junior officer. Unless it was a junior officer who was also a friend.
So, whenever his back was turned, whenever he had left Hutch alone for a while, Van had been inside the penthouse, in the bed, inside the lover that Starsky considered his. And Van was no trick either. There must have been some kind of relationship between the two of them, some kind of closeness. Had Vandam lain with his arms around Hutch as he, Starsky, had done? Had he known every inch of the blond’s body too? Had they exchanged confidences, and if so, what had Hutch told him?
“Van is dead,” Reiner said flatly and Starsky became aware of being watched closely. “You can’t hurt him. But he’s got parents and a couple of sisters. You wouldn’t let this get out, would you?”
“No,” Starsky said quietly. “I wouldn’t.”
“And then there’s Commander Hutchinson. Van thought you and he were… close.” It was obvious that Reiner did not dare to use the word he wanted to use. Starsky chose neither to confirm nor deny the statement.
“How did Vandam feel about that?” he asked neutrally.
“He didn’t say. But I know he wanted more time with the commander than he was allowed to have. But he couldn’t demand anything. Hutchinson was his boss.”
Starsky wondered if Vandam had been jealous of the liaison he obviously suspected between his senior officer and that officer’s bodyguard. He remembered how miserable the man had seemed on the night when Starsky had returned to the small, ugly, safe house after his walk on the beach. Had Hutch been warning his junior officer that he, too, must receive medication because of the disease Hutch had contracted? Poor Vandam. Had he been as shaken and upset as Hutch’s other lover? Starsky shook his head mentally. It must have taken a lot of courage for Hutch to make the admission to his junior.
“Well, thanks for telling me all this.” Starsky got to his feet.
“Van was unhappy with things the way they were.” Reiner tipped his head back so that Starsky could see the sweat beading his face. The man was obviously hurting. “He couldn’t see any future ahead of him. He didn’t think the commander really wanted him… knew it, I think… and once the trials were over he guessed he’d be given another assignment. He’d been very quiet the past few weeks.”
“Yeah.” Starsky needed time to assimilate this new knowledge. Time to be alone and re-evaluate his life. Life without Hutch. He forced a smile to his face. “I’ll call and see you again, Carl.”
“Okay.” A small, bitter smile marred Reiner’s well-shaped mouth. “It won’t be long before I’m out of here. At least, that’s what they say. But I don’t know what’s gonna happen after that. I’m gonna have to get back on my feet. I’m told I’ll be able to walk without a stick maybe….” He shrugged.
“You’ll be fine.” The mere thought of what the man would have to endure made Starsky shudder inwardly, but he forced an optimistic note into his voice.
“Yeah.”
So now what? Starsky left the room and walked slowly along the corridor towards the elevator. Now he had proof-positive of Hutch’s infidelity, not just with paid tricks but with an associate, one of his own men, someone with whom he must have formed some kind of relationship, however tenuous. Junior officer, too. Starsky winced from the unethical side of the liaison. Hutch had to be insane.
I hate him. No, he didn’t. Not really. What he did resent, bitterly and impotently, was the lack of care and importance Hutch had given to his love affair with his ex-partner. Starsky felt that he had been treated casually, his love taken for granted, misused and neglected.
Hutch, how can we hope to make it if you go on like this? I mean, a trick’s a trick and getting the clap could happen to anyone, I guess. But two lovers is just… impossible. How could you do this to me?
Starsky was too weary to be really angry and too disillusioned to feel any more than hurt. He did not want to see Hutch ever again. His heart was anaesthetized, deadened to any kind of real pain, but as he rode the elevator to the ground floor level he accepted his responsibility to his friend. Whatever Hutch had done, however amoral he had been, for today at least, the man needed him. As a friend, as a guard, and as a lover. Ex-lover. Hutch had to see his face in that courtroom.
When Hutch’s part in the trial was over, Starsky knew he would leave. In some ways it would half-kill him to walk away, but he saw no choice. It was not even a decision he had to agonize over. As he sat in the courtroom an hour later, he knew it was inevitable. The good-looking man sitting in the witness box and answering questions with such great composure and dignity was not the Hutch he had known three years ago. Starsky knew he had to accept that fact.
He sat in his seat, alternately watching Hutch and then finding that he could not keep his eyes on those beautiful, calm features without feeling that he wanted to cry, and looking down at his hands to compose himself.
Oh babe, you are like an angel. An avenging archangel. This is your day. You’ve worked for this… harder than any man should work. There’ve been sacrifices, heartaches, all kinds of things, but you’ve gotten through. You should be happy today, my love, but I don’t think you are. Maybe you never will be again. Maybe you’re an emotional cripple. Just as handicapped as Reiner, but inside, where it doesn’t show.
Hutch leaned forward slightly in his chair to emphasize a point and, as Starsky watched him, fascinated by the conviction in the quiet voice, Hutch met his gaze squarely. His tone did not falter, his train of thought obviously remained unimpaired, but those sapphire eyes lit up and Starsky knew Hutch was pleased to see him.
Yes, but that isn’t enough. I want all of you, mind and body and soul. All of you, all of the time. Even when you aren’t with me, I’d like you to think about me and want me and need me so bad that you can’t wait for me to get home so you can hold me and we can make love. I want you to need to be with me just so that we can hold hands and look at one another like lovesick teenagers. I wanna grow old with you.
It wouldn’t happen with this man. They had been the best and closest of friends, but they had made bad lovers. Why couldn’t friends be lovers, too? Miserably, Starsky tried to ignore the people around him and concentrate on that compelling figure on the witness stand. What was missing in Hutch? Why wasn’t he faithful and honest to the man who loved him best? Why did the outside of the man not match the inside?
Starsky sat through the whole of the day’s proceedings with his mind crowded with questions. He could answer none of them, but he still knew he was going to leave as soon as Hutch’s part in the trial was over. The only problem he now had was that the last time he had spoken to the blond there had been a much warmer atmosphere between them and Hutch would be expecting a reconciliation.
Why was life so complicated? He was getting older. Why couldn’t he have some peace? He only wanted one thing: a quiet, happy, loving life with Hutch. And he knew he was going to be denied it.
When the court finally cleared at the end of the day he sat for a few minutes longer in his chair, unwilling to be alone with Hutch when the time came for them to go back to that small house in the hills, but unable to think of an excuse not to go.
“How’s Reiner?” Hutch’s first words brought Starsky back to earth with a crash.
“Upset,” Starsky said quietly. “You gonna see him?”
“Soon as I can. Poor guy. He’s had it rough. His second child was only born a few months ago. He’s got a lot to worry about.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I did.”
Yes, he would. Hutch would know the small details of one of his subordinate’s lives while he would seem impervious to his own lover’s unhappiness. The conundrum that was Hutch.
“You okay?” Hutch asked. Well, maybe not totally impervious.
“I’ll survive.” It was not the time to raise awkward questions. Not with other people around them. He walked quietly beside the tall blond, surrounded by other IA men, and when Hutch sank back into the comfortable upholstery of the bulletproof car and sighed, he relaxed a little.
“Thank God today’s over,” he said quietly.
“Amen,” Hutch agreed. “Just tomorrow and then it’ll all be over, I think. Well… damn near.” As Starsky watched, the blond turned to look at him and now his smile was warm and intimate. A smile just for Starsky. Such a radiant, happy wash of sunshine that the dark-haired man could almost feel its glow. “We’re gonna have time just for us,” the blond murmured. “If you’re still willing, we could take that vacation. Get away from all this.”
“Yeah.” For a moment Starsky was tempted, but then he remembered Ray Vandam’s face as he lay dying. Ray, like himself, had hoped for more from Hutch than the blond had been able to give. Both of them had been disappointed. Starsky had a sudden vision of growing older and older with a series of disappointments and disillusionments to make him sink further and further into an apathetic well of misery. No. He might not be the most wonderful human being on earth, but he deserved better than half a love. There had to be someone somewhere who would love him wholeheartedly and faithfully.
“David….” Hutch commanded his attention again. “Something is wrong. Tell me.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah?” Again that tender smile. “Well, we’ll talk about it in bed tonight.”
“If we don’t have better things to do.”
Starsky did not want to go to bed with his partner. Yet how could he refuse without revealing his intentions? He had been partially responsible for initiating this new, tentative try at some kind of reconciliation. He could not bring himself to tell Hutch that he was leaving after tomorrow because of the effect it might have on his partner when he was due to be in court again. On the other hand, the thought of a passionate night with his lover was both a frightening and desirable one.
“I know we have to talk,” Hutch said. “I know there’s a lot to work out. But I have to admit I’m optimistic. I want us to be together….”
Bastard! Starsky said the word to himself, but without any real anger behind it. Ray Vandam loved you. Reiner didn’t exactly say that, but it’s what he meant. He’s dead now, but you seem to have forgotten him already.
Then another thought struck him. He wondered if he was being selfish. Didn’t he have enough inside him to take what Hutch could give him, however little, eagerly and gratefully, and in return give the blond all his love? Couldn’t he be that generous?
No. He had only one life and he could not live with a man who had such seemingly insurmountable problems. In the weeks he and Hutch had been together he had accomplished very little. He seemed to have no influence over his partner and was not able to command the kind of loyalty and love that he wanted. He sighed and Hutch stretched out his hand and clasped his arm reassuringly.
“Tired?” the blond asked.
“Yeah. Stupid really because I’ve only sat in court today….”
“…And been shot at and had to tell Reiner that his partner was dead….”
“I never used to get this tired.”
“Babe… I’m surprised you’re still walking around at all. After that last spell you had in the hospital….” Hutch shuddered. “…You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I guess.”
* * *
Later, as he sat on the couch and idly stroked his fingers through Hutch’s hair as his lover’s head lay in his lap, Starsky remembered that statement. Yes, he was lucky to be alive. Wasn’t that reason enough to stay?
The telephone rang, disturbing his thoughts, and he watched Hutch reach out and lift the receiver, gently touching the line of his lover’s nose as Hutch spoke quietly into the mouthpiece.
“What!” Hutch shouted the word, sitting upright and pushing Starsky’s hand away. “When?” He listened and Starsky, jolted out of his thoughts, stared at him in surprise. The blond’s face was reddening, and veins stood out on his forehead and throat while he clutched the receiver as if he wanted to break it into a million pieces. “How?” The question was barked out in a voice that Starsky hardly recognized and as the blond listened, Starsky saw his lips thin so that they compressed into a straight, hard line.
“I want the bastard who did this.” Hutch made the statement in a flat, cold voice. “I don’t care how long it takes… I want him. You got that?” He listened again and Starsky sat up straighter on the couch and watched his partner uncomprehendingly. What had happened to make his lover’s face look pinched and old and had driven deep, harsh lines into it?
“No,” Hutch said at last. “That’s not good enough. You call yourself a detective… goddamn well detect! No, I’m not coming out tonight. Nothing I can do. I’ll read the reports tomorrow morning. They better be on my desk by eight. Got that?” He slammed down the phone.
“What’s happened?” Starsky’ s voice showed his bewilderment. He put a hand lightly on Hutch’s arm and pulled a face as the blond wrenched himself away.
“Let me alone!”
“Tell me what’s wrong!” They were both standing now, facing one another almost like enemies. “Don’t shut me out!”
“Shut you out?” Hutch repeated the words derisively. “What the hell makes you think you were ever in? You don’t understand the half of it… and you’ve never tried to.”
“Hutch!”
“Mirren’s dead.” Hutch’s face was ugly in its impotent rage. “Three years’ work for nothing!”
“But….” Starsky did not know what to say. “…How?” he finished lamely.
“Some motherfucking bastard got him a gun.”
“Impossible!” Starsky’s inventive mind could not conceive how it could be done. “Hutch, how the hell…?”
“I don’t know how!” The blond swung away from him in obvious, blind fury. “But I’ll find out. If it takes me the rest of my life.”
“Calm down.” Only before had Starsky ever seen his partner like this. Twice in ten years.
“Calm down?” The laughter cracked bitterly across the room as Hutch stood looking away from his partner, head bent and hands gripping the back of the couch tightly. “Why should I? I swore I’d get the bastard but he’s goddamn well beaten me. You can’t convict a dead man.”
“He’s convicted himself, babe.” Desperately Starsky tried for reason. “He knew you’d get him and he couldn’t face the idea of doing ten to twenty in San Quentin. The way you gave your evidence today… he must have known he didn’t have a prayer. He didn’t beat you.”
“Oh yes, he did. Before I can turn round there’ll probably be stories in the press that I hounded the man… drove him to his death.”
“They wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh no?” Hutch’s back was ramrod straight. “Today’s hero… tomorrow’s scapegoat. You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know I’m just a figurehead in this place? They don’t need me. They just want a… a….”
“…A knight in shining armor?” Starsky finished. “It isn’t true. They do need you. You’re doing a fine job.” The unyielding back dared him to offer physical comfort. “And what the hell was that remark about my not understanding?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh yes, it does.”
“Really?” Still Hutch did not turn round, but now Starsky heard the challenge in his voice. “You’ve been good to me. Better… far better… than I deserve. But you’re just like all the rest. You set me up on some kinda pedestal and then you cry when I fall off. I’m just as human as the next guy. Sometimes I don’t handle my problems too well. But I swear to God I think you resent the fact that I don’t always have my head together….”
“I know you’re not perfect!” Starsky was surprised to find that his voice was trembling. “Of course I do. But the answers you find are even more screwed up than the problems themselves. You’re a mess, Hutch.”
“Think I don’t know that?” Hutch swung round and Starsky winced from the desolation in his face. “Think I don’t feel envious of you because you know who you are and where you’re going? I feel like some kinda fake. I feel scared.” A weary shrug from the now bowed shoulders made Starsky bite his lip. “You say I’m screwed up. I keep waiting for someone else to see through me.”
“See the self-pity, you mean.” Starsky had to make his voice hard. If he didn’t, he would break down and cry. “I’ve tried to help you… taken more from you than I would from any other man. But the more I give, the more you ask for. You’re bleeding me dry.”
“You should make me stop!” The words were said with anguish.
“Jesus everlovin’ Christ!”
“It wouldn’t be like this if you hadn’t….” It wasn’t said and yet it was. Starsky finished the sentence in his mind and felt his guts contract as though they were being squeezed by a huge, merciless hand.
A gay and a straight. It never works. He had told himself that a long time ago, but he had believed that he and Hutch were different. That they were special. Special? They weren’t special at all. They were good and close friends who had been apart for three years and then learned that they had changed during the separation. They had found out that friendship was not enough to sustain their waning, stricken love affair.
“I didn’t mean that.” Hutch’s whisper seemed to get lost in the thickening silence. “I swear I….”
“Oh yes, you did.” Starsky’s voice, by comparison, seemed too loud. “You had enough to deal with and I just gave you more headaches.”
“No. No, it wasn’t like that.” But Hutch wouldn’t look at him.
“I think it was.” As he said the words Starsky knew they were true. “I’ll always be glad you came to me that night. I don’t regret knowing you and loving you, but….”
“No!” Hutch stepped closer. Fierce, seeming suddenly to realize what his partner was leading up to and preparing to fight. “Don’t say it!”
“That it’s over?” Starsky blinked his eyes. They seemed to be aching suddenly. “What else can I say?”
“It isn’t over!” Very tall, very straight-backed, very proud, and very frightened, Hutch yelled the words. “I’ll be faithful. I’ll do anything you want. I won’t let it be over.”
If only he could have said that he wanted to be faithful. What happiness could Starsky gain from knowing that Hutch could make such promises only out of desperation and fear? They should have been made out of love.
Too late. The right words had not been said. Starsky knew that he had been waiting for them, not even knowing what they were, but realizing that the key to their loving had somehow been lost. They were lost.
Do I love you? God knows! If I do then my heart’s in some kinda deep freeze because I don’t feel anything. I should be fighting with you to keep us together, but I don’t seem to have the strength. I just wanna crawl away someplace and hide.
“Don’t leave me.” Hutch held out his hand and stepped still closer. “Please don’t. I know it’s in your mind. I can see it in your face.”
Starsky’ s instinct was to back away. He could hear the grief in Hutch’s voice because it reflected his own. He knew he would not be able to bear the touch of his lover’s hand because there was magic in those fingers. They could tear the heart out of him with just one caress.
“Stay.” The voice whispered its message of hope and fear. “We can make it work.”
“No, we can’t. You may love me. I may love you. But our timing has been bad. Maybe we needed one another too much, I don’t know. I can’t make sense of my own feelings, so how the hell can I help you?”
“Starsk… David….” Pleadingly, softly, Hutch tried again. “…Give me one more chance. Just one. Come to bed with me. Now. I’ll show you how good it can be… how sweet.” And then, with a touch of defiant arrogance. “I won’t let you go!”
Arms reached out for Starsky, drew his unresisting body close and Starsky shut his eyes as light fingers cupped his face.
“Relax, babe.” Enticing whisper. “Your dear face looks so worried. This may be a god-awful house, but the bed’s okay. Come and try it out with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” Hutch’s hands drew him closer until their lips were almost touching. “Let me show you how much I love you. Let me make things right.”
Maybe he could. Maybe he really could. Starsky hesitated and then nodded. Let Hutch weave his magic. If it was strong enough to soothe him, start to heal his wounded spirit, persuade him that love could conquer all, then he would know it was right to stay. He pressed his lips to Hutch’s.
* * *
Hours later, fully dressed, he stood beside the rumpled bed and stared down at the naked body sprawled on it. Deeply asleep, unashamed in his abandoned nudity, Hutch breathed softly and lightly between parted lips, and his skin gleamed with health in a voluptuous glow of honey-tanned flesh.
Oh God, you are something else! So beautiful. Too beautiful. No. No, to me you’re still all I’ve ever dreamed of. But you couldn’t satisfy me tonight. You tried damned hard, but you didn’t reach me. You made me hot for you but I was cold inside. We have changed, Hutch. Not our fault. And I won’t regret any of this.
You held me tight before you fell asleep, didn’t you? As if you guessed what I had planned. Deep down I think you already know that I’ll be gone when you wake up. Best way. No words that we might regret. No promises we couldn’t keep. I haven’t left any doors open for you, babe. No false hopes for you to get by on. It is over.
Tenderly, a last gesture of caring, he laid the creased sheet over the relaxed body, hiding all but his partner’ s face and shoulders from his sight.
Why am I leaving you? I don’t really know. I think I still blame you for not being there for me when I needed help three years ago. You sacrificed our friendship for a principle, didn’t you? And though it must have hurt like hell, you stuck it out. You’ve got guts and pride. That pride’ll keep us apart because I don’t think you’ll ever come to me and ask if we can begin again. And if you did, then I think I’d say no. You were swamping me with your problems. Tonight… now… I feel free. I’m me again. David Starsky.
He closed his eyes and then opened them again as if his lids were the shutter of a camera and he was engraving this image of Hutch on his brain forever: the childlike, trusting curve of his hand, the sweeping fan of eyelashes on flawless skin, the defenseless curve of his throat, the strong sweep of his shoulders.
If I was tougher, maybe I could stay. You’ve… battered… me with so many emotions that I can’t think straight. I have to escape. Now.
I know you’re not perfect. And yes, I did admire you for what you’ve done over the past three years. Don’t think I could. have done the job the way you did. So, in that sense, I did put you on a pedestal, like you said. Maybe poor Vandam did, too. Did he discover you had feet of clay when you had to tell him about getting the clap? Poor Hutch. Poor Vandam. Poor me.
What’s hurt me so much, babe, is knowing just how you’ve changed….been changed… by what’s happened to you. My old Hutch is gone. My beautiful, human, loving partner died somewhere and you were so busy fighting the bad guys you didn’t notice. And I didn’t either. I’ve been in love with the guy I knew three years ago and he doesn’t exist anymore.
One final look at his partner as he picked up his jacket.
Goodbye, babe. You’re gonna hate me for this. I’m sorry. I never thought I’d say this, but love isn’t enough. It should be, but it isn’t. I need more than that. Security… the kind of security that comes with knowing that I’m really loved, and trust too. We don’t have the right kind of trust between us. I just can’t hold us together anymore. Not by myself… and I’m not getting any help from you. Goodbye, my dear love, take care.
Now or never. Freedom or slavery. Starsky turned and walked soundlessly out of the room.
CHAPTER TEN
It was a quiet room. The sunlight did not penetrate it directly, making it seem cool and just comfortably warm. The walls were palest cream, the gold-brown curtains moved lazily on their rungs, aided by a small breeze that crept in over the sea, and the single bed in the room was covered by an orange spread that added a brighter splash of color. Prints on the walls and a bunch of flowers in a vase helped to soften the room’s spartan appearance, and in the small easy chair that was placed at an angle to the patio door, the man sat quietly.
“Is he always like this?” Starsky asked the nurse the question over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the solitary figure.
“Oh, yes.”
“Does he really spend every day in that chair?”
“Yes. He just stares out of the window. Sometimes he cries.”
“Cries?” Starsky fought to keep his voice even. “I thought you said….”
“Oh, he never makes any noise. He… well, tears just roll down his face.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“You’ll be okay?”
“Yes.”
When the nurse had gone, closing the door soundlessly behind her, Starsky relaxed a little, but he made no move to cross to the still figure and Hutch showed no sign of knowing that he was there.
What do you cry for, Hutch? For the old days… not so old really… for the times when we were together? Or do you cry because I walked away from you? You can’t blame me. We had such problems. We loved one another… oh yes, I know we did… very much, but we couldn’t get it right between us, could we?
I loved you. I still love you. But it’s different now and I’m not sure how. I feel so much older… not wiser I don’t think… but older. Quieter, maybe. I don’t get such highs and lows. I guess I was obsessive about you. I didn’t understand what you needed. Hell, there’s a lot of it I still don’t understand! We were on fire, weren’t we, Hutch? Like a trail of gunpowder leading to the dynamite. We blew ourselves up with our love. And look what it’s done to you.
They call it a breakdown, babe. A mental and physical breakdown. Not surprising when I know what you’ve been through. But why didn’t they tell me? Why, in God’s name, didn’t someone tell me?
All these months! Why have they done it to you? I remember you saying that Terry was a bastard, and you were right. He tidied you away in this… pigeonhole… of a room and forgot about you. And he told the others that you and I had had a fight and that I didn’t give a damn about you. I hope he rots in hell, babe, because he didn’t tell the truth. I’d never have left you alone like this, no matter what. Why did I believe all those stories about you? Why didn’t I… the guy who’s supposed to know you best… think there was something weird going on? Because it was easier? What did they tell you about me, Hutch? What lies?
I’m here now. And I want you back. It doesn’t matter if you can’t talk to me… I won’t mind that. I’ll take you to that desert island we talked about. I’ll lie on a beach with you and… and I love you so much!
Starsky’s palms were sweating and the room seemed to be closing in around him. But the man in the chair sat in contented, silent isolation, hands resting along its arms, head tilted to rest against the high back.
They say there’s nothing wrong with you. Not physically anyway. In other words, your body’s in good shape but they don’t know what’s happened to your mind. I don’t either. When Mirren killed himself, did you feel your job was over? No more dragons to slay? Did you feel you had nothing left but me… and did it finish you when I walked away? Are you sitting there waiting to die?
At some stage he was going to have to cross the room and speak to the man in the chair. He was going to try to shatter that peaceful tranquility of his lover’s. He was going to attempt to drag Hutch out of his safe, womb-like world back into the present, and he was not sure what the blond’s reaction was going to be.
I still love you! But will I ever convince you that this time it’s forever? Till death us do part. Suppose something is wrong with you? What will I do? Suppose all the love and the warmth and the intelligence is gone forever? Do I bring you out of your dreams? Do I wake you to a nightmare? Oh God, don’t let me be wrong! Don’t let me hurt him again! I don’t want to hurt him.
Fleetingly he remembered Carl Reiner. If it hadn’t been for his concern, his refusal to accept defeat, Hutch might have stayed alone in this room for the rest of his life. Only Reiner had been dogged and persistent enough to try to find his old boss. Only Reiner had dared to come to Starsky to recount his fears. And now the responsibility rested with David Starsky. He moved, crossing the room to the chair and kneeling beside it.
“Hutch,” he said softly. Oh babe, hear me! The man in the chair continued to stare out of the window. “Hutch.” Starsky lifted his hand to the immobile face and, unresisting, the blond allowed his head to be turned towards Starsky so that the dark-haired man could look into his eyes.
Starsky remembered someone saying that the eyes were the mirrors of the soul. If that was true, then Hutch’s was in limbo. The man was not living, but not dead either. Seeing, but not comprehending.
“Hutch?” Starsky stroked one finger down the side of his partner’s face with infinite gentleness. “I love you.”
The tears began. They slipped silently down the blond’s face and as fast as Starsky tried to wipe them away, the more they fell.
“I love you.” Something was getting through to Hutch and Starsky made his voice more urgent. “It’s Starsky, babe. Remember me? I love you.” If he said it often enough, maybe his beautiful man would believe him. “Hutch…” he began again, “…it’s me, Starsky. Your partner….” He could not say the word lover. He had been Hutch’s lover, but he had walked away. He did not deserve the title. “I love you, babe.” That much he could say because it was the truth and had always been the truth. “Will you say hello to me?”
The blue eyes were swimming with tears, but a tiny crease had appeared between the fine eyebrows as if Hutch was thinking.
“Say hi to me, Hutch.” It was like cajoling a sulky, recalcitrant child. Or a shy, innocent little boy. Slowly Starsky reached up and stroked the blond hair. “You know me, don’t you?” he coaxed. “It’s Starsky. Remember all the good times we had?”
“Starsky.” Carefully the dry lips formed the name soundlessly and Hutch seemed to be reaching inside himself as if searching for some elusive memory.
“Come back to me. I love you.” What if he could never pull Hutch into the land of the living again? Would he have to be haunted by a shadow man? Would he spend the rest of his life visiting this small, quiet room, desperately searching for a way to get his soul-mate back? Starsky knew that he would do it if he had to. Hutch should never have been abandoned by the department that owed him so much, but he would not be left alone a second time.
“Hutch… angel-face… sweetheart… sweet babe….” He tried to prod the tired brain into life with the endearments, but he could not bring himself to utter the more sentimental, the more intimate names he had used for his lover. They were not for this bright room but for dark nights and soft beds and the gentle embrace of love. “Don’t you remember me calling you those names?”
Why should he? Out of the total span of Hutch’s life why should he, Starsky, be arrogant enough to assume that a few months would be important enough to stand out in this man’s memory.
“Don’t cry, love.” With infinite tenderness he wiped away the tears again. “There’s nothing to cry about. I’m here. I won’t go away again if you don’t want me to.” He knows who I am. I’m sure he does.
Starsky sat on the floor and leaned his head against the chair to stare out of the window.
“This is what we never had,” he said quietly. “Peace. Never really alone… always someone outside the door… always scared of being found out.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. Not to me. This is what I’ve been looking for. We had some good loving between us, and good memories of the past to share, but we had no new ones to hold us together. I could have done something about that. Maybe. Only I just didn’t see it.”
When Hutch’s hand dropped lightly onto his head and fingers entwined themselves gently into his hair, Starsky hardly noticed it in his pre-occupation.
I’m happy. Right here and now I’m happy. I know there’s something wrong with the man I love, but if I just sit here long enough… quiet and peaceful… I can pretend for a few minutes that it’s all gonna come right.
Babe, when we come to talk I won’t say that I’m sorry because I’m not. I did what was right. Right at the time. Now it’s different… I don’t understand how or why, but it is. Thank God for Carl Reiner!
He recalled how the man had walked into his office and the fierce pride on his thin face as he had smiled warily at Starsky:
“Carl… good to see you.”
“Thank you, Cap.”
“Sit down. How are you?”
“Fine.” Reiner lowered himself awkwardly into a chair. “I’ve come to see if you can help me….”
“Sure. What do you want?” Starsky sat back in his chair and fiddled with a pencil.
“Information.” Reiner sat stiffly, obviously ill at ease. “I don’t know where else to go.”
“What do you want to know?” Starsky was curious. He had not seen Reiner since their meeting in the hospital and the knowledge had niggled at him. It was like a loose end that should be tied, but the man’s face was now evoking memories that he would rather forget. That, he supposed, was why he had made no attempt to see him again.
“Can you tell me where Commander Hutchinson is?”
Whatever Starsky was expecting, it was not that, and the familiar name jolted him painfully. A kind of slow, sweet longing immediately began to seep through his body, sliding insidiously and languorously through his veins and suddenly he was glad he was sitting down. His cock had stirred, responding to the evocative syllables of Hutch’s surname as they were uttered by another man.
“I’m sorry.” Starsky shook his head. “I’m not with you. Commander Hutchinson has the same office that he had before, as far as I know.”
“I can’t get to see him.”
That didn’t sound like the Hutch he knew. His partner would never refuse to see an old colleague. Except one called Starsky, maybe.
“What do you mean?” Starsky asked carefully.
“I mean his whole floor is off-limits… to me, anyway. I’ve told them who I am… asked to make an appointment, but there’s always some excuse.”
“What about his apartment?”
“He’s supposed to have a very exclusive place in Bel Air. You can’t even get into the lobby. But I’ve watched the place. I’ve never seen the commander go in or out.”
“Maybe he’s away.”
“Then why don’t they say so straight out?”
“Maybe he stays over with someone.” Another lover? Someone special? Or a string of men… one night stands? Or a woman.
“Yeah,” Reiner nodded, “or maybe he doesn’t really live there at all.”
The man was leading up to something, leaning forward in his chair to emphasize his point. Starsky stared at him.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” he said abruptly.
“As far as I can find out, no one’s actually seen Commander Hutchinson since the night Mirren killed himself.”
“Have you talked to Alex Terry?”
“He won’t see me. In fact, I’ve been warned off. Oh….” A little smile twisted Reiner’s face. “…Very discreetly. But I got the message.”
Starsky sat a little further back in his chair. “Are you trying to tell me you think Commander Hutchinson is dead?” he asked bluntly. No. No, he isn’t. I’d know. Somehow I’d know.
“I don’t know what I’m trying to tell you,” Reiner said helplessly. “All I wanted to do was to see Commander Hutchinson to thank him for all he’s done for me and my family. We’ve been well taken care of. But when no one would let me near him, I started asking around and I haven’t found a single man who has actually seen him. Oh, he gets talked about. His views are aired and memos come from his office, but Commander Hutchinson himself seems to have turned into some kind of… of hermit.”
“Yes, but….” Starsky was bewildered. He had not seen Hutch, but then he was trying to avoid that. He had heard the stories that went round the building about him, the policies he had formed, the decisions he had made. All words. “Tell me what you know,” he said calmly. “All of it. But first….” He picked up the receiver and punched out Hutch’s number. He waited for a moment and when a strange voice answered him, he felt his eyebrows slide upwards. Hutch had always answered his own calls. “Commander Hutchinson, please,” he said, as crisply and authoritatively as he could. “This is Captain Starsky.”
There was a minute’s silence and Starsky sensed that a hand had been put over the mouthpiece of the phone and the unknown speaker was conferring with someone else. He was just about to demand to know what was happening when the strange voice spoke again:
“I’m afraid Commander Hutchinson isn’t available right now.”
Hutch would never do that to him. Never.
“When will he be available?” Starsky asked smoothly.
“If you could call again….”
“Thank you.” Starsky put the receiver down and looked at Reiner. “I believe you,” he said simply. “You’re right and something is going on. Tell me what you’ve found out.”
“Okay.” Reiner sat back in his chair and looked more at ease. “I guess you’ll know some of it….” But his eyes questioned the validity of his statement.
“I haven’t seen Hutch since the night Mirren died either,” Starsky said quietly.
“Oh. Well, I’ve been told that you had a blazing row with him and that you wouldn’t even have his name mentioned in front of you. I was warned that you’d kick me out of your office. Seems someone around here tells lies.”
“Someone does,” Starsky agreed calmly, but inside he began to seethe, quietly and hotly. “Now, tell me what you’ve worked out.” Hutch, forgive me! Forgive me for not realizing something was wrong. Forgive me for being so goddamn selfish I just wouldn’t think about you.
“Commander Hutchinson went on an extended vacation almost immediately after Mirren died. At least, that’s the official story.”
“Yes.” Starsky had gone away for three weeks himself to make the break easier, and had found that out on his return.
“I can’t find anyone who saw him before he left.” Reiner was obviously trying to give his facts impartially. “He was away for six weeks. He came back for around three weeks and then went on a tour of police headquarters in Canada and Europe to study their methods. As far as I can find out, he was out of the country for around three months, but again no one seems to have seen him during the three weeks he was supposed to be here.”
“Go on.”
“After that he was back for about two weeks and then he went on another vacation. Since then….” A small shrug. “…He comes and he goes. But no one ever sees him.”
It was true. Hutch was like a ghost in the large confines of police headquarters. Spoken of, but invisible.
Oh my love, where are you? What’s happened to you? Starsky felt fear for the first time. Real fear. Gut-wrenching, heart-stopping fear. But he did not dare to show it. He did not know Reiner well enough and if he once let down the barriers that were stopping the screaming maniac inside him from getting loose, he might lose control totally. For Hutch’s sake he had to remain calm.
“So tell me what you think,” he advised carefully. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“Does it really matter to you?”
Starsky glared. “Yes,” he said shortly, “it does.” More than you’ll ever know.
“I don’t think he can be,” Reiner answered him. “They’ve got no reason to cover up his death. My guess is that he’s had some kind of breakdown. Mental… physical… who knows?”
No. Oh no. Not my Hutch.
“It’s possible, I suppose.” Starsky marveled at the calmness in his voice. Couldn’t Reiner see how he was feeling? “But Hutch is a tough man….”
“Even tough men can only take so much. Hutch… Commander Hutchinson… had more than his share. You must know that.”
“I know members of the IA aren’t popular.”
“No.” Reiner laughed shortly. “They aren’t. Or they weren’t. Things are better now. But when Hutch went into it he was damn unpopular. With cops. His own kind. He was accused of betraying them… going over to the enemy. He’s a sensitive man and we all knew it hurt him… And then his parents died… killed in a car crash. Did you know that?”
“No.” Why not, Hutch? Why the hell didn’t you let me share that grief with you?
“He was under pressure from everyone.” Reiner spoke reminiscently, but Starsky knew the cop was watching him intently, trying to gauge his reactions. “From Terry who wanted results and from cops he liked who tried to make him quit. Even Vandam and I and the others who were a part of his team didn’t really believe in him. We didn’t help much. Looking back I think we could have done more, but I guess the size of the job scared us. Some of us died doing it, too, and every death hit Hutch damn hard.”
“Hutch?” Starsky could not resist querying Reiner’ s familiarity with his partner’s name.
“I’m sorry.” But Reiner looked unrepentant. “He’s been Hutch to me for a long time. Oh, not to his face of course. He’s a good guy.”
“I know.” Starsky did not dare to say more in case he lost the precarious grasp he had over his self-control.
“Well, when Hutch’s investigations really got going, it was like hell on wheels,” Reiner continued. “He wanted to deal with everything himself and the work load was incredible. He’d be at his desk all hours of the day and night. He was the boss but quite often one of us would make him go home. Bully him into it. I did it myself more than once. Went for a beer with him, then drove him to his apartment. One time I even asked him if he didn’t have someone to look after him… someone to go home to. He never talked about himself, you see. He looked at me as though I was over-stepping some kinda mark known only to him and then he said, ‘I did once. Not anymore.’ I remember the words exactly. He was alone, Cap.” Reiner made the point earnestly. “Quite alone. I’ve never seen such a… solitary… man before. Or since. He lived for his work and it was killing him.”
“I’m going to see Terry.” Starsky got to his feet.
“What can you say?”
“I can threaten him if I have to. Either he produces Hutch or I go to the press.”
Starsky tried to suppress the wince of pain that the sudden movement caused him. When he had been with Hutch his old injury had not really bothered him. His joy and pleasure at being with the man he loved seemed to kill the pain. But now he felt the old aches and twinges even more keenly and soon he knew he would have to admit defeat and consciously take life easier. He would have to make changes once he had found Hutch.
“Would you do it?” Reiner asked curiously. “Would you really go to the press?”
“Watch me.” Starsky grinned wolfishly.
“You have to get to Terry first. He isn’t an easy man to see.”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” For the first time in months, Starsky felt his pulse stir at the thought of action. Maybe all the old instincts weren’t quite dead. Maybe. He had the motivation now, and the thought of a confrontation with Terry filled him with anticipation. “After that phone call I made, he’s probably expecting me,” he added as an after thought.
“If Hutch had some kinda breakdown, I wonder what the last straw was,” Reiner said reflectively.
I know. It was me. I couldn’t take any more. I promised him so much and I let him down. I walked out on him without even saying goodbye.
“When I find him,” he said quietly, “I’ll ask him. I’m glad you came to me.”
“You were my last hope.”
And Starsky wondered if he was Hutch’s last hope too.
Restlessly Starsky got to his feet. So much responsibility on his shoulders, but he accepted it all. This man, this child-man, belonged to him. His by right of friendship, and the closer ties of love.
“Oh, Hutch!” He sighed the words, remembering suddenly those gentle fingers in his hair but realizing from the way he had been sitting that it had not been a caress but merely a convenient place for Hutch to rest his hand. “I would love you to touch me and know what you’re doing.” He turned to the motionless figure again, only this time he went around to the back of Hutch’s chair and linked his arms loosely around the blond’s shoulders.
“Isn’t this nice, babe,” he murmured. “Just you and me. No one to bother us. No one caring what we do. You wanna talk to me? I’d love to hear you say something.” He rested his cheek against soft, blond hair and wished that they could stay like that forever. It was so quiet in the room, so beautifully serene. The two of them together could turn it into a small paradise.
One alone could feel that he was in prison.
Starsky frowned. Obviously Hutch was being taken good care of. He was freshly shaved, his hair smelled faintly of sandalwood and was neatly trimmed, and his clothes were crisp and clean. Physically he was probably fine, but what mental stimulus could he gain from his bland surroundings? He needed to have visitors, to get out of this room, to be talked to until something or someone sparked his interest.
“Would you like to go out?” he asked. “Would you like to go to the beach? You used to like the beach. There’s a great new bookstore opened up. Would you like to go shopping?”
Hutch stirred and Starsky waited breathlessly for some reaction, but all the blond did was to nestle back more deeply into the embrace and relax a little.
“You like me to hold you?” Starsky asked tenderly. “Well, if you’re liking it half as much as I am, then we’re two happy men right now.”
Was Hutch hearing any of what he was saying? Starsky turned his head a little so that his mouth could touch the silky fineness of the pale hair. It was comforting to know that he could make the small gesture without Hutch pulling away from him.
“I got this new place now,” he said conversationally. “I think you’d like it. There’s more space… a sun deck… two bedrooms. Would you like to come and see it? Maybe you could come and stay. It’d make a change from this place.”
He tried to envisage Hutch in his apartment. Sitting on the sun deck, eating at the breakfast bar, watching television, curled up on the new bed Starsky had bought.
Oh babe, I’d love to see you in my bed again. I’d make it so good for you. Oh God, I want to kiss you!
But he couldn’t. It would be taking advantage of Hutch’s defenselessness, and that was unthinkable.
“Would you like to get out of this place for a while?” he asked again. “Go for a walk someplace? Would you like that?”
No response. Starsky repressed a sigh but did not feel depressed. He had patience and he had time. Hutch would need both and he should have both. Starsky tightened his grip a little and felt the warmth of the blond’s body like a tangible force against the skin of his arms.
“Oh my love,” he whispered, “things went so wrong between us, didn’t they? And I still don’t really understand why. It should have been good. But there was so much you didn’t tell me. Why not? Carl Reiner’s told me some of it, but I want you to tell me the rest. In time. When you’re ready. Because I want to know all about you. I thought I knew already but I don’t. And you’re so important to me. You’re all that’s important. Do you know that?”
As far as Starsky was concerned he could stay for hours as he was. Hutch’s strong body was safe within his embrace. Safe. Protected. Loved. When the blond tilted his head slowly sideways and backwards so that Starsky could see his eyes, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to express those sentiments by bending his head just a little lower and brushing his lips against the broad forehead.
“You know that desert island?” he murmured. “I’m going to take you there. You’ll love it. You’ll really love it. Sun and sand and the ocean. You can get well there.” Again he touched his lips to that furrowed forehead. “You will get well, Hutch,” he promised confidently. “I’m gonna help you. Sure, it may take a little time, but I’ve got all the time in the world.”
He would have loved to have caressed the parted lips with his own, but deep inside him he knew he had to resist the temptation. Yet he could still dream about doing it, and he did so with his mouth pressed to his lover’s brow and his eyes closed.
The door opened and Alex Terry walked in.
Starsky did not attempt to conceal what he was doing. It would have been pointless and he was beyond caring what Terry thought. His interview with the man had been short and curt. He had threatened and Terry had capitulated. If Starsky had considered the matter, he might have guessed that the head of IA would follow him.
“I always thought you two were queer for one another,” Terry said flatly and Starsky knew from the choice of words that the man had no sympathy for them.
“Oh, yeah?” He made his tone as neutral as possible, but he turned away from his partner and put his body between Hutch and Terry.
“Yes.” Terry closed the door behind him. “What the hell do you thing you’re going to do now that you’ve found him? Bring him a bunch of flowers every week? You’ve seen what he’s like. He’s never gonna be any different….”
“Why not?” Starsky snapped back, aware that he was fighting both for Hutch and himself. “What’s been tried? What good can it do to keep him in this room with no visitors?”
“He needs rest….”
“He’s had rest, goddamn it! He needs life now. People around him… mental stimulation….”
“I can just imagine the kind of stimulation you’d give him!” Terry’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Do you think for one minute… that I’m going to let you sniff around him?”
“Try and stop me!”
“Oh, I can. Quite easily.”
Starsky was not sure enough of his ground to risk an argument at this point. He was afraid that Terry might be right and that he might have the legal means to have Hutch committed to some kind of institution for life. Swiftly he went over possible scenarios for what might happen and wondered, frantically, if he could find a way to smuggle Hutch out of the country.
“I want to look after him.” Starsky knew he should try not to anger this man and he made his tone placatory. “I was his partner and his lover.” He would not deny that fact, even if he could. “I have some rights….”
“You have no rights!” Terry shouted the words. “You know who put him in this place? You did! The way you see him now is the way his own men found him a few hours after you walked out.”
“I accept the responsibility,” Starsky said steadily. “I think the pressures and the strains and Mirren’s death were probably contributory factors, but I take the blame. All of it. I shouldn’t have left him.” He had no intention of going into details with Terry. It was not the man’s business and it was too personal, too intimate, to relate to anyone.
“You are a homosexual,” Terry said, slowly and distinctly. “So is he. I’m not going to let you hang around him. If I had my way, every queer would be kicked off the force.”
“Even Hutch? I thought he was the hero….”
“Hutch?” The word was spat rather than spoken. “Him more than anyone!”
This was the man who had Hutch’s well-being within his jurisdiction. This was the man who was keeping his beautiful, loving Hutch away from people, tucking him away in this private place where he could be forgotten. Starsky shuddered. He did not want to talk to Terry anymore. He had heard enough to convince him that Hutch would receive no sympathy or understanding from the head of IA. Somehow Hutch had to be removed from Terry’s influence.
“You can’t do anything here, Starsky.” Terry walked across the room and stared critically at the man in the chair. “He’s finished. Burned out. Go home. Forget it all happened.”
“No!”
“Why not?” Terry’s voice hardened and became vicious. “He won’t ever be able to get it on with you again. That’s over. You better look someplace else.” The even white teeth were bared in a wolfish smile. “This one ain’t gonna be doing much… unless you don’t mind fucking a corpse.”
Hutch was a man. A man who was loved. Terry’s contempt was clear and stark and Starsky could almost feel the enmity in the small room. It made him want to shudder again. What Terry had done to Hutch was inhuman and cruel and he had to be stopped.
Terry had told him to look somewhere else. He had tried. He had gone back to a victorious Tony who had sworn that he would give him the moon and, after a week, had begun to take him totally for granted again. The broken promises had been like ashes in Starsky’s mouth as, once again, he had felt himself betrayed. He had tried other men but always, always, he had remembered the sweetness of one man’s mouth. Well, he had learned his lesson now. He knew where his heart lay, and it was with Hutch.
“He’ll be all right.” He believed the words. He had to. “I’ll make sure he’s all right. I love him. He can get well if I help him.”
“You’re a goddamn optimist, Starsky!”
Starsky knew that he had to be. And he had to protect Hutch from this defeatist man and from his antagonism and hatred. Defensively he took a tiny step backwards to bring himself closer to his lover.
“No,” he said quietly, “I’m not. Hutch needs to know he’s loved and he needs to get out of here and back into the world….”
“Well he won’t be allowed out of here with you… I’ll make sure of that.”
Oh dear God, what do I do now? How do I get over this? Should I go see a lawyer? Yeah, but if I do that, this bastard might have him moved where I can’t find him. I can’t leave him. Damn, I wish I’d brought Reiner with me. Terry’s got this whole motherfucking thing taped, but I’ll beat him. I have to.
Something—someone—was prodding at his back, trying to attract his attention.
“Hutch?” He swung around, only half believing that light touch, but it was true. Hutch had turned slightly in his chair and the blue eyes were watching him. There was life in those eyes now, and while they were clouded with anxiety and bewilderment, intelligence was there too and Starsky guessed that his partner had probably understood every word said about him. “It’s all right, babe.” He knelt by the chair, knowing that reassurance was vital. “You’re gonna be okay.”
“Starsky.” A whisper of a voice. “I love you.” Hutch cleared his throat.
The most beautiful words in the world. Starsky smiled.
“I’m so glad, sweetheart,” he said gently. “I love you too.”
“Hutch….” Terry tried to push Starsky aside to get to his officer. “…I want to talk to you.” But Starsky had seen Hutch’s hands reaching out for him and had captured them in his own and was clinging tightly. “Get out of the way, Starsky!” Terry snapped. “I want to talk to Commander Hutchinson.”
“Talk to him from where you are.” Starsky was equally curt as he pressed the cool fingers tightly between his own.
“Hutch, you’re sick. You had a breakdown.” Terry spoke soothingly. “I’m going to get a doctor and he’ll give you something to make you sleep.”
Hutch’s eyes were drawing Starsky’s soul out of his body and he seemed not to have heard Terry, but as Starsky leaned closer, Hutch dragged his gaze away and looked at his superior officer.
“Fuck off!” he said, slowly and distinctly. Then he looked back at Starsky. “Can we go to that desert island?” he asked, and with every word his speech became clearer and more confident. “Can we?”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“You can’t leave here yet.” Terry broke in urgently. “You’re sick. And you can’t go with Starsky. It’s because of him that you’re here at all.”
“Fuck off,” Hutch said again, but this time he did not even bother to tear his eyes from Starsky’s. “Just… get the hell out of here.”
“It is true, babe,” Starsky admitted softly. “I walked out on you. Do you remember?”
“Yes. You came back. That’s all that’s important.” Hutch did not seem capable, at that moment, of stringing words together into long sentences. “I understand. I’ve been waiting. Waiting for you. Knew you’d come.” There was such conviction in Hutch’s voice that Starsky had to swallow hard. Hutch had trusted him to come. Hutch had been certain that he would. It was not a time to wonder if Hutch realized exactly how long he had been waiting. “I’d’ve come and found you,” the blond continued in a whisper. “But… somehow… I was too tired.”
“Hutchinson!” Terry’s hectoring voice broke in again.
This time both detectives turned and looked at him. “Fuck off!” they said simultaneously, and Starsky added quietly, “We quit. Don’t we, Hutch?”
“No.” Gentle denial, but there was a hint of apology in the soft voice. “There are still things to do.”
“More crusades? Oh, Hutch!”
“If we do it together… we can do a lot of good.” Hutch nodded in Terry’s direction. “Do you think he’s the right person to be in charge of IA?”
“Christ, no!”
“So… we’ve got work to do.”
“Aw hell!” But it was inevitable. Hutch had to have his dragons to fight. If he didn’t have them, then he would invent them and that would be worse. Besides, Starsky liked the idea of getting Terry thrown out of his job.
“Stay with me, babe….” Muted plea, but Hutch’s eyes reflected acute anxiety.
“Sure. I ain’t going nowhere.”
“Well, I’m going to get the doctors,” Terry announced and when neither man answered him, he stalked out of the room and slammed the door shut behind him.
“Starsky….”
“What, my dearest?”
“I’m scared. I don’t want to stay here.” The blue eyes were still worried and forlorn. “I don’t trust Terry.” And then: “Don’t leave me.”
“I don’t trust him either,” Starsky agreed. “And there’s no way I’m ever going to leave you again. You wanna split?”
“I don’t want to be pumped full of any more drugs. I want to be me again. With you.”
“Think you can walk?”
“Try and stop me.” Just a hint of the old Hutchinson recklessness although the blond’s voice was still husky and he still looked scared. “Come on, lover… let’s escape.”
“Yeah, but before we do…” Starsky scanned the planes and hollows of Hutch’s face anxiously, “…you’d better tell me how you feel. I mean, I’ll take care of you if you get sick, that’s no problem, but….”
“…But am I really sane?” Hutch smiled. “No, I don’t think I can be. Don’t I have to be crazy to want you so badly?” The words were coming more freely now, but it was obvious that it was tiring the blond.
“Me? Do you really want me?” Starsky could hardly believe what he was hearing. “I left you….”
“I know. You did the only thing you could. I don’t blame you.” Gentle, cherishing fingers stroked their way over Starsky’s cheeks and the dark haired man sighed under the pleasure of the caresses and lifted his face impulsively for more as though raising it to the sun. “And yes, I want you.” Hutch’s voice hummed with happiness. “Want you and need you and love you. I’ll show you. When we get outta here.”
“Okay.”
Terry would be coming back with the doctors. Hutch might be able to walk, but he might not be able to withstand the pressure of words and Terry’s dominant personality. Starsky got to his feet and held out his hand for his partner. Hutch grasped it, pulled himself up and then leaned forward and brushed his lips against Starsky’s.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I’ll thank you properly when we’re out of here.”
“Babe, do that again and you’ll be lucky to make it to the car!”
With a conspiratorial grin that promised much, Starsky opened the door and cautiously peered along the passage. Then he reached backwards for Hutch’s fingers again and, hand in hand like guilty schoolboys, they stole out of the building.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Starsky?”
“Yes, my love?”
“I never thought a place like this existed in all the world.”
“Well,” Starsky admitted, “I wasn’t sure that it did either. But it does.” He tipped his hat further over his eyes and moved his left leg closer to Hutch’s so that he could stroke his lover’s instep with his big toe.
“It’s perfect,” Hutch said simply. “Paradise.”
Starsky knew that if he bothered to remove his hat, turn his head and look, he would see the superb dark honey tan of Hutch’s skin and the skimpy white briefs that showed off his masculinity in a way that Starsky considered indecent. If he dragged his gaze upwards he would see laughing eyes, clear and untroubled, and a face that looked younger than its years. The enforced rest in the hospital, the reunion with Starsky, and then the vacation had been all Hutch needed to make him well again.
Starsky smiled. He was so proud of Hutch, and, yet now it was a different kind of pride from those days in the penthouse. He was in love with a very beautiful, very confident man, and whereas before he had been partially in love with his old image of his ex-partner and partially drawn to the Commander of the IA, now the love was all for the man and not for his job or recollections of what they had been.
Their seven-year partnership would never be forgotten, and Starsky did not wish those good times to fade from his mind. Yet they were making fresh memories every day now and these new, shared, experiences were very precious to Starsky. They were building a new life for themselves and he knew it.
The heat soaked into every pore of his body, and he knew that his own skin had darkened, too. If he squinted upwards he would see the big palm tree that was shading them from the direct rays of the sun, but he was too lazy even for that. Lazy and sated with love, he thought smugly.
Their loving was incredible. It had been that way ever since their first mating after Hutch had left the hospital. They had fled to a quiet motel and had lain on the bed in their room just holding one another and allowing relief to wash through them. Then holding had not been enough. Blindly, wordlessly, they had been drawn into a vortex of desire and they had screamed their ecstasy into each other’s mouths as their bodies had convulsed in exquisite release. Yet after that first time, Hutch’s old urgency had gone, as if the intensity of that one coupling had drawn off all the mad desires.
“We should talk.” Hutch loomed over him suddenly as the hat was cast aside. “We haven’t, you know.”
“I do know.” Starsky looked into the serious face and stroked his lover’s warm skin lightly in a reassuring gesture. “I haven’t wanted to. I really haven’t.”
“We should.”
“I suppose so.” Yet Starsky was reluctant to break the silence they had both been observing on their mistakes of the past in case it should cast a shadow on their present and their future. Since the beginning of their vacation, they had been totally absorbed in one another, wrapping their love around them like a feather quilt, content with the peace of their surroundings and the harmony of their thoughts. He did not want to lose that.
“It won’t hurt us,” Hutch said gently and he turned Starsky onto his side so that they lay facing one another, their heads pillowed on the towels they had brought down to the beach with them. Starsky felt himself enfolded in a loving embrace and duplicated the action so that they cuddled comfortably in one another’s arms. “We’re strong enough now,” Hutch continued. “We can talk about it without it getting to either of us. And I think there are some things that should be said.”
“All right.” Starsky could not resist the temptation to kiss the parted lips so close to his own, and they clung to his as Hutch answered his unspoken need for that passionate, fulfilling mouth. “Dear God, I’m never gonna get enough of you,” Starsky whispered at last, shakily. “Never.”
“Yes, but do I give you all you want?” Hutch asked. “I mean, that’s important. I want to be… everything… to you.”
“You are everything.” Starsky leaned forward and drank from the smiling lips again, tasting the man and inhaling his breath. Every time they made love he was totally satisfied. It was a good feeling and yet he had the niggling thought that he should have asked that same question of his lover. Hutch had been the unsatisfied one. “Where do you want to start?” he asked quietly.
“Good question.” Hutch grinned ruefully. “It was such a goddamn tangle, wasn’t it? Maybe I should tell you something. It’s been on my conscience and I know you’re not gonna like it. Ray Vandam was my lover too, for a little while.” The final words came out with a rush. “I’m sorry.”
“I know he was,” Starsky said calmly and when Hutch’s eyes scanned his face, he nodded.
“You knew? How?”
“Reiner told me.”
“Is that why you left?”
“Yes.”
“Hell.” Then: “I’m sorry. I don’t blame you.”
Starsky said nothing. He just traced a line carefully down Hutch’s face from his forehead, around his left eye, over his cheek to the sensuous mouth that he loved to cherish with his own.
“Why?” he asked finally. “I guess it’s one question I have to ask. Because I just don’t understand.”
“He needed me,” Hutch said simply.
“He needed you?” Starsky echoed blankly. “What d’you mean? I needed you! I needed you so damn bad I used to walk around aching for you….”
“No….” Hutch ran his fingers over Starsky’s hair, making them both tremble. “…I don’t mean need in the physical sense. I mean he was emotionally immature. I made him feel protected. I liked that. It couldn’t be that way with you because you were so strong. So damn strong.”
“But I did need you!” Starsky still could not understand.
“Listen, sweetheart.” Hutch drew him closer but, for once, Starsky sensed that it was not a sexual embrace. It was simply the comfort one friend might give another. “You were incredible in those days. The way I was acting, you damn well had to be! Do you remember what it was like to take care of me? Do you remember how it felt to know you were helping me… being strong for me?”
“Yes. It was good.” Starsky recalled the great satisfaction he had derived from being there for the man he loved: supporting him, helping him, protecting him and doing things for him.
“I wanted to give some of that back to you.” Hutch’s voice was muffled in Starsky’s hair. “But I couldn’t. You didn’t need me like that. Ray Vandam did. He liked to be dependent on me. Can you understand that?”
“I think so.” Yes, Starsky recognized that there had been few chances for Hutch, outside his job, to demonstrate his own capability for strength and determination. Yet he also remembered that Vandam had told Carl Reiner that Hutch needed him. A complete reversal of what Hutch had said. Maybe Vandam—working with Hutch for those three years—had understood far better than Starsky what the blond needed. Maybe Vandam had been a good actor, and had assumed a role for the sake of the man that he, too, loved.
“Are you sure you understand?” Hutch drew back and Starsky saw that his blue eyes were anxious. “It’s important. I never loved him. The only constant in my life was… and is… you, and the fact that we love one another.”
Even if he had not totally believed in Hutch’s sincerity, his partner’s behavior during the last three weeks would have been enough to convince Starsky that he was deeply loved. For Hutch—for both of them—touching was a necessity; kissing a passionate journey or a teasing game, holding hands a most vital part of life, and going to bed together a perfect ending to every perfect day. Starsky knew that he was loved. Loved and needed and adored.
“I understand,” he said quietly. “I should have talked to you… found out what was really in your head. Guess I was scared to, in case I just gave you more things to worry about. Should have told you that I wanted… lots of things. Little things. Should have told you that when you were threatening Tony, you turned me on so hard I thought I’d explode. I love you when you’re being tough.”
“I must try it more often.”
“You do that, babe. Vandam isn’t the only one who knows how to be weak.”
Starsky was gathered even closer, rocked in arms that spoke eloquently of Hutch’s emotional response to his gentle words, and he knew that he could now abrogate his role of protector. They were back to being equal again. Equal in their loving and their strength and their wish for a stable and exclusive relationship.
“Love you… love you… love you.” Hutch’s voice was husky. “Oh God, you’ve got no idea how much!”
“Of course I have,” Starsky chided his man. How could he not know? He had woken up on so many warm, sunny mornings to find Hutch hovering over him, watching him, waiting for him to open his eyes and then smiling a brilliant, heart-warming grin of pure pleasure.
All the other men. What about all the other men? Starsky asked himself the question but refused to voice it. Hutch would tell him, when he was ready.
“You want to swim?” the blond asked suddenly.
“Well….”
No, he didn’t, but Hutch was getting to his feet, eyes haunted, and Starsky watched in rapt appreciation of his lover’s grace and agility as the blond ran down the beach, waded out into the crystal water, and dived cleanly under a white-crested roller as it surged towards him.
You can’t run from me, babe. Starsky sat up so that he could watch the bobbing head in the water. He smiled a little. Oh no, lover, not this time. There’s nowhere to run to and no escape from me. I’m just gonna wait here for you to come back. Sooner or later you’ll have to… unless you think you’re gonna swim home. And it’s a hell of a long way back to California.
Starsky was not worried by what was possibly Hutch’s last minute panic at the thought of talking openly about their troubles of the past. Hutch was entitled to his anxiety. It had been a traumatic time for both of them and it was Hutch who wanted the subject brought out into the open and talked about. Starsky knew that he would have been prepared to forget the whole business and look to the future, but that was not Hutch’s way. Hutch always liked every end to be neatly tied.
You haven’t wanted me to hurt you since we came here. Not once. Oh sure, we’ve gotten a little rough sometimes. You’ve had my teeth marks in your shoulder and you’ve striped my back with your nails, but there’s been no… provocation. These things have just happened. I think you’re over it, love. Don’t you think so, too?
Sometimes, to Starsky’s dazed senses, it seemed as if whole days were spent doing nothing but lying on their bed and making long, slow love. Gently, so gently that Starsky sometimes shuddered with the awe-inspiring tenderness of it, they would advance through every stage of love-making, lifting one another to heights of ecstasy that seemed, to Starsky’ s bemused senses, to go on and on into eternity. Sometimes it seemed that he spent his whole day lying in Hutch’s arms, kissing and being kissed, basking in his blond’s adoration and reveling in the closeness that was between them.
They had something now that they never had before. Time. Hours and hours and hours of time. Time to say everything that they wanted to say over and over again if they wanted to, and time to make love the way any two people in love should. Time to be together, to walk hand in hand on the beach, to share food and wine, to sleep in the sun and look into one another’s eyes and smile.
Lazily Starsky got to his feet and strolled down to the edge of the water to watch his sun-worshipper with his white-gold hair and gleaming body arise out of the waves like a pagan god. Suddenly mysterious, Hutch seemed remote and powerful, and the sea churned around his legs and seemed eager to drag him back into its cool embrace.
Ah God, how I want you!
Starsky stared, immobile and fascinated, as Hutch pushed his hair back out of his eyes and then stretched his arms above his head in a gesture that seemed to Starsky to be both a celebration of his freedom and a supplication to unseen deities to help him in his difficulties. The water streamed off his body and Starsky longed to touch him, to feel the sea-cooled flesh against his own and taste lips that would be salty from the ocean spray.
Come to me. Be with me. Hold me. Love me. I need you.
When Hutch was close, Starsky held out both his hands in a gesture of welcome, wanting to show his eagerness to have his lover with him again. Smiling, Hutch took his outstretched fingers without a word, and Starsky basked in the warmth, feeling tentacles of love twine themselves more tightly around his heart.
“I missed you.” The words came involuntarily from his lips.
“I’ve only been away a few minutes.” Hutch’s eyes never left his face.
“I still missed you.”
“Crazy man. Let’s walk.”
Hand in hand they strolled along the deserted shoreline, finding seashells and marine life to interest them and throwing stones into the water in a light-hearted test to see who could hurl the pebbles the furthest.
“Shall we have lobster tonight?” Hutch asked.
“Yes.”
“Would you like to….”
“Hey,” Starsky interrupted him gently. “You said you wanted to talk about us.”
“Yes.”
Silently they turned around and began to retrace their steps to where they had left their towels. Starsky felt Hutch’s fingers grip his more tightly, and he returned the pressure reassuringly.
“Tell me, babe,” Hutch said quietly. “What’s the difference between a cop who regularly takes big bribes and a cop who accepts a coupla dollars here and there… or a few meals… in return for looking the other way sometimes?”
Starsky was not expecting questions like that. He blinked, hesitated, then spoke quietly.
“There’s no difference, I guess. A bribe is a bribe. Doesn’t matter if it’s five hundred dollars or five… a new car or a free beer.”
“So if you bust a cop… kick him out of his job because he’s taking big bribes… you should also get rid of all the other cops who reckon that what they’re doing isn’t really wrong at all?” This was more difficult and Starsky hesitated again, long enough for Hutch to continue quietly: “Interesting problem, isn’t it?”
“It’s a human problem,” Starsky corrected. “And it’s damn difficult. If you arrest a guy for defrauding his company, do you also arrest the junior clerk for taking home a few envelopes? They’re both stealing. It’s only the size of the crime that’s different.”
“Then how would you decide what was a crime and what could constitute just human weakness? The guy who takes home a few envelopes wouldn’t even think it was stealing. The guy who deliberately commits fraud knows exactly what he’s doing. Is that the difference?”
“I… don’t know.”
The policeman in Starsky told him that every crime was wrong, no matter how small. The realist in him told him that all ordinary people committed petty indiscretions at some time during their lives. And the whole of society could not be locked up. He also remembered that he and Hutch, during the course of their time on the streets, had not arrested men for minor crimes in the belief that the people could be used to get at more important crooks.
“Let me put it another way.”
They had almost reached the towels and Hutch’s grip on Starsky’s hand was almost painful. “When does a case of a small bribe… something a police officer maybe wouldn’t even see as wrong… become a big enough crime for him to be thrown out of his job? What can be classed as human weakness and what is criminal?”
“Christ, babe, I’m just a cop. I’m no lawyer and no judge. How the hell am I supposed to know?”
“I’m just a cop, too. I had to make that kind of decision all the time.”
“What about Terry… the DA?”
“This was an internal affair… and Terry couldn’t deal with every case. He left most of it to me. There were so many cases, Starsky. Not many cops are like you, my love. You’re so clean, you squeak.”
They sat down on the sand side by side and Starsky slipped his arm around Hutch’s shoulders and hugged him.
“Too many grey areas,” he said simply. “Nothing black and white. How did you do it?”
“Looking back… I don’t know. One day at a time, I guess.”
“It was tough for you.” Starsky hugged tighter. “I couldn’t have done it. Wouldn’t have known where to start. Oh babe, I wish I’d been with you. I wish we’d been lovers then.”
Hutch turned to look at him and the strong face was soft with tenderness. He leaned closer and their foreheads met lightly.
“I wish we had, too,” Hutch said. “But IA said you had to join them voluntarily. You know I was wearing a wire when I tried to talk to you….”
“I was a stubborn bastard.” Starsky sighed. “And so were you. You could have given me some sign.” They had talked about the subject before, but… Starsky could not resist the comment.
“You know why.” Hutch answered him levelly and Starsky nodded.
Hutch’s pride. Hutch’s wish, not even admitted to himself at the time, to have Starsky on his side out of loyalty, without any form of coercion. And Hutch had failed. Yet there had been no resentment in the blond’s voice and no hint of accusation. Starsky smiled faintly and felt the heat of Hutch’s skin against his forehead.
“If I’d known….” he began quietly.
“It doesn’t matter.” Hutch shook his head slightly, but maintained the contact between them. “I only told you this so maybe you could see my… problems. But my dearest….” Starsky felt Hutch’s hands draw his head sideways and he rested his cheek lovingly against the blond’s tanned one. “…I’m glad in one way that you weren’t a part of it. I wouldn’t have wished it on anyone.”
Starsky rubbed his cheek gently against Hutch’s and wound his arms around the blond’s shoulders. He sighed to himself. Hutch still had not touched on the subject he wanted to hear about, but he promised himself that he would not raise the issue. Hutch would have to force himself to talk about it.
“You do know, don’t you,” Hutch continued, “that I’ll never be unfaithful to you again?”
Again? Starsky tried to prevent his body stiffening at the telltale word.
“I’m glad.” He did not know what else to say.
“All those men….” Hutch drew in his breath in a hiss of distaste. “…I wish I could give you the reasons why. I wish I could say it was because of this or because of that. I’d like to have clear-cut answers to all the questions I know damn well are inside that beautiful head of yours. But I don’t.”
Being in the open air, feeling the sun on his skin and the sand against his legs, and hearing the regular beat of the ocean it all seemed suddenly, to Starsky, to have happened a long time ago. A lifetime ago.
“Maybe you were trying to prove that you weren’t gay,” he murmured, and he nestled closer to his man.
“If I’d been trying to prove that, I’d have been making it with women,” Hutch answered quietly.
“Mmm.” The beat of the surf was synchronized with Hutch’s heartbeat under Starsky’s stroking hand. He felt drugged by the beauty of the place and the proximity of the man who now held him closely in his arms. Yet Hutch had found the courage to raise the subject and Starsky knew that it had to be talked about.
“You don’t seem to need to be hurt anymore.” Reluctantly he pushed on the hot shoulders so that Hutch had to release him slightly and he could see the concerned face clearly. “Or are you just holding back.”
“No.” Clear eyes begged him to understand the truth. “I’m not. I don’t seem to get so… so obsessed about sex….”
Starsky would have liked to have denied that statement. Strongly.
“…Except when I look at you.”
Yes, that was better.
“But then that’s because I’m in love with you.” Hutch smiled. “But I don’t need to take a beating or indulge in non-stop sex with anyone else. It was like I couldn’t get enough of it. Sex and pain. Somehow the two got linked together in my mind. God knows how or why.”
“Well, I sure as hell don’t.” Except that the first time he had made love to his ex-partner, Hutch had persuaded him to take a step that he had thought unwise. He had entered the man’s body and had felt the tight passage stretch to meet the demands placed upon it. On Hutch’s own admission, it had hurt.
“When I found out about Tony, I was jealous.” Hutch said the words quietly. “We’d been so close and I couldn’t understand why I’d never known you were gay or why you never tried to move on me. In the end I figured it was because I just didn’t turn you on. Then… later I began to read up about being gay…. I found that I kept thinking of us in bed together. And then D-Day came and… and all I could think about was you.” Hutch shook his head. “When I came to see you that night, sex was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted to feel safe for a while. With you. And then I couldn’t believe you’d stay with me.” The soft voice became husky with remembered fears. “I kept telling myself that if I didn’t expect too much, didn’t look ahead, took each day as it came, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much when you finally realized that your old partner had changed from the man you knew.”
Starsky picked up a towel and casually began to rub at Hutch’s wet hair. His partner bowed his head to make the job easier and Starsky turned the task into a gentle act of love while Hutch waited in silence for his lover to comment.
“You have changed,” Starsky admitted at last. “At first I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted to turn the clock back. Stupid. No, in some ways you aren’t the same… at least on the outside….” Hutch was tougher, able to give orders and having the authority to see they were carried out. He was less vulnerable, too, and less able to articulate or show his emotions to anyone. Anyone but his lover. “…But inside….” Starsky hunted for the right words. “…Nothing’s altered that much. You’re still my Hutch.” He framed the flushed face with his hands. “I love you.”
“I thought I was going to die.” Hutch uttered each word carefully and Starsky was held captive, breathless and suddenly afraid, by the quiet conviction in the soft voice. “We had our enemies on the street, didn’t we, love? But this was different. The kind of corruption I was trying to stamp out wasn’t street crime. It was highly organized, totally ruthless, and it had all the money in the world to back it. I didn’t think one cop stood a chance. Not with the kind of friends John Mirren had.”
Hutch smiled and Starsky caught his breath in wonder at the sweetness of the expression on his lover’s face.
“But then suddenly it wasn’t just me, was it?” Hutch continued. “It was you and me together. The old team. They couldn’t beat the two of us together.” The smile became tinged with joyful triumph. “We won, babe. We won.”
Suddenly Starsky didn’t care about the men in Hutch’s life or the blond’s bizarre sexual appetite. All that was important was the victorious note in Hutch’s voice and the way his ex-partner was looking at him; as if he were the only man in the world; as if he were the sun, moon and stars; as if he were Hutch’s own personal god.
“Yes,” he agreed steadily. “We’ve won. I don’t think we’ll ever have to fight so hard again. I don’t think we should have to. Next time it’ll have to be younger men. We’ve done our part.” With deliberate slowness he ran his forefinger along Hutch’s forehead. “I don’t want to see any more lines in your face. You’ve given enough.”
“As far as you’re concerned, I haven’t started to give.” Hutch’s arms drew him close and forward so that Starsky found himself leaning over his lover as Hutch lay on his back in the sand. “All those men,” the blond continued, “it was like some kind of crazy merry-go-round. I couldn’t stop. The more I got, the more I needed. I desperately wanted to be faithful to you, but I didn’t seem capable of sticking to what I wanted to do. Every time I promised myself it would be the last weekend… and every time I couldn’t keep to it. It really was like some kind of weird addiction.”
Starsky looked down at the love of his life lying beneath him, pale gold, sun-bleached hair mixing with the soft, pale sand. It seemed incredible, now, that any of this could have happened. It was like a bad dream, a nightmare, in which his role of onlooker had been a terrifyingly impotent one.
“It did happen.” Hutch seemed to be reading his thoughts with unerring accuracy. “It’s over now and I know it is, but is it a problem for you?”
Starsky pulled a face and bent his head to the vulnerable hollow at the base of Hutch’s throat, kissing it lightly and then finding the courage, with the small gesture, to be honest.
“I wish I really knew why,” he said, and his hand gestured appealingly. “I wish you could tell me. I don’t like… not knowing.”
“If you really want me to, I could give you a lot of reasons.” Hutch pushed him away and sat up abruptly. “Lots of theories, anyway.” He crossed his legs Indian fashion and compulsively Starsky’s eyes were drawn to the white-covered crotch. He cursed himself for responding to the physical attributes of his man while they were discussing such an important subject—important to him, anyway—and, in confused annoyance, he forced his gaze back to Hutch’s face.
“Tell me,” he invited simply.
“Sure.” Hutch grimaced. “How many reasons would you like to hear? How many half-assed ideas about the state of my mind… the fact that I’d just found out I liked men as well as women… the fact that I’d fallen in love with my best friend… the stress I was under… would give you an answer you’d be satisfied with?”
“Hutch!” Suddenly it was becoming too serious. Starsky acknowledged to himself that he did want to know, but not if the price was too high. Not if it brought a look of scared worry into Hutch’s face or made the fine, candid eyes cloud with shame. Nothing was worth that.
“How many more reasons would you like?” Hutch asked softly, and his face reflected an intentness that caused Starsky to panic inwardly. This was some kind of test of their love and—somehow—he had to pass it. He copied his lover and turned his body to sit cross-legged on the sand, knowing Hutch was watching every movement and inwardly bracing himself for whatever was said. Only inches apart, Starsky placed his hands on his knees and nodded gravely.
“Say what’s on your mind,” he told his lover gently.
“Do you remember saying that we weren’t equal anymore? That I was the boss and you were the body guard?”
“Yeah.” Starsky ducked his head. “Vividly. Stupid, wasn’t it?”
“No, it wasn’t.” Hutch reached out and tilted Starsky’s jaw so that he had to look into understanding blue eyes. “You were right. I didn’t like it any more than you did. I guess maybe… now that I’ve had time to look back and think about it… that I tried to make it up to you in bed.”
“How?” Starsky asked bleakly, but he didn’t really need an answer.
“Maybe by wanting to be punished for what I was doing to you… you and all the other men I’d busted. All the ordinary cops… all the cops that died… and the cop I loved more than anything.”
“Don’t put that on my shoulders,” Starsky said quietly. “It isn’t fair.”
“Isn’t it?” For a moment Hutch looked grim. “You wanted reasons, David. I’m trying to find them for you.”
“So try looking for a theory that fits all the other men too. Or did you go to them because I wouldn’t hurt you anymore?”
“I don’t know.” Hutch looked away, staring out over the ocean as if he wished he could run into the water and throw himself into it away from the questions that were disturbing him.
“I’ve got some ideas,” Starsky said. “You wanna hear them? I wouldn’t join IA. Sometimes I wondered if you were trying to push and push to see how far you could go before I made you stop. Baby….” He turned the tanned face back so that he could stare into the depths of the blue eyes. “…Were you trying to test me? Trying to find out how much I loved you? Were you trying to measure my love?”
“No!” Hutch pulled away from the restraining touch. “No.” His voice became quieter. “I don’t think… I don’t think I was doing that….”
“But you aren’t sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything.”
Hutch stared at him and his face was tortured. Starsky cursed inwardly. Hutch had started this, but he should not have been allowed to. They should have buried the bad memories forever. They should have been content with the wonder of this new love that had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of their anger and their troubled fears.
“Help me,” Hutch whispered. Starsky dragged his full attention back to his lover and winced before the defenselessness that the blond was not attempting to hide from him. “I can give you even more reasons. Do you want to hear them? Do you want me to tell you…?” Hutch nodded his head slowly. “…Yeah, and I think this is true… that part of me wanted you to walk out. I was terrified for you. I knew how sick you’d been…. I knew how difficult your job was… and I knew if you stayed with me, you might die.”
“…Just as I might have gotten blown away any time during the years we were partners,” Starsky finished. “That won’t work either, Hutch.”
“No?” Hutch’s face twisted. “I wasn’t your lover then, even though I loved you. I’ve been so scared, Starsky. So damn scared. Because I couldn’t see any future for us. I liked the excitement of fucking with strangers and the pain….”
“Shit!”
Starsky clamped his mouth tightly shut after the one expletive and turned imploring eyes on the man he loved. Hutch couldn’t really have said that, could he? Yes, he could. And he had.
“When I was being hurt, then I couldn’t think or feel guilty or worry.” Hutch said the words expressionlessly but his face was terrifyingly vulnerable in its naked agony for Starsky to understand. “When I was getting laid, there wasn’t time to think about what the next day would bring. Can you imagine being frightened for twenty-four hours of every day, David?” Hutch shook his head slowly. “Can you understand that even when we were in bed together, I was afraid that it might be our last time… our last night? I didn’t think you could take the pressure of my hang-ups and the… the intensity of my feelings for you. And all the sex. And the danger. And the fact that you lost all semblance of a private life because of me. David….” It was a cry of anguish. “…Do you realize how terrified I was that because of what I had done… because of my job… you might get killed? One way or another.”
“Oh, sweetheart!”
“Even when we were making love….” The words tumbled over one another as Hutch rushed on. “…I used to wonder if this was the last time I’d ever hold you or kiss you or touch you or make you a part of me. Fear can be like an aching tooth. You can never quite forget about it. I never got any peace.”
He had not known, nor even guessed. He should have! Starsky berated himself wildly then rose to his knees and held out a hand to his lover.
“You should have told me,” he said quietly. “All the things that worried you… I could have made it easier….”
“You did,” Hutch interrupted. “You cared about what happened to me and I knew it. You helped.”
“You’re no masochist,” Starsky said. He hoped he sounded more convincing than he felt.
“I don’t know,” Hutch answered him honestly. He took the outstretched hand of his lover and Starsky interlaced their fingers. “What I do know is that if I am… it’s something I can live without. I don’t need you to hurt me and don’t need any other man but you.”
Starsky nodded. He lifted their joined hands to his mouth and kissed the backs of his lover’s fingers with grave deliberation.
“I think IA tried to make you into something you’re not,” he said. “Yeah, I really think that’s true. They wanted a hero. A perfect cop. Totally incorruptible. You tried to fit their image, but then I started pushing, too… tried to make you become the man you’d been three years ago. And you’re a human being, darlin’. You can’t become something you’re not. I guess that subconsciously you tried to break away from the images IA… and I… were forcing on you.”
Starsky thought that was a good summing-up of the situation. It didn’t have to be all of the truth although he suspected that the reasons that had been put forward were probably a part of a very complicated whole. What was important was that Hutch should accept his words and let the theories and the speculations die.
And whose fault was it that Hutch had discovered his liking for pain? Starsky asked himself accusingly. He, David Michael Starsky, had taught Hutch what it was like to roll over for another man. He had given his blond partner the taste for pain with that very first penetration. Hutch had accused him of nothing but Starsky knew—from the only woman who had shared both their beds—that his partner had been an imaginative but considerate lover of women. He had learned about masochism from his gay friend, David Starsky.
“You’re so generous.” Hutch’s free hand reached up and Starsky turned his mouth into a warm, caressing palm. “Whatever happened to me… whatever madness I went through, it’s gone. It’s been burned out of me. All I want now is to be with you and to love you.”
“That’s what I want, too.” Starsky drew his lover close and found the waiting lips with his own. He had to take away the look of suffering on Hutch’s face. He wanted to see his beautiful blond with the tranquility shining from his eyes as it had been earlier in the day after they had made love. Hutch always looked so supremely happy when they lay exhausted on their bed, and Starsky always took it as a personal tribute to his talents that he could give his man so much pleasure.
It worked both ways. Hutch had the power to rock his soul with just one touch of his fingers, one loving glance; one sweetly savage growl that was always the prelude to a rough-and-tumble kind of loving that was filled with laughter.
Starsky tried to say all that with the lips that he moved over Hutch’s in a kiss that brought the blond’s sun-warmed arms up around his neck and made his mouth open wider under the tender pressure. Yet it was Hutch who broke away and Hutch who sighed and smiled for both of them, and Hutch who could not quite let go.
“Can you take me as I am?” he asked, and his words were almost drowned by the crashing of the surf. “I love you and I’ll be faithful to you. Is that enough?”
Enough? It was all he had ever wanted. Starsky reached out and Hutch met him halfway so that they enfolded one another in an embrace that was reassuringly possessive.
“It’s more than enough,” Starsky whispered into Hutch’s ear. “More than enough.”
They lay down on the sand together and for a while both seemed lost in contemplative silence while Starsky brooded over all that had been said, knowing that the subject would never be mentioned again and realizing that if there was anything more that had to be said, then it should be now.
There was something. Something he had sworn he would never ask for because it was unfair and selfish. And yet something that he wanted very badly.
“Hutch?”
“Mmm?” The blond stroked his cheek lightly.
“When we were together before the trials, your job was the most important thing in your life. And that was right….”
“…But you resented it.”
“Yes. I had no right to, but I did.”
“I was a bastard.” Hutch leaned up on one elbow and then bent his head to nuzzle at Starsky’s neck. “I knew you wanted me to spend more time with you, but I was too goddamn selfish to give you what you needed. It was the job… always the job.”
“And now?” Starsky allowed Hutch to tip his head back so that his blond could lip-bite his throat with avaricious intensity. “What happens… when we… go back? Oh God, that’s incredible!”
He felt the vibration of Hutch’s laugh against his flesh and moaned softly in helpless desire.
“When we go back….” Hutch blew gently into Starsky’s parted lips. “…It’ll be different. You’ll come first. I promise you that. First and last and everything in between.”
“And if the job makes you tired and bitchy and worried, do I have your permission to seduce you into bed? Or will you yell at me for interfering? Or shut me out again. Don’t shut me out, love. Please.”
“You can do just as you like.” Hutch blew cool air over Starsky’s face and when the dark-haired man blinked in surprise, the blond laughed again. “The job used to be the most important thing in my life. Now you are. And I’ll never shut you out. I promise.”
“Can we go back to the cabin and make love?”
“What’s the matter with this place?”
“The sand,” Starsky said with dignity, “gets everywhere. As you well know.”
Hutch chuckled and bent to kiss him, and Starsky yielded wordlessly to his lover’s caresses, sliding his hands over smooth shoulders to draw the man still closer.
Today the dream, next week the reality. They could face it.
His lover was no longer the hero, not to anyone, and they could both live more comfortably without the appellation. Not the boss and the bodyguard any longer, but the loved one and his lover. Starsky held his man closer.
END
20th August, 1982
THE INCORRUPTIBLES
“I hope you’re the end of this goddamn trail, Hug!”
“Not me, man. I’m just another link in the chain. Want a beer?”
“Thanks.”
Starsky sat in Huggy’s yard and turned his face up to the warmth of the sun, closing his eyes and yielding to the seductive heat on his body. For how many hours had he been playing Hutch’s crazy game? He did not have the energy to look at his watch but he knew it had to be late in the afternoon. What a way to spend a birthday! He had thought that they would just have the day quietly to themselves, a rare luxury that came all too seldom, but instead he had been sent out on a wild memory trail—as Hutch had called it—that still wasn’t over.
“Your beer, sir.”
Starsky opened his eyes, saw the drink in the tall glass and grinned wryly. “It ain’t like the old days,” he said ruefully. “We used to drink it straight outta the can then.”
“That can be arranged….”
“No, this is fine.” He took the glass and sipped slowly, then, “We’ve come a long way, Hug.”
“Some of us have come further than others.” Huggy settled into a garden chair next to Starsky’s and rubbed his knee. “How’s the great white chief of IA?”
“Hutch? Fine. How’s your leg?”
“It’s a damn nuisance. It’ll get to you in the end too, Starsky….”
“What will?”
“Old age. Who’d’a thought I’d have to slow down because of rheumatism….”
“Can’t the doctors do anything?”
“No doctor’s gonna mess around with me. Not while I can cope with it. Anyway…” Huggy raised his glass, “…happy birthday, Starsky. How many now? Fifty-three?”
“Fifty-two, damn you! Thanks.”
“And Hutch is making you work, huh?”
“Seems to be some kinda trip down memory lane. You wouldn’t believe where I’ve been today!”
“Oh yes, I would. He told me. He’s picked out all the places that have some meaning for you two. Kinda nice.”
“Hutch always was a romantic,” and Starsky remembered the champagne breakfast, the easy loving they had enjoyed afterwards, and smiled.
“Yeah? Well, Sally’s out right now but she told me to fix up a date for you two to come over and eat with us. We don’t see enough of you…” sly grin from the black man, “…or would it be beneath your dignity…?”
“Don’t be stupid, Hug!” Starsky knew his friend was joking and the words had no heat. “We’d love to come, but I gotta check with Hutch. He gets so tied up in the evenings….”
“You reckon he’ll make Chief of Police before he retires?”
“No. It’s too late for that, and he’s gay… remember? But he should make deputy. He’d like that and I’d like it for him. He deserves it.”
“Who’d’a thought Ken Hutchinson would come so far. Or you. When I remember what you were like twenty years ago….”
“I know,” Starsky agreed, “but then look how the rest of the world’s changed too. When Hutch got to be deputy head of IA he spent most of his time in discussions that changed the whole shape of the force. He still spends a lot of his time at meetings, but we try not to lose touch with what’s going on in the streets.”
“You were good cops.”
“I hope we still are.” Starsky spoke seriously. “Only now we try to make the streets a better place by putting better officers out on it. Well trained and well paid. And they know that if they come under suspicion from IA that they’ll be treated fairly and that it won’t be turned into a goddamn witch-hunt. Of course, lot of the younger officers don’t even remember what the force was like twenty years ago. They were just kids then… some of them not even born. But Hutch’ll crucify any cop who breaks the law. IA’s got a different reputation now.” He stopped suddenly. “Sorry, Hug, I was lecturing again.”
“You were,” Huggy agreed sipping at his beer. “Doesn’t IA run the LAPD now? Quite a change!”
“It works,” Starsky said defensively.
“It seems to. But you know a hell of a lot of people think this country’s turning into a police state. They don’t like it….”
“Maybe. But they’re a damn sight safer in it than they were twenty years ago.”
“There doesn’t seem to be any freedom any more. I think people feel trapped. And there’s nothing they can do….”
“There never was that much freedom, Hug.” Starsky closed his eyes again and relaxed.
“There was more than there is today.”
“I don’t think so. Today people have got a lot of free time….”
“…All the time in the world if they don’t have a job….”
“…Earlier retirement…” Starsky ignored the interruption, “…a shorter working week. We aren’t really used to it yet. But I think people are more tolerant these days….”
“And Big Brother watches them.”
Starsky began to wonder if he and Hutch should accept that invitation to dinner. Huggy was becoming a discontented man. He had his problems and Starsky knew that, but he did not want Hutch embroiled in arguments of this sort. Starsky knew that his lover, too, was concerned about personal freedom, but that this tended to clash with his desire to protect people from becoming part of the crime statistics that were still high enough to worry him. He tried to warn his old friend: “Big Brother isn’t anything to do with me or Hutch,” he said softly.
“No?”
“No. This isn’t 1984. Big Brother’s a stupid name that some one dreamed up. Nothing to do with my Hutch. People are scared just because of that goddamn name.”
“Okay. Okay.” Huggy gave way gracefully. “If you say so.” He changed the subject. “Those three years you and Hutch were apart, did you really not know what he was doing?”
“I knew he was in IA. That’s all. Then I got to work one morning… I was in Narco then… and found that half the department was under arrest. There was only one guy senior to me and we kinda muddled through for a few hours before things began to make sense and we started to organize what men we had left. And all the time we kept wondering what the hell was going on. Then the rumors started to come through. Purge on the LAPD. Senior men under arrest. IA controlling everything. I wondered what had happened to Hutch, but I didn’t have time to find out. And then we started to hear more stories. About a cop called Hutchinson. Then I started to understand what had happened. Hutch had been behind all of it.” Starsky recalled his surprise and concern of that time and grimaced.
“When I finally got home…” he continued, “…hell, it was damn near twenty hours later… Hutch was waiting outside my place with two cops guarding him. The bosses had thought someone might try to kill him. He asked me if he could come in for a few minutes and he looked kinda… shell-shocked. I’d seen men in Nam like that. I gotta admit that I hesitated, just for a minute, and he said, ‘Please. For old times, huh?’ I’ll never forget that. Well, I was pretty shook up by the sight of him and the kinda dead look in his eyes. So I got him inside, left the cops to guard the door, poured a few brandies into him, and then took him to bed with me.”
Starsky raised his eyes to Huggy’s. “That’s when it all began,” he said simply. “Nearly three years after I got shot that last time. He came to me because he was scared and exhausted and close to some kinda breakdown. He didn’t have any other place to go. The first time we made love, it was while Hutch was under death threats and there were two cops outside our door. We tried not to make any noise, but we really didn’t care too much. We’d found one another again.” Starsky shrugged, but a contented smile curved his lips. “We’ve been together ever since.”
“And does he still have his nickname?”
Starsky, swallowing beer, choked slightly and then laughed. “Oh yes,” he assured his friend, “that guy Marcus… Christ, how many years ago was that?… was quite a prophet. Hutch really is a white knight. Incorruptible, just, and compassionate. Hell of a combination. Of course, he ain’t perfect! He can be a bastard to live with. But I think it makes the bosses happy to know he is human after all. The fact that he’s gay means that he’s flawed in their eyes. Still, we’ve been living together since the day the Benchley thing blew up so I guess they don’t think he’s a risk. Him and me… we’re just an old married couple.”
“I’ve never understood that.” Huggy leaned forward and rubbed his knee again. “Neither of you’ve ever talked about it, though the papers talked about nothing else….”
“You mean the Benchley affair?”
“Well I don’t mean your affair with Hutch, dummy.”
Starsky was not sure how much he should tell. He wasn’t even sure that he knew all of it himself and now, with the intervening years to cloud what had been a very complicated story in the first place, some of the details had been lost. All that he could recall now with clarity was the toll it had taken on his lover’s health and strength.
He had told Huggy that the first time he and Hutch had made love had been the day after the Benchley scandal broke. It was not strictly true. Yes, they had gone to bed together, but Hutch had been physically incapable of achieving an erection let alone an orgasm, and it had been left to Starsky, with his partner’s full consent, to consummate their new love in a mating that had been full of emotion.
“You remember that party we had in my room at the hospital?”
“Vividly.” Huggy chuckled at the memory but then his face grew sober. “Poor old Harold C.,” he said softly. “He was a good man.”
“Yeah.” Dobey’s death was still recent enough to hurt Starsky. “He was one of Hutch’s original ‘Incorruptibles,’ you know. One of the ones who re-built the Force. Hell of a good cop. But after Edith died…” he shrugged, recalling how his old captain had lost all interest in life after the death of his wife. Yet he understood what the older man had gone through because he knew he would be the same if Hutch died before he did. “He was a good man,” he agreed quietly.
“Anyway…” He made his mind move further back in time, “…what was I saying? Oh yeah. Three days after that party, Hutch told me I’d never be fit enough to go back on the streets. The doctors wanted to tell me, but Hutch thought I might take it better from him. I was… numb.”
He well remembered the way he had clung to Hutch’s hand as he tried to assimilate the words that were really only a confirmation of what he had known for some time. He recalled the depressive fear that had settled over him and the way he had despairingly asked Hutch what they were going to do. And then his partner had told him that he had joined IA, and that there was a place for Starsky, too.
“Hutch tried to talk me into going into IA with him,” he continued. “But it wasn’t a case of discussing what we should do as a team. He’d already decided. He wasn’t gonna change his mind. Maybe that’s what got to me. The fact that he’d worked out his own future without talking to me and then expected me to go along with what he wanted.” He shrugged, hiding all the pain and hurt of that interlude. It was past. It was done. He understood now and although the memory still jarred, there was no resentment in him.
“I lost sight of Hutch in those three years,” Huggy said reflectively. “Didn’t know what was going on. You used to come into The Pits but you wouldn’t talk about him and you looked kinda strange on your own. I never knew what to say to you.”
“I wasn’t happy.” Starsky said somberly. “I kept thinking I’d get over it and forget about him. I used to see him once in a while at Metro and we’d be polite because people were watching, but neither of us ever suggested getting together to talk.” He stopped as he remembered the day when he had suddenly realized he had not thought about Hutch for forty-eight hours. And then he had felt guilty. It was a shock to realize that he could make a life for himself without Hutch and he hadn’t liked it. He had thought their friendship an integral part of what he was, and it had hurt to feel he was guilty of some kind of betrayal because he could survive alone.
“It all started when Hutch arrested Gunther,” he said. “He saw some documents on his desk and he took them without letting Gunther see. But it wasn’t ’til he was alone and could read them properly that he realized just how important they were. They seemed to incriminate half the LAPD from street cops right on up. Hutch didn’t know what to do or who he could trust. Gunther committed suicide… Hutch still believes he was murdered but he’ll never prove it… and because I was in the hospital he reckoned I was too vulnerable to attack so he didn’t tell me. But he thought that if he talked to the wrong man, they’d kill him too.” And it still hurt that Hutch had kept a secret from him, that even when they had been celebrating his own fast return to health with that party in his hospital room, his partner had been scared and worried.
“Hutch did some checking, took a lot of precautions to try and protect himself, and then went to the head of IA. It paid off. He had proved his own incorruptibility by arresting Gunther so the chief gave him a team of four men and told him it was his sole job to root out the rotten apples of the LAPD. It took them well over two years, but they investigated everyone suspected and collected their evidence. And when the day came, they arrested all of them.”
“Biggest goddamn scandal since Watergate,” Huggy said reminiscently. “Benchley was about as high up as you can get. And I didn’t even know Hutch was at the back of it all at first.”
“Nor me,” Starsky agreed, “it was all arranged like a military campaign. And Hutch was one of the masterminds. I swear, I’d never have thought he could do it. Retired cops who could be trusted were contacted and agreed to come back and take over their old jobs. Other cops… cops like Dobey and me… were marked for instant promotion. Hutch put the emphasis on integrity and experience rather than college degrees. I think he was right.”
“Did those years change him?” Huggy asked, and then, “You want another beer?”
“Thanks, Hug.”
As the black man wandered back inside, Starsky contemplated the simple question. Simple question, yes, but the answer was almost impossible to qualify. He lived with the man, close to him all the time, but he had to admit that after that three year parting, he had at first thought Hutch changed almost beyond recognition. The long and difficult job he had been doing, the fact that he had been a member of the IA and therefore disliked by all but his own men, the fact that he was three years older anyway. All these things Starsky had thought had contributed to the change.
At first, for a few weeks after their reunion, Starsky had thought the old Hutch he had loved so much gone forever. The man was hard, sharp, nerves stretched to the breaking point but hidden beneath a brittle veneer of calm coldness. Starsky had hardly known his partner, either as the new and efficient deputy head of IA or the man who joined him in bed at night and coupled with him in exhausting, frantic passion that left them both drained.
What should he tell Huggy? That he had despaired of ever finding the real man beneath the layers of self-protective steel? That he had thought he would never see the day come when Hutch would function sexually again despite all his efforts to arouse his lover? That he had been almost afraid of the man who shared his bed? Hutch had wanted to play it rough. There had seemed to be no gentleness left in him and he had not seemed capable of giving or accepting tenderness. All he had seemed to want was for Starsky to take him with as much force as he cared to use, teasing and taunting his dark-haired, bewildered lover until Starsky lost control and invariably finished up hurting him.
Hutch had seemed to need to be hurt. Starsky knew now that it had been to expiate and banish for a while the guilt and fear and worry of the past years. At the same time, Hutch’s masochism had confused and alarmed Starsky, but he had been so overjoyed at being back with his partner again that he had subdued his own needs in an effort to help the man he loved.
For a while, a few weeks, they had managed to make it work, but at last Starsky had known he could struggle no longer with his despair. One night, during one of their frenzied matings, Hutch had goaded him relentlessly until he had lost his temper completely and beaten up his blond so thoroughly that he had sickened himself with his own actions. Humiliated by what he had done, aware that Hutch wanted something from him that he was no longer able to give, he had exploded into words, accusing Hutch of so many things, things that he now could not even remember. He had been so ashamed, so full of a love that he was not being allowed to express as he wished, so full of a bitter hurt, that he had not spared his partner. He had knelt by the side of his naked lover and every one of his words had stung Hutch like the lash of a whip, worse by far than the beating had been.
Hutch had cried. No amount of physical punishment had ever brought that kind reaction before, but it had seemed as though Starsky’s outburst had lacerated him as nothing else could and he had simply broken down beneath the tirade. Starsky remembered the latter part of that night with happiness. The tears had been a release for Hutch, triggering long-denied emotions and giving Starsky an opportunity to show the tenderness he knew that he was capable of. He had lain next to Hutch, pulled the covers over both of them and then, in the darkness, he had taken the weeping man in his arms. His voice had been soft and pleading as he had begged Hutch to let him help, let him be the kind of lover he wanted to be. He had asked for just a little time. For a chance to show Hutch a different way of loving, a chance for both of them to learn to live together and be happy.
How well he remembered that night. Patiently, compassionately, he had helped Hutch to shed the defensive shell he had been living in and, like a man re-born, Hutch had emerged as the partner Starsky had known and loved for so long. Slowly, hesitantly, Hutch had begun to talk, to relate something of the loneliness and isolation he had suffered. Although he had gone into IA with his eyes open, he had expected Starsky to join him. When he had realized that he would have to do it alone, it had been too late for him to back out. He was too deeply committed. Starsky had listened to it all, saying little but showing his understanding and sympathy with the way his hands stroked his lover’s back and his lips caressed the broad forehead.
“So has Hutch changed?” Huggy came back with the beer.
“No. Not deep down.” And that was the truth. His lover would never really change. However further he might go in the Force, he would still be simply Hutch from the moment he stepped in through the front door of their home. Starsky sipped his beer and smugly reflected that life could not be better.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. What?”
“Well, when you and Hutch got together again, you’d bought a house inside four months and were living together openly. You’ve never tried to hide the fact that you’re both gay. I’d’a thought you’d both be thrown out of the Force.”
Starsky laughed. “At the time they needed Hutch just too damn much,” he claimed. “They’d lost so many men through this corruption scandal that two gay cops hardly made a ripple on the water.”
“Yes, but why were you so open?”
“Do you remember what it was like in those days? I mean, apart from the Benchley thing. We were all scared of the state of the world was in. The Russians… the Oil States… Pakistan… it looked as if World War Three was just around the corner. We were all waiting for the big bang. Hutch and I decided that if we had to go, we’d go together. In bed and preferably fucking one another. We agreed right from the start that we’d have our relationship out in the open. We wouldn’t hide and we wouldn’t lie. It’s worked.”
For fifteen years it had worked. He reflected on that fact after Huggy had handed him the now familiar envelope containing his instructions from Hutch and sent him on his way. Fifteen years of living with his partner. Fifteen years of sharing a bed, a home, a life with a man who meant so much to him that everything else seemed, by comparison, trivial.
Gradually, over the years, he and Hutch had built up a life for themselves that he treasured. For three years after the Benchley scandal he had worked in the Narco Division, one of the departments worst hit by the shake-up, and had worked hard with his chief to reshape it and bring it back up to strength. Then Hutch had asked him again to join IA, but this time he had agreed without hesitation. Now he was Hutch’s deputy, and while in theory this meant that his lover was also his boss, in practice it was a partnership. Not an equal partnership such as they had enjoyed before, but rather a comfortable and very workable team arrangement. Starsky did not walk in Hutch’s shadow and they both knew it. He had his own responsibilities and his own areas of command and there was no competition between them.
Hutch would go on to higher things. Starsky knew that. Very soon now he would take over IA and let his lover climb higher up the ladder. Hutch was not particularly ambitious, but he now had an unassailable reputation in the force for justice and understanding and it was one of the reasons he was so valuable. Starsky knew that he was so secure in his love that he would be happy with whatever his blond chose to do. His own place in life was comfortable, but challenging enough to keep him interested.
Once he had joked with Hutch that the force should pay him twice. One salary for the work he did during the day and then another for keeping the great white hope of the LAPD happy in bed. Hutch had laughed with him, but Hutch had also kissed him tenderly and told him how much he needed him and Starsky had known then that he was truly loved.
He did not underestimate the role he played in Hutch’s life, or his power over his lover. When Hutch came home and the day had been too much for him, Starsky was there. When Hutch needed comforting or calming or teasing out of a black mood, it was Starsky, knowing the weaknesses of his man as well as the strengths, who knew what to do. And the roles were reversible. In Hutch’s arms Starsky knew he had found happiness beyond his most hopeful dreams and Hutch supported and sustained him as no other man could.
He glanced in the mirror of the powerful Alpha and turned right. The car was his indulgence. Ever since he and Hutch had bought their first home, he had gone through a succession of fast cars, and as his salary and his responsibilities increased with the years, so he had changed from car to car until now he had his present Alpha. Hutch hated it. Hated its shining black paintwork and its bold red stripe. He called his lover immature, told him he was trying to prove his masculinity—a statement which made them both laugh—and accused him of driving too fast. Starsky knew he didn’t mean any of it and just shrugged and grinned.
For him it was a kind of release. He would take it out with the top down and let the wind blow the cobwebs out of his brain by driving it too fast on the freeways. In a way, he knew it was stupid. As Hutch was fond of pointing out, it was a distinctive car and therefore he was vulnerable to attack in it despite its bulletproof windows and safety gadgets. The price of gas had skyrocketed some years ago and now most people had discarded their big cars in favor of small, economical saloons. Even with engines that did seventy or eighty miles to the gallon, driving was still a luxury that many people could not afford, but for Starsky it was a part of his life he did not want to be without.
He glanced in the mirror again, too used to his grey hair now to think twice about it. It remained as curly and as thick as ever, but he knew that while he looked his age, his body did not match his face.
Fitness for both of them was a priority. They had a small gym in the privacy of their home—a home he loved for its size and space and secluded position in the hills. It was a large rambling one-story house that they had bought six years ago with all their resources, but they had never regretted the decision. Their privacy was guarded by the latest and best of security devices and they lived serenely and quietly when they were away from their work. Starsky took pride in the fact that they were both still lean and strong. While they no longer had the resilience of youth, their energy level was high and they took advantage of this to maintain a full and satisfying sexual relationship.
Starsky still remembered, with a smile, the first time they had gone to bed together and Hutch had looked at his lover’s nakedness and become aroused. Until that time their love affair had been physically one-sided, but on that occasion Hutch had solemnly and joyously entered his lover’s body and they had found a new happiness in the reversal of roles. Starsky knew he would never forget that most satisfying of nights. They had stayed awake for hours, lying side by side on their backs with their fingers entwined. They had exchanged secrets, made plans for the future, and then, when they were ready, they had made love again.
If only it could have stayed like that. Starsky sighed and swung around a slow-moving truck. At first it had been idyllic. They had worked hard during the day and then they had gone back home to passionate and exhausting nights that had stretched their stamina to its limits. And that, Starsky knew now, should have warned him. Hutch, from being an exclusively heterosexual male had become a homosexual with an appetite for sex that had at first pleased, then astonished, and then finally worried his lover.
Hutch had wanted too much. It was as if he had on itch that he could never quite scratch properly. He became edgy and restless, only seeming really happy when Starsky was fucking him until he was screaming. His needs, his demands, increased as the weeks went by, and after three months, during which time they moved into their first home, Starsky admitted defeat. He simply could not satisfy his lover and the knowledge was bitter.
They talked about it openly and honestly. They were in love and neither of them would deny that love. They now had their own home and they didn’t want to lose it. They wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. They wanted a binding commitment to one another. The sole difficulty was that Hutch had spent three years in the wilderness with a burden on his shoulders that had gradually worn him down until he had become impotent. Starsky, with his love and compassion, had released him from his prison and so had opened a Pandora’s box of new problems, the greatest of which was Hutch’s insatiable need for sex. Making up for lost time, Starsky called it wryly. They had both agreed that the condition was probably only temporary, but it was a problem that had no easy answer.
They had solved it in the only way they could think of, although Starsky still looked back on their decision with horror and distaste, wondering how he had endured it. Yet, to hold Hutch he had known he had to give him freedom. That freedom had taken the form of leaving town with him on weekends to drive north and find a motel. And then, because Hutch’s face was so well known, Starsky had gone out and found the men his lover needed. He had found them, brought them back to the motel, and then sat in his own room and tried not to listen to the sounds coming from next door.
Starsky found that his hands were shaking. Abruptly he pulled into the curb and turned off the engine. Why did he still torture himself with memories? It was all over. It had been over for years and years. Hutch was his now. Wholly and forever his. Nothing else mattered but that.
His eyes roamed the street, a habit he had never quite lost since the old, comfortable days of he and Hutch and that Torino of his. His attention was caught by one man and he nodded to himself. If he was still pimping for his lover—and he had used that word in the end to shock Hutch—then this man, if he was gay, would have suited Hutch well. He had liked them to be physically bigger than himself and he had like them to be black.
“Stop it!” He spoke the words through clenched teeth. “You fool!” Why did he have to remember these weeks now, tonight? His memories that day had all been happy thanks to Hutch’s ‘Memory Trail’. Why did his mind insist on spoiling it all?
Hutch, I need you.
Why, with all the happy memories of fifteen years to sustain him, did he have to dwell on a few weeks of bitter unhappiness? Yet he, and only he, knew how close he had come to breaking down. He had never seen Hutch with any of his men—perhaps it would have been better if he had—but his imagination had more than compensated for the lack of knowledge. He had visualized them, big and black and menacing, poised above his defenseless Hutch, all ready to plunder the delights of the beautiful, willing, golden body. How he had hated them, all those men who had closed the door of Hutch’s room and left him outside and alone.
Looking back, he could not understand from where he had found the strength to let it go on week after week. Yet he knew he had been assuaging his own guilt too. If he had been with Hutch in IA through those three years, he could have helped. His partner would not have been alone. And at least they played it as safely as they could. Hutch never cruised and Starsky was always within earshot in case of trouble. Bodyguard to a man who would give his body to anyone. Starsky remembered being struck by the irony of it at the time.
The end of it all was devastating to both of them. An out-of-town doctor, shots of penicillin, and Starsky had not said one word against his lover, not one word of accusation or recrimination. But he had decreed that they should spend their nights apart until the problem was over—neither of them would give it its true name—and he had retired to a hotel to lick his wounds in private.
He had come so close to walking away then. So very close. He had procured men for his lover’s pleasure and in doing so had given his tacit consent to Hutch’s infidelity. But the blond’s need for sex had been something he had not expected and not known how to deal with without losing his lover, and in the end he had paid twice over for what had happened. He had felt sickened and humiliated, and his love for Hutch had almost died.
Now, as he sat in his fast, expensive car, he wondered how he had managed to hold on. Had it been the deep-down, unshakeable belief that he and Hutch belonged to one another, or was it that he had been just too damn stubborn to let go?
He had kept away from his lover until he knew it was safe to return and then he had gone back and told Hutch that never again would he go through the embarrassment and the agony that he had just suffered. Either Hutch stayed home and stayed faithful or it was over. Hutch had agreed, quietly and immediately, to all that he said. A new Hutch. Gentler, seemingly more mature, as if all the reckless fire had been burned out of him. He had been scared too, and Starsky knew it. Scared and degraded and filled with self-hatred because it was his body that had infected his lover, and his greed for sex that had shamed them both.
Starsky took a deep breath and deliberately tried to relax. It was his birthday and he did not want these shadows from the past to haunt him again. It was inevitable that he should remember from time to time because the memories were burned onto his brain, but today he wanted to think of happier times.
He started the engine, pulled away from the curb and set off again to his next destination. One of the reasons he guessed he had been sent out on this trail into the past was simply to get him out of the house. Probably Hutch wanted to cook him a special meal. The blond enjoyed cooking, but seldom got a chance to try his hand at the complicated dishes that he saw as a challenge. Too little time; that was their trouble. They worked a long day and their evenings were also taken up with commitments.
Starsky wanted more evenings free for them to be together. The few they had were precious but too rare. He wanted more. Time to sit on their big, comfortable couch with their arms around one another. Tine to be gentle, to turn his head and see the soft blue eyes watching him, to inhale his lover’s breath, and be content to stroke the still beautiful face and smooth the lines from it.
Of course, the job had its compensations and they both enjoyed them. They were paid highly for what they did. While the mood of the country veered towards austerity, as if the people who did have work were almost ashamed of spending their money in the face of all the millions who were idle, Starsky and Hutch lived well but simply, with a quality of life that was rich and satisfying to them. They went to the theater only occasionally, dined out solely with their few friends, and preferred to stay peacefully in the home they loved. They spent their money on trips to Scandinavia and Australia and Switzerland; on the music they both loved; and on maintaining a life-style that kept them in quiet, unobtrusive comfort where the only public ostentation allowed was Starsky’s frankly luxurious Alpha. Hutch himself drove a small, economical Wilson One-Hundred but indulged himself privately with his passion for orchid growing. Their home was a serene oasis in a world that Starsky knew did not appear to have changed very dramatically on the surface.
Technology had made advances, but it had not altered the quality of life as much as people would have thought it might twenty years ago. Yet the changes were there, subtle and hard to define, and it was only when he was in his own home with his own dear lover with him and the gates locked that Starsky felt truly happy and at peace. He did not like to think about what their lives might have been if Hutch had not taken that fateful step of joining IA, or if he, Starsky, had not had the compassion or the love for his partner to take him into his home when Hutch needed him.
Starsky had never thought of himself as ambitious, never dreamed he would achieve the kind of position in the Force that was now his. But he had done it on his own merits, on his experience of the streets, his knowledge of how a street cop thought, and his own judgment and intelligence. Whether he would have had the confidence to succeed without Hutch in the background to boost his morale he was not sure, but now he took charge of meetings, made decisions, and looked forward to the day when he would run IA and Hutch would move onwards and upwards. The day was close now.
But still he wanted more time with his lover. They could have had today. Starsky rather resented the fact that they had spent it apart at Hutch’s insistence. If this latest destination was not the last, then he would give up the whole thing. In his mind’s eye he could see the generous mouth smiling at him, begging for the touch of his lips. He could see the blue, blue eyes that would lock with his as they made love, and the long, erotic sweep of throat that he could bury his face against. Hutch was his safe harbor against the world.
He found the place where Hutch had directed him, and as soon as he saw the telephone booth he recognized it and understood why Hutch had sent him there. This was the booth Hutch had called him from after walking out on him eight—no, nine—years ago. They had had a fight. Starsky could not now even remember what had started it although he dimly recalled that they had both had a bad day and were both short-tempered as a result. They had not fought physically but with words, and because they knew one another so well, they had known how to hurt and how to attack one another’s weak points. It had been a stand-up, toe-to-toe yelling match as they each had dragged up unspoken resentments and imagined slights, both determined to better the other verbally. In the end it was Starsky who had delivered the coup de grace and Hutch had walked out.
Starsky stared at the bright-painted phone booth, remembering the call he had received from a drunken, self-destructive Hutch who would not tell him where he was but had talked vaguely about betrayal and the uselessness of his life if he had to be alone while Starsky grew more and more frightened with each word. He remembered persuading Hutch at last to give him his location and then screaming off in his car—had it been the Porsche?—to rescue his lover, finding him slumped inside the booth weeping in an alcoholic depression. It had been their last major fight. Since that night they each had known how vulnerable the other was, and they had solved their differences without bitter quarreling.
He glanced at the piece of paper that Huggy had given to him, the instructions written in Hutch’s bold hand. He was to ring his own home for further instructions.
“Hutch… I love you, but enough is enough,” he said aloud. They had enjoyed a lazy, laughing, intimate love-session that morning but now he wanted more. Wanted to play one of their crazy love-games in the small gym where they had invented bizarre and erotic drama for their mutual excitement and satisfaction. He opened the door of the booth and stepped inside, speaking the number into the tiny computer that would automatically connect him to Hutch. The system was getting a little old-fashioned now even though it had only been installed in the last ten years. Hutch did not answer immediately, as he had expected him to, and he waited impatiently, staring at the small screen where his lover’s face would appear.
“Hi!” The door of the booth opened suddenly and then he was sharing the space with a tall, slim blond, seeing the light of laughter in his eyes and the way his lips curved in a smile of amusement.
“Hutch!” He was both exasperated and delighted by the unexpected arrival of his lover. “What the hell’s going on?” His eyes took in the faded, well-worn denim that clung tightly to his blond’s thighs and hips, the plain navy tee-shirt, the old leather jacket that he had thought discarded years ago. “You slumming or something?” The illustrious head of IA wore suits, immaculate shirts and conservative ties to work, and casual but expensive and elegant clothes at home. Starsky had not seen him in old clothes for years.
“Happy birthday, my love.”
“Thank you. What’s going on?”
“Well, you’ve been moaning about this birthday for weeks. Being fifty and fifty-one didn’t seem to worry you, but this time it’s made you itchy. You keep telling me you’re getting old…”
“Yeah? So?”
“…And you’ve also been saying I’m gettin’ pompous and boring. No fun anymore. Gettin’ too set in my ways….”
“I was only teasing…” Alarmed, Starsky pressed close to the tall frame for a moment, “…honest!”
“Yeah? Well I’m going to show you for sure that I’m not. Right here and now.”
“What the hell are you going to do?”
The wide mouth parted into a boyish grin of anticipation that made Hutch look twenty years younger, and his tongue ran slowly over his lips in a gesture that was familiar to both of them.
“What?” Starsky’s voice rose in alarm and disbelief. “You’re kiddin’!”
“Nope.” Hutch moved closer, so close that Starsky could see the tiny beads of sweat on his lover’s upper lip. The booth was getting very warm with two of them inside it and Starsky felt his pulse rate quicken in response to the soft glow in Hutch’s eyes. He knew that look. He saw it so often. When they made love in their waterbed, when they were alone in Hutch’s office sometime and the love between them bubbled over, when they were in meetings and exchanged a glance across a table to re-affirm their love.
Hutch meant it. He really meant it, and the fact that it was a wild, crazy, dangerous idea made Starsky’s heart thud heavily in his chest.
“No.” He made his voice as definite as he could. “Don’t be dumb!”
“I’m not. You don’t get outta here ’til I’ve gone down on you,” the blond grinned. “Hey, no… I’ll give you a choice. You can either fuck my mouth or my ass…”
“Thats insane!” Impulsively—horrified at the jolts of desire that were quivering through him and rousing his cock to pulsing erectness—he gripped Hutch’s shoulders. “Babe, listen to me!”
“No.” Hutch’s hand pushed between them and closed possessively over his genitals. “Gotta prove to you that I’m not getting boring.”
“You aren’t!”
“No?”
“No. Listen, Hutch…” There was a sense of urgency between them and the hand touching Starsky was beginning to move slowly and enticingly. “…Listen. What if we get caught? You’re the head of IA. You got a responsible job… you’re an important man. You wanna risk all that? You really wanna take a chance on being caught… having your face plastered all over the papers… being crucified… being sneered at….”
“Yes.”
“To prove a goddamn point?”
“Yes.”
“When we could go home and be safe and comfortable in our own place… walk around naked… make love without being scared?”
“Yes.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“Excitement, I guess.” The big mouth twisted into a rueful grin. “Put a little spice into our lives. I did pick a booth with the bottom half blocked in and it is dark. I’m not as crazy as all that.”
“Oh no? What about this fucking light just above our heads? Looks like a god-damn beacon…”
“Can’t do anything about that.”
“Hutch…”
“You talk too much.”
“Please… Christ!”
With one swift movement Hutch had undone his cords and released his cock from its tight confinement.
“Jesus!” He tried to push the strong hands away, to cover himself. He was fifty-two years old. He, too, had a responsible job. He and Hutch weren’t kids, they weren’t even young any more. They should have more sense, and yet the thrill of the peril in which they were deliberately placing themselves was arousing him to a fever of apprehension and guilty anticipation. Did they dare? No, they didn’t.
He tried to push his penis back inside his cords, but Hutch was getting in the way of his hands, the blond’s fingers wrestling with his own and rubbing against the erect organ at the same time. Damn the man! Damn his weird ideas and his laughing, inviting mouth, and the fingertips that were teasing his cock so unbearably.
“No…” he moaned the word softly and stared deep into those amused blue eyes, “…Hutch, please!”
“You beggin’ for it? How do you want it, lover?”
He didn’t want it at all. His brain told him that but his body said otherwise. His traitorous, excited body needed his lover’s touch—the velvet wetness of his mouth or that maddening, irresistible, tight passage that knew him so well. He whimpered with need and could not take his gaze from that incandescent glow in Hutch’s eyes. And the blond slid easily to his knees in front of him.
“No…” he moaned the word huskily in a last attempt to stop the insanity and deny the way his cock was arching blindly toward its savior as Hutch rubbed his cheek against it.
“Yes!” Soft but triumphant answer to his fear. “Keep a look out, huh?”
“Ohhh…” He glanced swiftly around, aware that the bright light above them was a focus point for anyone’s gaze. And then, “Sweetheart…” Would any of their men believe their eyes if they could see them now? His cords were dropping ignominiously around his knees and his Superior Officer, the well-respected and immaculate boss of IA was on his knees in adoration of his cock, questing tongue already licking its way up the aching hardness with an avidity not dimmed by the passing years or the number of times he had done it before.
Starsky gave up. If they were to be disgraced, drummed out of the force, ridiculed and persecuted for this, well they could always leave town. He glanced around again, but that magical, inquisitive tongue was teasing the head of his cock just the way he liked it best, and he gasped with the sensation.
“You crazy, mad bastard!” The words were said affectionately. “Gonna kill you for this when we get home!” If he had the strength. He glanced around once more and then lowered his head to look at Hutch.
The fine, blond hair still gleamed as brightly as ever in the light of the lamp above them. Beautiful hair the color of pale wheat under the sun, but thinner now. Much thinner. He could not see Hutch’s face, but he knew that it now had lines on it. Deep lines engraved by the responsibility of his job, lines that Starsky knew only he had the power to soften with just the touch of his lips.
“Hutch…” After all these years that wickedly knowing mouth still had the power to reduce him to a shaking, needing body without thought or reason beyond the desire to be made love to until he turned inside out with the pleasure of it. “My master cocksucker…” he whispered shakily. “My own gorgeous, sexy, tight-assed, incredible lover…” and he ran his hands lightly down the sides of Hutch’s hair so that he could touch the beautiful face as Hutch worked on him. He liked that. It gave him a sense of completion and unity with his man that he always needed.
Another quick glance around, but he guessed that Hutch was crouching down too low to be seen from the street. Could they pretend that one of them had lost a coin? Lord, they had done some strange things in their time, but now they did not have the excuse of youth or inexperience. They were mature and dignified middle-aged men. They were the Incorruptibles of the LAPD. Even the TV men in the news called them that. Only he didn’t feel incorruptible or middle-aged. He didn’t feel a day over twenty and this dangerous act of love was having the effect of making him feel wildly reckless. Hutch could corrupt him any day of the week. He would go up into the hills with his blond after this and make love to him under the stars. They would forget their age and their responsibilities and their dignity and indulge in a turbulent, all-consuming mating under a benevolent night sky.
If Hutch didn’t take him into his mouth soon, he would explode. He grasped the sides of Hutch’s head more tightly and guided the passionate mouth upwards a little, sighing with relief as Hutch took him and began to suck him slowly.
“Oh, babe…” The fingers of Hutch’s left hand were creeping between his legs, feeling with a sureness born of long experience for the entrance to his body to heighten his pleasure, and his right hand was closing gently but definitely over his balls. “…Do it to me…” The insistent mouth began to work faster, and every downward stroke was taking more of his cock deeper inside. He could feel it snubbing at the back of Hutch’s throat and waited impatiently for his lover to angle himself so that he could be swallowed up entirely, feel the eager lips press against his crotch.
“Yes!” He panted the word desperately and cast one frantic glance around him before trapping Hutch’s head between his hands and beginning to move his own body in the timeless rhythm of love. The fingers inside him twisted and pushed, the hand on his testicles rotated firmly, but nothing was as important as the mouth that was loving him so passionately and so well. He thrust harder and faster, biting into his lower lip to stop himself from screaming his joy aloud, but he could not restrain a gasp of warning as his orgasm sent shudders all through his body and convulsed him in a pleasure so deep and so intense that it was painful.
Hutch was greedy for his semen. He could tell that from the way the muscles of his lover’s throat were working, drinking from him as if he had been in a desert for a week and was thirsty beyond imagination. Love-juice, Hutch called it. And Hutch loved it.
He did not have the energy to stand so he dropped to his knees in front of the man he adored.
“Kiss me.” He loved this most intimate of acts between them, delighted in tasting himself on his lover’s lips and in his mouth. He looked into cornflower blue eyes and smiled at the dreamy expression that he found there. “Kiss me,” he said again softly, and their lips met, clung for a second, then parted reluctantly. “Oh, I do love you so much,” he breathed. “You’re crazy… insane… beautiful. Now can we get the hell out of here?”
“Sure.”
They got to their feet and Starsky hastily fastened his cords, still glancing around him nervously. Now that it was over and they were almost safe, he was anxious that they should not be discovered. Hutch’s career, and his own too, should not be destroyed on a whim. His blond, at least, was too valuable to the city they both served.
“You got your car here?” he asked.
“No. Took a cab. Guess I’ll have to take a chance in yours.”
“Fine by me. We can hold hands.” Starsky led the way to the gleaming black Alpha. They climbed wearily into it, and as the gullwing doors closed around them, Starsky sighed. “I like this car,” he said. “It’s got class.”
“Bit like its owner.”
Starsky put the square tag against the ignition and as the engine hummed into life, he turned to Hutch. “No, darlin’, you’re the one with all the class. I’m so goddamn proud of you. You’ve done so much….”
“Yeah? Well if I have it’s because of you. You’ve given me love and that’s the only important thing in my life. You hold me together. My beloved David.”
Many times in the past similar tributes had been paid to Starsky. He prized them all. Now he held out his hand and felt his fingers grasped tightly. “We’re behaving like kids.”
“Baby, you’ll never grow old. Never.”
“No? Well, if you can get me up again tonight, I’ll believe you.”
“Oh, I will. I got quite an evening planned. In the gym.”
“You wanna give me a coronary?”
“Take more than that!”
Starsky glanced sideways. The lines that were so often etched too deeply into Hutch’s face had eased away. He had done that. He, and only he, could make Hutch happy and relaxed, could make him young again, could bring him peace.
“Wanna tell me what you’re thinking?” The hand holding Starsky’s squeezed his fingers tightly.
“How much I adore you. My beloved Hutch. Is this memory trail over now?”
“I guess so. I had a reason for all of it, love.”
“Yeah, I thought you might. What’ve you been up to?”
“Surprise. I hope you’ll like it.”
“Darling, I’ll love it. What is it?”
“Wait and see.”
There was nothing Hutch liked better than to present his lover with unexpected gifts. Starsky knew that. And every year, on the anniversary of the day their love affair began, Hutch bought him a heart. Over the years he had received a gold heart, a silver heart, a heart made of solid oak and intricately carved. They were all displayed in a glass case in their library. All except one. The very first one. A heart made of white gold studded with tiny sapphires. Starsky wore it at his throat, hidden under the shirts and ties he wore to work. Yet it was not his favorite. The heart he liked best of all was the Victorian valentine card that Hutch had found in a curio shop, all plush satin with an elaborate and sentimental verse inside. This was his romantic Hutch. His unashamedly romantic darling.
He could guess what his present was. Hutch had probably had a fully equipped dark-room built into the house. Instant housing was so easy in these days that it would take no more than eight hours to finish the whole job and install the equipment. If it was that, then he could take pictures of his lover naked and develop them himself. It was a provocative thought. Nearly as provocative as the statement Hutch had made that he had an evening planned for them in the gym.
“Shall we go home?” He turned to look at Hutch.
“Yes.” Hutch released one of his hands and Starsky, knowing what he wanted to do, ducked his head a little to allow gentle fingers to comb through his hair. “Have you enjoyed your memory trail?”
“Yeah. Makes me realize just how much we’ve got and how lucky we are. All I want now to make my day is a work-out in the gym.”
Hutch grinned evilly. “And that,” he promised lecherously, “is exactly what you shall have. Happy birthday, Starsky.”
END
November, 1981
IN THE GYM
“Meet me in the gym. Nine o-clock.” Starsky stared at the terse summons on the single sheet of paper in his hand as he brushed his graying hair absentmindedly. Hatch had sex on his mind. He had received commands like this before.
Their bedroom was a sanctuary where their love could be expressed in words and deeds that were beautiful and satisfying, and in bed they found fulfillment and utter happiness in every joyful joining. In their own private gym it was different. It was a fantasy room, guardian of their uninhibited, erotic dramas and games, a secret retreat where they could play out every wild, inventive deed that came into their minds.
What was in Hutch’s mind this bright, clear morning? They had been living together for ten years yet Starsky knew his blond still had the power to surprise him. What would he find when he walked into that well-equipped room? The anticipation was half the fun, and he had enjoyed thirty minutes of speculation.
Would he find a lion crouched to spring from a dark vantage point, and would he have to wrestle a wild, golden body and try to escape the attacking nails and teeth? Hutch was a dangerous bastard when he was in a certain mood and he was capable of hurting his lover. Not badly, but enough to give Starsky a frisson of fear.
Or would Hutch be in a sensuous mood? Would he, Starsky, be lured sweetly into bondage and then driven insane by the latest teasing game that Hutch had invented? Was there to be a new master and slave scenario, and if there was, who would be cast in the role of arrogant master? Either, Starsky knew, would please him. Diversity, an element of danger and a willingness not merely to accept but to accept with enthusiasm whatever game the other lover wanted to play were the key pointers of the rules of the gym. Maybe, Starsky reflected it was a substitute for the excitement of the streets; a necessary fillip in their lives.
Hutch the archer. Starsky would never forget being bound, spread-eagled and face inwards to the wall bars that ran from floor to ceiling and then watching over his shoulder in horror as Hutch got out the hidden bow, and the arrows with big, flat suckers on the ends. A child’s toy, not dangerous, but who but Hutch would have had his eye on one particular target? Starsky could still remember the sucking noise as Hutch pulled them off his outraged ass for further attempts.
Starsky put down his brush and hoped fervently that he was going to get laid. The muscles of his ass twitched in anticipation, but he had not initiated the game and Hutch would dictate his part.
What should he wear for his assignation? Starsky glanced at his watch, saw that he had less than ten minutes, and pulled open the closet doors where his own clothes melded happily with Hutch’s. He decided on tight white shorts, the cotton molding itself to the contours of his body, and the cut emphasizing the length of his dark, tanned legs. White knee length socks, tennis shoes and after a moment’s hesitation he completed the outfit with a white short sleeved tee shirt.
“Virginal,” he murmured as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. “Good enough to eat. Pure and oh-so-goddamn-innocent.” He smiled wryly. Pity he couldn’t add the word young to his catalog of virtues. At forty-five, with graying hair, he could not deny his own middle-age. Hutch could, and Hutch did, but then Hutch’s love was blind. No one was as beautiful as his Starsky and he must have said so a million times. Starsky saw his own expression in the mirror soften to tenderness. Beautiful, loyal Hutch.
Even more beautiful when bound to the horizontal bars and covered with body paint. Starsky well remembered how he had decorated the honey-tanned torso with flowers and leaves and butterflies. He had finally painted two big red roses, one on each side of the cleft of Hutch’s buttocks, and slipped his cock between them. Hutch had loved it. Hutch had not been so happy to find out the body paint was not as water-soluble as it should have been. The blond had spent three working days sitting on his roses in mortal terror that somehow he would have to reveal the decorations.
Two minutes to go, and Starsky took off his watch and rings. He had accidentally gashed Hutch once and now jewelry was banned.
“Here I come!” he said aloud. “Tiger or pussy cat… what am I gonna find when I do get there?”
It was cool in the gym. Starsky stepped through the open door, closed it behind him and saw Hutch perched casually on the vaulting horse. His partner was clad in a black jumpsuit, tight fitting and sexy, over a jade green shirt.
“Hi,” Hutch said softly. “You look gorgeous.”
“You, too.” Starsky was wary, not knowing what to expect, and he waited as Hutch slid off the vaulting horse and walked slowly towards him, hips rocking in a deliberately provocative motion and the bulge in the front of his tight pants very obvious.
“Good morning, love of my life.” Hutch kissed him, backing him against the wall bars and Starsky opened his mouth, sucked hard on the thrusting tongue, and swayed closer into the tight embrace. He was a little puzzled. Hutch was showing no signs of either wanting to be dominant or submissive. It was the kiss of a man in love, a man with nothing kinkier on his mind than wriggling his knee between Starsky’s and then bringing his leg upwards to rub his thigh against Starsky’s groin.
“Beautiful.” Hutch’s tongue traced the shape of Starsky’s lips, and gentle hands came up to stroke his face and his neck. “So beautiful… my pet.” As the last words were spoken, Starsky heard a rattle and a click and then he felt a constriction at his throat and looked into his lover’s eyes.
“My pet?” he asked, knowing without looking that Hutch had put a collar around his neck. It was tight without choking him and hard without being too uncomfortable.
“Mmm.” Hutch lifted a leash from the bars and attached it to the collar. “Only you’re not tame. You’re my wild bobcat, my crazy, impetuous, loving lover. Only…” The leash was tugged a little and Starsky was jerked towards the compelling hand, “…I think I need to teach you some manners. You were asleep last night when I came to bed….”
“If you will work eighteen hours a day….”
“…and the other night you striped my back good….”
“You’ve done it to me!”
“I know.” Silken murmur. “But you’re wearing the collar and leash. Not me.” Starsky knew he was going to get laid. He smiled and Hutch smiled too. “Oh, yes,” the blond continued softly. “I know what you’re thinking. And you’re right. You hot for it?”
“Yes.” Why lie? Hutch knew him inside and out. Hutch would know that he was already aching for them to be naked together.
“Not yet.” Hutch’s grin became devilish. “We’ve got a long way to go….”
“I’ll bet.”
With a deft flip of his wrist, Hutch tied the leash to the wall bars. Starsky knew that he could free himself, but he made no move to try. Then, as he waited, the blond stood in front of him and slowly and deliberately began to pull down the long zipper that ran from throat to crotch of the jumpsuit. Slowly, slowly, the zipper slid on its sensuous journey, parting the soft, clingy material until it reached Hutch’s navel. Then the blond began to unbutton his shirt.
As he watched, loving the slow strip, Starsky eased his neck inside the collar and realized that although it was made of stiff leather, it was lined with some soft fabric so that it would not chafe his skin. Hutch might like to play rough, and sometimes the pain he inflicted was intentional, but he would never hurt Starsky thoughtlessly.
“Oh God, you’re beautiful!” Starsky breathed the words softly as the shirt was thrown aside and Hutch wriggled out of the jumpsuit to stand before his partner clad in skimpy black briefs that displayed clearly the outline of his erect cock. Hutch was still slim, still as sleek and fit as he had been ten years before, and if the blond hair was just a little thinner on top… well, neither of them talked about that.
“Hungry?” Hutch whispered as Starsky’s eyes fastened onto the prominent bulge. Starsky nodded. “On your knees then, boy.” The command was issued sibilantly and as Hutch released the leash from the bars, Starsky dropped down in front of the tall frame and laid his hands flat on the slim hips. He was proud to be doing this, proud to be submissive to his arrogant lover, and he closed his eyes as his lips touched the silky material.
“Gonna choke you, babe.” It was a threat and a promise. “My wild cat. I don’t want you tamed, but I want you trained… just a little. So do it good and maybe I’ll give you what you want. Maybe.”
Starsky nuzzled at his partner’s silk-covered cock with his mouth and his nose and the sides of his face. He had still not been allowed to remove the provocative briefs. The restraining collar and leash had orchestrated every one of his actions, and every time he had done something that Hutch had not wanted him to do, a sharp tug on the leash had been his punishment. It was torture. Starsky knew that one of Hutch’s favorite tricks was to tease his lover beyond his endurance, and Starsky suffered every time. Now he whispered quietly, catching the material between his teeth and tugging gently.
“C’mon,” Starsky whispered softly. “Let me….”
“Let you what?”
“You know what. I wanna suck your cock.”
“Plenty of time for that.”
“Bastard.” There was no resentment in Starsky’s voice. It was all a part of the game and he accepted it. He moved closer, sat back on his heels slightly to ease the pressure on his knees, and then wriggled his tongue deftly under the material into the soft, damp crease of Hutch’s crotch, teasing the skin lightly. His reward was a low gasp of pleasure and an instant of tenderness as Hutch’s fingers stroked his hair.
“‘Bout time we got you out of those clothes,” the blond murmured.
“Yes, but…” Starsky had still not been allowed to appease his hunger for that column of flesh. Well, he decided philosophically, he could wait. Perhaps this time he could outwait Hutch and get the blond to beg him. For a change.
Leash firmly in hand, Hutch took him back to the wall bars and secured him to them. Then Starsky allowed himself to be stripped, leaning forward as far as his collar would allow to press kisses to whatever parts of Hutch’s body he could reach. Finally, both naked except for Hutch’s brief covering, they faced one another; equal in strength and in their commitment to the pleasures of the gym. It was Hutch, ever surprising, who made the first move. He dropped to his knees and pressed the palm of his hand and then his lips to the tiny tattoo at the top of Starsky’s thigh.
“I still think you were mad to have this done,” he murmured.
“Makes two of us then.” There was a similar mark on Hutch’s body. When Starsky had shyly displayed the tattoo of his lover’s initials on his skin, Hutch had insisted on copying the idea.
“Your idea, crazy man.” Hutch kissed the mark again.
“Shut up and get on with it!”
“Okay.”
There was a bottle of oil on the vaulting horse. Hutch collected it, unscrewing the lid and tipped some of the liquid into his hand. As Starsky watched, Hutch began to oil himself, slowly and sensuously, seeming to enjoy the caressing touches of his fingers on his skin.
“Let me do that,” Starsky whispered, but Hutch merely smiled a secret smile and looked at him from under his eyelashes “Oh damn you, blondie!”
“You can do my back.”
“Thanks. Bastard.”
Just out of reach, wantonly posing as he stroked oil over his body, Hutch was a remote narcissus and Starsky bit his lip in frustration. He wanted to rage with anguished need, but that was what his lover was expecting. Starsky stayed silent, subduing his instincts to plead for the delights of the blond’s loving. Even when his own body was anointed, carefully and teasingly, leaving no crease or crevice untouched, he held his breath and tried to stop his body shuddering with its desire to be free. To touch, to hold, to worship, to yield, to dominate. But most of all to love.
Hutch gleamed under the lights of the gym. Golden statue come to life. Starsky knew that his own, darker body was also enhanced by the oil, sheened and glowing. He lifted his chin a little higher, proud of his slenderness, his flat belly, his erect cock and his muscled legs, and arrogantly certain that he was still very desirable to his lover, even if his hair was gray.
“Well?” Starsky asked encouragingly when the oiling was complete. “Are you a man with a plan?”
“Oh yes.”
“What?”
“You want that new car….” Oh yes, Starsky wanted it! Sleek, shining, black and fast. Very fast. Which was why Hutch didn’t want him to have it. “…And you know how I’ve always wanted that piano….” Hutch’s baby grand, coveted and yet something the blond had denied himself as an out-of-reach luxury. “…Well, we’re gonna fight… wrestle… and whoever wins gets what he wants.”
“And whoever loses?” This was just too easy. Hutch had something unpleasant up his sleeve.
“Whoever loses?” The blond radiated innocence. “Well, it just so happens….” He went to the cupboard in the corner of the room and opened the door. When he turned again, Starsky took one look at what he held and groaned.
“Oh, fuck it, Hutch, not that! You know how I hate wearing that goddam thing! Christ… the last time you made me wear it you lost the goddam key! How long did it take you to pick the lock?”
“This is a new one.” Hutch grinned. “Two keys… and bigger.”
“Oh, come on!”
“Not much bigger. You can take it, babe. All of it. And if you lose, you’ll wear it for one whole week between nine in the morning and five in the evening.”
“You bastard!” Starsky shook his head, feeling the collar rub against his skin. “You sneaky, devious, cunning, underhanded bastard!”
“Ain’t I?” There was a sparkle in Hutch’s eyes. A glitter of excitement, a hint of daring, a suggestion of a challenge. “I want a real fight, Davey. And you don’t have any choice. If you won’t wrestle, then I’ll call you the loser.”
Starsky knew he was cornered. He bit his lip and the nodded.
“All right,” he said. “You’ll regret this.”
Naked, without Starsky’s collar or Hutch’s briefs, they faced one another on the big mat, crouched in the classic pose of wrestlers and watching one another warily.
They had never, Starsky thought grimly, fought seriously before. Not in all the years they had been together. They were well matched and he did not know if he could win. Yet Hutch had worked out his strategy carefully and would willingly and happily sacrifice that in favor of Hutch’s piano because he loved his blond and it would give him great pleasure to see the man have what he wanted. No, he would fight to avoid the loser’s punishment because he had sworn never again would he let Hutch force him to wear it. Damn Hutch! Damn him and his smart ideas!
Hutch feinted an attack. Starsky found himself responding automatically and suddenly the blood was singing in his veins. He felt vitally alive. He was quicksilver and he was the great god Mars. He was tinglingly aware of every muscle and nerve in his body and he felt young again. Young and strong and capable of parrying that first attack.
He would not use his fists. Whatever Hutch might do, he would not punch, but as he used the blond’s own weight to try and throw him off-balance, they both fell onto the mat. Oiled bodies slipped and slid against one another, their hands were unable to grasp firmly and their breath came quickly, but when their eyes locked in a gaze of fierce excitement, the fire in Starsky’s belly burned higher. Whoever won, whoever lost, the loving would be incredible.
And he was losing. It was with a sense of shock that he realized he was slowly and carefully being pinned to the mat. He couldn’t be beaten so easily! He reared upwards, freed an arm and tried to force Hutch away from him. Jesus Christ, but the man seemed to have gotten heavier with the years! Starsky could remember a time when he could pick the blond up and throw him on the bed. Their bed. Now it was an effort to lever Hutch upwards and sideways, but he managed it and was rewarded with a grunt of annoyance and surprise.
“What makes you think…” he gasped out, “…that you can win… that goddamn easy?”
“Just testing you!”
“Yeah.”
They rolled in a wonderfully exhilarating tangle of arms and legs, bodies pressed tightly together, twisting and turning as each fought for supremacy. Starsky felt invincible. He was even confident enough to snatch a bruising kiss from the panting mouth of his lover as he wrestled Hutch’s arms above his head.
“Say goodbye to your piano, baby!” he whispered mockingly.
“Oh yeah?” Hutch moved his hips sensuously, grinding them invitingly against Starsky’s pelvis, and Starsky responded helplessly, as always, in the lure of that sexual invitation. Hutch laughed, a low triumphant chuckle of sound and then they were struggling once more, limbs now glistening with sweat as well as with the oil.
Starsky wanted it finished. And quickly. As fast as it had arrived he was losing his feeling of vital ebullience. He was a middle aged man of forty-five. He was fooling himself when he tried to believe that he—that they—were still young.
“Fuck me,” he said simply, and he stared up into the wide blue eyes and spread his thighs. “I don’t want to fight you. It’s wrong.”
“My game.” The rules of the gym precluded argument. Starsky was breaking those rules and he knew it. Hutch had defined what he wanted and Starsky’s part was to accept. For the first time he did not feel that he could do it. “Fight or lose,” Hutch said softly. “You turning chicken, lover?”
“No, I just…”
“So fight!” Hutch sank his teeth into Starsky’s shoulder and Starsky felt the pain, reacted violently, and suddenly the battle became real and savage with both of them using everything they knew to subdue and conquer the other. And inside, all the time, Starsky was weeping. Because they were using their bodies against one another and it was wrong. Terribly and tragically wrong. Hutch was his lover, not his enemy and they should be exhausting themselves with loving and not with this awful struggle for victory. His cry of protest echoed around the high walls.
Suddenly as swiftly as it had all begun, it was over. Starsky lay on his back, dragged air into his lungs and waited for the next onslaught. It never happened. Suddenly he was being sheltered in the compassionate curves of Hutch’s arms, his wet, slippery, shaking body being stroked and gentled and soothed.
“I’m sorry,” Hutch said uncertainly. “You were right and I was wrong. I’m sorry. You win….”
“Neither of us has won.” Starsky turned to lay his face against the blond’s chest. “The game got out of hand, that’s all.”
“I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
“Happens to all of us. Tell me you love me.”
“I love you.”
The mat upon which they fought would become the bed upon which they would love. Starsky’s crazy world of a few minutes before righted itself and everything fell back into place with reassuring ease. He knew that Hutch’s body would be his to own and his to yield to, and he sighed in relief.
“I love you, too.” Contentedly he snuggled closer and closed his eyes.
“Maybe we should give up using the gym like this.” Hutch sounded worried. “In case I get any more dumb ideas.”
Being the head of IA was not going to make Hutch infallible. Starsky shook his head and relaxed under caressing fingers.
“It’s okay,” he said gently. “We just make a new rule, that’s all. And besides…” He had not bought those peacock feathers and the furry toy snake and the stick-on sequins to see them wasted. “… I’ve got another game for us to play.”
END
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Dear Alana:
A dark tale, illuminated by our boys’ mutual love for each other. You made unexpected choices (Hucth in IA!) and welcome choices (I like the sound of Captain Starsky!) and somehow managed to make it all work out. I especially liked the parts where Hutch was in danger during the worst of the sweeps performed by IA (the toy gun bomb was completely unexpected as was the rocket launcher that took out the penthouse) All told, a grand bold adventure with tons of emotional back-blasts. I’m glad our guys got to live together and be happy. Thank you for writing and sharing.
Kath Moonshine