Finding Hutch

Table of Contents

120,855 words.

Finding Hutch follows Saving Starsky.

PROLOGUE

Starsky didn’t ever think he’d have the urge, not to that degree, to where he’d actually act on it, but he did. He’d never even entertained the thought; what was the point, after all? But it came unexpectedly none-the-less, without any warning whatsoever, not even a deep, fleeting thought in his subconscious seemed to trigger it, and the urge came powerfully. He’d been quite aroused in Hutch’s presence before, in and outside of his clothes, from across a room or right up against his nude body, with near-to-bursting erections, and purely from long-lasting kisses. But never, during those times, not once, did he have the urge to be inside Hutch; to be in his hand, yes; inside his mouth, for certain, but never inside inside him, in between his legs, buried in Hutch as deeply as his penis could go, to have actual intercourse with him. Starsky had always been pretty good about not wanting or even thinking about things he couldn’t have.

But for some reason, on that late summer afternoon, in that unplanned moment, or maybe because of it, the desire struck him, and it was strong, compelling, urgent, and unforgiving. He didn’t ask. He didn’t even seduce. He simply followed his instinct and his want, maneuvered himself between Hutch’s naked legs, thrust his penis up against Hutch’s groin in earnest, and fervently kissed him. Were Hutch a woman, Starsky could have entered him, but there was no opening, nothing to receive him, and his penis was sometimes painfully thwarted with each harder thrust, which only frustrated Starsky more. It wasn’t that he had Hutch pinned—that would be impossible, given the man’s muscle, and because Hutch was at least his physical equal—but he did have the advantage of surprise. He pushed Hutch’s legs open with his own and continued to search for the permissible tightness he sought, the one that would allow him inside the man he desperately wanted to penetrate.

Hutch was immersed in the passion of their kisses, in the physical feel of their nudity, Starsky’s slick, perspiring skin against his, in the familiar sounds of their breathing and moans, and in his own sexual urgency. He didn’t notice Starsky’s intention because he was wrapped up in his own—at least not for a few minutes, and even then he didn’t read it accurately. He thought Starsky simply masturbated against him, inside his legs, along the firmness of his thigh. Maybe Starsky’s difficulty was borne from their awkward position. Hutch loved kissing Starsky and feeling Starsky’s hands on his face and listening to Starsky’s pleasure and enjoying the pleasingly hungry ache of his own penis pressed to Starsky’s belly. But when he finally noticed Starsky’s unusual thrusting between his legs, occasionally hurting him when Starsky determinedly bumped up against his scrotum, Hutch gave himself a moment to decipher what Starsky wanted of him, so he could help the man out.

But Hutch didn’t get the chance to understand Starsky’s intention because Starsky, sensing Hutch’s pause, caught himself, became conscious of that sudden, powerful, aching urge to be inside Hutch, and was consumed instead by a wave of self-alarm. He was so terrified of what he’d done, so certain he’d committed a fatal mistake, so keenly aware then that he’d inadvertently solicited Hutch for something he’d never even discussed with him, that he pulled away from their kisses and from their fondling and from his thrusting, to abruptly stop himself before he caused any more damage.

“Hey,” Hutch whispered between pants, when he noticed Starsky’s withdrawal. “What are you doin’?”

Starsky misunderstood. He thought Hutch demanded to know why he had attempted to penetrate him, not that Hutch wanted to know why Starsky had stalled at such a critical moment; they were close to finishing. But, for the second time in his life—that time to protect himself, not Hutch—Starsky lied to him. Even then, and in a moment of weakness, under sudden duress, as he tried to explain himself in a way that Hutch would forgive him, he said the all-too-wrong thing. He meant something completely different from the words that emerged from his mouth. “I need to save that for Grace,” he said.

In Hutch’s mind, he may as well have been slapped in the face and without provocation. Hutch understood and appreciated that there were times when they couldn’t play because Starsky had plans with Grace or because Starsky had already bedded Grace, but to have engaged Hutch as fully as he had on Hutch’s bed under the ceiling fan that afternoon and then, in the middle of it, if not near the end of their sex together, to stop his orgasm in order to give it to Grace, to give it to anyone else, was a deeply painful and irrecoverable injury.

Hutch’s breath got knocked out of him. He physically sank into the mattress and felt his head spin. He breathed heavy. He felt the blood drain from every part of his body to his feet. He felt heartsick and angry, hurt and confused, rejected and manipulated, all coupled with an unfulfilled sexual frustration he couldn’t handle. Starsky had never done anything so cruel to him as he’d done just then. He pushed Starsky with both hands. “Get off me,” he ordered. He meant to tell Starsky to leave the bed, to leave the room, to leave the house, but he didn’t have the strength to use the words; he could barely make the effort to speak the ones he did.

Starsky resisted the move off Hutch. He panicked. “I didn’t say that right,” he hurriedly explained.

Hutch didn’t think there was any right way to say it. He was disgusted. “Get off me,” he said again, focusing on what he wanted Starsky to do in order to thwart the frustration of his unmet sexual pleasure, and then said, “I’m going to shower.” He figured Starsky would at least oblige him for that. When he pushed Starsky again, Starsky rolled his weight off him to allow him to leave the bed.

“Let me tell you what I meant,” Starsky begged.

“Forget about it,” Hutch heatedly replied. “You made your point.”

Starsky watched Hutch’s naked backside disappear into the bathroom. Less than a minute later, he heard the shower spray while he lay on the bed on top of the blankets in the dimly lit room and cussed himself for his stupid whims. There was no way to recover from what he’d done and what he’d said without some sort of punishment. He could tell the truth, that he wanted to anal-sex Hutch, and then set them on yet another awkward path of painful soul-searching and obligation—because anal-sexing Hutch was something Hutch had made very clear, from the beginning, that he’d never want to do. Granted, every step into their intimacy had been against Hutch’s initial will, but even Starsky could appreciate Hutch’s sensibilities about not wanting to be penetrated by a man, even though Hutch had done that very thing to Starsky—and more than once.

But if Starsky told that truth, the truth of his desire, he’d then be the brunt of Hutch’s hostility again, too. Or he could lie and continue to hurt Hutch’s feelings by letting him believe he had that penetration urge for Grace when, in fact, he’d had that urge for Hutch. Whichever explanation he used, Starsky was in trouble. It made him sick to his stomach. He got off the bed after a couple of minutes, which was how long it took him to find his bravery, and joined Hutch in the bathroom. Maybe Hutch would start a conversation and Starsky could feel his way along to a resolution.

Through the steamed window, he saw Hutch—nude, and slightly bent over with his hands braced on the tiled wall; he hung his head while water showered him, was obviously flaccid—and he didn’t move. Starsky then spun in the doorway, torn between bolting for safety and confronting his fear of Hutch’s anger. Hutch was gravely hurt, Starsky could tell, which made Starsky more ashamed for the pain he’d caused—and kept causing.

But he finally opened the glassed door and entered the shower. Maybe the hot water would calm his own nerves and give him courage to put his hands on Hutch and tell him, just by touch alone, that he’d meant no harm, that he’d been stupid, that he would work harder to be more responsible next time. Perhaps the shower would give him the excuse he needed to be physically intimate with Hutch and ease the blow as he explained himself. But every apology he had were things he’d said more than once—more than twice—over the past few months as he pursued and needed and desired Hutch, and they would be useless even then. He struggled to find the right words that time, to make sure what he said next was appropriate and healing and would bring him forgiveness.

But Hutch didn’t give him the opportunity to say anything. He heard and then felt Starsky’s presence in the shower, so he straightened off the wall. Without looking at him, Hutch abruptly left the stall with a parting shot. “Have fun,” he said dryly. “I got the water ready for you, too.”

“C’mon, man,” Starsky plaintively begged him again, but it didn’t stop Hutch’s departure. “I didn’t mean it the way you took it,” he argued.

Starsky stood for a minute under the hot water, and then washed and rinsed himself. He shut off the valves, left the stall with a pounding heart, grabbed the remaining towel, and dried himself as he walked into the bedroom, expecting to see Hutch still there—but Hutch wasn’t. Starsky redressed. He pulled on his jeans, climbed into his shirt, buttoned it, followed it with his socks and his shoes, and quickly tied their laces. All the while his stomach hurt; he broke a different kind of sweat and cussed himself for his stupidity.

Once dressed, he looked through the house for Hutch—in the living room and kitchen, on the front porch and in the gym—but Hutch wasn’t in those places, either. Through a window, Starsky could see that Hutch’s truck was still in the driveway, so he knew Hutch hadn’t left the premises. It made him remember to look on the patio—and that’s where he found him, fully dressed, on a chair in the sun, his translucent blond hair still wet and anger boiling in his eyes.

Starsky opened the door and stepped outside to join him. He didn’t know what he’d say, but he knew he had to say something, that the conversation had to begin somewhere, and he was the one who needed to initiate it. But, for the third time that morning, Hutch didn’t give him the chance. His rage was too close to the surface and it burned.

“How would you feel if I did that to you?” Hutch vehemently shot at him. “How can you not think I have any feelings about this? especially after all this time and all we’ve been through over it?”

Starsky tried to swallow the choke in his throat, but couldn’t. He averted his eyes instead and searched for an answer.

Hutch wasn’t finished. “Do you do that to Grace? Get close to a good cum and then tell her you’re saving it for me?”

Starsky never could handle Hutch’s anger. He could absorb a lot—and had—but the rage he often received from his brother-by-fate was more than he could take. Hutch feared losing Starsky; Starsky feared Hutch would abandon him—a delicate difference, but a difference nonetheless. Starsky thought it best then, no matter what was to be said, that he do it another time, under different circumstances, when emotions returned to some semblance of normal. He swallowed his pride and his fear and his sorry and backed toward the door. “Maybe I’ll see you later,” he managed to say. Even that was stupid. Maybe he’d see Hutch later? Of course, he’d see Hutch later. The fight that afternoon hadn’t been a deal breaker. He silently cussed himself again for being inarticulate and stepped into the doorway. He would have left at that moment, too, but Hutch called his name.

“Starsky,” was all Hutch said, as if Hutch had climbed down from his rage and his hurt and his offense and wanted Starsky to stay and work it out with him, but when Starsky paused and locked eyes with Hutch to give him his attention, he heard something he didn’t expect.

“Fuck you.”

This was no play. Hutch’s tone conveyed his seriousness. He was further enraged that Starsky chose, yet again, to walk away from a fight when he had every opportunity to throw a reciprocating punch, to at least argue it out, wrestle it to the ground, resolve their differences, end their pain and the strain between them.

“In fact,” Hutch annoyingly added, “fuck off, too. Fuck you and fuck off. Get the hell out of my house and out of my face and don’t come back until you’ve grown up. But be sure to jerk yourself off in the meantime—because you’re going to be the only one left who’ll want to.”

Starsky had his answer. He knew what he had to do. He had to tell the truth. No matter the outcome or the reprimand, it was the one thing he owed Hutch. Not to be facetious nor to be condescending or patronizing, Starsky used Hutch’s words to begin his own. “I wanted to fuck you,” he said, “not myself.”

Hutch misunderstood. “Go to hell, Starsk.”

Starsky bravely stepped toward him. He knew Hutch could easily lunge at him and catch him off guard or off balance, punch him hard in the gut, slap his face to add insult to serious injury, but Starsky didn’t care. The truth pressed him forward. “I meant what I said, Hutch. I wanted to fuck you.” He said it that time without the emphasis—though he hoped by calling Hutch by his name he could better make his point.

It made Hutch listen to Starsky more closely, because he knew Starsky was serious then, though he didn’t fully understand the meaning. His voice leveled. “Repeat what you just said.”

Visibly swallowing his adrenaline and fear, Starsky positioned a patio chair as close and in front of Hutch as he could, with its back to Hutch, then mounted the chair, faced him, and was as direct as he could be. “I said, I wanted to fuck you.”

Hutch bored into Starsky’s sorry-filled blue eyes. He didn’t know what Starsky meant, but he did know he wanted to know. “Come again?” he said, more invitingly.

“I wanted to fuck you,” Starsky repeated. He wasn’t playful, any more than Hutch was, but he trembled as he burned off the notion that Hutch would physically strike him. “I never had the urge before, you know? I never even think about it. I haven’t dared, I guess. But when we were in bed just then, I had this … I wanted to fuck you and I wanted to so badly, I tried—without thinking and without asking for permission.”

Hutch sincerely couldn’t help his impulsive reply. “I’m flattered.” But he had to replay those minutes in his mind. He didn’t know how he’d missed Starsky’s attempt until he rewound it and realized, when he had thought Starsky awkwardly masturbated against him, that Starsky actually tried to enter him. Hutch’s stare softened, but he was no less confused by what it meant and how Grace fit into the equation.

Starsky read his mind. “When you asked me what I was doing, I thought you knew and you were going into a meltdown over it. I panicked. I didn’t know what to say, so I said something stupid to throw you off track. I said I was going to ‘save that for Grace’, but what I meant was that I would save that fuck urge for her—so you wouldn’t be pissed at my wanting to fuck you.”

Hutch dropped his weight into his chair and looked more calmly at Starsky. His lover was contrite. Starsky was tense and he looked sorry and he appeared afraid, too. Why wouldn’t he be? Every time he asked Hutch for something else, whether it be with words or with actions, Hutch knocked him around—emotionally—only to follow him forward in the end. It was he then who felt a need to explain his resistance to receiving Starsky’s penetration, that it was he who feared what Starsky would ask of him next. “I don’t know where this thing between us is going to end,” he said, “where you’ll draw the line, I mean.”

Starsky was relieved to see the light return to Hutch’s blue eyes; it had always been a reflection of his soul and, despite Hutch’s breaking points, his abusive behavior and his sometimes rage, the man was a good one. Starsky would trade his own life for Hutch’s. He was reminded of that again as he noticed Hutch’s effort not to ridicule him for his recent desire. Or even seem to be offended. “What line are you afraid I’ll want to cross?” Starsky asked.

Hutch didn’t really have an answer. Perhaps it was something as benign as the unknown. He tried to lighten his apprehension. “A threesome?”

“We already did that,” Starsky said.

“With a man.”

“Oh.” Another fantasy Starsky had never entertained. “I see.” His nerves settled. He was almost amused—almost, but not quite. He didn’t take Hutch’s fear lightly. He did want to laugh at the idea, for a second there, anyway, because it was absurd. “So, you think what I want from you is just sex then. Let’s see how far I can take this thing until it’s too far—because all I’m really wanting is the sex? It has nothing to do with you, specifically?”

“Adam?” Hutch reminded him. Why should he feel special when Starsky had already bedded another man?

Starsky explained it best he could. “I never wanted to fuck him—and I didn’t. But you …” He trailed off when he realized he was about to repeat again that he’d had that penetration urge for Hutch, so instead he said, “but you’re special.” He winked at him.

Hutch admired Starsky’s face, his sunlit blue eyes and hair, his midnight blue shirt, and his more relaxed posture, and was glad they’d finally begun to recover. “Well, okay, you’re right,” he said. “This isn’t just about sex. It’s about you and it’s about me and it’s now about Us—in a completely different way. So I’ll try to stop worrying about orgies and other men.”

“Good plan,” Starsky said.

“But what about other things?”

“Like what?”

“Um … sex toys.”

“Why do those scare you?” Starsky had never given thought to them, either, but he was curious about Hutch’s fears.

Hutch tried a smile. “I have pain issues.”

“So you think I’d do something to hurt you,” Starsky surmised, appreciating Hutch’s apprehension.

“Not on purpose.”

“You don’t think I’d be extra careful with you,” Starsky imagined. It wasn’t a question, but it triggered one of Hutch’s.

“So what are you saying?” Hutch wondered. “You want to play with sex toys?”

Starsky really didn’t want to smile. They’d had quite the hurtful exchange that afternoon and he didn’t want to belittle it, but he was amused underneath his concern about Hutch’s colorful imagination. Despite it, pure honesty was the order of the day, too. “Let me put it to you this way,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you want to do—and I’ll not do whatever you don’t want to do. Which is why I was wrong to try to do something with you today that you’ve already made clear you don’t want to do. I was wrong, Hutch. And I was stupid.”

Hutch reflected again to that moment and how little he understood then what Starsky wanted while Starsky was in the act of trying. At some point, of course, it would have been clear what Starsky wanted and, for the first time, Hutch imagined how he’d react to that. “Had I known your plans,” he quietly explained as he lightly kicked Starsky’s chair, “I’d have put a knee in your groin.”

“I wish you had,” Starsky said. “That’d hurt less than your words.”

“Do you understand what I thought you meant?”

“You took me at my words,” Starsky said, “that I was saving my cum, my climax, for Grace. They just happened to be the wrong words—because what I meant was the ‘fuck urge’. I deserved what I got. Make no mistake.”

Hutch wasn’t sure. Starsky wasn’t always tactful, but he was never intentionally hurtful, either.

“But you have to know,” Starsky added, “that I’m never going to want to stop for anybody—and I mean, anybody—when I’m in the middle of something with you, no matter how it looks to you or what I say.”

“I know that now.”

They exhaled, together.

“So, what says you?” Starsky asked. “Want to go back and start over?”

“You’re not going to want to fuck me if we do, are you?”

Starsky shifted his eyes to beneath Hutch’s chair and stared a moment at the cement while he searched his soul for his answer. Then he looked at Hutch, into his blue eyes, into an expression that wanted a genuine answer. “I guess I know I want to,” he said, “but I promise never to try unless you want me to.”

Hutch didn’t think he’d ever want Starsky to penetrate him. On his second thought, he couldn’t remember ever fantasizing about having Starsky anal-sex him, and he wondered why. Was it a ‘pain issue’? Was it fear of humiliation, shame, repulsion? He didn’t worry that such an act—one leveled against him as opposed to one he committed—would mean he himself was gay, or even that it would matter if he was, nor was he offended by anything he and Starsky had done, so what was his real hangup? What his father would think of him if he knew?

He felt Starsky kick his chair; it made him look up into those blue eyes.

“What are you thinking?” Starsky asked.

“I wouldn’t dare tell you.”

When Starsky imagined what Hutch had been thinking, it made him finally break with a smile. “Do you sometimes think about me fucking you?”

“No,” came the quick, firm reply.

The answer surprised Starsky. Or disappointed him. “Oh,” he said, dismayed.

But Hutch searched further. “Sometimes, though, when I’m doing you, I can’t help but notice what a good time you’re having and I think maybe I’d like to have some of that, too. But I don’t think about it in conscious terms, know what I mean? I don’t think to myself, ‘Well, the good he’s having requires a dick in your ass.’ When I think that, I think it’s not something I want to do.”

“Well, there isn’t anything like getting fucked,” Starsky promised.

“Nuthin’, huh?”

“Nuthin’. It might even be better than the one doing the doing, but I don’t know.”

“Well, maybe someday, when I’m totally wasted and having a weak moment, I’ll experiment with you.”

Starsky crossed his arms on the back of the chair and got as close to Hutch as he could. “So I’ll have to wine and dine you first, hm, cowboy?” he guessed.

Hutch sat forward, too. He grasped the back of Starsky’s neck, pulled his face up against his own, and then kissed his mouth. “Wine and dine me and then some,” he said, stealing another kiss. “But not today. Today I don’t want to deal with it, okay? Let’s just go back in the house and make magic.”

“After you, Blondie,” Starsky affectionately replied. “I’ve been sitting here for the past ten minutes with a hard-on that’s got your name all over it.”

* * *

MATTERS OF THE HEART

“What about this other thing?” Dr. Jade asked. He stared purposefully at Hutch.

“What other thing?”

“You know what thing.”

“I have no idea what thing.”

Jade glared at him, hard, and hoped it would force Hutch to confess what he believed Hutch needed to confess. He just didn’t want to do it for him. And so they looked at each other for a few minutes, long ones, while Jade waited and Hutch wondered what Jade wanted from him.

“There isn’t something you want to talk about,” Jade finally asked, “something you’ve kept bottled up inside you for some time now?”

Hutch felt suddenly anxious and off-guard to think there was some secret he held that he wasn’t aware of or that he repressed. He felt Starsky’s silent presence and wondered if he and Jade knew something he didn’t. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he reiterated.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Jade said.

* * *

“Have I ever told you …?” Starsky asked.

“Told me what?”

Starsky lay on his back, on the sofa in the living room, in the dim light of the television screen and two small candles, with the back of his head in Hutch’s lap, and looked up at him.

Hutch dropped his chin to return the eye contact. “Told me what?” he repeated.

“How much I’ve liked looking at you from this angle?”

When Hutch realized where Starsky had to be to see him from that vantage point, they broke up laughing. “I like the underside of your chin, too,” Hutch said, “and the back of your head.” He loved sex from behind his lovers and Starsky was no exception. In fact, they’d just engaged in an anal copulation on the master room bed, then showered together, got dressed, and collapsed on the sofa for some late night TV.

Starsky had cozied in Hutch’s lap. He dozed for a few minutes that way, with his face pressed into Hutch’s shirt at his belly and his head nested in Hutch’s sweat pants at his groin. When he slowly woke from his night dream, he looked up at Hutch and studied the smooth underside profile of Hutch’s chin. He fondly remembered how often he’d seen it while he orally pleased Hutch. The idea of it made Starsky want more sex just then. “Make me come again,” he begged. He shoved Hutch’s hand to his crotch, to the outside of his jeans zipper, and massaged himself with it. “You know—how you used to do—make me come with just your hand.”

Hutch was impressed that Starsky could recover so quickly from his very recent and draining orgasm—or even that he’d want to, given how exhausted they both were—but he willingly agreed to oblige his partner. He slipped the button from its hole in Starsky’s waistband and tugged at the zipper.

Starsky stopped him. “I wasn’t serious,” he said.

“You’re just baiting me?”

“I wanted to see if you’d do it.”

Hutch looked into Starsky’s face and gave him a stern frown, though it wasn’t all that serious, either. “Why are you always testing me?”

“I was checking to make sure you still want to,” Starsky said. “Never trust a man with a hard-on, you know? But you could barely get one now and you still wanted to help me out, so I can trust that.” He studied the candlelight on Hutch’s flawless face, despite its soft dismay, and admired how it accented his features. Then he noticed Hutch’s reprimanding expression. “You’re the one in our right mind,” he explained further, “so I figure you’ll be the one to come to our senses.”

“Well, if I’m the sensible one between us,” Hutch replied, “and I’m doing this with you, it must be because doing it makes sense.”

“You funny.”

Hutch tickled Starsky and got the reaction he wanted.

Laughing, Starsky hugged Hutch’s arm to his chest to stop him—and then watched him for a minute, wordlessly.

The quiet between them settled. They noticed things about the other—the respective colors of their hair, the lengths of their eyelashes, the distinctive shapes of their faces, the looks in their eyes, the amber glow on their skin. Starsky wondered if he noticed these things because he and Hutch were sexually intimate with each other or if it was purely because they lay together on the sofa just then and shared a peaceful intimacy.

Hutch, on the other hand, knew exactly why he noticed Starsky, and it shone in his eyes. It was the same shine Jade had seen in him—and tried to get him to express with words.

“Are you going to kiss me?” Starsky asked. He couldn’t help but see the fondness Hutch had for him then.

“I’m not that flexible,” Hutch said.

“But you want to, right?”

“Yeah,” Hutch said with a laugh. His voice was like melted butter. “I want to. Always.”

Starsky turned his face into Hutch’s shirt again and pressed to his belly; he inhaled Hutch’s scent and his clothes, felt Hutch’s warmth and his presence. That Hutch wanted to kiss him was enough. He closed his eyes, gently smiled, and drifted back into dreamland.

And Hutch set his feet on the coffee table, crossed at the ankles, relaxed further into the sofa cushions, and sleepily watched television while Starsky contentedly dozed in his lap.

* * *

Hutch stretched on the mattress and hoped he’d never have to leave it. He woke because he heard the shower and only then did he realize he was alone in the bedroom. He did and he didn’t want to join Starsky because it meant he’d have to get out of bed. But if Starsky thought it appropriate to shower before their morning sex, maybe he should, too—though he had that thought too late. Just as he racked his brain about whether to join Starsky in the bathroom, he heard the water turn off. The decision was made for him.

He patiently waited, lay on his back with just the sheet to cover his hips and to hide his growing erection, so as to not appear too greedy, his thoughts and his anticipation having made it physically obvious he was excited for Starsky’s return. He dropped his arm over his eyes and listened to the sounds in the bathroom, of drawers closing. Then a blow dryer. That struck him odd. He didn’t care what Starsky looked like; he just wanted him in bed. Hutch had replenished his energy with a good night’s sleep and was prepared to be exhausted again, the notion of which made him laugh at himself. Who knew he’d ever get to feeling this way?

He was so lost in his thoughts, he didn’t realize Starsky had come back into the bedroom until he heard movement much closer to the bed. When he opened his eyes and turned his head, he found Starsky standing right there beside the mattress, dressed in his unbuttoned shirt, pulling up his jeans.

“Hey,” Hutch said to get Starsky’s attention.

Starsky looked at him and smiled, big and broadly. “Hey, there, cowboy.” He looked fresh and refreshed. He seemed happy. “Thought you might sleep forever.” He closed his zipper.

“I’m awake now,” Hutch assured him. He was keenly aware of his erection and didn’t know how Starsky could miss it. “So where are you off to?”

Starsky straightened to button his shirt. “Thought I’d check on my house.”

“I’m sure it’s still there.”

Starsky smirked.

“Grace isn’t home today, is she?” Hutch asked. He didn’t think she would be, but maybe he had misunderstood.

“Tomorrow,” Starsky said, winking at him. “Did you have plans today?”

“Whatever yours are,” Hutch imagined aloud.

Starsky paused and waited. When Hutch didn’t elaborate, he resumed buttoning his shirt. “Mine are to check on my house,” he said. “I’ll be back. You’ll have breakfast waiting for me, won’t you?”

Hutch wanted to have more than food to give Starsky, but Starsky’s reluctance, or at least his disinterest, made Hutch wary. He didn’t want to pressure his partner; their night before had been as satisfying as any other they spent, but Starsky was oddly not in the mood for sex that morning. At first, Hutch thought it was because Grace would soon return from her weekend in the city—she attended a first-time mothers workshop with her pregnant friend and decided to stay at the hosting hotel for the weekend—and that Starsky wanted to save some of himself for her. But Starsky had just reminded him that Grace wouldn’t return until the following day, Sunday, so Hutch didn’t know why Starsky would waste their intimate time together—except that, perhaps and somehow, Starsky simply wasn’t interested in sex right then.

Hutch noticed Starsky waited for an answer, so he had to think back to the question. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll have breakfast waiting for you.” He rubbed his stiffened penis through the sheet to ease its want, hoping Starsky wouldn’t notice and realize he was disappointed, but he did, though he didn’t say he had; he simply eyed it, briefly. So maybe they’d get to play with each other later then. Maybe Starsky simply needed more time to recover. Maybe Starsky wanted to reenergize so he could have a fully gratifying experience—given that they had the entire property to themselves for the first time in a long while.

Or maybe Starsky was troubled by something, some reflection on his ordeal at the hands of those rapists, and he wanted to avoid anything that made him think about them that particular morning. Maybe, maybe, maybe … Whatever it was, it wasn’t like Starsky to dress and leave the house, not without sex first, anyway.

“Something you want to tell me?” Hutch asked.

Starsky finished buttoning his shirt and looked at Hutch. “Nothing. Why?”

“Just seems your house can wait,” Hutch said.

“For what?”

“Wait for what?”

“What can my house wait for?” Starsky asked, impatiently.

Hutch didn’t want to mention sex if that wasn’t what was on Starsky’s mind; he didn’t want Starsky to feel pressured to deliver if he couldn’t, and he himself didn’t want to be rejected, despite that he already felt he had been.

When Hutch didn’t say anything, Starsky shrugged at him, and then sat on the edge of the mattress to pull on his socks and shoes. “I’m thinking pancakes,” he said as he tied the laces.

“You’re always thinking pancakes.”

Starsky could tell Hutch wasn’t happy; his erection was no longer noticeable under the sheet. But if Hutch wanted sex, he could ask for it. “Okay,” Starsky said. “How about waffles then?”

There was no humor in Hutch’s reaction. He watched Starsky and Starsky watched him and neither said a word. So Starsky dropped his foot to the floor and stood. “I can bring back donuts if you’d rather,” he said.

“I’ll make waffles,” Hutch surrendered. “See you here inside an hour?”

Starsky patted Hutch’s leg. “An hour it is,” he promised. Then he turned and left the room without even a kiss goodbye.

“See ya,” Hutch replied. He stared at the empty doorway long enough to push his strength over his unavoidable hurt of rejection—and then he got out of bed and headed for the shower.

* * *

REDEEMED

“So what’s the problem?” Jade asked. He had met with Hutch in private before—once, and that was two days after Hutch had his first intercourse with Starsky—and because Hutch had such an unexpected struggle over it. Jade had found him looking terribly confused and withdrawn then. On this particular afternoon, however, Hutch didn’t seem as burdened, but he’d asked for a private session, so Jade knew Hutch was at least troubled by something.

He handed Hutch his trademark water bottle and then sat across from him in the armchair. “You guys still headed in a healthy direction?” he wondered.

“I don’t know,” Hutch answered. He stared a moment into the water as he held the bottle in both hands. He didn’t know about direction at all. “Things seemed to be going quite well and then, just like that, they stopped going.”

“How so?”

Hutch lifted his eyes and looked into Jade’s. One thing that always struck Hutch about Jade was how genuine the doctor was, how concerned he was for his clients, and maybe for some more than others. He believed Jade was fond of him and Starsky, at least of him, anyway. He didn’t know how to explain himself, but he tried. “We were settled in this place…” he began. “We had a routine, I guess you could say—I mean, that we check in with each other every day and we usually do something together, like go to the hardware store, or build a flower box for Grace, or organize office files, or grab something to eat, or knock on doors, or whatever. That’s what we’ve done every day for the past decade—check in and do something. And then, for the past couple of months, anyway, we had sex every day, too, as part of a routine—up until about a week ago, that is. A week ago, for no apparent reason, we stopped having sex.”

“You stopped having it every day or—?”

“We stopped having it, period.”

“And by sex, you mean?”

“Sex,” Hutch emphasized, “anal sex. Me to him. And no reciprocated handjobs. And he doesn’t… ”

“Doesn’t, what?”

“Suck me, either. He doesn’t even kiss me anymore.”

Jade simply wanted to be clear before he proceeded. “You haven’t been intimate with each other in a week then, you mean?” he asked.

“Right. Not in a week,” Hutch said. “Once a day—often twice a day, occasionally three times, but always once a day—for the past two months, and now nothing for a week.”

“May I assume it was Starsky who stopped?”

“Yeah. I want it with him—still, but he’s not… showing signs of interest anymore.”

“What were his signs of interest?”

Hutch had to think. He leaned back in his chair and stared away for a few moments to examine them. “Well, there was no mistaking his signs of interest,” he decided. “His passes were quite overt. He’d take what he wanted. He wants a kiss, he goes for a kiss. He wants a blowjob, he strips naked and asks for one, and, if not with words, with obvious body language—like pulling my face into his hard-on. He wants intercourse, he oils us up and asks me to fuck him. I’m asleep, he wakes me—with hands, mouth, his dick. I’m busy, he interrupts me. He wants to suck me, he unzips me. He’s not shy.”

Jade was impressed. “The perfect lover. So, tell me what happened a week ago—or what didn’t happen.”

“We had sex the night before; fairly intense, liberated sex,” Hutch said. “I’m thinking I’ve never been more satisfied in my life. No woman has ever made me feel like that. It was sex and it was emotional and it felt more natural and authentic than any sex I’ve had before—with anybody else or even with him. We watched TV afterward—like he likes to do. He seemed genuinely and completely satisfied, too; was playful, you know, his normal friendly self, and then we went to bed together, to sleep, I mean. The next morning, he apparently got up before I did—and took a shower without me. Then, despite noticing I had a major hard-on for him, he got dressed, said a playful goodbye, and left the house.”

“And normally he would have—?”

“On the nights he stays over, he usually wakes me with a blowjob. He’d never let an erection go wasted—or a possible one—even if it was only mine.”

Jade didn’t know what to think. He needed more answers. He settled further into his chair. He could see that Hutch was confused and frustrated, but he didn’t believe Hutch was devastated, nowhere near the way he had been at their first private session. It made it easier to explore Hutch’s mind—and the possibilities. “Could he have been hiding anger or hurt and was too afraid or too proud to show it?” Jade asked.

“He didn’t seem to be.”

“Did you see him later that day?”

“He came back for breakfast an hour later.”

“What was his demeanor?”

“Still his usual playful, naive, charming self.”

“And that alarmed you?”

“Not then, no,” Hutch said. He remembered how excitedly anxious he’d been that day. “But I kept thinking he was going to come on to me, like after breakfast, or late that afternoon when we watched a movie to wait out the heat. Or before dinner. Or that night in bed.”

“He spent the night again?”

“Yeah. That was the plan; Grace was gone, so we spent the entire weekend together, doing all kinds of stuff. We worked some at his house, then some in the orchard, for a while in the office. We hung out together. But no sex on that second day we had to ourselves—which was odd. So, when we went to bed that night, I was sure he was going to want it—but he didn’t.”

“And he seemed his usual ‘charming’ self all day, you said.”

“I couldn’t have told you there was a thing wrong with him or between us, except for this little matter of what he didn’t do.”

“So you slept together in the same bed that night, but there was no sex.”

“Not even an innuendo. Not even a kiss goodnight.”

“Were you both naked?”

“Yeah. We’ve always slept in the nude—even before we slept with each other.”

“Did you ask him why he didn’t want sex?”

“No.”

Jade posed the inevitable question. “Why not?”

“Because he’d been talking the previous week about losing his religion and about Biblical sin and whether he’d burn in hell for what we’d done. I was afraid he stopped having sex with me because he decided he was damned if he didn’t.”

“That’s his reasoning, not yours,” Jade noted. “Why didn’t you ask him why he hasn’t been interested in sex with you?”

“If he cut us off because of some religious reason, I didn’t want to talk about it. I’d have been too pissed to hear him out.”

Jade searched instead for what he believed Hutch still didn’t tell him. “So let’s say you’re right. Starsky rethought his actions in light of his religion and decided he no longer wanted sex with a man. But what is it you’re really upset about? It isn’t religion. The fact is you don’t know why he stopped having sex with you so you can’t be angry about any one thing. That’s partly what bothers you.”

“You’re right. I can’t figure it out. You have to know how insatiable he is and how easy sex is for him—comparatively to me, I mean. You’d appreciate better why it’s hard to imagine him stopping—especially when he’s naked in a bed with me, knowing how good the sex is between us.”

“Maybe he hasn’t stopped having sex with you. Maybe he’s just giving you a break.”

“He’s ten times hornier than I am,” Hutch said, “and I’m fairly horny myself.”

Jade clarified himself. “Maybe he hasn’t stopped having sex with you. Maybe he’s waiting for you.”

“To do what?”

“To show an interest in having sex with him.”

The notion startled Hutch. He hadn’t considered it before. It was true that he seldom, if ever, initiated sex with Starsky, but that didn’t stop Starsky from proposing it himself as often as he did. Hutch thought back over the past couple of months to examine how much truth there may have been in Jade’s observation. But the deeper he explored it, the less he thought it was likely. “As I said, Starsky is sexually insatiable,” he reminded Jade after a minute. “Maybe he took time out to see whether I’d make a pass at him, but he wouldn’t take out a week. He’s too… needy. And I might be wrong, but he sure seems to like what we do; I have a hard time believing he cares which one of us starts it.”

“Maybe he’s afraid he’s sexually addicted.”

Hutch didn’t laugh. None of the dialogue amused him. It didn’t ease his anxiety about it, either. “He thinks about sex every five minutes,” he said dryly. “I think about it every six-and-a-half. He’d have to think about it every thirty seconds before he’d start to wonder if he had a problem.”

Jade hoped he could get Hutch to see what Hutch couldn’t see. Or maybe Hutch did see it; he just didn’t want to. “Maybe Starsky is trying to make room in your life for you to have a relationship with a woman, too,” he suggested.

Hutch twirled his water bottle in his hands and gave that thought, as well, then he sadly laughed. “You think he’s that noble a guy?”

“Don’t you?”

Hutch rubbed his eyes and his forehead. The elusive answers had given him a headache. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, I think he’s a noble guy, but is he that noble? Would he really sacrifice something as important as our sex life so I could figure out what I need to figure out about women in my life, as if I’m thinking about women at all anymore? I don’t know if he’s that mindful. Or that devious, for that matter. Remember what I’ve told you: The guy’s had sex with me every day—for a couple of months now—whether or not he’s had sex with Grace. Every single day in that time—with me. I’m not exaggerating.” He lifted an eyebrow at Jade to ask without words whether Jade understood the importance of his sex with Starsky.

Jade understood, but he had more faith in Starsky, too. He believed Starsky was capable of great sacrifice when it came to Hutch. But Hutch didn’t think so. Or Hutch wasn’t certain, anyway. So Jade followed another path. “He’s getting sex at home, so maybe he doesn’t need the sex with you. Maybe his sex life at home has grown into something more satisfying.”

“Overnight?”

“Coupled with his fear of hell…” Jade said. He could tell his answer only angered Hutch; he could see the fire burn in those blue eyes. “Are you jealous of Grace, do you think?”

“No,” Hutch said with conviction. “Never. I’m as sure of that as I am of anything. The part that pissed me off in your supposition was the implication that his withdrawal from sex with me is for reasons of hell.”

Jade was mildly amused. He would have thought that ‘fear of hell’ was a valid reason, but he knew Hutch didn’t believe in hell, therefore Hutch didn’t want to examine something in the context of make-believe. Jade tried another approach. “Does Starsky have any health issues you know of?”

“Health issues?” Hutch asked.

“Impotence problems, mild or otherwise, in the past or present?”

Hutch stared defiantly at Jade until Jade shrugged at him, accepting the absurdity of his question.

“How about digestive ailments?” Jade asked instead.

Hutch sadly laughed. “C’mon, you know we can be sicker than dogs and still want to fuck—and by ‘we,’ I mean men. We can be in the middle of a heart attack and think our rescue lies in a blowjob.”

Jade appreciated what Hutch said, but he was also aware of his own shortcomings when it came to knowing the delicate details of man-on-man sex. “I was thinking something more physical than the flu,” he said, “but I don’t want to sound crass.”

“Be crass. Say anything. I want to figure this out.”

“Well, I mean, maybe he’s having the kinds of digestive ailments that make, um, having anal intercourse impossible.”

Hutch was momentarily distracted by Jade’s discomfort. “You were embarrassed just then,” he noted. He uncapped his water bottle and drew a mouthful of the cool liquid.

“It’s more that I didn’t know how you’d take that question,” Jade said. “So I felt embarrassed for you if it embarrassed you.”

“It didn’t,” Hutch promised him. He stared into his water bottle for a few moments and silently examined Jade’s supposition during the time Jade gave him to think about it. Then he looked up at Jade and said, “Even so, we don’t have anal intercourse every time we have sex, so it’s not like he couldn’t have sex with me and avoid the anal stuff until he felt better. But I can’t see him having ‘digestive ailments’ of that nature for more than a week without showing it in other ways—such as his demeanor, know what I mean?” He sincerely addressed the issue because it was serious. “But he’s been seeming rather happy—like he feels good happy.”

“So maybe something happened, something we haven’t imagined,” Jade supposed, “and for whatever reason, he decided to limit his sex to one partner, except he doesn’t have the guts to tell the other that he’s done so—except through abstinence. That possible?”

Of course it was possible, Hutch thought. All of their scenarios were possible. And others he had thought of before, but couldn’t remember then, were possible, too. Still, it didn’t diminish his frustration. “This whole thing has pissed me off,” he admitted. “If he withdrew because of his religion or because of Grace or because he’s giving me space or because… because… because… doesn’t take away from the fact that he hasn’t told me why.”

Jade had sensed all along that not knowing why Starsky had abandoned sex was the most troubling part of the equation for Hutch. “Which leads me back to one of my original questions,” Jade said. “Why haven’t you asked him?” Before Hutch could answer with his expected list of reasons, Jade made his case. “We can analyze the possibilities until the cows come home, but you’re never going to really know what’s in Starsky’s mind unless you point-blank ask him. And if it’s that you don’t want to ask him for Reason A or Reason B or a combination of reasons, then you’re left with one solution: And that’s to let it go.”

Hutch stared again at Jade. He didn’t like that answer.

Jade could tell Hutch didn’t like it. “If you thought I would have some magic wand or crystal ball that would enable me to peer into the man’s mind,” Jade argued, “then you’ve wasted our time. So why don’t we stop trying to figure out what Starsky thinks or why Starsky did what Starsky did—or didn’t do—and get down to what we can learn: And that’s why Hutch doesn’t ask Starsky what he thinks, and why Hutch doesn’t initiate sex with Starsky, and why Hutch can’t let it go that Starsky is no longer having sex with him. Let’s talk about that, shall we?”

* * *

“I pulled those bags of fertilizer off your truck and dropped them over there by those, um, those… what do you call those things?” Starsky asked.

Hutch lifted his face from the newspaper he read and squinted in the sunshine at Starsky. He hadn’t heard his truck leave the front yard, so he didn’t even know it had been missing. Some detective he was, he inwardly sneered. “Watermelons?” he wondered. “You dropped them by the watermelon patch?”

Starsky sat on the top step of the porch, about a foot from Hutch, with his feet on the step below and his elbows on his thighs. He surveyed the front yard and then heard what Hutch said. “Yeah, those things. Watermelons.” He basked for a few seconds in the warmth of the early morning sun. The weather had cooled and was comfortable. “So whenever you want to start filling holes, let me know.”

Hutch silently nodded as he examined the loose plans he had for that day. He hadn’t expected to see Starsky until later in the day, let alone learn that Starsky had finished a task for him; he didn’t even know if ‘filling holes’ was a play on words, either. When Grace was home, Starsky usually spent the better part of a day with her, and almost always slept at home, too.

But why Starsky was already at work on a landscaping project, Hutch could only guess. He glanced to the driveway and saw that his pickup had been returned to its spot, although it faced the opposite direction. He would have helped Starsky unload the truck and wondered why Starsky hadn’t asked him. The question made him think back over the past half hour to recall what it was he’d been doing while Starsky was in the garden behind the house. When Hutch realized what it was, he felt his heart sink. He’d been in the shower. A week earlier, Starsky would have joined him in it.

Starsky looked over his shoulder at Hutch. “Do you think it’ll be today?” he asked.

“Do I think what will be today?”

“That you want to fill in those holes.”

“Sure.” But his answer was half-hearted. Hutch would rather be in bed with Starsky—or, short of that, they could have unloaded the truck together, filled in the holes, broke a sweat, and showered together—and then ‘rested’ on the bed. He folded the newspaper, dropped it a couple of steps below him, and then shifted his eyes from Starsky’s to the end of the driveway. Would he ever stop wishing? Could he ever let it go? “Do you want to do it now?” he asked.

“No,” Starsky said.

Hutch looked back at him to figure out if Starsky was perturbed or just playful.

Starsky smiled at him. “I just unloaded the truck,” he explained. “I need to sit here for a few minutes and get my second wind. I’m older now, remember?”

“Older than you were an hour ago?”

“Aren’t we all?”

Hutch didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything else. He looked into Starsky’s eyes and wondered whether he could do it long enough and deeply enough to make Starsky cough up answers to his silent questions. There had been a time, not long ago, when they could almost read each other’s minds, but that ability seemed to have faded with their intimacy. Hutch was purely mixed with emotion—and he had been for days. He so loved Starsky, cherished every moment he had with him, including the time they spent right then on the steps, and he was keenly aware that the man beside him was the single most important person in the world to him—and always had been. But, still, his heart was broken and it further ached because he couldn’t even tell his best friend how much.

Starsky noticed that Hutch hadn’t answered him. He noticed Hutch’s blue eyes and their faraway look. He noticed that Hutch hadn’t shaved in a couple of days; light blond whiskers had emerged on his chin and cheeks. He noticed Hutch’s flyaway golden hair—not that Hutch looked weathered and worn, but that his appearance was disheveled, and therefore somewhat primal, attractive, and sexy. He didn’t think Hutch baited him, but he wasn’t sure how to read the expression on Hutch’s face and in those eyes—so he waited.

Hutch glanced down the driveway toward Starsky’s house. He sensed the silence between them and didn’t know how to respond to it. He was usually the first to speak in moments like that, but he didn’t have anything left to say. He’d grown emotionally tired in the past week and didn’t have the energy to match Starsky’s playfulness and engagement. Maybe that’s why his detective skills were dulled.

“You all right?” came an unexpected question.

Hutch didn’t look at Starsky. “It’s the sunshine,” he lied. “It’s got a calming effect on me. It’s a gorgeous day, isn’t it?” He did take time to admire the greenery around the farm, to appreciate the long morning shadows, and the singing birds, and the sound of a riding lawnmower in the distance.

Starsky had known him too long to believe Hutch wasn’t troubled by something. Did his shame and embarrassment over what they’d done privately with each other finally surface? Starsky didn’t dare ask; to ask might trigger an unpleasant, perhaps even cruel, conversation, so maybe Hutch was right: It was a mesmerizing perfect day. He, too, looked down the driveway toward his house and listened to the sounds of nature while he drew a consoling breath. He’d left Grace at home, Grace and her pregnant friend, Jana; they did girl things, he thought; browsed baby furniture magazines or something like that. He couldn’t remember the details. Then his thoughts wandered into Jana’s future before they drifted to his own.

“I’m going to ask Grace to marry me,” he told Hutch, without thinking how Hutch might react, “next month when she and me are in Pismo Beach. I’m going to ask her then.” He glanced at Hutch again and found him that time with a smile on his face. “You laughing at me or are you happy for me?” Starsky asked.

Hutch knew exactly what he was. “I’m happy for you,” he said. “I know you’ve been thinking about it a while, but now you’re actually going to ask her. I think that’s a good thing. I wish you all the luck in the world, you handsome boy. This time next month, I hope I can congratulate you.”

Starsky searched Hutch’s face for telltale signs of insincerity, but found none. Hutch’s genuine smile hadn’t left his face, either—that perfect, very warmly pleased smile. “You really are happy for me, aren’t you?”

“I really am,” Hutch said. He was more than happy for Starsky. He was somewhat relieved, too. Starsky’s plan to ask Grace to marry him may have been the reason Starsky had ended his romance with Hutch. He impulsively reached to squeeze the back of Starsky’s neck, to let him know he meant his words, but he stopped before he made contact. It was in that moment that he realized neither of them had even touched each other in more than a week. In the past, they had been quite physically affectionate—it was the reason those men attacked Starsky in the first place—and suddenly there he and Starsky were, some six months later, after all that had been said and done between them, and they hadn’t so much as given each other a pat on the back in nearly a week.

The realization broke Hutch’s heart that little bit more. His smile disappeared. He felt the hardness of the step beneath him as he struggled to avert his eyes from Starsky’s. If he could have spoken then, he would have proposed that Starsky had rested long enough and they should get to their hole-filling chore. But he couldn’t speak. He even had to bite his lip to stall his emotional reaction, the kind that could have brought tears to his eyes.

“So which is it?” Starsky asked when he noticed the sudden change in Hutch’s demeanor. “You’re happy for me or you’re not happy.”

Hutch couldn’t avoid looking at him again. He did it to call on his love for the man—and to find the courage he needed to answer that question with all the honesty in his heart. “That first part,” he said. “You know that by now.” He could tell Starsky was puzzled and concerned; those things lined Starsky’s face and his brow—and those damn sultry eyes of his, too. Hutch thought maybe he could break Starsky’s worry by saying something inappropriate, like, “Want me to give you a big fat kiss on the mouth to show you how happy I am?” The idea caused him to notice Starsky’s lips—and he flashed, against his will, to the memory of their highly charged kisses. If Starsky agreed to a kiss, even a playful one, Hutch would be elated; if he didn’t agree, Hutch would know to leave the sexual intimacy in their past—once and forever.

“You’re happy for me,” Starsky assumed, not realizing Hutch wanted a kiss, “but you think I’m stupid for getting married.”

Hutch’s heart sank when Starsky didn’t accept his silent invitation. He mustered his strength to lay it behind him. “Why would I think you’re stupid for getting married?”

“Because you think marriage is stupid.”

“For me, it is,” Hutch explained. “Not for you.”

“So, let me get this straight… you think marriage is smart for me, me the guy who never committed to a woman for more than a week or two in his entire life, but—”

“Exactly why.”

Starsky squinted at Hutch, and not because the sun was in his eyes. “Explain yourself.” He wondered if Hutch had always thought marriage was something he should try.

Hutch felt inexplicably exhausted. There was so much he wanted to say and couldn’t—and there was nothing to say. He briefly studied Starsky’s appearance: Starsky’s dark wavy hair and blue eyes, thick eyelashes, the unique shape of his relaxed and handsome face and his mouth, in particular, his sensual lips; the clothes he wore, from his dark green tee-shirt to his belted jeans. Though they sat beside each other, it wasn’t the way they used to sit. In a past not long ago, they sat hip to hip, knee to knee, elbow to elbow.

That afternoon, on that specific day in that moment of time, there was at least a foot between them. And the gap hadn’t been Hutch’s making. Starsky had joined him there on the step and it was Starsky who’d chosen to sit at a distance. It was Starsky who had stopped the intimacy between them, even the plutonic one they’d shared for more than a decade. Maybe it was because Starsky wanted to marry a woman, to settle down with one lover, to raise a family, and to simplify his life. How could Hutch not be happy for that? But he was sad for himself and he was sad for them because they’d grown apart in other ways. It was ironic that not even three brutal rapists had altered their friendship. It took one woman.

Hutch wasn’t gay and he wasn’t even bi-sexual, so who better than he understood the power of a relationship with a woman—especially one as special as Grace?

But none of it didn’t mean it didn’t break his heart, either.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” he heard Starsky say.

Hutch looked at him and—for the first time his life—he couldn’t even remotely read Starsky’s expression. It seemed anticipatory and curious, alarmed and confused, expectant and sorry. Was Starsky all those things? Did he have a mix of emotions, too? Had he followed his head and left his heart behind, as well? Or was he just sorry for Hutch?

“If I had something to tell you,” Hutch said, “you’d have heard it by now.” That part was relatively true; Hutch had never kept silent about anything important—until then.

But Starsky didn’t believe him. “Did I hurt you?” he asked. He hated to think he’d dragged Hutch into a heart-breaking experience, yet he couldn’t imagine that he hadn’t. Their sex life had been his fault, the good and the bad of it. He feared he’d caused irreparable damage and scarred Hutch for life.

Hutch knew, like he knew anything, that if he answered Starsky’s question with sincere honesty, he’d break down right there on the steps. But he couldn’t lie to him, either, so he did the next best thing. He said nothing. He gathered his courage and his resolve, leaned back to his elbows, and stretched his legs out in front of him as he lifted his head toward the empty sky to feel the warmth of the sun on his face.

Starsky waited. He hung on the pause between them. And he watched those blue eyes gaze quietly at the blue overhead and he felt anxious and sick to his stomach and sorry. He didn’t like how things had changed between them, maybe as much as Hutch didn’t like it, but he never meant to hurt Hutch, either. He posed the question again, as if Hutch hadn’t heard him the first time. “Did I hurt you?”

Hutch closed his eyes and painfully drew a breath. “I wouldn’t trade you for the world,” he said with conviction.

Starsky didn’t know what that meant beyond the meaning of the words themselves. He knew there was a breach between them, but how much Hutch despised him for it, he wasn’t certain. What he did know was that Hutch didn’t want to talk about it. Or maybe he couldn’t. Or Hutch thought he shouldn’t. Starsky examined Hutch’s profile and the way the sun made his hair almost translucent and that Hutch hadn’t shaved and that those things alone gave him a much sexier and masculine look. Starsky remembered scratching Hutch’s days-old beard—with his fingers and with his teeth. He had nibbled on Hutch’s chin, kissed his mouth and his cheeks, sucked on Hutch’s nipples, on his erect penis, brought Hutch to orgasm in his hands, in his mouth, inside him—

Starsky snapped out of his thoughts and looked away. Then he crossed his arms and hugged himself to assuage the arousal in him and the pain it caused him to bury it. “You’re not mad at me because I’m going to ask Grace to marry me, are you?” he asked.

“Right.”

“Right you are or right you’re not?”

Hutch opened his eyes, turned his head, and looked over at Starsky. “What part of what I’m telling you aren’t you getting?”

“Well, I mean, you seem… upset about something.”

Hutch was cornered again. “Don’t let appearances fool you.”

“Is that some detective technique of yours?”

Hutch could tell then that Starsky was frustrated and defended himself with sarcasm. So he pushed himself to sit up, dismissed his hurt and his own frustration, and decided to answer the question that seemed most pressing. “You spent a lifetime looking for the better woman than the last one you’d had,” he said, “and you had some mighty fine ones.”

Starsky didn’t argue.

“Not a one was going to nail you to the wall,” Hutch reminded him, “although a couple of them got close. But you love women and you love sex and there was no reason to completely give yourself to any one of them.”

Starsky couldn’t tell if he was being analyzed or chastised.

“I went a different route,” Hutch said. “I thought each woman I fell for was the one I’d been looking for all my life.” He noticed Starsky’s defensive expression, but he had no intention of defusing it until he made his point. “The tables are turned, that’s all. Your life got reinvented for you about six months ago and the woman you didn’t know you’d been looking for was right there all along under your nose. Me? I don’t want one right now.”

Starsky heard something else, too. “You think I want to marry Grace because I can’t do any better?”

“I think you want to marry Grace because you know she could do better.”

“Ouch,” Starsky said. He wasn’t certain he’d just been slammed or Grace had been complimented.

“Those women you dated all had one thing in common: They were common,” Hutch explained.

“Except for the daughter of a mob boss,” Starsky mumbled.

“Well, except for that,” Hutch replied as passingly. “But Grace is a rare and special soul. She didn’t have to put up with a boyfriend who had a boyfriend—but she did. Don’t get me wrong, sweetheart. She’s got a good man. No one knows that better than I do, but she’s got something few have. You know it. I know it. And I believe she knows it. A woman that special can have any man she wants. That’s all I’m saying. You want Grace because you know she’s one-of-a-kind, she’s special—and yet she loves you, you a guy who’s been with more women than he can remember—and you, a guy who’s been with a guy while she’s with you. So am I happy for you? Yes. I’m ecstatic. I mean that and you know I mean that. You finally get to have what you’ve needed all your life. And I…”

When Hutch didn’t finish his sentence, Starsky coaxed him. “You, what?”

Hutch didn’t say what he almost said; it was much too close to how he felt. Instead, he covered for it and replied, “I’m happy for you. I’m happy for you whenever the world gives you back some of what it took from you.”

Starsky looked for a while into Hutch’s eyes. He saw Hutch’s sincerity through them, and Hutch’s genuine affection for him, and Hutch’s honesty—all things he’d gotten from Hutch over the years and still had. Yet he couldn’t help but think he missed something. If Hutch regretted his sexual relationship with him, it would explain the shadow of melancholy in Hutch’s demeanor the past week. Hutch wasn’t sad; he was just sorry he’d done what he’d done sexually with a man.

And Starsky didn’t know how to apologize for that, not then anyway, because he’d been the one to coerce Hutch into it. He nodded that he heard Hutch, then lowered his eyes to the wooden step, and dug at a groove in the board with his thumbnail. He hoped Hutch would say more in the silence that blanketed them, that he would say what he really felt deep down inside him, even if it hurt or frightened Starsky. Hutch usually spoke his mind, so why did he stall?

Hutch watched Starsky for a minute. He looked at his handsome face and its familiar profile, his thick eyelashes and his wavy brown hair, his somewhat defensive posture and his precious presence.

He waited for Starsky.

Starsky waited for him.

Neither said anything.

Then Hutch pushed off the step and stood. “C’mon, old man,” he said. “You’ve rested long enough. Let’s go fill in some holes.”

* * *

When Hutch and Starsky left the Canyon Ridge Stables in Starsky’s Torino and drove the surface streets to a residential address, Starsky excitedly shifted in his seat, gripped the steering wheel, and broadly grinned. “Is this just…?” he began, but then was at a loss for words to describe his elation.

Hutch knew what he meant. “It sure is.”

He had had a difficult conversation with Grace’s pregnant, 15-year-old friend, Jana, only two days earlier, one in which he’d solicited from her the appearance of her attacker. He told her he didn’t want the explicit recounting of the rape itself—because that would be too traumatic under the circumstances at the time—but for her to focus on the rapist’s body and build, his clothes and his manner, or any other physical detail she could remember about him when she first laid eyes on him that fateful day.

Through tears and stuttered speech, Jana described a white male in his early thirties with light brown hair, clean-shaven, wearing a blue tee-shirt, jeans, and an apron. “Like a cook’s apron?” Hutch had asked. “Maybe,” was the answer; she didn’t know one type of apron from another. She also remembered that her attacker had a large dragonfly tattoo on his right forearm, that he had a cigarette pack rolled in his left shirt sleeve, and that he was smoking and leaning against a dumpster when she happened by. Hutch had been under the impression from Starsky’s narrative that Jana had walked through the parking lot outside the market, but he learned a different story when he questioned her; she’d left the riding stables after her lesson and passed behind the strip mall on her way home. It was there, where the trucks loaded and unloaded their cargo, that she’d been assaulted.

The fact that the man wore an apron was critical information. It told Starsky and Hutch that the suspect most likely worked in one of the stores as a cook or a butcher. And because the attack had occurred only four and a half months earlier, it was quite possible the assailant was still employed there.

So Hutch and Starsky took off that morning and drove out to Glendale. They soon found the riding stables; from there they were able to drive to Jana’s then-home. Perhaps her grandmother still lived in the house, but Hutch and Starsky didn’t make her acquaintance. They simply familiarized themselves with Jana’s neighborhood and with her actions that day, a routine she had followed several times a week while taking horseback riding lessons. Along that route was a natural foods market she had used as a landmark—and they had little trouble finding it, too.

Starsky was especially excited. He was back behind the wheel of his car—doing what he loved most: Detective work. Well, detective work and sex were his favorite things, he silently joked. It had been a while since he and Hutch had investigated a criminal case, and this one was personal. That their leads were solid made Starsky think they’d catch their prey much sooner than later—most likely that very day. He shifted excitedly again in his seat and thought about Hutch’s comment, “It sure is.”

It sure is, he mulled in his mind, and then he said it out loud. “It sure is… fan-tas-tic,” and he emphasized each syllable to give the word more weight.

It made Hutch smile. He always did enjoy Starsky’s playfulness. But he, too, felt purely energized by the pursuit. He hung his arm out the car window, watched the scenery as it passed by, and tuned momentarily, and again, into the way Starsky drove his car. It was familiar and soothing. It was ‘old times’—the way things were, long before those men raped Starsky, long before all that pain and confusion, long before the way events altered Hutch’s personal relationship with Starsky. Hutch then looked over at him—Starsky still sat eagerly forward in his seat; he was refreshed and well-groomed, light-hearted and affable that morning. And he looked especially handsome, even despite the sunglasses hiding his eyes.

Starsky didn’t know Hutch studied him until he himself looked over to size up Hutch’s silence and noticed the attention. He flashed a grin at Hutch. “We’re going to kick some ass today,” he said with certainty. “So what’s the plan?”

Hutch then stared out the windshield and into his own mind. “The plan?” he said, thinking. “To castrate the fucker—without anesthesia.”

Starsky grunted with disgust at the idea. It temporarily dampened his enthusiasm when he imagined the visuals of a loading dock castration, using tools they found on the sidewalk. Then he shuddered. “I’ll hold him down while you cut him,” he said. “I don’t think I can handle seeing all that blood today.”

“I’ll spare you then. What say we just send him to prison for a number of years and then go after child support?”

“I like that plan better,” Starsky said. He didn’t want Hutch to do anything that would put one or both of them behind bars. They’d had that debate before—about seriously harming those who abused the ones they loved—but Starsky didn’t know whether he would win the argument again. Hutch was especially fond of Jana, too, after all. “Besides, I don’t think I ever want to see the inside of a nut sac,” he added.

Hutch glanced at him. He wanted to read what Starsky didn’t say, or what he thought Starsky didn’t say, which was a reference to the times they’d fondled each other’s crotches. But Starsky didn’t return the eye contact; he hadn’t made a reference.

“Know what I mean?” Starsky asked.

“Sure,” Hutch mumbled. But he wasn’t really sure. He didn’t know anymore what Starsky meant about any given thing. “So, what say we leave this car in the shade and take a walk?”

Starsky pulled into the lot in front of the natural foods store and parked the vehicle. He killed the ignition, rolled up his window, flashed an excited smile at Hutch again, and then got out of the car with him. Together, they meandered into the store. They chose to start with that particular shop because it was the only food market in the strip mall, but after exploring its aisles, they decided the perp they sought wasn’t in the building.

Back outside, they chose to arbitrarily head west on foot in search of a deli or an eatery. They entered a Chinese restaurant, realized early on that the workers there were of Asian descent, and then returned to the sidewalk. Another short stroll put them at the door to a diner, one that appeared quite popular because, even for late morning, it was packed with patrons. They sauntered up to the counter, removed their sunglasses in tandem, tucked them into the collars of their shirts, and took seats on the two remaining bar stools. One quick glance into the open kitchen to its busy staff told them they’d found what they’d hoped to find.

And they both knew they’d found it; they didn’t need to confirm it with the other. They sat quietly and watched the cook at the stove while he fried potatoes and flipped pancakes; he was 30-something, had light brown hair, was clean-shaven, and wore an apron over his green tee-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled in its left sleeve. On his right forearm was the unmistakable tattoo of a large dragonfly. He seemed relaxed at work, as if he enjoyed the job, and he comfortably interacted with the wait staff as if they also liked him.

A waitress interrupted their study. “May I get you boys anything?”

They shifted their eyes to her, a 20-something attractive brunette with pretty blue eyes, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She seemed attracted to them, too.

“He’ll have regular coffee,” Hutch said about Starsky, “and I’ll take decaf.”

Starsky flashed her a shy grin. “Throw a piece of apple pie in with that for me, will you?” he asked.

“A la mode?”

“Naturally.”

When she departed, Hutch leaned into Starsky to reprimand him. “Now we have to wait until you finish your dessert before we can do this thing,” he complained.

Starsky pushed back into Hutch; their physical contact hadn’t gone unnoticed by him, and he wanted to make it last. “I figure we should take our time,” he explained. “It’s been a while since we’ve done this. Don’t you think we should savor the moments? It’s not like the guy’s going anywhere.”

Hutch accepted the decaf the waitress placed in front of him and thanked her for it. Then he watched Starsky eagerly sweeten his coffee with cream and sugar. “Didn’t you just have breakfast?” he asked.

“It’s now dessert time,” Starsky replied.

It was always ‘dessert time,’ as far as Starsky was concerned, Hutch thought. He let it go. Starsky was right. They should simply enjoy the day. It’s just that he so wanted that criminal in custody. He examined the cook for a while and silently thought the suspect would also be wise to savor those moments. After all, his life was about to change—forever.

“He’s going to be easy to take down,” Starsky decided after he, too, studied the cook for a few minutes. “He looks tough, but he isn’t.”

“I was thinking the same thing. He’d lose to anybody his own size. That’s why he went after a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“So, how do you wanna do this?”

“I’ll take the back door—and you let him know why you’ve come for a visit.”

Starsky sure did love the pending action. He thanked the waitress for his pie a la mode, winked at her, and took his first tasty bite. “Perfect!” he said.

Hutch sipped decaf and looked around the room. All those disappointed people, he mused; they were about to lose their chef. He and Starsky could have waited until the end of the work day to make the arrest, but they didn’t know what to expect when they arrived there and, having then found their man, they weren’t about to let him spend another second in freedom—no matter the cost to the establishment. He heard Starsky say something and turned his attention back to him, but Starsky had actually spoken to the waitress.

“These aren’t homemade pies?” he’d asked.

The waitress assured him they were fresh, but that they bought their pastries from a bakery in town. Starsky explained that he wasn’t complaining; the pie was exceptionally good, he said. He simply noticed how appetizing the home fries appeared on the stovetop and assumed the cook was also a baker.

“He can do anything, but bake,” she said with a laugh.

“Yeah? Well, his food must be good because you’ve got a busy place here.”

“He dreams about moving to San Francisco or the wine country,” she said, “to be a big-city chef.”

“Does he? What’s his name? I’ll look for him next time I get up that way.” He used his charming smile to solicit the information.

“Richie,” she said.

“Richie Conklin? He’s now a chef?” Starsky mocked surprise to force her correction—and it worked like a dream.

“Richie Sanders.”

“Ah… not the guy I was thinking of.” When he felt Hutch nudge him, he went back to eating his pie and drinking his coffee. At least they had a name, should, for some reason, the assailant escape them.

“You pay,” Hutch said. “That’ll give me time to get to the back door. Say, three minutes?” He drank what was left in his cup, stood and returned the sunglasses to his face. He then left the diner through the front door, right after Starsky ordered a piece of cherry pie—to go. While Starsky waited for it, he kept his eye on the clock; then he paid for the food and drinks, and asked the waitress to “send Richie over,” adding, “I’d like a word with him, if you wouldn’t mind.”

She saw no reason not to oblige him. It wouldn’t have been the first time a patron wanted to speak to the cook. And the cook apparently didn’t think anything of it, either, because he stirred hash browns on the stovetop and then set aside his spatula after the waitress gave him Starsky’s message. He came around the kitchen counter to the bar, wiping his hands on his apron—and made friendly eye contact with Starsky.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

Richie even sounded ‘weaker’ than he appeared—not that he couldn’t have out-muscled a young girl into the brush behind a dumpster and sexually forced and gratified himself on her, and not that he couldn’t stage a formidable fight of his own against such an attack, but that he’d never be able to overpower Hutch or Starsky, or especially the two of them together. Starsky looked into the light brown eyes and saw the black heart of every rapist; what sort of man would abuse a young girl like that?

“I’m Detective David Starsky,” he told him, checking his rage and flashing his new badge before he re-pocketed it. “I’m the nicer half of Starsky and Hutch. My job is to hunt down people who’ve done bad things and bring them in to face the music.” He flashed an insincere smile at the confounded man. “Today is your day.”

Richie straightened and carefully eyed Starsky. “What sort of bad thing do you think I’ve done?”

“Oh, I don’t think you’ve done anything bad. I know you have.”

Richie laughed lightly with disbelief. “Who are you again?”

“Dave Starsky. Didn’t you hear me the first time?”

“Right,” Richie said, dryly. He glanced around the room as if someone had put the stranger at the counter up to some practical joke. “And what specifically do you ‘know’ I’ve done that’s so bad?”

Starsky pretended to think for a few seconds. “Well, let’s see if this rings a bell: She’s about five-foot-four, weighs no more than 105 pounds, has long blonde hair, and beautiful blue eyes. She’s fifteen. And she was walking home from a riding lesson about four-and-a-half months ago when she had the misfortune of crossing paths—with a guy who had a dragonfly tattoo on his right forearm—back there by the dumpster while he was out having a smoke.” He pointed toward the rear of the building, to the loading dock area where he knew Hutch was, and then pretended to notice Richie’s dragonfly tattoo for the first time. “Well, look there,” he said. “Seems like I’ve found my man. If you remember what you did to her—and she sure does—you’ll know why I’m here.”

Richie’s expression instantly sobered. He stood, tensely, and stared defiantly at Starsky. “And so what is it you want to pin on me? Something to do with some high school girl?”

“Junior high,” Starsky corrected him, his tone noticeably sober. He didn’t like smart-asses, let alone rapists. “I’m here to pin charges of statutory and forcible rape on you.” He was aware then of the sudden silence in his immediate surroundings as those nearest who listened to their conversation heard what Starsky said. It was followed by a murmur, an undercurrent of voices and audible whispers. Starsky added, “Why don’t we leave here like a couple of pals and take a ride to headquarters, shall we? Or would you prefer I slam you up against a wall and handcuff you in front of all these good people?”

The young waitress defended her colleague. “You must have him confused with somebody else, Sir.”

Starsky glanced at her, but his reply was directed at the suspect. “His DNA will prove I don’t,” he said with conviction, “and paternity tests are the number one DNA tests in practice now.”

“That girl couldn’t possibly have anything on me, let alone whatever DNA you think she’s got,” Richie protested.

“Why? Because you think you got away clean? Guess again, nimrod. One of your little swimmers decided to stick around and bear witness. We’ve got all the evidence we need. Your daughter will be born in less than five months, but I’m assuming she’ll want to disown you as soon as she’s old enough to know how she came to be.”

Richie didn’t hesitate then. Expectedly, he bolted for the kitchen door.

“Hutch is waiting out there for you!” Starsky yelled after him. “I wouldn’t go that way if I were you!” He glanced at the waitress again when the suspect didn’t heed him—and sarcastically rolled his eyes. “Trust me,” he said, grabbing his to-go bag from her. “He shouldn’t have taken that route. This really isn’t his lucky day. Hutch is going to kick his ass something good.”

* * *

“So … did you give him the same treatment you gave one of the men who attacked your partner?” Jade asked. It was his third session with Hutch—and without Starsky—and he was sincerely curious. It had seemed, from Hutch’s telling of the story, that Hutch and Starsky were in a rather playful and excited mood that day, not like the one filled with rage when they cornered Starsky’s attackers.

“Let’s just say,” Hutch told him, “that Richie ran into me with such force when he came out that door onto the loading dock that he bounced off me and fell head-first into a trash bin and broke a rib.”

“Uh-huh,” Jade mumbled.

Hutch wasn’t about to say he’d punched the assailant so hard he cracked one of his bones; it wasn’t a confession Hutch would make even to a privileged listener, as was Jade. Some of the secrets he shared with Starsky were only shared with Starsky. “It was good the thug got stopped, though,” Hutch said, “especially because Starsky didn’t come out of the restaurant for at least a minute.”

“What took him so long?”

“I didn’t realize it at the time,” Hutch recalled, “but he’d apparently stopped to solicit a free apple on his way through the kitchen. I noticed it because he tossed it into the air on our way to the car; him in the lead and me shoving the perp along behind him. Starsky was rather happy that day and it showed. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world.”

Hutch twirled the water bottle in his hands and stared into its contents for a few seconds while he remembered that image: Starsky, relaxed as he could be—and as sarcastic as ever. “I remember, after I handcuffed the guy and pulled him to his feet, that Starsky looked the piece-of-shit right in the eye and said, ‘Didn’t I tell you I was the nicer of the two of us?’ His flippant manner that afternoon added insult to the injury I caused the perp, I think, and made Starsky all the happier.”

“Were you happy?”

“I was and I wasn’t. I was glad we were working again and that we caught the guy, and so easily, but I was also concerned about how it was all going to play out in Jana’s life. I’m still concerned. I’ll do my best to shield her from the trial and all that, but I also want her to know her attacker is being punished for what he did to her. It’s important that she knows he’s held accountable.”

Jade agreed. He studied Hutch for half a minute. Neither of them spoke. Hutch didn’t even look at Jade, as if he was mentally somewhere else. He’d asked for the private session, again, yet seemed at a loss for words. Jade imagined Hutch had mixed feelings about his detective work with Starsky that day, too. Hutch loved working with Starsky, he knew, but he probably felt painfully distant from him at the same time. That hadn’t changed, Jade didn’t think. “What was that like to go back to police headquarters?”

“Nice,” Hutch said. He shifted his eyes to the floor for a moment as he fondly remembered the welcome he and Starsky received upon their arrival. “We ended up staying a while. Spent some overdue time with Capt. Dobey—got caught up on our lives—and even had a few minutes with the Internal Affairs agent who worked with us to nab Starsky’s attackers. You know Starsky. He was the life of the party, and our former colleagues, at least the ones who were in the building at the time we were there, were happy to see him, too. They really do love him.”

“And then there’s you,” Jade noted. “You love him more than anyone.”

It wasn’t news. Jade simply provoked him. What was news was how Hutch felt that day about Starsky. “He so pissed me off,” he admitted. He then felt momentarily ashamed by the feeling and shrugged at it. “I held my own most of that day, but when we got into the car to leave the station, he pissed me off when he handed me a…”

“A … what?”

“A flower.”

Jade tried to repress his smile, but couldn’t. “That would piss me off, too,” he said sarcastically.

Frustrated, Hutch sat back in his chair and tried to explain it. “He picked a dandelion from the edge of the sidewalk on our way to the car and then gave it to me to congratulate me for a ‘job well done. It took us both to make the arrest, but he thanked me for it.”

“And that’s the part that pissed you off?”

“He gave me a stupid yellow flower,” Hutch repeated.

“Okay. So?”

“He thanked me for a ‘job well done.’”

“All right.”

“Do you see? He was…”

Jade waited, but had to raise an eyebrow of curiosity to solicit the rest of Hutch’s sentence.

“He was his usual playful, wonderful, fucking charming self,” Hutch finally said.

“Ah, I see.” But Jade didn’t really. He crossed his arms and cocked his head at Hutch and figured Hutch would explain his hostility better if Jade pretended to understand him. “And when he’s charming, you get pissed?”

Hutch averted his eyes again and stared into the water. He shook his head, but didn’t answer Jade. He didn’t know why he’d asked for another private session with the doctor; he didn’t think it would help or change anything. Maybe he just didn’t want to be alone with his problem, and that, by itself, was helpful.

Jade interrogated him. “Starsky was playful and charming,” he said, to use his client’s words. “He was loved by everybody. He had a good time catching a bad guy with you. He was relaxed and sarcastic and his ‘usual self.’ Why did that make you mad?”

“It was like old times,” Hutch explained. He rubbed his eyes to ease his sudden headache, and finished his thought. “It was like the last couple of months between us never happened.”

Jade thought that might have been where his client had landed.

“Well, we weren’t completely off limits from each other,” Hutch said on second thought. “I mean, he leaned into me at the counter, but only after I leaned into him.”

“Why did you make the contact?”

“I wasn’t thinking when I touched him. I leaned into him when he ordered that damn piece of pie to tell him I wasn’t happy that he was—yet again—eating on the job. He leaned back into me.”

“So, you were your ‘old self,’ too?”

“Okay,” Hutch said, exhaling frustration. “But I wasn’t the one to end this thing between us, so my going back to my ‘old self’ is justifiable. I have no choice—but he does. He’s gone back to being his usual self as if nothing went down between us. Like it never happened.”

“So, which is it, Hutch? Are you upset because he’s not having sex with you anymore or upset because he’s acting like you never did—?”

“All of the above.”

“But you think he may have ended the sex because he plans to marry Grace, no?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure sometimes. It’s hard to measure the sex we had and then think anything could get in its way—including one of us marrying somebody else.”

“Maybe he thinks you ended the intimacy between the both of you and he’s got no choice now but to return to the way things were.”

“We’ve been over this before,” Hutch reminded Jade, reflecting to their last session, and what he’d told the doctor then. “If he thought it had been me to end this thing, he’d have said something by now.”

“Unless he’s afraid he’ll get his head chewed off over it.”

“I think he decided to be done with it and then gave it time to see whether I’d say anything. When I didn’t, he was free then to think about getting married and to go forward into his life as if he and I never…” He didn’t even want to use the words to describe what they’d done; suddenly, they seemed inadequate and trite.

“Are you ashamed of the sex you had with him?” Jade asked.

“No,” Hutch said. His answer was firm and honest. He finally made eye contact with Jade, as firmly. “I never was and I haven’t been and I’ll never be. Reluctant? Yes, I was that. Regretful at times, obviously. Ashamed? Never. And then there’s this part of me that understands completely what he went through, what he needed after what those men did to him, and why he did it, came after me, I mean, and why he’s doing what he’s doing now—or not doing now with me—which is why I don’t want to confront him over it. But then there’s this other part of me…”

“Let’s talk about ‘this other part.’”

Hutch leaned forward in his chair and briefly closed his eyes. Did he want to talk about that? He didn’t. He stood. Then he drank what was left in the water bottle and tossed it into the waste can near Jade’s desk. “It’s pointless,” he explained. He walked to the window near the sofa and looked into the car-filled parking lot below. “And I know what you’re going to say next: If I don’t want to talk to him about it and I don’t want to talk to you about it, then why the hell am I here?”

Jade wasn’t amused. “I’m glad you asked the question, so I didn’t have to.” He got up from behind his desk and walked to where Hutch stood, to bring intimacy to their conversation—if they were to have one. He wasn’t certain Hutch wanted to talk about anything. His client didn’t even seem proud of the capture he’d made a few days earlier.

“Maybe Starsky is too ashamed of himself to continue having sex with a man,” Jade said. When Hutch didn’t respond to that, when he continued only to stare out the window into the sunshine and the goings-on outside, Jade continued. “Or maybe Starsky wanted to devote his life to one lover and Grace was the most ‘logical’ choice in the scheme of things—if Starsky wants children someday, for example, and he says he does.”

Hutch sometimes believed Starsky only thought he wanted offspring. Other times, when he remembered how Starsky played with the street kids or how he took an interest in babies over the years, maybe Starsky really did want to be a father. It was beside the point, though. Starsky could have Grace and he could have children—and he could still have what he had with Hutch. Or at least Hutch thought he could. He realized he was selfish then, shook his head, and exhaled his self-disgust so he could think beyond it.

“Maybe Starsky got to thinking about God and original sin,” Jade also supposed, following Hutch’s silence, “and he’s afraid he’ll burn in hell for all eternity, given what he’s done with you. So he best cut his losses sooner than later and make amends with his Creator while he still can.”

Hutch didn’t even want to make a snide comment about such an idea, let alone an honest one. He continued to stare out the window and to listen to Jade. Despite all of the doctor’s failed attempts, Hutch still hoped there’d be something redeeming upon which to ruminate.

“Or maybe Starsky wanted something more with you,” Jade assumed. “He tried once and even talked about having intercourse with you—intercourse the way you have it with him, wherein he could enjoy the pleasure of penetration, too—and when you shot him down, he decided you both wanted different things, or things to differing degrees, and he didn’t want to frustrate himself any longer.”

Hutch turned his head then and looked into Jade’s light brown eyes. That was a notion he’d never considered before and he needed to think it through. He looked at Jade—without seeing—for a couple of minutes. Then he dismissed that explanation as well. “If Starsky wanted to anal-sex me,” he said, “I mean, if it meant that much to him, he’d have continued to solicit it.”

“Would he have?” Jade wondered. He pressed his lips for a second and then reminded Hutch, “When he first asked you to ‘anal-sex’ him, you turned him down. I’d say you even belittled him. Do you remember?”

Hutch did, but didn’t want to. He was such an idiot that day. Had he just given in to Starsky’s wishes, he wouldn’t have that terrible memory of Adam in his mind for the rest of his life. “Still, I can’t imagine he would give up the sex we had because he couldn’t have more of the sex he wanted.”

“Why’s that so hard to believe?” Jade asked. “Maybe he hoped you wanted the same sexual things he did, and because you don’t—or won’t—he felt foolish and frustrated. Rather than argue with you about it, he chose to walk away from sex with you. It doesn’t mean it was easy to leave; it means it was harder to stay.”

“You don’t understand him,” Hutch charged. “He’s sexually fearless. You had to live around him all those years and watch him work the ladies to appreciate just how sexually comfortable he is. Or be in bed with him sometime; better yet. Nothing fazes him. The guy liked to lick our cum off my stomach and then French kiss me.” Hutch didn’t mean to be so explicit, but he really wanted Jade to know just how fearless Starsky was when it came to all things sex.

Hutch had made his point, but he had missed Jade’s. “There’s a difference between his having sex with you and his being patronized for wanting it,” Jade said. He tried one more supposition, this one an absurd one, and hoped it would get his client to do what he hoped he’d do. “Maybe Starsky decided to take up tennis instead of sex.”

Hutch lightly laughed. “Maybe,” he mumbled. When he heard himself say the word, he realized what Jade had just done. “Okay, maybe, maybe, maybe… I get it.”

“You’re not going to know why he abandoned that part of the relationship unless you ask him,” Jade contended. “And if you’re not going to ask him, Hutch, I’ll tell you this again: Learn to let it go.”

“I can’t,” Hutch argued. He pushed away from the window and sat in the chair behind him; rather, he slumped into it. The weight of his helplessness and his emotion pushed him into it with such conviction, he thought he’d never find the energy to leave when his session ended. “I can’t seem to let it go,” he admitted. “And I don’t know why.”

“You do know why.”

Hutch glanced away from Jade, back toward the window, but all he could see was blue sky. He did know why.

Jade, too, pushed off the wall and joined Hutch in the adjacent chair. He wasn’t sure himself whether he could help his client; Hutch had to want to change things, and Hutch seemed uncharacteristically helpless. “Do you want to talk about why you can’t let it go?”

“No.”

“But you miss the sex, I imagine,” Jade noted, still hoping to get Hutch to talk about it despite his “No” answer.

Hutch was momentarily jarred by the notation. He knew what he missed. He thought Jade even knew what he missed, but he spoke then about how he felt to hear himself think. “I’ve never had more satisfying sex in my life,” he said, looking at Jade. “And you know me: I’m not one to analyze a thing to death. But this sex-with-Starsky thing has made me do two things I never thought I’d do: One, have sex with Starsky,” he sadly laughed, “and, two, analyze it to death.”

Jade was sadly amused by Hutch’s dilemma. “Tell me what you figured out.”

“That sex with him was the best ever because of his sexual fearlessness and his technique,” Hutch said. “He can instinctively feel his way along, know what I mean? He taught me how to be less inhibited in bed, too, because of how we feel about each other; it wasn’t just fucking. And, because we’re guys, we get what makes us tick. We know what each other fundamentally thinks and wants and how to make it happen. But also because there was no pretense, no plan, no hidden motive or agenda. We didn’t have to explain ourselves or justify our wants, or work—manipulate, if you will—to have our needs met. All those things made it just that good.”

“And you miss it.”

“Well, hell, yeah, I miss it,” Hutch confessed. His voice suddenly broke then, by accident and without warning, when he added, “but the sex is only part of what I miss.” He flashed on a feeling he had, one that summed up everything he felt, one so complex and complicated and forceful it wasn’t possible to describe with words. It choked him too much to say anything.

Jade knew already that Hutch missed more than the sex; he imagined Hutch knew that already, too, but it was time they talked about it—if, for no other reason, than to help Hutch put it behind him. “Tell me what else you miss,” he encouraged his client.

Hutch bent forward in his chair to control his composure, but he succeeded only after a minute. He wanted to answer Jade; it still helped to hear himself, but he couldn’t speak those words out loud. They were much too personal. He traced over them in his mind, on his own. He missed kissing Starsky. He missed sucking on Starsky’s face and Starsky’s lips and Starsky’s tongue and Starsky’s penis. He’d even come to relish making Starsky climax in his mouth because he knew Starsky loved it so much, but also because it was such a sexually intimate gift to give. He missed the way Starsky tasted in all those places and the way Starsky smelled all over, Starsky’s sweat and his semen and his cologne and his skin.

Those things were so keenly in Hutch’s mind, he could almost taste and smell and feel Starsky right then. He missed the sounds Starsky made, those grunts of approval and Starsky’s whimpering ecstasy, the way Starsky had to sometimes audibly catch his breath because he was so overcome by the pleasure he felt, and Starsky’s heavy panting, and Starsky’s moans of sheer bliss. And he missed Starsky’s spent look afterward, his shy, crooked smile, his delirious blue eyes, his haired chest and belly, plastered to his skin with his sweat. Oh, and how he missed the way Starsky made him feel wanted, sexually thrilling, intensely orgasmic, preciously desired, and in such needy ways.

Hutch stared at the floor into days gone by, into that period of time after he and Starsky had overcome the awkwardness and the tentativeness of their sex with each other, to a time when Hutch believed those summer days—and those balmy, breezy nights—would never end. “I miss laughing with him,” he then said aloud, with a laugh at the memory. “I mean, I miss lying there in bed having sex with him or just having had sex with him or about to have sex with him and laughing with him about god knows what and nothing in particular—and everything being so funny. I miss feeling him there with me, know what I mean? Just his presence. Or maybe it’s the knowing he’s there; I miss that, too.”

Jade imagined it was all those things.

“I didn’t need him in my bed every night,” Hutch said, “but when he was in my bed, I don’t know, it seemed like, well, like everything was all right. This life thing was all right. There was no yesterday, no tomorrow, and whatever that day had been was just where we were at the time we were together. I miss his touching me. Not just the daytime stuff, the ways we were affectionate with each other prior to all this going down, the physical contact we’d display in public, I mean, but the private nighttime stuff, too, the quiet touches, the small ones that felt so big. He had to always be ‘connected’ to me somehow during the night, did I tell you? If I moved, he moved; he made sure we were physically connected in some way while we slept.”

“How so?”

“Like, um, he’d keep a hold of me, my hand or wrist mostly, my arm. He’d sleep like that, with me in his grip there. Or his foot over mine. I miss that. I miss his wanting to be bonded to me during the night—like he needed me to feel safe enough to sleep.”

“Maybe that is what he needed.”

“Maybe,” Hutch said on second thought. “Or maybe I read into it more than is there. He could be doing the same with Grace, after all.”

“You know you mean more to him than she does.”

Hutch didn’t want to admit it; doing so was selfish.

“And you know you could protect him better, too,” Jade added.

That made Hutch sad for Starsky. “I’d have gone through that thing for him if we could have made a choice. I’d trade my life for his, you know.”

“I know.”

“He knew that, too,” Hutch said. He laughed at himself then, at how corny he thought he sounded. Who’d have thought he’d be so cheesy about sexual intimacy with a man? He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled. “But that’s the least of it,” he said. “I miss waking up every morning knowing there was someone out there who wanted to have sex with me that day, who would make sure to have sex with me that day—at least once—who’d go out of his way to make time to have sex with me each and every day—and I didn’t have to ask for it or go looking for it or try to manipulate my way into it. I’d wake up and I’d know there was someone waking up that morning thinking the same way about—and wanting the same thing—with me. And not ‘maybe’ it’ll happen, but it was going to happen. Guaranteed.”

Jade actually felt sorry for Hutch, that he had had such a connection with another human being, and then no longer had it—and didn’t know why. But Jade didn’t dare say what he thought, lest he break his client’s purge.

“I miss lying there afterward with him,” Hutch said, “on the floor, in the bed, on the sofa, wherever—and just being there in that place; you know that place? A complete disengagement from anything and everything else in life. It’s a right-here right-now place. You know where I mean: It comes after sex, when you’re totally physically drained and void of every emotion and thought except bliss. A place of bliss. And I’ve been there with women—you have, too—but it’s short-lived. They want to make something to eat right after or talk to you about the movie you weren’t watching in the first place or ask if you enjoyed yourself as if you hadn’t already proved how much. And, lest you appear to be a slob and hurt her feelings, you fight your way out of bliss as quickly as you can and get yourself back among the living—which was the last place you ever wanted to be again.”

Jade lightly chuckled with empathy.

“But with Starsky,” Hutch added, “that place lasted. It lasted as long as it lasted. No interruption. No time limit. No end in sight—and no care for an end. To just be there—with him in that place with me—was, shit, awesome. I don’t have any other words for it. Well, actually, I do have another word for it: Heaven. Sex isn’t Heaven. When you love someone and they love you and you get to be freely sexually human animal with them and then are emptied of all thought and feeling and find yourself adrift with them afterward in this seemingly eternal bliss that only the two of you created together: That, my friend, is Heaven.”

Jade didn’t smile. Hutch’s words touched him. He was envious and he was sorry and he was speechless.

Hutch could tell he’d moved Jade. He himself had to find his strength to finish his thought. What he described was rare and he knew it. “It only works when you’re with someone you love so much that you’re able to be purely who you are with them and they with you,” he said, “and you both know it and you both know you both know it. A connected liberation like that with another person doesn’t happen but once in a lifetime. At least it won’t happen again in mine. I shouldn’t be heartbroken over this. I’m angry at myself that I am. I should feel privileged to have had such a thing at all in my life. I was blessed.” He shrugged as if the rest was obvious—and then he quickly caught a tear that emerged in his eye. “Still… do I miss the sex? Yeah. A lot,” he said. “Immeasurably. But, god-fucking-dammit, I miss him more.”

* * *

Piano music and red wine, amber lamps and candlelight—and a summer night’s breeze passing through the opened windows—were all Hutch needed to feel his day had been complete—at least the part of it that was empty of Starsky. He tasted the sautéing eggplant, drank a sip of wine, and raised the volume on the radio; it played through external speakers he’d installed underneath the kitchen cabinets. He might even dance if a song with an appropriate rhythm should play.

But his solitude was broken when Starsky unexpectedly emerged through the front door. When their eyes met, Starsky flashed a friendly smile. “Hey,” he said. He came to the kitchen and settled onto a bar stool on the off-side of the breakfast counter. “It smells great in here.”

Hutch lowered the music’s volume. He was happy to see Starsky. “You like?” he asked. He couldn’t think of a better way to end his day than to have dinner with Starsky, but it was past Starsky’s home dinnertime, so he pushed the desire aside and was thankful to see Starsky at all. “I’d invite you to share, but I know you’re not fond of eggplant,” he recalled.

Starsky wrinkled his nose to express his continued distaste of the fruit. “It must be the mood I smell then,” he decided. He leaned elbows on the counter and scanned the kitchen with its candlelight and two table lamps, the array of steaming pots on the stove, and the opened bottle of red wine. He searched then for its accompanying glass and spied it on the center island that housed the stove. “Pour me some?” he asked with a gesture toward the bottle.

When Hutch turned to get it for him, Starsky also noticed Hutch’s relaxed demeanor, his untucked shirt and sweat pants, the dish towel draped over his shoulder, that he was barefoot and attractively disheveled, and that he was there in his kitchen with music and wine and opened windows while he created a homemade meal all by himself. He missed playing with Hutch and was jealous that someone else could. “Did you write these tunes?” he asked about the piano music he heard.

“It’s the radio,” Hutch said, “but thanks for thinking I’m good enough to do so.”

“That’s because you are. So what gives? Got a hot date?”

Hutch filled the wine glass. He wanted to be able to say, “Yes—with you,” and resented that he couldn’t. Instead, he set the bottle on the counter, corked it, looked firmly at Starsky, handed him the glass, and said, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Starsky momentarily hesitated before he accepted the wine. Hutch’s snap at him was out of character—especially in light of his initial friendliness. “Well, I’m no detective,” Starsky joked to lighten the moment, “but you look like you’re in for a romantic night at home.”

“Ah, but you jest, Detective Starsky,” Hutch replied, kicking himself for his previous hostile comment. He retrieved a large pot from a cupboard beside the stove and filled it with water at the sink. He used the time to pull away from his resentment. None of what they’d shared in the past few months had been Starsky’s fault, so Hutch felt guilty for the hurt that made him try to hurt his partner. He attempted to defuse it further by simply saying, “As you can see, I don’t need a hot date to have a romantic night at home.” He set the pot on the burner and lit the flame. “I have them all the time.”

“Hot dates? Or romantic evenings—by yourself?”

“By myself. But you wouldn’t know that because you’re not here every night.” It wasn’t a dig at Starsky, nor even at his reserve the past two weeks, but a mere fact, that Starsky hadn’t spent every night in the past ten years with Hutch, so how would he know all Hutch did in private?

Starsky was still demoralized by Hutch’s tone, though. Maybe Hutch resented him for costing him Sara; it could have been her there at the house that night sharing a romantic evening with him. Or Emma—another woman Starsky had cost him. Instead it was Starsky who’d ended up alone at his own house that night and thought it would be more fun to drop in on Hutch. But it was a mistake; bad timing. He drank wine, felt its warmth in his mouth and down his throat, allowed it to ease his wounded pride, and then he stood. “Well, don’t let me interrupt you,” he said in a depressed voice, though he tried to sound cheerful. “Grace went to the mall with a friend of hers and—”

“And you wanted me to fill in the silence?” Hutch asked. “Your Plan B?”

They made eye contact, both of them hurt and aware of it.

Hutch couldn’t seem to help himself. He didn’t intend to be spiteful, but he was also frustrated and angry and sorry. Maybe if Starsky hadn’t asked him if he had a ‘hot date,’ he wouldn’t be so pissed off; it only served to remind him of what he didn’t have and that he didn’t know why he didn’t have it—and that he sorely wanted it. Still. He realized and appreciated that he had Starsky’s undying, lifetime loyalty and love, but he wanted more of it, the way their sexual intimacy had given it to him. He shrugged then to silently apologize.

But Starsky was sorry, too—for dampening Hutch’s mood. He leaned across the counter, raised the volume on the radio to its initial level, pushed the glass of red wine in Hutch’s direction, and forced his smile. “Like I said: Don’t let me interrupt you.” He tapped the counter to signal his departure and turned from the kitchen.

“Stop right there,” Hutch ordered him, “or I’ll tackle you to the floor before you can get to the door.”

Starsky faced him. “Well, that would be a start.”

“A start to what?”

Starsky returned to the counter. “Never mind,” he mumbled. He didn’t want to waver on his self-made promise to release Hutch from his own interests. “I didn’t come over to rain on your parade, Hutch. You were having a good time until I showed up.”

“And usually I had a better time after you showed up, is that it?”

Starsky sat on the stool again. He didn’t leave the eye contact he held with Hutch, but he couldn’t read Hutch’s intention, despite it. He spoke honestly. “I wasn’t trying to make any point, just that you were enjoying yourself tonight, and whatever I said—or did—set you off. But I’m not trying to push your buttons, if that’s what you mean.”

Hutch didn’t know what he meant, either, but he did know he didn’t want Starsky to leave. “Are you hungry?”

“For eggplant?” Starsky sneered.

Hutch laughed at the welcomed comic relief and went back to the stove. He stirred the eggplant, onions, tomatoes, and spices, noted that the water in the other pot had begun to steam, and then retrieved a bag of mushrooms from the refrigerator. “I’m making pasta,” he said. “If you want some, you can have yours without eggplant.”

“I’ll eat your spaghetti any which way,” Starsky confessed. He loved Hutch’s homemade sauce.

“It’s linguini,” Hutch noted for him.

“Linguini. Spaghetti. Macaroni. You make it. I’ll eat it.”

Hutch was pleased to hear it. He wanted Starsky to stay with him for supper, to not himself eat alone if he didn’t have to, to eat with Starsky, regardless. After all, he wanted Starsky to ‘fill in the silence,’ too. He lowered the volume on the radio to a quiet play in the background and felt a summer breeze pass through the room. He used it to relinquish his resentment and hurt and to look forward to the unexpected evening he then had. “So, is Grace buying herself a new dress or something?”

“She’s getting stuff for Jana’s baby shower,” Starsky said.

“That’s just like her, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Starsky said, reaching across the counter to retrieve the wine glass. “One of these days maybe you and me will get back to our good cause—of kicking ass. We were off to a good start last week nailing that—”

“You and I,” Hutch corrected Starsky’s grammar.

“That’s what I said.”

Hutch winked at him. “Right. And one of these days we will get back to our worthy work. How about Monday?” The personal tension between them was no longer at play, so why wait?

Starsky drank wine, enjoyed the taste and the feel of it, and thought about Hutch’s idea. “Okay. Monday, it is,” he decided.

They were silent then. Going back to their jobs in a few days would confirm the end of their sexual intimacy—that was the plan, after all, to follow their new relationship to its natural end and then get back to work—but the moment was bittersweet; Hutch was lucky to have had the private time with Starsky, so why be sorry to lose it? He looked into Starsky’s eyes and noticed Starsky’s clean-shaven face and his combed hair and the shape of his lips—ones he’d, until recently, actually kissed—and with pleasure. He so badly wanted to ask Starsky what had happened, to know why Starsky had ended the sex between them, and was so sure he had the courage to verbalize the question that his heart noticeably pounded.

Starsky could tell Hutch was about to say something, so he hung on the suspended pause while he passed Hutch an inquisitive expression. When that didn’t work, he finally asked, “What? C’mon. Tell me.”

Hutch laughed at himself for having been caught, but he avoided Starsky’s coaxing. He emptied the bag of mushrooms onto a cutting board on the kitchen island and sliced them.

Starsky then provoked him—or tried to. “Are you kidding me? Do you really think there’s something you can’t tell me?”

“Yeah,” Hutch mumbled.

“Seriously?”

Hutch paused long enough to study Starsky and pose a preface. He loved Starsky’s look—that he was nicely dressed in a buttoned blue shirt that accented his dark hair and blue eyes, by the black curls that peeked from the top of his collar, reminding Hutch of Starsky’s nudity and their sex together, and by Starsky’s almost innocent expression as he silently struggled to read Hutch’s mind—and Hutch didn’t want to change that look. At the same time, he would give anything for answers. “Suppose I wanted to talk about ‘forced oral copulation’?” he bravely asked. “That something you’d talk to me about?”

“I wouldn’t want to, but I would.”

“For me, you mean. You’d talk to me about it—for me.”

“I’d do anything for you,” Starsky said. He wished he could do something for him then; Hutch looked as delicious to him as the aroma smelled in the kitchen. Hutch appeared relaxed, despite the hovering strain between them. He was all build and all muscle, purely male and formidable—not the kind of man anyone would want to provoke. But Starsky couldn’t help but feel empowered by his power over Hutch during those sexual experiences they’d enjoyed with each other, so long as he wasn’t greedy. He further enjoyed the look of Hutch, there in the kitchen in comfortable clothes, in the amber light and the warmth of the oven, with his soft blond hair and softer eyes, when Hutch interrupted his thoughts.

“Well, I don’t want to talk about what they did to you—simply for me,” Hutch explained.

“Why not?”

Hutch resumed his mushroom-slicing task. “Why would I put you through that for my sake?”

“Because something about it bothers you enough to want to talk about it,” Starsky said. “And if it bothers you, it bothers me.” He noticed how focused Hutch was on his task, how he carefully made certain not to cut himself as he quickly sliced mushrooms with a sharp knife. When Hutch didn’t say anything after a few minutes, Starsky pushed him. “So, cowboy,” he coaxed, “cough it up. What did you want to know about what they did to me?”

“Nothing,” Hutch said. It wasn’t a lie. He concentrated on his food preparation and summoned the courage to be honest with him. “It was a hypothetical,” he explained. “I figured if you could talk to me about that, you could talk to me about anything—including things you haven’t yet told me.”

“You’re a sick man, you know that?”

“I’m catching on.”

“You’re making no sense. What do you want me to tell you that you think I haven’t?”

Hutch retrieved a frying pan from the pots-and-pans cabinet beside the stove, set it on a burner, and lit the gas flame. Soothing piano music played. A summer breeze cooled the kitchen. Candles burned and the soft amber light of table lamps gave the room its ambiance. And Starsky was there and was prepared to listen. Hutch finally had the opportunity to broach what had troubled him for more than two weeks. He faced Starsky and looked into his eyes, into those sleepy, dark blue, bedroom eyes that he’d seen tightly closed in beautiful ecstasy, from an intense pleasure that he, Hutch, had given him. The mental image made Hutch both aroused and angry. “Why did you give up on us?” he asked. “I’m not wondering because I want to change your mind, but because I’m sincerely curious. Why did you? Because you want to marry Grace?”

Starsky was taken aback, too stunned by Hutch’s questions to reply right away. Then he laughed when he realized what he’d just heard and how far it was from the truth as he knew it. He didn’t have any other answer except, “I didn’t give up on us.”

Hutch didn’t think Starsky understood him. He poured a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into the pan and tried for a different way to say what he meant by way of an explanation. “So, the last Saturday you were here, when you got out of bed and showered and left the house without the usual play between us, you hadn’t given up on us?”

“No,” Starsky said. He took another drink of wine when he realized then what had happened—and was immediately excited by the possibility that they’d each been confused about the other’s behavior and, therefore, once cleared, they could resume their sexual play. “I’m the last person to give up on us, least of all that way.”

“Then what do you call this ‘abstain-shun’ between us?” Hutch wondered. His frustration returned because Starsky hadn’t been forthcoming with the truth, but he didn’t want to be accusatory and send Starsky out the door again, either, so he played with words to ease the blow.

“Well, what I called it then is different than what I’d call it now,” Starsky said.

“What would you call it now?”

“A misunderstanding.” He rubbed his eyes and whispered, “Shit.” But he was also relieved to have discovered the possible misread between them. He laughed at it.

Hutch didn’t find it funny. “This isn’t easy for me.”

“I wasn’t laughing at you. The thing is: You believe I gave up on us that morning, but I didn’t—and all along I’ve been thinking you were glad not to be fucking around with me anymore.”

Hutch stared at him, puzzled. “You’re not saying you’ve thought it was me who gave up on us, are you? because you don’t know me if—”

“Not in those words, no,” Starsky said. “But, I mean …” He got up from the stool, walked into the kitchen, lifted himself onto the island counter beside the stove, the one Hutch worked at, to be closer to him when he confided what his thoughts and intentions had been. He was also close enough to touch Hutch—so he did. He playfully scratched Hutch’s head to break his angry stare, but Hutch pulled away out of annoyance, leaving Starsky to quickly explain himself instead. “I’ve had this feeling all along,” he said, “that you really aren’t all that into this man sex thing, that you’re doing it for me, and that’s why you’ve been nervous about it—because it’s my deal and you’re just along for the ride.”

Hutch liked that Starsky was close to him—and he wanted his physical affection—but he didn’t understand it, either. Nor Starsky’s perceptions. “And which part of my hard-ons were giving you the impression I was just along for the ride?”

“I’m not saying you didn’t enjoy yourself, that you weren’t having fun. But it’s like that time we went skiing, remember? You went because I wanted you to go, and you had fun, but you could care less when I stopped going. Maybe you were even glad.”

Hutch dumped the mushrooms from the cutting board into the pan. They sizzled and made him lower the flame before he addressed Starsky’s analogy. “You’re not comparing sliding-down-a-mountain-on-a-coupla-sticks-on-a-sheet-of-ice-at-ninety-miles-an-hour-in-frigid-cold-weather to suckin’-and-fuckin,’ are you?”

“I’m saying I think you were glad not to be skiing anymore. You had fun, but you were gladder that it ended. Same with the sex.”

Hutch still didn’t understand, so he abandoned the cooking and stepped in front of Starsky, pushed Starsky’s calves open with his thighs, and leaned into him to get his full and undivided attention. If Starsky thought he made a sexual pass at him and wanted to encourage him, Hutch didn’t mind, but a pass wasn’t his intention; clearing up his confusion was foremost on his mind. “Why would you think for a second that I was ‘gladder’ to be done having sex with you? What one thing did I do to make you think that?”

Starsky squeezed Hutch’s legs between his knees and relished the feel of the man. What he wouldn’t give to have sex with Hutch right there on the kitchen counter. “It’s not what you did,” he said, remembering how Hutch cried that night, the night before Starsky had gone to see Adam, when Hutch didn’t know he’d been heard crying, but he didn’t voice that memory so he wouldn’t embarrass Hutch. Instead, he said, “It’s what you didn’t do.”

Hutch searched his own mind, but came up empty; maybe looking into Starsky’s eyes and feeling Starsky press him back distracted him too much from focused thinking. “What didn’t I do?”

Starsky loved the closeness between them again, too, even if it was for a different reason from the one he’d grown excited by in months past. “You didn’t ask for any,” he said.

“For any what?”

“For any sex from me.”

Hutch was dumbfounded. He replayed that last morning in his mind. Starsky had gotten out of bed, showered, came back into the room, and dressed. Then he left under the lame excuse that he needed to ‘check’ on his house. He didn’t reach for Hutch when they were next alone. He didn’t kiss him, fondle him, or even make an innuendo. In fact, he didn’t show any sexual interest in Hutch whatsoever the rest of that day—and all the days that had since followed. But neither had Hutch shown any interest in Starsky, no outwardly visible interest, anyway—just like one of Jade’s suppositions. “You were testing me again?”

Starsky was sheepish. “I thought if I gave you enough time, you’d come after me—instead of it always being the other way around—and then I’d know you weren’t forced to by me and that maybe you’d even feel more like a team than I think you’ve felt you’ve been.”

Hutch bit the inside of his cheek. He wanted to laugh at himself, at the both of them, but his feelings were too mixed to be light. He put his hands on Starsky’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. “You tested me—and I failed.”

“I didn’t test you. I gave you a chance to be you—and you aren’t all that … brave, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

Starsky looked at him to send home his silent answer.

Hutch heard him. “Okay. So, asking me would have defeated the purpose. But how long were you going to let this go before you said or did anything?”

“For as long as you didn’t say or do anything. But now I see you weren’t going to do anything because you thought I’d given up on us and you weren’t about to bring up what you thought was a touchy subject.”

Starsky had gotten that part right, Hutch mused. He heard the water boil beside him; it had probably been boiling for minutes, so he reluctantly pushed away from Starsky and opened the box of linguini he’d earlier set on the counter. He poured its contents into the pot, set the stovetop timer, and stirred the eggplant and then the mushrooms. He listened to the piano music, felt that breeze pass over him, and savored the enormous relief that had once again settled over them. In a soft voice, he asked, “Why do you suppose, after ten years, we’re this inarticulate with each other these past few months?”

“Inarticulate?”

“Don’t express ourselves clearly.”

“Probably because this is all new ground for us.”

Hutch decided Starsky was right. “So how we going to fix it?”

“We talk to each other more, I guess,” Starsky said. “God, that sounds like we’re women.”

“Well, maybe they’ve got the right idea.”

“Maybe,” Starsky mumbled.

“But that’s not what I meant. I meant, how we going to fix this thing, the part where you think I’m doing it out of obligation and I think you’re done needing it?”

“I was done needing it long ago,” Starsky said with a laugh. “It’s about want now.”

“But how do we know that?”

“The fact that I get a hard-on whenever I’m near you? you know, like the one I had a few minutes ago?”

Hutch poured some of the wine from their shared glass into the sautéing mushrooms. Then he added dried herbs to the pan and further lowered the flame so they’d simmer. He stirred the linguini. He didn’t have answers.

“Well, I mean,” Starsky said, “at what point in all this did you stop doing it for me and start doing it for yourself?”

Hutch was too embarrassed to look at him when he answered. “I’ve been doing it for myself all along because doing for you is doing for me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I mean.”

“You fought me all the way,” Starsky reminded him.

“Yeah, but you knew you’d have me eventually—or why did you relentlessly pursue it? You whittled away at my resolve. You know you’re my weakness and you took advantage of it.”

Starsky did know that—to a degree. “Then explain why, other than the time on the floor by the front door after the picnic and that afternoon in the hotel room when you gave me head the first time, you’ve never made a pass at me.”

Hutch hadn’t been conscious of that fact. “I was the first one to get our handjobs going,” he remembered.

“Yeah, but that was part of a deal we made. We both expected it.”

“Maybe that’s the point: We expect it from each other. I know I expect it from you—for you to make the overtures.”

“Because I do, you don’t?”

“Maybe. I mean … to make repeated passes at you,” Hutch joked. “why, that would be really gay of me, dear Watson. Besides, I figure you’ll solicit me when the time is right, when you know we’ve got the privacy we need, which partly comes from knowing Grace’s plans.”

Starsky hit Hutch’s arm. “C’mon. Seriously. Why is it always up to me to get something going between us? When I’m here, you know we’ve got privacy.”

“But it doesn’t mean you can.”

“Why couldn’t I?”

“Because you already have.”

“I see.” Starsky understood that part of the equation. “Okay, but sometimes I’m here for a whole weekend and you know when the last time I got laid because it would have been with you.”

Hutch drank from the wine glass, embarrassed to be cornered. “You don’t have to spell it out.” He then looked at Starsky, into his eyes, humbled himself by his confession. “So, I guess the underlying reason that I don’t make passes at you are because … you’re my weakness …”

“And?”

“… and to be rejected by you would be …”

They held each other’s eyes; Starsky understood. To be rejected by him would be more than Hutch could withstand. “So what do I have to do to convince you that there’ll always be one place on this planet where you can go anytime—day or night, rain or shine, sick or well, and for any reason you want it—to have all your horny needs satisfied and not hear ‘no’—ever, even if it’s you who’s doing the asking?”

Hutch had to catch his breath. He stared speechlessly at Starsky. He’d never been made such a promise, let alone believed one.

Starsky knew he’d reached him; he could see it in Hutch’s intent expression, in those appreciative blue eyes. He heard the piano music and thought it was a perfect halo to his conviction. “I am never going to turn you down, boyfriend,” he said. “That’s a solemn promise engraved in granite.” And Starsky knew it in his heart of hearts because he loved Hutch—not because he was attracted to him, or shared a chemistry with him, but because he was forever emotionally bonded to him. “As you might tell me,” he added, “‘how many times do I have to say it before you hear it?’”

Hutch repressed his smile. He didn’t want to appear as moved as he felt. That was a weakness, too, wasn’t it? But then he flashed on the ten years of their friendship and all it had been through and how much they meant to each other—and that it was safe to be vulnerable with Starsky—and he finally let the smile go. “Okay,” he said, under his breath.

Starsky took the wine glass from him, drank some, and winked. “I have something for you that no woman’s ever going to give you—and that’s a permanent green light.”

Oh, how Hutch loved him. He bit his lip and stared for a minute at the stovetop to let Starsky’s words sink in. Then the kitchen timer sounded and distracted him from his emotion. He grabbed a potholder, transferred the linguini to the sink, and poured its contents into a waiting colander. The quiet music in the room soothed him. The summer breeze calmed him. Starsky’s promise consoled and excited him. He felt mixed in emotion. Suppose he could get rid of his fear of being rejected by Starsky? Suppose that? Suppose he could have Starsky’s inner strength, that together they would take care of each other by all means possible—fearlessly and forever? Suppose he could believe that? How would it change his life or their lives, together?

Hutch returned to the stove, scooped a wooden spoonful of mushrooms from the pan, and lightly blew on them. Then he fed them to Starsky. “Taste this,” he said. “Let me know if it’s missing anything.”

Starsky found the mouthful surprisingly tantalizing. “Damn good,” he honestly said, chewing. “You could have been a professional cook, you know that?”

“It’s never too late,” Hutch joked. “I’ll bill you later. More salt?”

Starsky licked his lips. “No, really, it’s perfect.” The food was as perfect as Hutch appeared to him. They fit together, seamlessly. Hutch’s demeanor and his relaxed clothes and his comfort in that kitchen complimented the wholesome and organic bite he’d been given and Starsky desired more of it—just as he wanted more with Hutch that night, too. Those blue eyes and that tousled blond hair and that flawless face, Hutch’s body and his build, his height and his muscle, his smell and his primal drive, his abiding love for Starsky and his sexual chemistry with him, the feel of the man in his hands—and inside him; all those things Starsky longed to touch and experience again.

Hutch turned off the flame, poured the mushrooms into a bowl, and set the dish on the counter near them. He sensed Starsky’s silent communion with him and imagined Starsky’s private thoughts as his own, about resuming their sexual intimacy from where they’d left off. Then he spooned the eggplant and offered it to Starsky to tantalize his senses further. “Taste this.”

Starsky turned his head away to remind Hutch he didn’t like eggplant, as if Hutch didn’t already know it.

“Oh, c’mon,” Hutch laughed at him, “it’s not like I’m asking you to eat dog shit.”

“It is like that.”

“Indulge me.”

Starsky let Hutch insert the spoon—and the warm eggplant—into his mouth, though he only took half of it from the utensil in case he needed to spit it out. But he was surprised by the taste—and the texture; it wasn’t mushy, the reason he hated eggplant. This was meatier somehow. He devoured it then with relish. “You could make dog shit taste good,” he said, chewing.

Hutch laughed and ate the rest of the eggplant from the spoon. He liked it, too. It had simmered perfectly. He could tell Starsky enjoyed it; he knew how to read his pleasure. “It is dog shit,” he then said.

“Collie crap?” Starsky asked.

Starsky’s quip and Starsky’s playful smile made Hutch lose the rest of his seriousness and join him. “C’mon. I wouldn’t serve my buddy just any old shit. This is something classier … poodle poop.”

Starsky heartily laughed, so they continued on the theme, each countering the other into a list of ‘doberman doo,’ ‘terrier turds,’ ‘shepherd stools,’ ‘mastiff muffins,’ and ‘dachshund dung.’ They laughed until they could barely speak and the tears came to their eyes. Hutch had to finally turn away from Starsky because he feared his intense laughter might burst into actual crying—and he couldn’t afford the breakdown at that minute. After he arrested his emotion and faced Starsky, he saw that Starsky had dropped to his back on the counter and covered his face with his hands while he fought to control himself, too. His entire body heaved with his laughter.

“You bastard,” Hutch swore at him. He pushed between Starsky’s knees and bent over him.

Starsky relished Hutch’s physicalness, but hadn’t quite abandoned the laughing jag they’d stumbled into. “Pekinese—”

“Don’t,” Hutch warned him. He pulled Starsky’s hands from his face to force Starsky to look at him.

The sudden eye-to-eye contact, in the context of their laughter and playfulness, made them abruptly stop and watch each other instead. Wordlessly, they connected to the decade-long underpinning of their friendship: Its absolute freedom, their ability to be themselves, their fearlessness with each other—at least to their ever-deepening degree.

“Say another word about it,” Hutch playfully threatened him, “and I’ll slap the urge right out of you.”

Starsky liked the way Hutch lay on him, there on the counter in the kitchen, beside the stove, in the candle and lamp light, with that summer breeze cooling the heat in the room, but fueled by the one that burned deep within him. He liked all of it: Hutch’s weight and his presence, his attention and his affection. Starsky wiped tears of laughter from his eyes and asked, “Did I make you cry?”

“You were about to,” Hutch said, laughing at himself.

Starsky wanted to tell Hutch to kiss him, but that was what he wanted, and he decided, instead, to hold out for Hutch’s initiation of a kiss. He couldn’t help but think it was forthcoming. He wouldn’t test him. He would simply wait for him. At least for a minute.

“So … taste this,” Hutch said. He didn’t have another spoonful of anything; what he wanted Starsky to taste then was the kiss he expected—and the one Hutch wanted to have with him. He followed his impulse, further relaxed his weight into him, and touched his lips to Starsky’s. The recent absence of their kisses—caused by one of their stupid misunderstandings—made the contact sweetly satiating because of it.

Starsky moaned with pleasure as he willingly received Hutch’s wet, tasty mouth, one of eggplant and spices, of familiarity, warmth, and sensuality. “Now that’s fucking delicious,” he whispered between kisses and with a quiet laugh. He was instantly aroused and couldn’t get enough of Hutch’s taste and smell, or of the intimate touch itself, so he kissed him with the same enthusiasm and desire. They sucked tongues for a minute, breathing fiercely. When Hutch finally tried to break the contact to attend to the meal, Starsky gripped the back of his neck and, forehead to Hutch’s forehead, he said, “I’ve missed you.” He then let him go.

Hutch straightened, sorry to have ended the mesmerizing lip and tongue dance between them, while he held a lingering eye contact with Starsky. When he could hold it no more, he winked and shyly smiled. The sentiment had been mutual. They’d spent just about every day together—for the past decade—but what Starsky missed was their recent intimate affection, their sexual play and interaction, that primal connection they’d made with each other and hoped would last a lifetime. Hutch understood Starsky’s desire and his relief to resume it, and he understood it completely because he had missed it, too. But how to say that in words? He couldn’t; not even he, so he expressed it instead with his humility and by the soft light in his eyes, and by his reluctance to leave the kiss—or their body embrace, for that matter.

He pushed off Starsky and listened to piano music while he rinsed the linguini, poured it into a large ceramic bowl, added the mushrooms and the eggplant, seasoned it with salt and pepper to taste, and mixed it with a wooden spoon. He was keenly aware of Starsky’s quiet presence, and that he was watched as intently. In the contented silence between them, they ended the misunderstanding that had kept them apart for what had felt like a lifetime. He also heard Starsky rise back to his seated position, and he sensed Starsky drink wine and he saw Starsky’s fond expression—in Starsky’s eyes and on his mouth and across his face—without even looking at him. And he knew what pleasure the night would bring them and he was excited by it, anxious for it, and yet certain he wanted to savor every second of it, too, to slow it down and bathe in it—for fear he’d miss out on a single moment.

Starsky crossed his arms, hugged his chest, and watched Hutch. He also knew how their intimacy would evolve that night, but he thought it best to keep his hands to himself; Hutch would appreciate having dinner after all the work he’d poured into it—and that he was probably hungry. That, and Starsky was curious to know if Hutch would, finally, be the initiator of a sexual experience between them. It wasn’t the ideal set-up; Hutch knew Starsky wanted sex with him so Hutch could easily surrender under obligation, but if Starsky heard his lover correctly that night, and he believed he had, Hutch wanted sex with him as much as he wanted it with Hutch. That was something he was simply going to have to trust, not test with his stupid games. Not ever again.

Minutes passed. They didn’t speak to each other. Words would have been useless and disruptive. Hutch retrieved two forks from a nearby drawer and then set the pasta bowl on the counter up against Starsky’s thigh. He handed him a fork, stem-first.

Starsky hesitated to take it—not because he didn’t want to eat Hutch’s meal, but because he needed Hutch’s confirmation that they’d resolved their misunderstanding, that they would share dinner then, and that they’d follow it with the sex they both wanted, the kind that would leave them deeply physically satisfied and more emotionally bonded. He couldn’t eat until he knew for certain that Hutch was on the same thought page and he looked for that answer in Hutch’s candlelight-reflecting blue eyes.

Hutch closely noticed Starsky’s pause. Momentarily, he was confused; he thought Starsky didn’t want eggplant in his pasta after all. But then he finally read the silent question on Starsky’s face. He encouraged Starsky to take the fork. “I was going to make garlic bread and a salad, but time’s a-wastin’,” he said, to let Starsky know he was impatient for the upcoming sex between them, too, “so stop fucking around, will you?”

They laughed, amused by the truth that they were definitely of one mind that night. Starsky took the fork when Hutch disheveled Starsky’s hair, but the affection only backfired on Hutch because it gave Starsky a more seductive look. He couldn’t resist his impulse—and didn’t—so he leaned in again and kissed Starsky’s lips.

They tasted each other, kissed and sucked on each other’s warm tongues, while their audible deep breaths buried the piano music for more than a minute. Starsky was the first to break the contact; he really didn’t want to waste Hutch’s dinner, and he rather liked the self-control because he hoped it would trigger another of Hutch’s initiations, not as a test, but as an aphrodisiac.

“C’mon, Wolfgang,” Starsky encouraged him, “let’s eat this so we can eat each other.”

Hutch heeded the suggestion. He filled the wine glass again and together they drank from it and ate from the pasta bowl. He stood beside Starsky, his groin pressed to the counter on which Starsky sat, the side of his hip snug to Starsky’s knee. He ate hungrily and excitedly, too, but there was also real emotion just beneath the surface. He was relieved and he was grateful. He would never take Starsky’s affection or intimacy with him for granted; it was a frail thing in those early months of it, and he felt enormously privileged to have it back.

More than Hutch, Starsky needed a distraction from his sexual wants that night, so he ate with his focus on the pasta, its taste and feel, its warmth in his mouth, and the care he’d witnessed behind its creation. “You could be anything you want to be,” he told Hutch. Maybe if Hutch had followed his passion for food, he’d be a world-renowned chef by then with his own television show and bestselling books.

“What I want is to be inside you,” Hutch casually replied.

They were somehow on such a different plane of thought that Starsky laughed out loud. It amazed him how well they could read each other and then not.

“Not what you meant?” Hutch suspected. He laughed at Starsky’s amusement. “Okay … so … I could be anything I want to be. I choose what I am, a crime detective.”

“Yeah, I know, but I mean you could be a professional cook, you know? Or a teacher. A doctor. Anything. You’ve got that kind of mind and background. You’re one of those people … the kind who could be anything and be it well. I never have seen what you admire about uneducated, untalented me.”

Hutch twirled pasta on his fork, stuck it in his mouth, and chewed while he talked. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

“Nah, really,” Starsky said. He drank wine from their shared glass and watched Hutch eat. “I like crime puzzles. I like figuring things out, like cold cases. I like finding the bad guys and making ’em pay, you know? But that’s as deep as I go.”

Hutch couldn’t resist. “Oh, believe me, buddy boy, you go a lot deeper than you think.” He winked at him.

“C’mon. Be serious.” Starsky still needed the distraction from sex, so he handed Hutch their glass. “Take your mind off fucking for one minute and listen to me.” He tried a different tact. “I’m just a street punk. You’ve said so yourself.”

“Yeah, and in the same breath, I’ve said I’m just a country boy. But we both know there’s more to who we are and what we do than meets the eye. Detective work requires intelligence, skill, planning, and timed execution. Deciphering clues, analyzing data and research, understanding and enforcing the law, reading body language, unraveling motive—solving ‘crime puzzles’—all that … I like your mind, pal.”

Starsky was comforted and ate again with earnest.

“And I love your heart,” Hutch added. “That drive you have to find and make ’em pay … that comes from a bred-and-born sincere place in your soul. I may have locked horns with you in those former years, but it was never over your pure heart or your integrity.” He thought a second and then said, “Or your honesty.” He realized, only after a pause, that Starsky had stopped eating and looked at him, so he lifted his eyes and looked back. He could tell Starsky genuinely appreciated the assessment. “So I’d take your streetwise gold heart,” Hutch finished, “over your being a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher any day.” He ate another bite of pasta, chewed, swallowed it, and lastly said, “Or a college-graduated talent of any persuasion, for that matter.”

He thought Starsky would be speechless for a minute, or that he might feel so emotional by what Hutch said that he would return the sentiments, but when Starsky spoke, his voice carried the weight of his sarcasm with it. “You’re such a cornball,” he noted.

“You just don’t want to tell me you love me, too,” Hutch joked.

“I’ll tell you,” Starsky said. “Someday. It’s not like I haven’t before.”

Silence fell over them again; they were focused on dinner and drinking and listening to the music and feeling the summer breeze in the kitchen, and being consoled by the other’s company, by the bonds that held them and had held them for years, and by the intimacy they’d discovered with each other and were glad to have back in their lives.

As they neared the emptying of the bowl, Starsky took the wine glass from Hutch, looked him squarely in the eye—with fondness and affection—and, as quietly as he was sincere, he broke the silence and said, “I love you.”

Hutch warmly laughed. He felt the weight of Starsky’s words and their authenticity, just like the Starsky he knew and had known and loved deeply, more than life itself. He didn’t use the exact words in reply, but they conveyed the same promise. “I’d do anything for you.”

And he had—and they both knew he had.

And it had been mutual over the years.

Starsky felt the warmth of wine in his mouth and throat, imagined its effect long before it reached his blood, and handed the glass back to Hutch. “So prove it, Romeo,” he playfully said. “Prove that you’d do anything for me. Blow me.”

Hutch dropped his fork into the empty pasta bowl, took the one from Starsky’s hand and tossed it in behind it, and then grabbed the back of Starsky’s head. He pulled him forward as he leaned into him and kissed him at length and longingly, savoring taste and feel, smell and sound—and the arousal it caused him; eyes tightly closed, all he felt were the physical sensations in his body and the excitement in his veins. Without breaking their passionate contact, he maneuvered in front of Starsky again, pushed between his legs, and pressed up against the counter, imagining then how it would feel to be inside him. The thought and the desire and the near possibility of it gave him an instant erection and got his heart to pounding.

Starsky wouldn’t encourage Hutch beyond his verbal suggestion; he wanted to feel Hutch’s passion, undirected and unfulfilled, but he did take Hutch’s face in his hands to return the fierceness of his drive. If it fueled Hutch’s appetite, it did so because Hutch’s urge was evident and irrepressible. Starsky was aware again that the lover in his hands was male; Hutch’s shaved face, lightly rough, made Starsky sensually scratch Hutch’s chin, gently, while he kissed him—and served to remind him that Hutch was male in all aspects. Maybe, right there, if he was lucky, Starsky would get to feel the man inside him, too.

Hutch dropped his hands to the counter and used his fervent kisses to push Starsky to his back onto the cool tile beside the stove. Then he lay against him, still standing, and pinned Starsky willingly to the hard surface while they kissed and panted and laughed with each other.

Starsky squeezed Hutch’s hips between his knees to encourage him—and succeeded. “Go ahead,” he said. “Have your way.”

“Like so?” Hutch ran his hand up under Starsky’s shirt to feel the hair on his chest and belly. He heard Starsky’s halting breath when he felt the skin-to-skin contact and was aware of his own urge for Starsky. “I think I get more out of this than you do.”

“Think again,” Starsky said with a laugh. He was comfortably helpless on his back on the counter beneath Hutch’s inspection. And he was contented by the belief that Hutch desired him, would make sex happen between them because Hutch wanted to, not just because Starsky wanted him to, and that Hutch’s initiation was liberating in a way he would later analyze, not then. He was excited to experience Hutch’s pursuit, an animal passion that would allow Starsky to surrender to sexual indulgement rather than direct it.

Hutch lifted Starsky’s shirttail to look at his haired, noticeably heaving belly. The self-tease made him unbutton Starsky’s shirt from the bottom up, then push it open to expose what had been hidden until that moment: Starsky’s appealing tanned skin and its black hair. Was it Starsky’s physical appearance that attracted him, that stimulated him further, or was it that Starsky’s underlying charm and sensuality added a level of arousal he wouldn’t have otherwise—and that he was about to be completely enchanted again? How would he ever know and was it relevant to know?

For whatever reason, Starsky’s look—his face and his hair, his eyes and his mouth, his haired skin and that playful smile, his masculine voice, all those things—coupled with memory, with flashbacks to his and Starsky’s sex-making, aroused Hutch. It drove him beyond a previous fear he held that Starsky would reject him if he asked for his consent. He loosed the button at the top of Starsky’s waistband and heard Starsky moan his approval. He unzipped Starsky’s fly while he looked longingly into his eyes, noticed Starsky’s approving reaction, and was sidetracked by his own determination. He pressed his erection to the edge of the counter and gripped Starsky’s waistband.

When he tugged, Starsky willfully lifted his hips to allow Hutch to pull down his jeans and, together, they lowered them enough to release Starsky’s yearning penis into the soft candlelight.

Hutch couldn’t look at it soon enough; it was hard and upright, already visibly veined and dark with heated blood. Hutch was pleased by its obvious desire and further aroused by the eager evidence of Starsky’s want. He gently cupped Starsky’s scrotum and briefly glanced at his eyes again to get a read of Starsky’s no smile; he detected a pure mix of excitement and anticipation.

Hutch relinquished his fear and anxiety, his awkwardness and his shyness; Starsky wasn’t just his best friend, his partner, or even his lover. Starsky was also his equal. Hutch had to abandon his fear that he’d lose Starsky. Starsky’s bond to him was as indelible as the reverse.

Wasn’t it?

He released Starsky’s scrotum, gripped his shaft in a loose and gentle fist instead, and heard Starsky suck breath between his teeth. The sound of Starsky’s anticipation made Hutch feel nearly as tantalized. It was a sound he had sorely missed. He bent down and lightly kissed Starsky’s bared hip, then his haired, but naked belly near his navel. He lowered his head further and felt the hair between Starsky’s legs tickle his face, his eyes and his nose and his mouth, and he inhaled deeply. Starsky’s musky aroma and Starsky’s apparent heat fueled his own appetite.

* * *

“Did you take him there like that?” Jade asked Hutch. Jade was curious about why Starsky had ended the report at that point, but he imagined Hutch would complete it for him. Hutch had always been forthcoming—at least on most things.

But Hutch didn’t get a chance to answer.

“You mean, did he take me right there on the counter?” Starsky asked. “Hell, yeah. He’s an animal.”

Hutch rolled his eyes.

“Is that the reason you have the big counter?” Jade asked. “Are you a sex-in-the-kitchen kind of guy?” He hoped humor would bring Hutch out of his shell.

“I’ve started sex in kitchens,” Hutch admitted, finally joining the conversation, “but never before finished in one. Those counters aren’t exactly the kinds of places women want to be ravished.”

“I didn’t notice,” Starsky said, mocking shyness. “I was focused on something harder.”

Hutch rolled his eyes again.

“Well,” Jade said proudly, “I’m glad to see you boys overcame your misunderstanding.” He glanced knowingly at Hutch to remind him that he had originally supposed to Hutch that his and Starsky’s sexual separation had been a miscommunication built on their respective insecurities.

Hutch heard the silent reminder and pursed his lips to let Jade know he had. “This whole mess has been a delicate matter,” he defended himself—for not having listened to Jade in the first place.

“Is it still a mess?” Jade asked.

“We disinfected the counter, so that’s cleaned up,” Starsky said with a chuckle—and it made Jade smile. “But it’s no mess anymore, not really, right, cowboy?”

“Right,” Hutch agreed with him, honestly, “at least, not the mess it was. I mean, you don’t hit me anymore.”

That’s when Starsky remembered that Hutch had slapped him. “But now you hit me,” he said, making quick eye contact with Jade when he realized he’d just opened a dialogue about that embarrassing moment and he wasn’t supposed to.

“Hutch hit you?” Jade asked him, right on cue.

“He slapped me,” Starsky said. He didn’t want Jade to think Hutch had punched him. But he realized too late, again, that he said too much, especially when he heard Hutch’s objecting exhale beside him.

“He slapped you recently?” Jade furthered.

“Yeah. A couple of days ago.”

A moment of silence passed while he and Jade looked at each other.

“Where did he slap you?” Jade finally had to ask. He didn’t understand the awkwardness and thought clarification was in order.

“My face,” Starsky said, displeased when he realized his effort to stop the questions had failed. “Where else would he have slapped me?”

Jade simply leveled his gaze at Starsky to force him to answer his own question.

Starsky laughed, embarrassed. “No, we’re not into spanking. He slapped my face. I pissed him off and he slapped me.”

Hutch looked away and huffed, his turn to be annoyed. No doubt Jade would want to know why he had slapped Starsky and why he had slapped Starsky was because Starsky had joked with him that morning about an extremely private experience they’d had, an experience he didn’t want Starsky to tell Jade about. But how could Starsky possibly explain the slap without exposing the reason? Hutch was peeved.

Right on his next cue, Jade asked, “Why did he slap you?”

Starsky felt Hutch’s silent pressure and struggled to find his elusive answer. “Because I made light of a favor he wanted.”

“A favor?” Hutch echoed, incredulously. He didn’t like how Starsky had reduced his heartfelt request to something as frivolous as a favor.

Starsky didn’t get a chance to explain his choice of words before Jade asked, “What favor was that?”

“To keep a secret,” Starsky answered, unable to help himself. Jade had asked, after all.

“Whose secret?”

“Hutch’s—to keep to myself what he did to me the next morning,” Starsky explained, “the morning after the night we played around in the kitchen.”

Jade was surprised, but not offended, to think there was anything Hutch wouldn’t confide in him. “Without telling me the secret,” he said to Hutch, “can you at least tell me, in general terms, how the slap transpired?”

“Well, I didn’t really hurt him all that much,” Hutch said, defending himself. “I shocked him mostly.”

Starsky snickered. “He shocked me all right—and not just when he slapped me.”

* * *

Hutch woke before Starsky did and he woke early. Though morning had broken, the sun had not yet risen. There was enough light in the room to see the ticking clock on his dresser, but the time didn’t register in his brain. He was too sleepy to care. Instead, he lay quietly on his back in the dimly lit room, eventually re-closed his eyes, and drifted into a conscious dreamland. He was aware of Starsky’s presence in the bed beside him, sleeping deeply still; Starsky lay on his belly and faced away from him, his foot snug against Hutch’s ankle. The touch brought a smile to Hutch’s face. He was reminded of how much he had missed his lover’s contact for the past couple of weeks.

As he revisited the path through their miscommunication, he emerged from his sleepy daydreams to chastise himself for the role he played in it. How could Starsky ever think he didn’t want sex with him? The answer was because Hutch rarely initiated sex. As important as it was to Hutch that he not make Starsky feel obligated, Starsky hadn’t wanted Hutch to do likewise. Hutch decided that morning that making his intentions known would begin right then. The sex in the kitchen the night before was somewhat expected; it came on the heels of their rediscovery, but the sex that morning would be impulsive, purely without motivation—other than that Hutch wanted to prove to Starsky how much he wanted it with him.

He rose onto his elbow and pulled the sheet away to expose Starsky’s lightly haired back and mostly hairless buttocks. The sight of Starsky’s nude body, even in the dim light, was inviting and stimulating to see, and not just because of the orgasmic pleasure it would provide him, but because Starsky was an attractive, well-built man; he was well-proportioned, masculine and male. Sexuality and sensuality oozed from his every pore, even in his sleepiness, even in soft light. Hutch had never really noticed Starsky’s physical attributes prior to his playing around with him, to his having sex with him, to his making love with him, but now he couldn’t miss them; more than that, he was consciously drawn to them.

Not finding their bottle of almond oil on Starsky’s nightstand, Hutch looked for it on his own side of the bed. When he spied it, he rolled over to grab it, rolled back and then squeezed a generous dollop of oil into his palm before he recapped the bottle and left it on his pillow. He propped again on his elbow and coated his hands with the emollient to warm it while he listened to Starsky’s deep breathing and studied his sleeping form in the soft light. Starsky sure did excite him.

There was no comparing. Hutch didn’t notice how different Starsky’s shape was from any woman’s he’d made love to over the years—Starsky’s broader shoulders, his wider back, his absence of a waist. Hutch didn’t recognize the haircut as male, just that Starsky’s was dark brown and wavy and disheveled from their sex and sleep the night before, and how much he would have liked to run his fingers through it right then were they not covered in oil. And he didn’t find Starsky’s lightly haired backside any less a turn-on than any woman’s would have been; in fact, Starsky’s butt was the most attractive he’d ever laid eyes on, male or female.

Was it because that “tight ass” belonged to Starsky and he loved him more than he loved anyone—or ever had? Was it because he’d actually been inside the man in a way he’d only been inside a woman once in his lifetime and the draw of anal sex was the thing that aroused him? Or was it simply because Starsky had an attractive body and build, was perfectly proportioned, athletic, noticeably muscled, and healthy?

When Hutch placed his hands on him, he lost interest in the answers, and leaned slightly over him to admire his familiar face instead. Starsky’s closed eyes, his dark lashes, his distinct profile, his sleep-induced innocence as he lay there, oblivious, were the things that made Hutch realize that he himself was already aroused. Certainly his erection had emerged while he eyed Starsky’s nude body and felt the warm oil in his hands, but he was intrigued that it took Starsky’s face to make him realize he had it. Love was a curious thing.

He placed his palm on Starsky’s shoulder, gently and with affection, and then slowly massaged his skin in circular, smooth, tender strokes.

Starsky stirred. The touch was deep enough that it seeped into his slumber and slowly woke him from an unmemorable dream. Had Hutch been more in earnest or first put his hands on Starsky’s penis or butt—the way Starsky often woke Hutch—Starsky would have awakened sooner, faster, and instantly responded, but the contact that morning was warm, un-rushed, quiet, and sensual. Starsky woke, but didn’t open his eyes, preferring to direct his senses on the lascivious feel of the flesh.

After a minute of his focused attention on the relaxing massage, Starsky fully realized where he was and who touched him. He moaned with the pleasure it gave him. The sensation of Hutch’s oiled hands and strong fingers, sliding and kneading his body, both stimulated and comforted him—and that Hutch was the one to give it to him made it flawless.

The sound of Starsky’s quiet moan, his masculine voice, even wordless, made Hutch smile that morning for the second time. He massaged Starsky’s shoulders, then his neck, next the length and width of his back and muscled arms. His fingers and his palm slid effortlessly over Starsky’s warm skin, aided by the buttery feel of the oil. He pressed more firmly as he caressed the length of Starsky’s spine from its base to his hairline—and then couldn’t help himself, particularly in light of his earlier wish: He tangled his fingers in Starsky’s hair, gently pulled it, and then released it to follow a trail back to Starsky’s butt.

Starsky moaned again. The pressure in his penis and its determination titillated him; Hutch’s gentle aggression with his hair further aroused him. He wanted to laugh, but he felt too mesmerized to utter a sound other than a quiet moan. He got what he’d wanted all along: Hutch’s unsolicited initiation of something primal with him—and he wasn’t about to interrupt it, so he felt the emerging flush slowly excite his penis and immersed himself in the hypnotizing stimulation.

Hutch could tell he’d deeply relaxed Starsky—the evidence came through in Starsky’s soft sounds of pleasure—and he knew his pass at him had been sanctioned. Hutch hadn’t been rejected. Instead, Starsky had held to his promise to never refuse him. He sat up then to squeeze more oil into his hands, recap the bottle, and then rise completely to mount Starsky’s legs. He pushed the sheet to the bed’s foot in the shift; he and Starsky were fully nude and exposed in the soft morning light.

Hutch then used both hands to massage him; they worked in unison, firmly, and with a more spellbinding stroke than before, both for him and for Starsky. He glazed Starsky’s back with the oil as he squeezed, caressed, and kneaded Starsky’s skin and muscle. His caresses were lengthy and sensual and they aroused him emotionally, too. His penis had hardened rather quickly as it nested between Starsky’s thighs in that crevice between Starsky’s legs, and his own respiration had deepened and was audible. Starsky’s did likewise, and their breathing hadn’t gone unnoticed by the other.

Starsky felt as if he’d died and gone to that Heaven Hutch believed existed only on Earth. He, too, didn’t want to rush the experience. The massage was aimless and lazy, though Hutch’s hands were strong and determined. They purged Starsky’s muscles of their unseen tensions and their tightness. Hutch’s fingers were thorough, too, as they caressed the whole of Starsky’s back, his neck and shoulders, the base of his neck, then along his sides, down and up his arms, to his waist, and then they repeated their journey. Starsky never opened his eyes. He didn’t care what day or what time it was, where he was or how he got there, whether he’d be beckoned elsewhere by someone or something at any minute; he was purely adrift and in the moment, and the moment captivated him.

Hutch’s hands were warm and that sensation alone reminded Starsky that the initiation was brave and had come from the love Hutch felt for him. Starsky wanted the sex that would follow, he ached for it, he even expected it and imagined it before its arrival, but he also didn’t want to hurry it. What he had in those lengthy minutes was priceless by itself.

A clock ticked. They listened to each other’s breaths, to the sound of Hutch’s hands as they slid over Starsky’s skin, to Starsky’s occasional low and expressive moans. They were aware of what was right then and what was yet to come. They were aroused and wanting and expecting and excited, but they enjoyed the sensualness of the communion, too. Hutch was further rewarded because he could see Starsky’s face in relaxed consciousness, Starsky’s innocent and blissful expression, his familiar profile and his mussed hair, the shape of his neck and shoulders, the width of his back, his perfectly muscled butt.

Hutch could see his own erection, too, there in the soft morning light, its healthy size, emerged from its foreskin, nearly fully veined. It was another of life’s liberating moments, to be freely who he was with the one person on all of Earth that he could be himself—doing what he felt compelled to do without judgment or pretense, without repulsion or restraint. It was just Starsky and himself in those private minutes.

He massaged each cheek of Starsky’s butt, first one and then the other. Despite their toned muscle, they were fleshier than Starsky’s back, arms, and legs, and the softer feel further aroused Hutch by their submissive attributes. The division of each shank, marked both by the definition in the physical design of the human body and by his own hands parting Starsky’s backside purely by the nature of the massage, made Hutch anticipate the inevitable penetration. It was the first time during their sensual endeavor that morning, and purely from what he knew lay ahead, that he himself moaned.

Hutch’s lengthy hum made Starsky giggle.

And that made Hutch laugh, a quiet laugh. He imagined that Starsky had read his mind. How could Starsky not have? He certainly felt where Hutch’s hands were and that Hutch laid eyes on his naked butt and that Hutch’s hardened shaft was pressed into its cleft and what his moan had implied.

Hutch lowered himself and rolled his hips to gently press his penis deeper into the division between Starsky’s buttocks. It made them both growl and then laugh together because it seemed tentative and yet wasn’t. Hutch kissed Starsky’s shoulder. His skin smelled of almond oil and of his familiar and intimate scent. The aromas made Hutch lick Starsky then, too, to inhale as much of him as he could in every way possible. He nibbled, licked, and kissed Starsky’s shoulder, Starsky’s neck, and then his face, the side exposed from his pillow. When Starsky finally opened his eyes and attempted to turn enough to get a lip-kiss from Hutch, Hutch withdrew to discourage him. He then shifted to his heels to trail kisses and licks and nibbles along Starsky’s spine to his buttocks instead.

Starsky sucked a deep breath. He imagined he’d get to roll over and Hutch would continue that oral contact right where he hoped they both wanted him to. His penis was ready, so he made an effort to indulge his craving, but Hutch firmly pressed Starsky’s hip to the mattress at his first effort to move. If Starsky exerted himself, he could easily have broken past Hutch’s apparent wish, but Starsky understood what was asked of him—and he gave it. He sank back to his earlier surrender, there on his stomach, and hugged the pillow beneath his head. It was Hutch’s initiation, after all, so Starsky wanted it to be at Hutch’s direction, too.

Hutch drizzled oil onto Starsky’s lower back, a generous amount; no doubt, it felt cool to him, but he never reacted. Hutch capped the bottle, tossed it back to his pillow, and then immersed his already slick-with-oil hands into the pool he’d created in the cup of Starsky’s back. With his thumb, he felt along the division of Starsky’s buttocks until he found that indentation, and then he carefully lubricated it, both its rim and its immediate entrance, amply covering it with the lubricant. When he glanced at Starsky’s face to further read his willing expression, anticipating a positive reaction, he saw it in the genuine smile that faintly emerged on Starsky’s mouth.

Starsky didn’t fear pain, had never experienced it with Hutch, not even a little, and he knew his unforced acceptance early in their sexmaking only lengthened and increased his pleasure. The massage he’d just been given simply heightened his ability to yield to what otherwise may have been instinct to initially react. But Hutch didn’t penetrate him, not then, anyway; his manual stimulation at Starsky’s vent actually lingered a while. Starsky assumed Hutch didn’t realize he could ‘anal sex’ him yet, that Hutch perhaps thought he wasn’t relaxed enough, or wet enough, or wanting enough. Whatever the reason, Starsky willingly settled further into his submission.

Hutch had a different instinct. He shifted further back on Starsky’s legs, to below Starsky’s knees, took his own penis momentarily in his oiled hand and briefly pleased himself while he enjoyed the look of Starsky’s glistening skin in the early morning light. His erection was strong, but not so pressing that he wouldn’t first make Starsky harder than he imagined he already was. He tugged Starsky’s hips toward him, used enough pressure to coax his lover into rising to his knees, and then rose slightly off Starsky to push Starsky’s shoulders to the mattress, so that Starsky knelt in front of him, but was off his hands, his face still in his pillow. In that position, Hutch was able to open Starsky’s legs at his knees with a nudge from his own.

Starsky had never, in his lifetime, been in such a position. He’d been on his hands and knees while Hutch anally penetrated him, and the same with Adam, or he bent over the mattress from a standing position to accommodate Hutch that way, but he’d never been up on his knees with his shoulders on the mattress and his face on a pillow—though he’d certainly put numerous women into such a position in his past. The pose made him feel vulnerable—rather, more exposed than he’d ever been—and caused him to giggle, but not because he was embarrassed. He was actually delighted and pleased and excited to learn what turned on his lover after all that time—especially when he imagined why Hutch had put him there.

The morning light had grown into a crisper blue. It enabled Hutch to better see what he wanted to see: Starsky’s backside, his butt and his anus and his scrotum, the curve of Starsky’s hips, the length of his back where it ended at his neck, and Starsky’s wavy, dark hair on his head, his penis from behind him; a complete picture, one Hutch had never seen from that angle before. He also noticed that Starsky hugged his pillow and pressed the side of his face in its cushion; he could still see Starsky’s tightly closed eyes and his shy smile and his relaxed expression while Starsky anticipated Hutch’s every caress and kiss. He’d also heard Starsky giggle again—that time like a little boy. Hutch laughed, lightly and with affection. He kissed Starsky’s raised hip, and kissed him again.

On second look, he saw that Starsky’s smile had disappeared. Their engagement was no longer amusing or awkward or playful or innocently juvenile. Hutch’s intention was very serious, extremely adult, and explicitly sexual.

He reached between Starsky’s legs, gently gripped Starsky’s expectedly hardened penis, and heard Starsky draw another deep breath while Hutch’s already oiled hand enabled the glide of his stroke, smooth and uninterrupted. He pulled Starsky’s penis toward him, back between Starsky’s legs, as far as he thought he could bring it without hurting him, and continued to slowly and tenderly stroke its length in his open, but snug fist. When Starsky helplessly moaned from the pleasure Hutch gave him, Hutch kissed the rise of his hip again, one and then the other. He sucked Starsky’s warm skin, kissed, and nibbled Starsky’s lower back and the sides of his thighs, kisses that drew closer to Starsky’s penis. His teasing touches made Starsky audibly pant with anticipation.

But the oral sensations considerably relaxed him, too. He surrendered completely to the experience. Hutch had already learned how to satisfy him with fellatio because Hutch followed his instinct, born from love, and listened closely to his lover’s cues. Hutch also didn’t rely purely on the pleasure his large penis provided; he gave his all to his partners to make sex as rewarding an experience for them as for himself. It was just his nature. With Starsky, that nature went deeper yet.

He felt Hutch’s tongue and his wet lips and his gentle sucks and his warm kisses in keen and mesmerizing bliss. He was aware that Hutch drew closer to his aching and engorged penis and couldn’t wait to feel the man’s mouth on it—despite that the delay was part of the fun. He hugged his pillow more tightly, closed his eyes in the dawning light, and focused every fiber of his being into the physical enjoyment that fermented between his legs. He knew what awaited him and how good it would feel, but he’d never experienced it in the position he was in, there on the bed on his knees with Hutch behind him handling him like that in such sensual relaxation.

Hutch had grown eager, too; pleasuring Starsky immensely pleased himself. He made an effort to prolong the sensations for Starsky by kissing the inside of his thighs while he stroked Starsky’s penis, quite near his heated erection. He made Starsky want the touch, ache for it. Starsky’s skin was glistening with oil, and the slick glide enabled more graceful licks and kisses; he tasted of the previous night’s sweat and almond oil. When his moans leveled and his pant seemed to nearly hit its peak, Hutch amplified Starsky’s pleasure by holding Starsky’s swollen penis to his face. He deeply smelled and longingly examined it to intensify his own desire, and then gently trailed sucking kisses from its engorged tip slowly up its warm and tumescent shaft. He lingered with softer, more tender touches when he nursed Starsky’s fleshy sac and its sensitive testes, and then licked along the hairless curve of his perineum to Starsky’s anus.

Starsky didn’t flinch, but Hutch heard his moans rise in pitch, telling Hutch all he needed to know as he, for the first time in his own life, pleasured another human being in the way he did then. The indentation was rounder than he expected, subtlety ribbed, softer, too, than he anticipated. Nothing about Starsky offended him, not even in slight degree. Hutch’s touches were a series of lubricated, sensual, tender, and loving kisses, tantalizing and heightening in their genuine deliverance. He used his tongue and his lips together, altering pressure and sensualness, technique and timing, and then retraced his trail to return his sucking kisses to Starsky’s penis, savoring the taste of every inch of his erogenous skin along the way.

Starsky could have died just then and been happy for it. His vulnerability with—and his complete exposure to—his trust and loyalty, his permissible helplessness and his faith in his lover, all served to liberate him. He rocked back to make himself more easily accessible to Hutch, but he didn’t leave the embrace he held to his pillow. He simply hadn’t expected the lengthy duration of Hutch’s attention to him, not in time nor in the ways Hutch chose to pleasure him. When Hutch did it again, when he kissed, licked, and sucked Starsky from the tip of his penis to his anus and back again, Starsky about died the second time, too.

He was filled with sensation, with eroticism and ache, with longing, want, and sexual desire. The experience was distinctly heightened for him because Hutch used his hands and his mouth in tandem. While he sucked Starsky’s penis, he stimulated Starsky’s anticipating anus with his oil-slicked thumb, and while he sucked and licked Starsky’s anus and scrotum, he stroked Starsky’s aching-for-touch penis in his lubricated hand. The combination for Starsky was exhilarating. He moaned, he panted, his heart pounded, he whimpered, he smiled and he laughed and he nearly cried; he was hard and harder still, and he was grateful and filled with more love and excitement for the man for whom he already had such enormous feelings.

There was no guessing for Starsky that Hutch was as sexually and emotionally involved as he was. He felt Hutch’s warm breath on his skin, heard Hutch moan, too, and he heard him pant and breathe heavily and sigh; even the sucking and kissing sounds Hutch made were fearlessly audible and genuine. That Hutch took his time, that he was apparently methodical in what he did, that he knew his actions pleased Starsky that much, and that he explored parts of Starsky’s body with such meticulous and prolonged detail, all told Starsky what he’d waited months to know: Hutch did want him. Every part of him.

Starsky’s exposing position, there on his knees with his hips in the air, and his legs spread, gave Hutch access to his lover’s most private and essential attributes; Starsky’s naked body was completely hostage to Hutch’s lust—and he took full advantage of it. In that position, he missed not kissing Starsky’s mouth. He missed not looking into his eyes and seeing that handsome smile on his face. He missed the emotional connection he made with Starsky when they looked at each other during sex, when they communicated purely by expression or by the sweat on their foreheads or by the shyness of their body language and smiles.

Hutch had to rely that morning on those other things, on Starsky’s willingness, on the sounds of his pleasure and their pitch, by Starsky’s labored and heaving respiration, that Starsky had rocked back into him to appease his desire for more, and by the hardness of Starsky’s burning penis; in the morning light, Hutch could see its engorged veins under the surface of its skin. They told no lies.

He was thrilled to have pleased Starsky that much. He was aroused, too, as eager to reach that climax, maybe even with him. But he also got a charge out of the warmth and stiffness of Starsky’s penis in his mouth, its fullness and length, of the smooth delicacy of Starsky’s scrotum between his lips, by the caressing softness of his tongue across Starsky’s perineum, and by the taste and oiled slickness of the bliss he gave Starsky when he licked his anus—all that and those same sensations in his hands.

It was primal and it was animal and, as much as he wanted something more emotional and as much as he wanted the ecstasy of an orgasm himself, he didn’t want to end the tasty gratification at his lips and tongue before it was too soon. But when he felt and then licked up Starsky’s viscous pre-cum from the slit of his penis, Hutch was able to gauge just how close to an ejaculation Starsky had come, and knew he wouldn’t be able to hold him off for long.

Starsky was delirious. No other lover had breached the barriers. There were simply titillations no woman had given to him—or ever would. Few women ever touched his sac, let alone licked his anus—and yet Hutch couldn’t seem to get enough of every private part of him. The position alone spellbound him. He had been given permission to fully indulge himself. He had tried to reciprocate, tried even just to kiss Hutch in reply, but Hutch held to his silent conviction that he take the experience and not feel obligated. It meant Starsky could fully enjoy every single stroke of Hutch’s hand and tongue. He didn’t have to ask. Or wish and want and not get. He didn’t have to pace himself. Or take time out of his ecstasy to make certain his partner had caught up with him. He didn’t have to return any favors. He simply got to immerse himself in a pleasure so deep it defied description.

No one had ever devoured his body with such complete abandon and thoroughness, nor in a way that read his every nuance and internal feeling, be it emotional or physical or sexual or spiritual. Hutch read his body and mind—and his heart. He took Starsky to the edge, brought him back, took him closer, recovered him, over and again, until he thought Starsky wouldn’t last another second. But Hutch made sure he did.

Starsky heard Hutch’s panting and felt his breath on him, imagined Hutch’s penis was as close to bursting while he gave his own over to Hutch’s hands and lips and tongue. The idea that Hutch, too, was as aroused and wanting of that experience gave Starsky a rush unlike anything he’d felt in his lifetime. He could cry were the bliss already not so physically overpowering.

Hutch released him then and pushed him forward, not so much that Starsky ended up on his stomach, but enough that he lowered to an accessible angle. Starsky went willingly. He lifted to his elbows to brace himself for the impending penetration, then hung his forehead to his pillow, and eagerly awaited the sensation. The only thing he was anxious about was that he wouldn’t last much longer, that he was so close to a climax, he feared it would overtake him just from Hutch’s entry.

But Hutch slowly eased his hardened penis into him with surprising mindfulness, given his own arousal and want. They moaned from the pleasurable feel of it, each experiencing a different sensation, but that they felt something intense together made them quietly laugh, too. The tightness pleased Hutch; the lengthy penetration pleased Starsky. Hutch didn’t thrust until he was inside as far as he could go, the circumference of his penis dilating Starsky to accommodate him, and then withdrew to push in again. Those initial hot strokes enabled Hutch to further judge Starsky’s passivity and to make certain he was relaxed enough to handle something more aggressive. It never ceased to amaze him how easily he could slide into Starsky, how supple and submissive Starsky was, but also how snug and rewarding was the tightness.

Hutch was close to an orgasm and he imagined Starsky was, too, measured by their collective heavy breathing and their desperate moans and by the sweat they’d broken together, so he was unusually rhythmus in his thrusts. He was further stimulated by the visual of his penis disappearing inside Starsky, the whole of it swallowed by him, the length of it gone in an instant and appearing again, over and over, reddened and glistening, veined and near bursting, and by the shape of Starsky’s buttocks and hips as he bent forward on his knees to take the penetration, and by Starsky’s sweaty, oiled back, his disheveled hair, how he hung his head nearly into his pillow and went from a rhythmic moan to a repetitive “Fuck” with every one of Hutch’s pushes. Starsky was close to the finish, Hutch knew, and he did everything in his power to prolong the inevitable, so Starsky could enjoy its duration to the max.

Starsky didn’t think Hutch’s erection could be any bigger than it had been in the past, but on that day, it felt enormous. It filled him much deeper than he remembered and made the pleasing sensation of the withdrawal last longer. The stroke, there in what Starsky had once described as the backside, or the basement, of his penis, was tremendous. He heard Hutch’s breathing accelerate, he felt Hutch’s strength with each push inside him, and he felt Hutch’s oiled hands on his back, on his butt, behind his head, as if Hutch, too, couldn’t find that perfect mark that would delay the pleasure for them. Starsky couldn’t wait any longer.

It was at that nearly releasing moment that Hutch realized, almost too late, that Starsky had shifted his weight to one elbow to aid his own impending climax. Hutch quickly reached under him, gripped Starsky’s wrist, and pried him off his penis. With an affectionate laugh, he pinned Starsky’s arm to the mattress instead. When Starsky couldn’t please himself, Hutch sped up the pace of his thrusts. He knew the end was imminent at that moment, but he wanted to be the one to push it over the edge.

Starsky’s orgasm had never been more furious. Nor had it ever lasted as long. As Hutch penetrated and withdrew from him in rhythmic thrusts, Starsky emptied himself onto the sheet beneath him with equally fervent moans. His spasms of pleasure were powerful and they made him uncontrollably convulse with each wave, heightened further by Hutch’s deeply felt penis inside him. He shuddered and loudly cried out, dizzy and annihilated, completely buried in his own physicalness, drenched in his own sweat, and on fire with his own heat. He was weakened, too, and lost his ability to support himself. While Hutch continued to thrust into him, he collapsed on the mattress beneath him, into the warm wetness of his ejaculate—and gulped for air.

* * *

Jade didn’t know the details of that early morning sex because they had both clammed up about it; Hutch never had any intention of sharing a single aspect of such a private act with Jade, at least not its finer details. He could only remember it and wish it wouldn’t be pursued. It was Starsky’s stupid comments that put them in that awkward conversation.

Jade watched them both for a minute while he waited for either of them to say something. When neither of them spoke, he finally said, “Okay … how about, then, you tell me why it matters enough that you won’t tell me why he slapped you. Fair enough?”

“When he asked me to keep some of what he did to me to myself, to keep it between us,” Starsky said, “I joked with him about telling you. It’s nothing personal, you understand,“ he quickly explained to Jade.

Hutch chimed in, too. “It was simply personal to me and therefore something I want to keep between my partner and me.”

Jade understood. And appreciated it. “Then I’ll ask no more about it,” he promised.

That was a promise they would all keep. No one but Starsky and Hutch would know what—or why—Hutch had slapped him, and even then, as Hutch played it through his mind, he was satisfied by how it ended…

* * *

It may have been late morning by the time they woke from their sex-induced sleep, but Hutch didn’t care. He didn’t have anywhere he wanted to be other than where he was, but it did amuse him that they’d slept so long. They were still oiled and they’d destroyed the bed. He inwardly laughed about that, too.

Starsky heard him stir and woke beside him. “Are we alive?” he asked.

“More like the waking dead,” Hutch said with a groan.

Starsky rolled onto his back and tried to look at the ceiling, but the light was too bright, so he closed and rubbed his eyes instead. “Jesus.”

“Was he here?”

“Don’t be so …”

“Sacrilegious?”

“If that’s a word.”

“That is a word.”

“If that’s the word I was looking for.”

“I’m sure it was, even if you don’t know it.”

“Yeah?” Starsky nudged Hutch to abuse him for his sarcasm, but he was weak still and it was obvious he hadn’t given the punishment the justice it deserved. Hutch didn’t even grunt. “Make me pancakes?” he asked instead.

Hutch looked at Starsky, to Starsky’s profile, his closed eyes, his haired chest and shoulders. “What say we go out and have someone else make us breakfast? I’m exhausted.”

“A good plan if ever there was one.”

They lay quietly for a while and neither spoke. They didn’t really have it in them to do more than lie in the early morning light and summon the strength they’d need to greet what remained of the day.

“Do something for me,” Hutch finally said, projecting into their future. “Do something important for me, will you?”

“Name it.”

“Don’t tell Jade everything we do? I mean, let some things be just between us?”

Starsky opened his eyes, turned his head, and looked at Hutch, right into those baby blues. “You mean, don’t tell him you licked my asshole?”

Over the years, it was Hutch who used words to knock Starsky around; Starsky was the one to physically prod or poke or smack or lightly punch Hutch, but on that day, given Starsky’s crack, and in light of what they’d just immensely enjoyed together, Hutch rose to his elbow and slapped Starsky’s face—not hard, but hard enough.

Starsky tried to block the blow when he saw it coming, but was too late. He stared in disbelief at Hutch as he absorbed the sting. “I was just kidding,” he defended himself.

“Don’t kid,” Hutch warned him. “Not about that.”

“Well, c’mon, if I can’t joke with you about—”

“Don’t joke-with-me-about,” Hutch said firmly. “Or maybe that kind of thing means less to you than it does to me.”

“You were there with me,” Starsky sincerely said, rubbing his cheek where Hutch had slapped him. “You know how much it meant to me.”

“Then don’t joke about it.”

“Okay.”

Hutch lay beside him again.

“Jesus,” Starsky swore, that time because he couldn’t believe Hutch had struck him. It was the shock of it that upset him. “That’s not how I wanted to wake up, you know?”

“Get over it.”

Starsky could have gone any direction at that moment; he could have withdrawn the way he was known to and pissed Hutch off in another way. Or he could have followed Hutch’s order and ‘got over it.’ But he suddenly had a completely different reaction. He laughed. Hutch had actually slapped him and Starsky thought it was one of the funniest moments of his life—once he got past being stunned by it.

“Shut the fuck up,” Hutch warned him, but he couldn’t help but be disarmed. On second look, it was rather, well, funny. He never hit Starsky, not like that. And when he did, Starsky ended up laughing about it. He didn’t want to encourage Starsky, though, so he nudged him with his elbow to make him stop laughing. “You heard me.”

“It’s what you didn’t say that I heard louder,” Starsky said. He rolled over onto Hutch and tickled him until Hutch grabbed his arm and made him stop.

“What didn’t I say?” Hutch asked.

Starsky pressed the length of his nude body alongside Hutch’s. He was tangled in the sheet with him and had never felt closer. He held Hutch’s chin and turned Hutch’s head so they would make eye contact. For a minute, Starsky was speechless. He looked deeply into those beautiful blue eyes, right into the soul of the man, haloed by his tousled, translucent blond hair and his flawlessly defined face, and was melted by Hutch’s intensely expectant expression. “I heard what you didn’t say,” Starsky repeated, whispering that time.

Hutch looked back as fondly into Starsky’s cobalt blue eyes and saw genuine warmth and sincerity, but he didn’t know what Starsky meant by what he’d silently heard. So Hutch asked him, without words, with just his expression, to explain himself.

Starsky kissed Hutch’s lips, then his cheek, and his mouth again. He kissed Hutch without reply, but he didn’t expect any. His affection wasn’t about Hutch, nor did it require Hutch’s involvement. He simply couldn’t resist being intimate with him at that moment. He pulled himself closer and covered Hutch’s face with kisses, Hutch’s eyes and his nose and his cheeks and his chin. He wasn’t silly. He didn’t play. He really wanted to put his mouth on Hutch, Hutch’s lips, and then eventually his tongue, when he realized Hutch had warmed up to him and invited him. He inhaled Hutch’s sweat and his scent, heard Hutch breathe deeply for that first returned kiss, tasted his skin and his mouth, which hinted of semen and almond oil, and Starsky was overwhelmed by the love and respect he had for his partner.

The kisses were sensual. They were warm and moist and they surprised Hutch, caught him off-guard. He and Starsky had just been through another enormously gratifying sexual experience with each other and he was sure Starsky didn’t expect a repeat performance just then. Neither of them could summon another orgasm that quickly, even if they wanted to, so Hutch didn’t think Starsky would tease either of them that way. But the longer the kisses lasted, the less they seemed to be anything but kisses, and the more Hutch appreciated them for their intrinsic worth—and for their message.

Starsky heard him. Wasn’t that the point? Starsky heard that Hutch wanted some things to be just between them, the most intimate, private moments of their lives to just be theirs. Starsky couldn’t say it with words; they could never have carried the weight of his promises. So he did it with touch, with affection, and with gratitude and intimacy.

Hutch stroked Starsky’s hair while they kissed. He opened his eyes briefly and saw that Starsky’s were closed and it made him smile—on his mouth—during a kiss. And in his heart.

Starsky felt Hutch’s smile at their lips and he smiled, too.

They paused, mouth to mouth, and deeply breathed, then laughed.

When Starsky began to withdraw, Hutch wrapped his arms around Starsky’s neck and pulled his face to his own, cheek to cheek, chest to chest, heart to heart. He squeezed him tightly and at length. They were nude and bonded, held together by unprecedented circumstances and by loyalty, trust, love, friendship, vulnerability, and respect, despite their differences and their sometimes misfires.

Starsky had heard more than Hutch realized he’d heard. He also heard that Hutch loved him and it was validated for him right then, right there, in that unplanned embrace, by its duration and its closeness. He could feel Hutch’s heartbeat, Hutch’s warmth, and his affection. Starsky closed his eyes and buried his face in Hutch’s neck to deeply inhale the aroma of Hutch’s skin.

The hug lasted until Hutch released him.

Starsky then noticed an expression on Hutch’s face that he couldn’t read. “What?” he asked, puzzled.

Hutch admired Starsky’s eyes and his handsomeness; then he tousled Starsky’s hair again and pressed against the choke in his throat. “Nuthin’,” he said.

“Sumpthin’,” Starsky believed.

But Hutch didn’t say. He couldn’t say. “Nuthin’,” he repeated.

* * *

GATHERING CLOUDS

Starsky had only been gone three days when Hutch couldn’t help but call him. His endurance had waned. “So?” he asked.

“So …” Starsky mulled before he realized what Hutch actually needed to know, and then said, “I don’t have time for details—except to say yes.”

But, yes, what? Yes, Grace said she’d marry Starsky or yes, he simply asked her? Hutch felt a bit anxious about his future as he sat there on his sofa and feared his impatience crossed the line by calling Starsky during his romantic getaway.

“Yes, she said she’ll marry you?” he meekly asked, seeking clarification before Starsky could hang up on him—or, rather, he was afraid Starsky would hang up on him. Hutch wasn’t sure Grace would actually agree to marry Starsky if Starsky had a boyfriend. Perhaps her acceptance of Starsky’s marriage proposal had attached conditions, which Starsky didn’t have time to tell him. Hutch didn’t know where he stood in that scenario now that it had become a reality. He was anxious for Starsky’s reply to his question, but he was more apprehensive about what Grace’s answer meant for himself in the long run. Starsky seemed impatient to get off the phone, so Hutch drew a deep breath to calm himself when Starsky’s reply took longer than he hoped.

“Yeah, of course,” Starsky replied, muffled, as if he’d cupped his hand over the receiver. “She’s going to marry me. Can you believe that?”

“I can.” Hutch was happy for him. Genuinely happy. “Congratulations, Starsk. I mean that.”

“I know you do,” Starsky said. “But, hey, we’re having room service and I got the waiter here still. They’re both looking at me like I owe some money. Grace says hi.”

“Tell her hello back. But … before you hang up … can I ask … are you still going to park your car in my driveway now that you’re engaged?” He hoped Starsky would pick up on his play on words, so Starsky could answer accordingly in mixed company.

“going to park there as soon as I get home—in about three hours,” came the friendly reply; then, in a much softer voice, Starsky added, “But, technically, you’re the one who parks a car in my driveway.”

Hutch’s relief was palpable. He could exhale. He also knew Starsky’s comment was a metaphor for their one-sided anal intercourse; it was Hutch who penetrated Starsky—Hutch’s ‘car’ in Starsky’s ‘driveway’—so he defended himself with a metaphor of his own. “You’re the one who drives a car, remember? I drive a truck.”

He knew Starsky would read between the lines the way he intended, that a truck was bigger than a car, that Hutch had a larger penis than Starsky did, and sure enough Starsky proved how accurately he’d deciphered the clues when his return crack was snarled, but affectionate. “Fuck you, blue eyes.”

* * *

Without any sound or announcing trumpets, the white-striped red car finally came into view between the trees that lined the road. Hutch had showered, shaved, dressed nicely in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, groomed his hair, splashed himself with cologne, and then impatiently sat on the front porch steps, his eye on the road at the end of the driveway. When he saw the car, it made his heart pound with anticipation. Though he was quite excited to be reunited with Starsky, he didn’t want to show it; he didn’t want to appear the love-struck fool he felt, so he forced a casual walk out to meet the arrival.

The car pulled up to the garage doors when Hutch reached Starsky’s driveway and the brake lights stayed on as he approached. Grace quickly emerged from the passenger side; she immediately saw Hutch, rushed to hug him, apologized for her hurry to use the bathroom, and disappeared up the walkway to the house before Starsky could even get out of the car.

Starsky had seen Hutch from the road when he arrived on the property, so he was as anxious to say hello, too. He got out of the car and grabbed Hutch in a tight bear hug—and he didn’t let go for half a minute. The feel of each other in their arms, especially Starsky’s strength, warmth, and physical reality, brought quiet tears to Hutch’s eyes. It wasn’t that he thought he’d never see Starsky again; he was simply overjoyed to be with him in that exquisitely suspended moment of reunion.

Neither wanted to let go. The week had been the longest they’d been separated and they weren’t about to shorten the precious contact between them any sooner than they had to. They laughed, inhaled each other’s scent and cologne, felt the physicalness of their union there in the driveway outside the car, heard each other’s breath, and deeply savored every second of the embrace in all ways possible.

Starsky eventually held Hutch at arm’s length to look into his eyes. “You’re not crying, are you?” he teased.

Hutch laughed at himself. “If I was, I wouldn’t tell you.” He wiped an eye on his sleeve as he noticed how nicely dressed Starsky was, that he was as freshly groomed and clean-shaven. “I’m just happy to see that the car got back in one piece,” he joked. His desire for Starsky shone in his eyes. “So … how about coming to my place for a proper welcome home?” he offered. “And then I can be happy fucking you to see.” He stepped away from Starsky to coax him with his body and a tug on his arm. “Or is it ‘fucking happy to see you’?” he reworded himself.

Starsky was tickled by Hutch’s playfulness—but he resisted.

Even before he explained his pause, Hutch’s smile disappeared and the happiness in his heart got instantly replaced with dread.

“Grace is coming back out,” Starsky explained. “We’re going to unpack the car and then see a movie to top off our vacation.”

Hutch made an effort not to be visibly disappointed by the delay in their rendezvous. “So come back to my house and come quickly.”

“I wish I could,” Starsky said, gently squeezing Hutch’s arm. He tried to be careful with Hutch, but knew he failed. Hutch was obviously crestfallen. “Hey, listen, let me do this thing, you know?” Starsky said. “Give me the rest of today to keep Grace happy. We all get a good night’s sleep and I catch you first thing in the morning. How’s that sound?”

Hutch looked longingly at Starsky while he fought to hold his composure. “You can tell her it’s been a week since we’ve seen each other and you want to take ten minutes out of your schedule to say hello to me in a man-to-man way.”

Starsky hoped Hutch appreciated the time constraint and the inappropriateness of rushing from a romantic week with Grace into the arms of his boyfriend the second he arrived home. He knew Hutch could understand that, and probably did, but Starsky still didn’t have an answer.

“C’mon,” Hutch coaxed him again, that time more seriously, and trying to compel him with eye speak alone. “She’ll understand that you want to spend a few personal minutes with me, won’t she?”

Starsky felt pressured, both by Hutch’s desire and from his effort to let Hutch down gently. He could see the man’s want in his eyes and the emotion in his face, that Hutch had dressed neatly and groomed himself and smelled good because he wanted to get his hands on Starsky and not let go until they’d both been satisfied. Starsky understood that because he wanted it for himself, too, to put his hands and his mouth on Hutch, but Grace had asked to see a movie that afternoon and he promised to treat her to one—out of obligation. They planned to drop their bags at the house, use the facilities, and then head to town to catch the feature of her choice. He then offered Hutch an option to ease the blow. “How about I come over in the morning,” he proffered, “and we have a long hot shower together?”

Starsky’s answer made Hutch abandon his effort. His disappointment dissolved into hurt and anger. “So why did you bother to tell me that you’d be home in a few hours?”

“Because I wanted to lay eyes on you; say hi.”

“That’s not what you said. You specifically said you’d park your car in my driveway as soon as you got home. Did I misread the code?”

“That was the plan,” Starsky said, emphatically. “But it wasn’t a plan I’d told her about, so she came up with another one. Innocently.”

“All right then,” Hutch surrendered. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It was the way Hutch said it that troubled Starsky; the tone in Hutch’s voice was one of pain and sorry, not one of excitement and anticipation, the way Hutch appeared when he first arrived at the house. Starsky didn’t know how to reply to it, but he never got the chance even if he’d made the effort because Grace emerged from the house and approached the car.

She greeted Hutch with a smile and warm hug, more relaxed that time. “Come with us to the movie,” she said. “We can all have dinner afterward.”

“Yeah,” Starsky said, trying to encourage Hutch, “do that.”

“Thanks just the same,” he told them, “but I need a nap.”

Starsky held eye contact with Hutch. There was much he wanted to say, especially an apology, but he wasn’t at liberty to speak those words without having to explain himself to Grace. He hoped Hutch could read them in his eyes instead—but his sunglasses hid his conveyance.

“We’ll see you later, then,” Starsky said when Grace’s further appeals had no effect on Hutch’s decision.

Hutch didn’t look at him. He backed a few steps so he would be clear of the car when it left the driveway. Then he waved to Grace and turned slowly on his heel. Without a word to Starsky, he set off for his own house.

“C’mon, Hutch,” he heard Starsky say behind him. “This can go another way, you know? Isn’t that what you would tell me?”

It could have gone the way Hutch hoped it would, the way he expected and dreamed it would, the way he so desired and ached that it would. That’s the way he thought it could go, but because it didn’t and, more importantly, because it wouldn’t, he never turned around.

* * *

“Are you just going to sit there?” Starsky asked.

He ascended the porch steps to Hutch’s house not long after he’d arrived home from the movie and found Hutch seated in a lawn chair beside the front door, in jeans, barefoot, and wearing a different shirt, which was noticeably unbuttoned.

Hutch didn’t rise to greet him. “Yep, gonna, yessir,” he said lightly—about whether or not he would get out of his chair. “I’m going to just sit here.” He was surprised to see Starsky, but no less happy about it, either; he’d been under the impression that he wouldn’t get to see him until the next day, but as he watched Starsky come up the driveway and then onto the porch, he knew it wasn’t a dream. He kicked himself for his earlier impatience. “What brings you here?” he asked.

“You,” Starsky said emphatically. He was peeved that Hutch didn’t stand to greet him, share an embrace, a kiss, maybe, too. “Why else would I come here?”

“But you said—”

“Yeah, I know what I said,” Starsky growled. “I said I couldn’t see you until tomorrow. It wasn’t my idea to come over right now.” He stood in front of Hutch and noticed again that Hutch appeared to have undressed and then redressed sometime during Starsky’s movie adventure. Hutch didn’t appear rested, like he normally would after a nap, and Starsky was also puzzled as to why Hutch had changed his clothes.

“It wasn’t your idea?” Hutch asked.

“Grace said I shouldn’t keep you waiting,” Starsky explained. Those hadn’t been her exact words, but Starsky was too distracted by Hutch, by his appealing appearance, by his inviting half-dressed body, from the absence of contact between them, and from his own desire to put his hands on Hutch, that he couldn’t remember Grace’s specific words, just that she’d given her permission that he spend time with Hutch that late afternoon.

When Starsky saw the look of dismay on Hutch’s face, he realized what he said and quickly added, “That didn’t come out right. I wanted to come over, you know I did, but it was just bad timing earlier, you know? On the way home, Grace said it was all right with her if I left her alone for the night. I think she’s setting us up.” He grinned.

Hutch was glad to learn Starsky wanted to be with him and not simply because Grace thought it was a good idea. He winked at Starsky to let him know he understood and appreciated the explanation.

Starsky nudged Hutch’s thigh with his knee. “So, c’mon, then, let’s go inside.”

“No can do,” Hutch replied.

“You’re still pissed at me?”

“I was disappointed, for sure,” Hutch said, squinting at him. “But I was also horny as hell, so I took care of it this afternoon while you were at the theater. I’m no longer a hostile person.”

“It?”

“The urge.”

“You whacked off?”

Hutch winced. “Keep your voice down.”

“Why? No one’s here but us.”

“That’s … actually … not true.”

Starsky didn’t understand. He quickly glanced about the driveway and didn’t see a vehicle other than Hutch’s truck. “Who else is here?”

It was at that moment, as if on cue, that Starsky heard a movement at the front of the house and looked over just as the screen door opened and a young man, probably in his late teens or early twenties, stepped onto the porch. The sight of him, at first, startled and confused Starsky. He couldn’t put the pieces together, but he knew what he saw: A young, very blond farm boy, with striking blue eyes, clean-shaven, and relatively the same height as he and Hutch; he wore tight jeans and cowboy boots, but his shirt was off and draped over his shoulder.

Had a woman emerged from the house, Starsky would have congratulated Hutch, but this unknown man to him was no woman. He was attractive, and he was young, and he was immediately friendly—all of which instantly raised Starsky’s hackles.

“Hey,” the younger said cheerfully.

“Andrew Roberts,“ Hutch said, making the introduction. “David Starsky. ‘Starsky.’” He expected to see the men shake hands, but when Andrew extended his, Starsky didn’t take it.

Starsky was speechless. And dumbfounded. And borderline enraged.

“You must be the guy who lives across the driveway, right?” Andrew said—and he said it with a distinctly masculine voice, too. He was cordial and ignored the shun he received simply because he didn’t understand it.

Andrew was, by all intents and purposes, a very beautiful man. He was lean, well-proportioned and built, muscular and tanned, confident and affable, despite his disheveled blond hair and well-defined bare chest—or maybe because of those things. Starsky’s first instinct told him the young man had been hired, but hired for what?

“Andrew lives a half mile up the road on the right,” Hutch told Starsky.

“And Hutch only knows that,” Andrew playfully said, “because he nearly ran me down in his truck a couple weeks back. That’s one way to meet your neighbors, huh?”

“Yeah, and I felt guilty, so I gave him a ride home,” Hutch added. “We—”

“So what’s he doing here now?” Starsky asked, but it was more of a demand for an answer than curiosity.

Before Andrew could tell him, Hutch cut Andrew off, and told him, “Starsky just got back from his stay on the coast. He hasn’t technically been home yet.”

Andrew assimilated Hutch’s reply and declined to answer Starsky’s question about why he was at Hutch’s house.

“What’s he doing here now?” Hutch echoed Starsky’s question, his attention on him. “He … um … is visiting. Enjoying the hammock in the back yard. That’s what neighbors do.”

Hutch’s answer pushed Starsky over the line and he felt the rage boil in his belly. He didn’t like being lied to, though he didn’t expect the truth right then under the circumstances, either. He felt he’d intruded on a private affair he wasn’t supposed to see—while, at the same time, he believed he had a right to know about. In the past, he probably would have taken a swing at Andrew, but he held his fists. He was sharply aware of the fact that any physical altercation might hurt him more than it would Andrew; something he’d learned the hard way when he tried in vain to fight off the three men who’d abducted and raped him.

Were it not for that, he’d have expressed his hurt and his anger by throwing a punch—first at Andrew, for what appeared to be his patronizing nonchalance in that exchange with Hutch—as if he and Hutch had a secret and he was proud to keep it—and then at Hutch for seeming smug about it, let alone for the affair itself.

“So maybe I’ll see you around sometime,” Andrew told Hutch after he pulled his shirt off his shoulder to redress. “Call me, you know, if you need anything else.” He winked at Hutch while he buttoned his shirt.

Starsky couldn’t help his remark. “You visit all your neighbors half-dressed and hang out on their hammocks?”

“I was working on my tan,” Andrew said.

Hutch noticed the glare he got from Starsky, though he didn’t understand it. He shrugged to let him know his message, whatever it was, hadn’t been received, but Starsky didn’t offer an explanation, not even in his expression; just his consternation seeped through.

After Hutch said goodbye to Andrew, watched him as he jumped down from the steps and walked across the field to the road, he gave his full attention to Starsky—who met his eyes with a fiery stare. “What’s with you?” Hutch asked. “Were you feeling your age around that guy or something?”

“What’s with me?” Starsky shot at him with disbelief. “What’s with me? What the fuck is with you? You couldn’t wait a few hours for me to get back here? You had to fuck somebody else in the meantime?”

Hutch was as stunned by Starsky’s words as Starsky had been upon seeing Andrew, so much that he was at a loss for a reply. He’d never seen Starsky’s face and eyes so angry at him; angry, yes, but not that angry. Starsky wasn’t usually an aggressor in an argument with Hutch; he hated Hutch’s anger and worked to either defuse it or walk away from it, unless he was defending himself from Hutch’s pressure or lectures. But Starsky was the one to cause a fierce spark between them just then and that was, well, stunning. It wasn’t so much Starsky’s words, but his hostile tone of voice and the accusation he made that prevented Hutch from even attempting to answer for himself.

Starsky didn’t wait for an explanation, though. His rage and his hurt and his dismay pushed more words out of his mouth. “We had an agreement, remember that?” he heatedly asked. “You blew it now on an impulse, didn’t you?”

“What agreement was that?”

Starsky paced away from him. If he stood too close, he really would punch Hutch, and that could only prove to be a mistake. He was further insulted by what he believed was Hutch’s feigned ignorance. “You know the one,” he asserted. “We were both clean.”

“We still are.”

“You?” Starsky replied, sarcastically, “a guy who never used condoms before, using one today? Is that some favor you did me?”

Hutch didn’t like the accusations and the implications and the insults he heard anymore than he liked those he didn’t hear in words, but were implied. He settled further into his chair, pursed his lips, and stared back at Starsky with a similar hostility.

His silence fueled Starsky’s anger. Starsky chose then to walk, the way he often did, when the emotions between them were too painful for his comfort. He turned to leave, but Hutch finally spoke, and caused Starsky to face him again.

“You said I wouldn’t see you until tomorrow,” Hutch began. He didn’t want there to be a misunderstanding and he was prepared to do his part to prevent one, especially if Starsky chose to walk from a resolution. But he didn’t get a chance to say more than he did because his answer only made Starsky madder.

“So you figured the light was green to have some boy toy over? You’re so horny—and pissed at me—that you ‘take care of it’ with somebody else and you didn’t think I’d know because I wasn’t going to come by until tomorrow?”

“I waited all week for you to come home,” Hutch defended himself. “You got laid all that time; I didn’t. You said this morning that you’d be home in three hours—to my house—so I really thought I was going to get to see you, see you see you, not just ‘say hi’. But—”

“I don’t give a fuck what your reason was,” Starsky interrupted him. He felt betrayed and insulted and he was enraged. Nothing Hutch could say would change his feelings about what he had just learned.

“I didn’t fuck him,” Hutch said coolly. If Starsky wouldn’t listen to reason, perhaps he’d listen to facts.

But Starsky felt further patronized. “You and your goddamned word games.” He knew what he saw: A half-dressed man had emerged from Hutch’s house; Hutch himself wasn’t completely dressed and wore a different shirt; he’d confessed to having taken care of his sex urge, and he hadn’t even stood to greet Starsky when he arrived. There was no missing the wink Andrew gave Hutch, either. “You know what?” Starsky continued. “It doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t fuck him. Blowjobs. Handjobs. ‘This is sex and that isn’t.’ Dissect all the words you want. I don’t give a shit what you call it because I don’t want this thing with you anymore. Not after this. It’s not what I thought it was.”

“Look who’s talking, butthead. I didn’t lay a hand on that kid—or him, me. You’re the one who’s fucked around with some other guy.”

“Cheap shot.”

“Is it?”

“Things are different now,” Starsky defended himself. He panted.

“Yeah? How so?”

Starsky couldn’t say it because he realized it was he, then, who was justifying bad behavior, but Hutch spoke the words for him.

“Because now I’m fucking your ass?” he said unkindly, “and that gives you special privileges?”

“Actually, yeah, it does. Don’t you have a special privilege with me now?”

“Do I? I’m not in another relationship. I’m still a single guy.”

“Have all the girls you want then, but guys are off-limits to you, too.”

“You’re sounding like a woman here, man, and I don’t like it.”

“Oh, I see,” Starsky retaliated, “so now you’re putting me down.” He moved toward Hutch, but stopped before that urge to punch him became reality. “That promise I made to not fuck other guys works both ways!”

Hutch made one more attempt to tell Starsky the truth, but gave up even before a single word emerged from his mouth. He looked off for a few seconds, until he sensed Starsky’s departure, and then, in a much calmer voice, he said, “Here’s the thing, buddy boy … the only one I’ve been private with and jerked off today is me.”

Starsky’s heart pounded and he didn’t say anything. If Hutch could sound calm, maybe he could have a reasonable conversation with him instead, find some truce before things got way too ugly—if they hadn’t already.

“I picked that guy up a couple of weeks ago; gave him a ride home,” Hutch said. “He was hitchhiking and only had a quarter mile to go. Short ride, but during which I found out he and his father own a spa shop. So I went to their store the next day and bought a couple of them.”

Starsky swallowed his rage long enough to take a deep breath and slow his heart. “You bought a couple of spas?”

“I bought one for you and Grace because I figured she’d say yes to your marriage proposal—and I bought one for you and me, too, just because I’m a greedy son-of-a-bitch. The tubs were delivered yesterday.”

Starsky realized he hadn’t been in the house since he’d returned from the coast, so he wasn’t aware of any new furniture there, but to hear Hutch had bought him and Grace a hot tub really cooled his anger. He finally spoke more reasonably. “Okay. So that explains yesterday.”

“During the installation, we discovered the oxidizer on the tub here was broken. Andrew said he’d get a replacement part and bring it by as soon as he had it in hand. You guys left for a movie and, after my shower this afternoon, the kid dropped by with the part.”

“So … Andrew was here to fix your ozonator, hm?”

“Oxidizer,” Hutch corrected him.

“Right. Your oxidizer.”

“And, no, it’s not a euphemism for anything.”

“Yeah, I got that. And he was half-dressed because he had his hands in water …?”

“He really was working on his tan afterward,” Hutch said. “He’s 19. He hung out on the hammock for a while, so I sat here on the porch and waited for him to leave—and that’s when you showed up.”

Oh, how Starsky wanted to believe he’d misunderstood everything. He was immediately ashamed, sickened, and embarrassed by himself. He felt weak, too, and sorry, sorry to Hutch for his verbal abuse. His shoulders drooped. One last detail about the farm boy. “Why did he wink at you?” It irritated him even as he recalled it.

“I told him you hadn’t yet been home, remember? I didn’t want him spoiling the hot tub surprise for you. So he winked at me to let me know he got the message and it was our little secret.”

Starsky exhaled, slowly. He couldn’t feel more stupid if he tried. “And you?” he wondered.

“And me?” Hutch asked, not sure he understood the question.

“Well, I mean, you took care of it, the urge, I mean? You? right?”

“Right. I took care of it. I, myself, and little ol’ me. In the shower.”

“And that’s why you changed your shirt.”

“Not with any ulterior intent,” Hutch replied playfully. He was relieved Starsky had come to his senses. “You make a great detective,” he said, “but you’re also an asshole, you know that? You embarrassed yourself. If you ever so much as even think I’d risk this family or turn a trick for revenge or just for the fun of it, I’ll separate your head from the rest of you, you got me?”

“I got you,” Starsky said in a low voice. “Loud and clear.” He trembled while his unspent adrenaline coursed through his veins. He tried a smile then and rubbed the back of his neck as he looked off into the orchard.

“How could you think that of me?” Hutch demanded to know.

“I was scared, I guess. I was scared I’d done something that made you do something that would …”

“That would … what?”

“… hurt my feelings … make me feel less … wanted by you.”

“You thought I’d get even with you? that’s who you think I am?”

“I think that’s what I’d deserve—for putting you off another day after having been gone a week and telling you different.”

“Jealousy sucks, doesn’t it?”

Starsky looked back at him and made steady eye contact. “Yeah. Big time.”

“So, I guess we’re even on that front.”

Starsky slumped beside him in the neighboring chair. “Not really,” he said, ashamedly. “At least you had a valid reason to want to kill me after what I did with Adam, and then again when you saw him and me together at the banquet.”

Hutch vividly remembered that night. He’d never felt so strange in his life.

Or so outside of Starsky’s life.

* * *

It had been a pleasant evening for Hutch up until then. He’d been specifically invited by Grace to one of her black-tie fundraiser banquets; she told Starsky she wanted Hutch to feel comfortable in their lives and that they should include him more in their activities. Both he and Starsky sat on either side of her at the table for ten, along with other invited guests with whom they made acquaintance, and enjoyed the food, wine, and conversation. Music played in the background; there’d been a short introduction of the night’s program prior to the meal, and it would be followed by presentations from a few guest speakers.

Hutch spoke little to Grace because it was hard to hear her over the cacophony of voices, utensils, laughter, and music, small talk mostly, about food, itinerary, and the overall success of the fundraiser. But he spoke even less to Starsky, who was further away still. They communicated with occasional eye contact and friendly smiles.

It was on such an occasion that Hutch glanced at Starsky—but not only didn’t he find Starsky looking back as he expected or hoped, he saw something that instantly riled him. Adam Love had arrived at the table, knelt beside Starsky, and engaged in what appeared to be a serious conversation with him, but about what, Hutch could only guess—and he didn’t like his guesses. He didn’t like the body language he saw there, either. Starsky was turned in his chair to face Adam; he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and spoke into Adam’s ear and Adam into his, so their heads and faces were quite close, too. They were in their own private world and oblivious to the noise and happenings around them.

Hutch’s heart pounded, his palms sweat, and he felt light-headed—and angry. He tried to swallow the choke of rage that lumped in his throat, but couldn’t budge it. He thought he might lunge across the table and break them apart were it not for his manners. That, and he knew intellectually he wasn’t threatened. He’d forgiven Adam for his affair with Starsky. Hadn’t he forgiven Starsky, too? Hutch didn’t understand from where his resentment boiled, but he knew he felt it and he felt it hard. He’d been hit by a proverbial fast-moving train.

Grace said something to Hutch, but he didn’t quite hear her. He handed her the juice carafe from the center of the table; it must have been what she asked for because she willingly took it and thanked him.

Then he saw Starsky laugh at something Adam said and it was all Hutch could do to stay seated. He felt hurt and rejected, isolated and alone, abandoned and helpless. And he hated himself for all those things—including his physical reaction, which felt something like a panic attack. It was ridiculous. He’d never felt jealous of the women Starsky had romanced over the years. He wasn’t even jealous of Grace in their lives—and she lived across the driveway. Was it the memory of what Starsky and Adam had done that offended him, or was it that he feared they’d do it again?

But why then? Starsky and Adam met once a month to host their male rape victims workshops and Hutch never suspected they did more than that because Starsky said they didn’t. Was it that Hutch himself had noticed how attractive Starsky was that night with his blue eyes and dark hair and in that black tux he wore, so how could Adam not be helplessly drawn to Starsky, too? Was it Starsky’s playfulness and charm, his silliness and his easy smile that night, that made Hutch wish he and Starsky were alone at the table and that they could go home alone and fall onto his bed in each other’s arms? After all, it would have been the first official romantic evening they’d spent together since their mutual friend’s wedding some six months prior.

When he remembered how that night ended, Hutch felt sick to his stomach over that, too. On that night, he and Starsky got rather drunk and had sex with Emma—at the same time. That was the night before the night Starsky was abducted. That was a night long gone, forever buried, the one that doomed his budding romance with Emma, the one he knew in his heart of hearts he’d forgiven all parties for, including himself. But recalling Starsky’s affair with Adam made him angrier still. He hated everything about what he saw—Starsky and Adam, talking, laughing, sharing something private—and he hated himself for hating it.

They finished their conversation and Adam stood. That’s when Starsky half-turned back to the table and said something to Grace, something Hutch couldn’t hear because of the noise in the room. She said a few words to Adam and Adam replied to her and it was at that moment that Starsky innocently glanced at Hutch—which embarrassed Hutch because he felt caught in his moment of weakness. He tried everything to cover for it, but only managed to force a smile at Starsky, and could tell, by Starsky’s instantly sobered expression, that he’d failed. So, to keep from saying more with his face than he apparently already had, Hutch shifted his eyes from Starsky’s and forced the same smile at Adam.

“Are you all right?” he heard Grace ask him.

He couldn’t seem to hide from her, either, so he told her he was okay, but that he needed to visit the men’s room—and that he’d be right back.

Without looking at Starsky, he rose from the table, searched momentarily for an exit door from the banquet room, and then headed in its direction. He tried a smile at the ushers who manned the doorway; the female opened one for him to pass, and he barely delivered an audible, “Thank you,” before he felt safe in the hallway.

He also felt rattled and shaken to his core and overcome with hostility. He felt trapped, too. So he bypassed the restroom at the end of the hall and found his way to the front of the hotel, to its outside, and quickly drew a cooling breath of air. Then he felt stupid—alone outside in a tuxedo—without a woman to romance or a cigarette to smoke. He nodded at a few loiterers and hotel patrons and then walked in the direction of the parking lot as if he had someplace purposeful to go. As he toyed with the keys in his pocket, he contemplated a drive in Starsky’s car around the block—or maybe the city, for that matter—until he was calm enough to rejoin the party.

But he knew better than to get behind the wheel, given his rage. Instead, he walked across the grassy landscaping to stand against the side of the hotel in an area where there were no rooms; a solid wall of stucco, shielded by leafy bushes and a palm tree, and lit by one street lamp. There he pressed his back to the hard surface, rested his head against its strengthening support, and fought to control his anxiety attack. He honestly didn’t understand his emotional breakdown that night. It made no sense to him. He wasn’t the jealous type. He didn’t even believe Starsky had any interest in Adam, despite how Adam may have felt about Starsky. It had to be that Hutch had not yet forgiven Starsky for his sex-making with Adam. It was a hurtful memory he couldn’t let go of—apparently.

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

The other ingredient that fueled his panic was that Starsky had asked Hutch first for that experience and Hutch had initially turned him down. It was Hutch’s fault that Starsky had gone to Adam. Maybe Hutch was mad at Hutch. Or maybe Starsky’s disregard for Hutch’s change of heart that afternoon was the insult to injury from which he’d never recover.

He didn’t know.

He thought he should probably schedule a private appointment with Jade before too long. Jade would help him get to the root of it; at least Jade would set him in the right direction.

He opened his eyes to stare out over the sea of cars in the lot. It was then he saw Starsky—and his heart sank and pounded at once. Starsky had come to look for him. Not finding Hutch in the men’s room—or anywhere in the hotel—brought Starsky to the car, the next logical place Hutch would have gone. Hutch held his breath and hoped Starsky would return to the banquet and he himself could get back his composure and join him soon after.

But when Starsky saw his car and didn’t see Hutch in or near it, he turned on his heel—and serendipitously caught sight of Hutch in the shadows against the side of the building near the street lamp.

Hutch knew he was busted—and felt all the stupider and foolish, so much that it eased his jealousy and his anger, and he had a more genuine, though embarrassed, smile to give Starsky when Starsky casually approached. “I should have known better than to think I could hide from the police,” Hutch quietly said as Starsky stopped near him.

Starsky wasn’t happy. “Why did you leave the party?”

Hutch shrugged. He couldn’t possibly tell him because he didn’t know himself.

Starsky stepped closer. “What are you doing out here?”

“Same as you,” Hutch said.

“That’s impossible. I’m out here looking for you.”

Hutch sadly laughed at the irony. “I’m out here looking for me, too.”

Starsky was only feet away. He had to stand in the grass to get close enough to see Hutch’s eyes in the low-lit darkness; Hutch was off the beaten track, seemingly in hiding. “I’ve won awards for my ability to decipher clues,” Starsky said.

“I know you have,” Hutch replied.

“Then you know I know it was Adam who upset you.”

Hutch was even more embarrassed. He tore his eyes from Starsky’s and looked up the sidewalk into the blackness for a moment. His emotional roller coaster took its toll then and triggered tears, though he managed to keep them from rolling out his eyes. “I don’t know what the matter is with me,” he confessed.

“You’re jealous,” Starsky said.

Hutch read Starsky’s forgiving expression. “You know I’m not.”

“This is different.”

He could argue Starsky’s point, but it was useless. It was different. Everything about his friendship with Starsky and their recently discovered intimacy was different. So, he surrendered to it. “Okay, so maybe I’m jealous.” He wiped an eye on his shirt sleeve to keep a tear from appearing on his cheek, but he knew Starsky could tell he was emotional.

“So what do you need from me, hm?” Starsky asked.

Hutch didn’t know. He felt something press for release, but he couldn’t verbalize it. It was too foreign a feeling.

Starsky felt sorry for him. He wanted to help, if he only knew how. “What else do you need from me?” he repeated. He never wanted Hutch to feel less than the most important person in the world to him. God, the man was so beautiful—in all ways possible. Couldn’t he see it himself?

“I don’t know,” Hutch said under his breath, frustrated. He buried his hands in his pants pockets and dropped his head to stare at the dark ground at their feet. He was sorry Starsky felt a need to fix it.

“You want to marry me?” Starsky asked.

Hutch laughed, absurdly, and looked at him. “Don’t be an ass.”

“Well, what do you want? what do you want from me that I’m not giving you? It has to be something or you wouldn’t be feeling outcast and jealous—the very last things I ever want you to feel. You’re it, you know? So what can I give you that’ll make this easier for you?”

The interrogation forced Hutch’s impulse. “Promises,” he blurted.

Starsky wasn’t fazed. “You name them and I’ll make them,” he said. He knew they believed promises weren’t the kinds of things that best of friends needed to make for each other, but he also knew these were special circumstances.

Hutch laughed at himself when he read Starsky’s mind, but he was nervous and he was embarrassed and he felt helpless still—and weak. And Starsky wouldn’t back down.

“Name one, Hutch.”

Pushed by Starsky and by his own mixed emotions, Hutch said the first thing that came to mind. “Promise me you won’t fuck other guys,” he said, “even ones you already have.”

Starsky was relieved. The promise was easy to make—and his word was dependable; Hutch knew it as well as Starsky knew it. “I promise,” Starsky said. “I don’t even want to fuck other guys. I don’t want to fuck Adam. Fucking other guys was just something I wondered about, that’s all, something I was trying to figure out for myself.”

“But you did fuck Adam. Or he you, if you’re going to hold me to semantics.”

“He was part of the figuring out,” Starsky explained, plaintively. Would he ever be able to make Hutch understand that? “Can we put that behind us and move forward? Will you accept my promise that I won’t lay—or be laid by—any guy, but you? Please. Take that to the bank.”

Hutch wiped both his eyes on his sleeves. “Okay.” Starsky’s words had instantly consoled him and freed him of his feelings. He realized it wasn’t so much that he felt threatened by Adam, but that he felt threatened by Starsky’s sexual appetite and that it might lead Starsky to other men. Hutch wouldn’t emotionally survive it if Starsky engaged anybody else. But Starsky promised he wouldn’t and Hutch took him at his word. It was the one thing Hutch could concretely depend on. Starsky didn’t make promises lightly and Hutch had just been given a big one.

“Now name another promise I can make you,” Starsky said.

Hutch searched the air for another request he wanted honored and then looked Starsky in the eye. “I think that was the only one I had,” he said. Well, it was the only one he thought he could ask for; anything beyond it was simply pie-in-the-sky. What he wanted to further ask for was to never have his change-of-hearts dismissed the way Starsky had dismissed the one that afternoon when he would rather have anal-sexed his partner than let some other man do it. But if Starsky was capable of shunning such a heartfelt plea, he was capable of breaking a promise for such a thing, too.

That’s how Hutch saw it, anyway.

“Nothing else?” Starsky asked, waiting for confirmation before he’d abandon the offer.

“Nothing,” Hutch said. It was a sentiment he thought he could ignore in the long run, though he realized he’d broken a sweat from thinking about how much it had hurt him that day—and since. In the end, wasn’t it at the root of his jealously that very night?

“Let me know if you want to add any other conditions as you think of them,” Starsky told him.

“You’ll be the first person I’ll tell,” came the honest reply.

Then, right there under the street lamp, relatively in public, Starsky stepped up and pressed into Hutch, pushing him against the hotel wall. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a gorgeous man—even when you’re upset?” he asked.

Hutch was concerned about being seen that close to each other, but Starsky’s familiarity and his warmth and his playful tone of voice disarmed him and made him forget a world existed outside their own. He pretended to think about whether anyone had told him he was gorgeous. “Um …” he said.

“I love you stripped out of your clothes,” Starsky affectionately said, “but, boy, are you handsome in a tux.”

“Look who’s talking.”

Starsky gripped Hutch’s genital through his pants, pleased to find that Hutch didn’t wear undergarments dressed in a tuxedo, either, so he was able to keenly feel his flesh through the cloth. “When we get home tonight,” he said, raising his own hard-on, “I’m going to drop Grace at our house and take you to yours.”

“Is that another promise?”

“You betcha. Then I’m going to drag you onto that bed and strip you out of everything, but your bow tie.”

Hutch laughed. He appreciated the way Starsky had broken through his melancholy and smashed his rage with it. He wanted to hear more. “And then what?”

“And then I’m going to take my time sucking you dry.”

Hutch couldn’t but harden in Starsky’s grip. “You keep talking like that and you’re going to have to fulfill that promise right here.”

His crack broke them apart and into laughing—and not because it was all that funny, but because they were both relieved of their previous tension—which was just what Hutch needed. He pushed Starsky away, bent over, and held his knees while he relinquished his earlier mood.

Starsky pretended to tighten his tie while they recomposed themselves. “Damn,” he said, noticing that Hutch was still bent over, “what I would give for you to be a foot closer.” A foot closer would put Hutch’s face smack into Starsky’s groin.

Hutch, not missing a beat, replied, “What I would give for you to be a foot longer.”

Starsky didn’t laugh. “You don’t really wish that, do you?” he asked, “that I be longer?”

Hutch straightened and locked eyes with him. His comment had backfired. “I don’t really wish that, no.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“I thought it’d make you laugh.” When Starsky still didn’t appreciate Hutch’s effort, Hutch added, “C’mon. It’d been funny if you said it to me.”

Starsky scowled at him. “Yeah, because you’ve already got a foot there.”

“One of the things I love about you, David Starsky …” Hutch cooed.

“Is what?” Starsky asked.

“Is that you accept me as I am. So, why don’t you do me the honor of believing I accept you the way you are, too? Besides, you’re not a little guy; you simply compare yourself to me and you shouldn’t. And, really, Starsk, is this the kind of shit we’re going to argue about again?”

“It beats arguing about you thinking I want to fuck other guys.”

Hutch recalled in that moment why he was jealous. “I think you might,” he admitted, “because I won’t let you fuck me.”

They looked at each other for half a minute, wordlessly. Hutch had spoken volumes in so few words. They noticed the light in each other’s eyes, their sobered expressions, their vulnerabilities and dilemma.

Starsky broke it. “It doesn’t follow that I want to fuck other guys because I can’t anal-sex you,” he said. “When I went to Adam for something you couldn’t give me, I learned I’d rather have less sex with you than have it all with someone else. Remember that?”

Hutch remembered. And believed him. “Okay. It’s settled then.”

“Yeah. It’s settled. I gave you my word. You and you alone are the only guy who’s going to have his dick anywhere near mine—or vicey versey.”

“I second your sentiment,” Hutch said as he straightened. “So, on that note …“ He took Starsky by the arm and turned them toward the hotel lobby. “Let’s join your fiancée—who’s probably worried about where you are—and see if we can’t dignify ourselves in her eyes before this night is over.”

* * *

Starsky became aware of his surroundings as they slowly seeped into his brain: The sound of a faint click and whir of the ceiling fan, the quiet tick of the clock on the bedside table, and the relaxed, deep breathing of his lover on the mattress beside him. He felt Hutch’s bare skin pressed to his cheek where he had laid it to Hutch’s shoulder. And he felt the weight of his own arm across Hutch’s belly where it had ended up just by circumstance. He could still feel the wetness of their ejaculate beneath his forearm—and its seep into his consciousness just then made him smile with the arousing memory of the sex they’d enjoyed that early morning. But he didn’t open his eyes. He wanted to remain in that surreal suspension between reality and dreamland—pressed along Hutch’s length—for as long as he could.

Hutch stirred. He’d felt Starsky move. Or maybe he heard a change in Starsky’s breathing. Or in his weight against him. Or purely because it was that moment in his body’s recovery that he came back to the light of day. He shifted his leg to stretch and felt Starsky squeeze him closer. That’s when Hutch knew for sure they were both awake. And alive. He chuckled. “Damn, boy,” he said, somewhat hoarsely after he discovered his voice, “you sure do know how to annihilate a man.”

Starsky groaned. Hutch’s crack dismayed him. “Don’t talk like that.”

Hutch laughed again, though that time he didn’t know why. Maybe he didn’t think Starsky was serious. But his laugh seemed to dismiss Starsky and only made matters worse.

Starsky rose to his elbow so he could look Hutch in the eye and be better heard that way. “I don’t annihilate men,” he corrected him, and secondly liking the look of Hutch’s mussed hair and his sleepy face, too. “Just you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Hutch said softly. He stroked Starsky’s cheek with his fingers to calm him. “Okay,” he repeated. “Just me. You sure do know how to annihilate me.”

Starsky forgave him with a wink. Then he dreamed aloud about breakfast. “Pancakes, right? And those potatoes you make with all the fixings.”

Hutch continued to look into Starsky’s eyes and admire his handsome face. Breakfast seemed light years away.

“And that thing you do with fruit,” Starsky added, poking him.

“That thing I do with fruit?” Hutch wondered. He dropped his free arm to his side to mock disappointment in Starsky’s choice of words. “Is that how you refer to us now?”

Starsky squeezed Hutch again to make him serious. “The blender thing,” he clarified. “That thing you do with fruit in a blender.”

“Oh, that thing I do with fruit,” Hutch said, giving Starsky a smile. “Yeah, I suppose I can do that.” He’d send Starsky to pick strawberries while he mixed a batter of pancakes. He noticed Starsky’s newly expectant expression and the blue morning light in his eyes, and it softened the intensity in his own. He tenderly stroked Starsky’s warm cheek again in silent reply and felt his stubble, a feel he’d grown to savor.

“What?” Starsky asked. He didn’t shift his eyes from Hutch’s because he didn’t think Hutch wanted sex again right then, but he wasn’t sure. Well, maybe Hutch wanted it, but he wouldn’t be physically able to have it, would he? There was something else in Hutch’s face, something below the surface, something Hutch had to say and felt he couldn’t or wouldn’t. “What?” Starsky asked again to encourage him.

Hutch dropped his hand back to his chest and closed his eyes. “What what?” he said. It was his effort to distract Starsky from his question, but it wasn’t successful.

“Are you wishing I was a woman or something?”

Hutch opened his eyes, looked into Starsky’s, and knew what had triggered Starsky’s question. “I can’t caress my lover without wishing for a woman?”

“I don’t know,” Starsky said. “Can you?”

It was apparent Starsky wanted an answer to what otherwise may have been a flippant remark. It was in his blue eyes and in his posture as he remained firm on his elbow beside Hutch and pressed up to him, to let him know through body language alone that Hutch wouldn’t escape him without a confession.

“I can,” Hutch said. “I can caress my lover without wishing he were a woman. That’s the difference between you and me. Well, I mean, it’s one of the differences.” His last comment, meant to make Starsky smile or ease his directness, fell flat.

“Why did you touch me like that?” Starsky asked. His voice was low and his affection as apparent. He was certain Hutch had something to say, something more than just through his fingers and his touch. He’d seen that look in Hutch’s eyes before, especially lately, and sensed the reserved communication behind it.

“I touch you like that all the time,” Hutch said. He gently ran his fingers through Starsky’s mussed hair. “I do it because I love you.”

“Yeah,” Starsky whispered. He smiled at Hutch. That was the feeling he’d seen in Hutch’s eyes, the driving force behind his tenderness. “I just wanted to hear you say it. Does it bother you that I don’t touch you like that so much?”

Hutch continued to comb Starsky’s hair with his fingers. He admired Starsky’s face again, his handsomeness and his deep blue eyes, then lowered his line of sight to Starsky’s muscular biceps, to his haired chest, his unshaven chin, and back to his eyes again, as he mulled the answer to Starsky’s question in his mind. “What you’re wondering is whether I wish you were a woman,” Hutch said. “No woman has touched me the way you have.” He was aware of Starsky’s warm, nude body alongside his as he flashed on those sensual ways Starsky stimulated him. He gripped Starsky’s arm with one hand, still draped across his belly, and burrowed into him a little. “I wouldn’t trade you for anyone or anything—least of all a pair of tits.”

“Yeah, but I mean, this is how you’d touch a woman, so it follows—”

“This is how I touch you,” Hutch corrected him. “Is it bothering you?” If his strokes had irritated Starsky, he didn’t want to repeat them.

“I like it,” Starsky said.

“But?”

“But I don’t do it to you. I don’t think I do, do I?”

“Sometimes you do.”

“But not as much as you. I’m not a lovey-dovey kind of guy.”

“Is that what I was being? ‘Lovey-dovey’? Maybe I was just expressing how I feel about you. You tell me how you feel about me in ways I don’t tell you.”

“What ways?”

Impulsively, Hutch said, “You’re a nipple nibbler.” His comment made Starsky laugh. “You like to nibble,” Hutch further explained, “on all kinds of things attached to my person.”

Starsky raised an eyebrow at him.

“You like to be ‘connected,” Hutch added. “So maybe you’re not a guy who caresses, but you like to be ‘in touch.’ Like here. Like now. Lying up against me the way you do.” He squeezed Starsky to remind him that he also had contact with him that way, too, that Starsky had his arm over him. “You don’t think I feel loved by you?”

“I think I feel more loved by you than you probably feel from me.”

“Really?” Hutch didn’t think so. He argued the point. “You don’t think the way we are right this second after what we just did with each other a few minutes back makes me feel as loved? Maybe it’s because you don’t see you the way I see you.”

Starsky set his palm to his temple, settled on his elbow, and prepared himself for Hutch’s replies, especially after he said, “Sometimes I see me doing something really horribly wrong with you like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like sex. Like nibbling on your nipples—you, a guy. And that means I’m a bad person.”

Hutch hadn’t expected a reply such as that one; it made him speechless. It made him visibly wince, too, and Starsky noticed. They’d discussed Starsky’s remorse at length already and Hutch hoped it had ended.

“I mean, most of the time I’m okay with it,” Starsky solemnly said, reading Hutch’s body language—and his mind. “Most of the time I see it through that love thing, that right to do with your body and your feelings with somebody you love whatever you want—so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, you know? But other times …” He broke eye contact and looked across the room for a few seconds while he gathered his thoughts. “Sometimes I think it’s just a sex thing.” He looked again at Hutch. “Sometimes I don’t think it’s so much a love thing as a sex thing and so I’m doing it for the wrong reasons.”

Hutch tried to decipher Starsky’s meaning in context. “And maybe it’s more of a sex thing because you’re not as physically affectionate with me as I am with you,” he surmised. “That’s your measurement?”

“Yeah,” Starsky said. He liked it when Hutch could express his thoughts better than he could himself.

“Are you a ‘lovey-dovey’ guy with Grace?” Hutch asked.

“I think so.”

“But with me you’re more sexual.”

“Well, yeah,” Starsky said emphatically. He felt confused then, too, because it wasn’t as limited as that implied. “But there’s love here, make no mistake. I can’t see me laying here with somebody else, some other guy, like this, having a talk like this.”

Hutch couldn’t see it, either. He couldn’t imagine Starsky could be intimate with another man; sexual, apparently, but not intimate. A tenderness, like the one they had together, would require a decade of close contact—as well as a decade of proven trust and devotion. “So these times when you think our behavior is driven mostly from—”

“Not our behavior,” Starsky corrected him. “My behavior. I trust your behavior. I believe with all my heart you’re doing this for the right reasons. But sometimes … I guess it’s those times when I go off on a dream … thinking about down that road and what’ll happen between us … and how I wouldn’t trade anything or anybody for you … not … even … her.”

Starsky paused then. He felt ashamed for speaking those words, let alone that he felt that way. But Hutch’s blue eyes were full with his patience and his desire to hear more, so Starsky finished his thought. “Then I fantasize about that, about a life that’s just you and me. Would we live in the same house? That might be cool. And we’d do the work we do, the work we’ve been doing for the last ten years, and we’d have this happy little unit, you know?”

Hutch smiled at him. Starsky’s fantasy pleased him even though he didn’t think it was practical or that it would ever come to pass because Starsky would always want a woman in his life—wouldn’t he?

Starsky read his mind. “I still want to have some kids,” he explained. “I still want that kind of family unit, too. And that’s when it hits me: You and me, we can’t have kids, we can’t make babies, you see? It’s all perfect otherwise: We have what a lot of people don’t have, like you’ve said. We’ve got love and trust and loyalty and chemistry and all that. We got a lot together, you and me. We even got sex between us now. But we can never make a kid; the body parts don’t fit.”

He thought his presentation explained what he wanted to say, but he could tell by the look in those blue eyes that he hadn’t succeeded. He finished it with the clearest words he could find. “It isn’t natural for two guys to have sex … I mean, you can argue it from every which angle you want, and we can talk to Jade and go up one side it, down another, all around it, until the cows come home, but in the end, there’s this indisputable fact: The parts don’t fit in a way that can make a kid … so that’s when I realize just how unnatural it is, how not ‘right’ it is.”

Hutch understood—in context, but he was still compelled to set Starsky straight. “The naturalness of homosexual sex isn’t validated by whether it can produce offspring,” he said.

“Whatever that means.”

“It means homosexual sex is natural—regardless of the fact that it can’t ‘make a kid.’”

“Says you.”

“Say the facts.” Hutch drew a deep breath and continued to examine Starsky’s confused expression. They’d spent months having that conversation, both with and without Jade, and yet Starsky was still troubled. His lack of physical tenderness with Hutch was Starsky’s proving point, that if his sex with Hutch was purely love-driven than sex-driven, he’d be more affectionate with Hutch. Hutch pursed his lips after a minute to not say what he wanted to say.

It made Starsky push him. “What? You think now that I’m right? You’re a better person in all this because you do this for the love of it and I do it for the love of it, but also for the sex of it, so I’m not as good a person? Is that what you think?”

“You wouldn’t make the grade for a prosecuting attorney,” Hutch replied. “Stick with investigative law enforcement. That’s your talent.”

“C’mon,” Starsky said, nudging him. “What the hell does that mean? Tell me what you think. Point blank.”

Hutch combed Starsky’s hair again with his fingers, their eyes and bodies connected, and he felt the physicalness of their communion as much as he did the sensual and the spiritual. “You’ve annoyed me to no end over the years,” Hutch said, “because you’re crass and you’re sarcastic and you’re so fucking immature sometimes. But if I judged who you are based on those things, I’d … well, I certainly wouldn’t be lying here with you. The thing is, I think your crassness and your sarcasm is a façade. Your immaturity is really your innocence. It has to be, you see? Because underneath it you’re more sensitive than you realize and you’re a kind-hearted person, someone who believes in and pursues justice. You care about other people. You’re not a narcissist. But you grew up without a father and you never learned how to be truly vulnerable.”

Starsky was slightly taken aback by Hutch’s analysis. He’d never been that deeply or intimately analyzed by Hutch, at least not to his knowledge. It intrigued him to know what Hutch meant by his words, so he squeezed him to push more out of him.

Hutch saw the look of concerned wonder in Starsky’s warm blue eyes. “You were on your own after your father died,” he said, about Starsky’s childhood. “It was expected that you’d take care of your mother and your little brother—and anyone else whose life intersected yours. But under that tough street punk exterior lay a scared little boy with a lot of responsibility. You hid that fear with sarcasm and crassness. But that’s all it was: A cover. It still is—and I know who you are under it. Just like I know who you are and where you’re coming from under the sex we’re having.”

For a moment, Starsky wished Hutch had been his father’s replacement all those years ago; at least his big brother. His mentor. That he had to wait another eight years after the loss of his father to find a man he could genuinely respect troubled him only briefly. He felt the warmth of Hutch’s nude body pressed to his own and the look of, yes, sheer love in those blue eyes shining back at him and he settled for having Hutch better late than not at all in his life. But Starsky was also dismayed by Hutch’s perspective of his childhood and the subsequent behavior that had ‘annoyed’ Hutch for as long as they’d known each other—because Starsky learned only then that Hutch had thought those things.

“Your guard is always up,” Hutch continued. He knew Starsky was at a loss for words and he had more to say himself, so he didn’t hold back. “You’re afraid you’re going to get found out—as if there’s anything there to find that hasn’t already seen the light of day, at least by my prying eyes.” He thought he saw moisture in Starsky’s, but it didn’t stop him from finishing what he thought important to tell him. “I have news for you, pal: There’s no bad person under there, just your fear of one. You measure yourself up against your father’s memory and you measure yourself up against all you were taught was good and bad and right and wrong, and you measure yourself up against me—whom you hold in high esteem.”

He resumed a light stroke to Starsky’s cheek, and said, “But you don’t have to put your hands on me like this to convince me you care about me or that you love me. You did that years ago by taking a bullet meant for me. You’ve already done that by being there in my darkest hours, and from the respect you show me, and by the desire you have for me, least of all by those unspoken things you do that you think have no meaning, such as wanting me to make you pancakes. And by caring about what I think enough not to let it go until you get to the bottom of it. And by going to bat with me when your fear is at its most palpable degree—like when you’re squaring off with me. I know how much you hate confrontation with me, but by-and-large, you come through on it.”

Starsky was amazed and amused at the same time. He studied Hutch’s face for any hidden sign of insincerity, but found none. It made him more serious. He thought about Hutch’s answer. “So you think if I didn’t have this fear of being ‘vulnerable,’ I might just be more … ‘lovey dovey’ with you?”

Hutch smiled at him. “Maybe.”

“Why do you think I’m afraid to be like that with you?”

“Because it would fall into your ‘I must love this guy that much to touch him that way’ and loving somebody that much requires that you completely open yourself—your soul, that is—to another human being. And that’s scary. ‘Hutch just might find me out after all, and after all these years. And if he knew who I really was under all this sarcasm and crassness, and this tough guy exterior, and this guy who wouldn’t dare bed another man, he’d leave—as if, like I said, there’s anything about you that I don’t already know.”

“Yeah? What is it you think I’m afraid you’ll find out?”

“That you’re still that scared little boy.”

Starsky leaned away. Hutch had struck a nerve. He was stunned and he was even a little frightened—because Hutch was so close to what he’d fought so long and hard to hide—and didn’t even realize he’d been hiding. He found his next question. “How long you been thinking I’m doing that?”

Hutch hoped his casualness would ease Starsky’s shock. “From the first sarcastic crack you made some ten years ago.”

“And you never said anything all that time … until now?”

“I’ve never been this close to you. Nor did it matter. It’s who you are.”

Starsky realized again how intimate they were at that moment, lying on the king-sized mattress in Hutch’s closed-door bedroom, nude and exposed, with not even a sheet to cover them, having just been as physically close as two people could get—regardless of its naturalness or its morality. But then Starsky was suddenly consumed by a sinking feeling, one he couldn’t describe in words even if he had words at his disposal, one that simply made him feel ‘bad’ and angry and sorry. He was so overwhelmed by those emotions that he didn’t have the power to speak.

To avoid even hinting at it and opening himself up to confusion and ridicule, he forced the expression off his face, the one that had probably already given him away. He found instead that very façade Hutch had just spoken of, his sarcasm and his crassness, and he said, “Well, someday I’ll tell you about the goods I have on you.”

Hutch had gone too far and he knew it. The proof was in Starsky’s elusive reply—and in the sudden change in his demeanor. Hutch wouldn’t push him. They’d had a beautiful morning in each other’s arms and there was no point in marring it. He had simply wanted to answer Starsky’s questions and address his self-doubt. He gave Starsky the reprieve he needed by rolling away to grab his water bottle off the nightstand.

Starsky noticed Hutch’s backside, his bare shoulders and broad back, his waistless hips and lighter skin color, and then he drank in the arousing look of Hutch’s firm and muscular buttocks—until it, too, deepened that sinking feeling inside him, the one that made him feel bad and angry and sorry for the way he felt. He had to force himself to abandon the mix of emotions while he waited for Hutch to finish gulping water.

Hutch handed the bottle to Starsky when he rolled back to him. “Replenish thyself,” he suggested.

Starsky accepted and took as long a drink.

Hutch watched him. They’d so desperately needed the hydration, despite the cooling overhead fan. “So? You checking out my ass a minute ago?” he finally asked.

Starsky grunted while he drank the last swallow and recapped the bottle. “I couldn’t help myself,” he said. “It’s such a big, fat ass, it’s hard to miss.”

Hutch laughed at him. “You know it made you hard because even I can feel your dick vibrating the mattress.”

Starsky lifted his leg to conceal his penis behind his thigh. “I’m just a horny guy,” he admitted. “Like I once said … I’d fuck a snake if someone held its head.”

“You’re not as horny as you think you are.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I remember Jade asking you a few months back if you ever checked out my ass and you said you didn’t—and that you never had. If you were as horny as you like to make out to be, you’d have noticed my fine butt years ago in those locker rooms we stripped nekkid in.”

“You’re right,” Starsky said. He wanted the conversation to go in another direction. “I wasn’t checking your ass out right now because I’m horny. I’m not that horny. I was checking it out because I’m a detective and detectives just notice things, you know?”

“Yeah. I know,” Hutch said. He also knew Starsky had concealed his penis and he didn’t know why. He backtracked over their conversation in his mind and tried to find the catalyst. Maybe it was just that he’d gotten too close to Starsky’s personal demons and Starsky wasn’t about to let down his guard, not even for him. Hutch attacked it from another angle. “So you’re saying you don’t want in my ass anymore, am I hearing you right?”

Starsky knew then what had made him feel so bad and angry and sorry. He knew exactly. It was that very question and its answer that hurt his pride. “Is this conversation going to get better results than the others we’ve had on this subject,” he cooly asked Hutch, “or is it just another empty talk about what I can’t have?”

Hutch thought Starsky kidded him at first, but when Starsky didn’t add anything to his question, Hutch shifted his head against his pillow for a second look at Starsky’s face to read him more clearly. Not only was Starsky serious, Hutch realized, but his feelings were hurt, too. He wouldn’t tease Starsky and he wouldn’t give him false hope. It was his turn to pull the sheet up over his groin and hide himself to keep Starsky from wanting something he wasn’t prepared to give him. Then he shut his mouth. His lips were already closed, but he set his jaw, too. It was a subtle movement, but it sealed his decision to not say a word about what had become a delicate and sore subject between them.

Starsky held onto his emotions. “I noticed that, too,” he said, about Hutch’s retreat, “so I guess that’s your answer. This is just another empty talk we’re having, hm?”

“I don’t want to make matters worse,” Hutch explained.

“Good plan,” Starsky said. He tossed the empty water bottle to the floor on the off side of the bed and rolled over to his own. After half a minute, he left to put on his jeans.

Hutch rose onto his elbow in a figurative effort to follow him. “Hey, c’mon. Don’t leave mad.”

“I’m leaving hungry,” Starsky said. He was hurt, not mad, but he also thought it a good idea that they not ‘make matters worse’ with more conversation. Besides, he had to get home to Grace and sooner was better than later. “Are you going to make me pancakes like you promised?” As soon as he asked the question, he realized how Hutch no doubt perceived it: That it was Starsky’s way of showing his love for him by wanting to share breakfast with him. But he wanted to show his love for Hutch another way, too—by completing a sex act with him—and Hutch wouldn’t let him.

Further, it was probably immoral to behave that way, so Starsky simply decided to get dressed and leave the room before his feelings got the better of him. He pulled on his shirt and buttoned it. “We can all go out for breakfast if you don’t want to make it,” he said on added thought.

“C’mon,” Hutch said. “You think I won’t make pancakes when you ask for them?”

Starsky didn’t want to engage Hutch further. He picked up his shoes and his socks and headed for the closed door. “I’m just saying you don’t have to.”

Hutch wasn’t about to let Starsky leave on those terms. He’d caused the rip between them, he’d hurt Starsky’s feelings—and he knew better than to let them fester. So he bolted off the bed, in the nude, and intercepted Starsky at the door. “Don’t leave. Not like this.”

Starsky was forced to look him in the eye. “How would you prefer I leave? Naked?”

Hutch didn’t want him to leave at all, least of all angry or hurt. Instead he said, “Preferably after a shower.”

Starsky squinted at him. It was Hutch who was sarcastic.

“You don’t want to go home to Grace smelling the way you do,” Hutch explained himself. “Trust me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love it, but she’s not going to be happy about it, no matter how accepting of us she is. Take a shower. Do us all a favor.” He forced a smile at Starsky and raised an eyebrow over his blue eyes.

Hutch’s suggestion made them break out of their light argument.

“I suppose you’re right,” Starsky said. He accidentally came into visual contact with Hutch’s nudity then and, in particular, Hutch’s sheathed penis.

Hutch noticed the study. “What you looking at?” he teased him.

“It amazes me that you’re bigger than I am even when you don’t have a hard-on.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know some things,” Starsky boasted. He turned away to unbutton his shirt so he could shower. “And that’s one of them.”

Hutch caught Starsky by the arm, swung him back to face him, and pulled him up to his face so he could kiss him. It was a friendly, warm, replenishing kiss he gave Starsky on the mouth, and Starsky responded to it just the way he hoped. When Hutch let him go, he told him, “How about we take a shower together and compare parts? Let’s see who’s the bigger man in hot water.”

“Okay,” Starsky said as he stripped off his shirt and unzipped his jeans. “But the winner has to make pancakes—and you know it won’t be me.”

* * *

Jade couldn’t help but notice how subdued his clients appeared again. Hutch was slouched in his chair on the offside of the coffee table with his elbows on the chair arms and his fingers locked and pressed to his mouth. He seemed disinterested, though not distracted, while he waited for dialogue to begin rather than start it himself. Jade thought so because Hutch was usually the first to speak, but on this particular day, he was seemingly rather tired, and more patient to follow than lead.

Though he wasn’t as withdrawn as Hutch, Starsky also appeared somewhat removed from the purpose of his visit. He couldn’t hold eye contact with Jade for long; instead he nursed a bottle of water. That, too, intrigued Jade. Starsky usually busied a beer during their sessions, but on that early afternoon, he’d chosen to drink water and told Jade it was because he was ‘dehydrated.’

As Jade examined the two men, as well as the brief small talk they’d shared upon their arrival, he thought he knew what had exhausted them. He would at least ask about it. If nothing else, his question would provoke one of them into saying something useful to him. “You boys wearing each other out with all that sucking and fucking?”

As he hoped, both men abruptly looked at him, bewildered by such a direct, blunt question, so he flashed them an insincere smile in reply. “Too personal?” he wondered.

“Too crass,” Starsky said, “especially for you.”

Hutch didn’t say a word, but Starsky felt a need to defend himself. “I’ve never been this energized and alive,” he said. “I’ve been having the best sex of my life these days.”

“Are both your lovers wearing you out then?”

“The boy lover is wearing me out,” Starsky said with a giggle.

Jade was impressed. “Does he have a new technique?”

“New technique,” Starsky agreed, then added, “more drive, loads of passion.” He shrugged when he was at a loss for other words. He thought maybe he could explain it better if he told Jade how he felt. “I like what he does to me, the way he does it, you know? He likes it, too—that’s part of what I like about it. And he does it out of, um, you know, love.”

“Yes,” Jade said slowly, stealing another glance at Hutch, “I know. But that doesn’t explain why you’re both wiped out, does it? Or is it that the sex is so good for both of you, it’s exhausting?”

“He’s exhausted,” Starsky said about Hutch. “He does all the work these days. I’m just … dehydrated.” He lifted his water bottle to prove to Jade he was serious. “Well, I guess I shouldn’t have said he does all the work; it isn’t work. He’s loving every minute of it. It’s just that I love it more.”

“And you love it more, because?”

“Because he’s gone into new territory for me. Let’s say I’m the happier one between us because of his horniness.”

Hutch reacted by clearing his throat.

Starsky knew he’d provoked Hutch with his words. “Don’t worry about it,” he said to Hutch after he heard his subtle warning. “I won’t give the good doc the details. Your secrets are safe with me.”

Hutch rolled his eyes and returned his line of vision to the back of Jade’s desk. His fingers remained propped under his chin. “Some things are still personal,” he quietly said to Jade, to intercept him from additional questions he imagined had been triggered by Starsky’s casual replies.

“Okay,” Jade agreed. “I still won’t ask for details. But what do you think about the fact that he’s enjoying sex more than you are?”

“That’s his interpretation,” Hutch replied. He looked at Jade finally. “Maybe Starsky just doesn’t get as much out of giving pleasure as I do, so it’s easy for him to assume I’m not having as much fun.”

“That’s mean,” Starsky said under his breath.

“Well, maybe I’m loving it as much as you are,” he said to Starsky, “but for a different reason.”

“Okay. I give you that. Maybe.”

They looked at Jade then and waited for the next question.

But Jade didn’t know where to begin, so he backtracked to something Starsky had said. “You’re having the best sex of your life—and it’s because of Hutch, because of some new technique, his drive and his passion—and his love, you said.” He received a confirming nod from Starsky, and then asked, “Would you say it’s better sex than the sex you’re having with Grace?”

Starsky hadn’t meant to compare. He simply noted what was, not what was juxtaposed. He attempted to defuse it because he never wanted to degrade Grace. “Sex with him is just different.”

“Apparently it’s so different, it’s better.”

Starsky had cornered himself. “I haven’t been this … satisfied before, that’s all.”

“So Grace doesn’t satisfy you as much.”

Hutch waited for Starsky’s answer; he hadn’t known that their sex together was that rewarding for Starsky, or how Starsky would explain himself without injuring his respect for Grace.

Starsky shifted uneasily in his chair and stared at Jade for half a minute before he resisted. “To say my sex with Hutch is better than my sex with Grace only puts Grace down and I don’t want to do that.”

“I’m not suggesting she’s ‘less than,’” Jade said. “I’m noting that Hutch is ‘more than.’ Let’s say Grace is extremely sexually satisfying for you, but what you’re saying is that Hutch is even more so.”

“Okay, yes, I would say it that way.” He thought for half a second and realized he wanted to enter into a dialogue he could only open in Jade’s presence. To do it alone might bring the kind of wrath from Hutch he was unable to handle by himself. Jade would watch his back—at least emotionally. “But I still say I enjoy the sex more than he does.” He then parted with the provocative comment he’d held onto for days. “He’d like it as much as I do if he wasn’t so busy playing games with me.”

Just as expected, Hutch fired a confounded look at his partner.

“What games are those, Starsky?” Jade asked.

“He’s on a power trip,” Starsky claimed. He didn’t look at Hutch after the initial eye contact with him; he knew Hutch would be defensive and when Hutch was defensive, he was often cruel. Starsky kept his eye on Jade instead. Jade was his salvation. “It’s complicated,” he added. “He’s not doing it on purpose. It’s just a hard-wired straight guy thing, I think.”

Jade almost parted with a smile over Starsky’s flippant remarks, but he knew something serious brewed beneath them, so he repressed it. He glanced at Hutch, who still looked at Starsky with a distinct puzzlement, and then Jade asked Starsky, “Explain ‘a hard-wired straight guy thing.’”

“Well, I’ve asked him a couple of times why he won’t, um, return the sex favors, and each time—”

“Sex favors?” Jade wondered.

Hutch knew what Starsky meant and was dismayed to learn that Starsky wanted to talk to Jade about it. He thought they’d settled that matter. Apparently they hadn’t. So, in the interest of closure, Hutch exchanged a silent, agreeing glance with Jade to pursue the subject to its natural end—but he had no idea how it was about to trap him.

“Sex favors,” Starsky answered, embarrassed, as if the definition was obvious—but then he explained, “I don’t get to do all the things he gets to do, in other words.”

Jade still didn’t understand; had he another few seconds to think about it, he probably would have figured it out, but Hutch explained it to him so he didn’t have to make the effort.

“He means he doesn’t get to fuck me,” Hutch said.

“I see,” Jade noted, but he was still confused. He asked Hutch, “How is that a ‘straight guy thing’ if you won’t let him fuck you—when you’re obviously fucking him?”

Starsky explained it. “Because to fuck somebody is different than being fucked by somebody. Goes without saying, right? If you’re straight, you’re going to get a blowjob, not give one. To give one means you’d have to do that to a guy, and to do that to a guy is to be queer, see? Same goes for fucking—”

Jade didn’t see. “But Hutch is giving blowjobs.”

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed with a smirk, “because he loves me. But he doesn’t finish those, either. He stops just short of where I stop when I’m doing him.”

Hutch didn’t understand what Starsky meant. They both knew he ‘finished’ those for Starsky. “I’ve got your cum in my mouth,” he reminded him. He spoke out of annoyance, something he wouldn’t have normally said in front of Jade. “How’s that not finishing?”

“You don’t swallow it,” Starsky argued, as impulsively.

Jade glanced at Hutch and thought he saw a flash of agitation in Hutch’s expression, as if Hutch found Starsky’s assessment ridiculous in the context of Starsky’s point, the one where Starsky accused Hutch of ‘power-tripping.’ Jade looked back at Starsky. Their blunt conversation enabled him to be likewise. “So, he only blows you because he loves you, but he isn’t ‘queer’; therefore, because he’s straight, he isn’t going to swallow jizz, right? is that what you mean?”

Starsky glared at Jade. “Do you have to be more crass than he is?”

Jade laughed. “I’m just getting down to basics like you guys do.”

“Well, don’t try so hard. My point is, Hutch will only take things so far because to go further would mean he’s as gay as I am—or gayer.”

“Are there degrees of gayness?” Hutch asked, amused.

“In your mind there are,” Starsky replied.

“Oh, so now you know my mind better than I do, huh?”

“You’re not gay,” Jade injected, but Starsky was bent on defending himself against Hutch’s argument and didn’t belabor Jade’s comment.

“Every time we talk about this,” Starsky said heatedly to Hutch, “you have a different reason why you don’t want to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Swallow cum.”

“Maybe it’s a collection of reasons.”

“Using my expert detective skills,” Starsky said, mocking pride, “I figure there’s an underlying reason, a real reason, something you’re hiding, something you don’t want to tell me or something you don’t want me to know. That leaves me to come up with the answers—and I say it’s because you’re afraid of doing anything with me that’s ‘too gay.’ And my only point to Jade was that I have more fun in sex with you than you do with me because I’m not limiting myself. You’re limiting me. You’re the one who draws the lines.” He didn’t like the look of levity that still lined Hutch’s expression, but he decided to go with it and try a little humor himself. “If you’d unfuck yourself and let me fuck you, in other words, you’d have as much fun as me.”

Hutch kissed at him, facetiously.

Jade broke their sarcasm and directed a question at Starsky. “Why do you think he won’t?”

“Won’t swallow?” Starsky asked. “Won’t let me fuck him? The answer is obvious: So he can control the relationship.”

“Why would Hutch want to control the relationship?”

“Because he has to be the alpha male, or he wants to be the alpha male—the top, as they say. He won’t dare be the bottom; to be the bottom, in a straight guy’s mind, is to be a fag. A homo-sexual. He keeps the power in this relationship by keeping me from topping him.”

“Are ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ gay terms?”

“The top is the one who penetrates—and from that you can figure out what the bottom is.”

Hutch had no idea Starsky felt the way he did, or that he defined the dynamic of their relationship in such terms. He dropped his hands from his face, from where they’d been pressed to his chin since his arrival, and onto the chair arms. “Where did you learn words like that?” he asked Starsky. “‘Top.’ ‘Bottom.’ Huh?”

“I have gay friends,” Starsky cooly replied.

“You have one gay friend.”

“So I have one gay friend,” Starsky reluctantly agreed. He knew Adam Love was a sore subject for Hutch and hoped the conversation wouldn’t get derailed over the reference.

Jade hoped so, too. To Starsky, he said, “So … you’re saying Hutch will fellate you because he loves you and he’ll penetrate you because he loves you, but he has his boundaries—because he’s straight—and straight trumps love.” It was Jade’s job to know his clients and he felt confident by how well he knew these men. That knowledge enabled him to take them further into the journey of their lives—and to help them learn and grow from it. He was pleased when it also succeeded to avoid the topic of Adam Love. “But, you, on the other hand,” he continued to say to Starsky, “have no boundaries.”

“None,” Starsky said flatly. “Hutch is the one on the power trip, not me.”

Jade didn’t think Starsky’s assessment made sense. “So are you back to questioning whether you’re gay because you’re willing to ‘bottom,’” he asked, “but, because he’s not, he’s still straight—or at least more straight than you are? Is that your reasoning?”

Starsky rubbed his eyes. The conversation had become too complicated. It wasn’t what he wanted to talk about. What he wanted to talk about was why Hutch wouldn’t let him top him. He thought by accusing Hutch of some wrongdoing, of ‘power-tripping,’ in this case, he could get Hutch to have a serious, soul-searching dialogue with him about it. But it only backfired. Jade’s analytical approach threw his effort off track. “We’re both straight,” Starsky finally decided as he locked eyes with Jade. “I think we’ve already figured it out—we just happen to be hot for each other—and I’m happy with that. It’s just that he’s more straight in his thinking, maybe. But, never mind … I didn’t want to make this about that. I don’t want to get back to that label thing. I was just explaining why I like the sex with him more than he likes it with me—which didn’t and doesn’t mean he doesn’t like it. I just like it more, that’s all.”

Jade sensed Starsky’s palpable frustration and in an instant knew what Starsky really wanted, deep down: He already felt like a bad person for his homosexual behavior and Hutch’s disapproval of any of it would only reaffirm his self-loathing. So Jade settled into his chair, took a calming breath, and instead aimed his focus at Hutch. He would help Starsky figure out why Hutch was reluctant to receive him, if for no other reason than to hear from Hutch, in ways he hadn’t already, that he didn’t think as poorly about Starsky’s same-gender sex as Starsky feared he did. It might even give Hutch an opportunity to realize or to confess his own deeper feelings, something Jade had tried to get Hutch to do on other occasions.

“How close to the truth do you think Starsky is?” he asked Hutch.

Hutch straightened in his chair. He thought back over the conversation of the past fifteen minutes and found the first hole he noticed in Starsky’s argument. “Well, he’s wrong about that semen-eating thing.”

Starsky half-turned in his seat to have a better look at Hutch. The answer surprised him and he wanted to see Hutch’s face, not just hear his words. “Really? I’m wrong about that?” he asked. “You’re not repulsed by it? Why don’t you do it then?”

“Because you are what you eat,” Hutch told him. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Jade.

Starsky laughed, not because Hutch was funny, but because Hutch’s answer was ridiculous. “So … you’re afraid you’re going to turn into a giant sperm or something?”

Jade laughed then; he couldn’t help himself. In all the years he’d counseled clients, he’d never met any who had the conversations these two men did—which didn’t mean men didn’t have them, but he’d never been privy to them. His laugh made Hutch and Starsky look at him because he rarely laughed as heartily. He then covered his mouth with his hand to stop himself.

“Do you find us funny?” Starsky asked him, tickled by Jade’s reaction.

“I was picturing Hutch as a giant sperm,” Jade confessed. He winked at Starsky. Then he composed himself and waited for one of them to resume the conversation.

Starsky directed a question at Hutch. “What does that mean, you are what you eat? You think I’m diseased or something?”

“Or something,” Hutch mumbled.

Starsky was put off, not hurt. He knew Hutch continued to elude him and he didn’t like it. “Why don’t you just cut to the chase, you moron, and tell me what the problem is? I’m not asking you to eat cum; I’m just wondering why you don’t.”

“Why would you expect he might?” Jade asked. If Starsky really didn’t care whether Hutch did or didn’t, why did it matter why he wouldn’t?

“I expect he might because he’s a guy and we get pretty raunchy … well, I mean, we really get into sex with each other. We’re not as careful as we would be with women, I don’t think. I’m not, anyway. I’m all in.”

“That’s because you’ll do anything,” Hutch told him, “and because you’ll eat anything that isn’t picked off a tree or pulled out of the ground.”

“I wouldn’t eat a praying mantis,” Starsky defended himself, but mostly he said it to back Hutch off his animosity.

“So you think Hutch is not that into fellatio, then, or is offended by your taste,” Jade asked, “because he won’t swallow?”

“Why won’t you?” Starsky asked Hutch, using Jade’s question to direct his own. “I mean, you don’t have to swallow; I don’t care if you do or you don’t. Never met a woman who did so it’s not something I expect. But why won’t you? That’s all I’m asking. Same reason women won’t? Because you think it’s gross?”

“I told you why,” Hutch said. “Because you are what you eat.”

“Explain that. Tell me why my cum offends you.”

“Generally speaking, it doesn’t,” Hutch said. “Would you like me to embarrass you? Tell you in front of Jade how much I love its smell and its aftertaste and its feel in my hands and on my skin?”

Starsky fumed. He didn’t like the threat—even though Hutch had just basically carried through on it to embarrass him—nor did he like the pursuit. “Maybe someday you’ll be man enough to tell me what the hang up is then,” he growled. “I mean, if you think it’s too gross to eat, just tell me, for crissakes. Or maybe you think it’s dirty, nasty, I mean. Immoral. That’s my point. Tell me something.” He leaned back into his chair, stretched his legs out in front of him, and exhaled heavily. “Bastard,” he mumbled under his breath. Had Jade not been in the room, he could never have been that brave.

“You won’t appreciate my answer,” Hutch finally said to ease the mounting tension. He noticed Jade’s calm demeanor after Starsky had abused him, so he felt obligated to explain himself.

“Try me,” Starsky dryly pitched.

Hutch did just that—bluntly. “You eat dead things,” he said, looking over at him. “You eat dead animals—which were sometimes-dismembered-alive. You eat corpses, things just this side of rigor mortis.”

Starsky shifted his eyes to Hutch’s and realized only then that Hutch meant what he said. He could see the seriousness in Hutch’s expression and in his rigid demeanor, and by the way Hutch sharply looked at him. “Well, it’s not like they’re praying mantises,“ he joked, hoping to thwart Hutch’s hostile tone. It failed miserably.

“You eat fat and bacteria and cruelly deprived things,” Hutch continued, not missing a beat. “You eat hormone- and antibiotic-injected dead and decomposing things.” He decided not to hold back. “You eat pus and mucous and blood and call it dessert. You eat sick and diseased and suffering things, things you pour barbecue sauce all over and call tasty and then wonder why you’re climbing the walls later.” He himself was heated then because it angered him that Starsky didn’t know him better. “What the fuck have I been telling you about my lifestyle for the past how long now? Why would you think I’d want any of that shit in my body anymore, even if came through yours to get there?” He looked at Jade and hoped the doctor was as satisfied with his answer as he imagined Starsky had to be, even if neither of them understood it—or appreciated it.

Or forgave it.

But Starsky actually laughed. He was so surprised by the explanation, his initial reaction was to laugh—at himself for never expecting it, not even a hint of it, and for his believing, almost with conviction, that he’d figured Hutch out on his own. He could tell by Hutch’s blank expression that Hutch wasn’t pleased, so he whispered an, “I’m sorry,” at him, and then more audibly added, “It’s just that I do know how you feel about that animal thing. I just didn’t realize I’d be passing any of it on to you in my cum.”

“Well, how more direct could I have been?” Hutch asked. “You are what you eat. How many fucking times do I have to say that before you get it?”

“I think you just reached the number.”

Jade watched the men for half a minute. They were silent—except for the words of understanding that passed between their eyes. But Jade wanted clarification before he moved on. “Not eating semen, then,” he said to Hutch, “has been an ethical issue for you—”

“My not eating dead things is for health, ethical, and moral reasons,” Hutch replied. “My not eating his cum is purely a health issue.”

“So … eating cum doesn’t turn you off,” Starsky said, “except because of what’s in it?”

Hutch kissed at him again. “In yours, anyway. We’re only talking about yours, right? Yours is the only cum I’d willingly eat. We’re not talking about the cum you make me eat sometimes—mine, that is.”

“And you say I’m crass,” Starsky mumbled.

“You and Jade brought this up. I’m just making it as clear to you both as I can.”

“Okay … so, if I ate only what you did, you’d eat it then?”

Hutch winked at him.

Starsky really hadn’t cared whether Hutch finished fellatio as completely as he himself did, so long as he could climax inside Hutch’s mouth, which he always did when he was on the receiving end of oral sex. But he was impressed—and relieved—to finally learn Hutch’s reasons for not swallowing his ejaculate; Starsky found it quite sexy to do just that with Hutch’s ending.

Naturally, he also figured that Hutch’s reasoning about not swallowing his semen applied to anal intercourse, but Starsky wanted to be sure first. “You’re saying … if I was a seed-eater instead, you’d let me top you, too?” He didn’t really like using that term, ‘top,’ to describe his wants, but he didn’t know how to say it any other way in front of Jade; using the words ‘make love’ seemed too corny and ‘fuck’ was too impersonal. Still, he didn’t expect Hutch’s answer.

“No,” Hutch said flatly. “They’re two different things. One’s sucking and the other’s fucking.”

“Yeah, butthead, I know the difference,” Starsky grumbled, “but I don’t get why it’s not the same as far as my cum goes.” He believed Hutch eluded him again and he was too bothered to not be as crass as he felt. “Cum in your mouth. Cum in your ass. What’s the difference? It’s all inside you—and it would be clean if I only ate the things you ate.”

Hutch wouldn’t answer.

“What you’re really telling me,” Starsky decided, “is that you have yet a different reason why you don’t do that, right? a different reason you won’t let me fuck you—because I could fuck you without cummin’ in you, you know that, right?”

Hutch still wouldn’t reply.

“So,” Starsky provoked him, asking him directly, “would you let me fuck you if I pulled out and came outside you?”

“Different act, different answer,” Hutch finally said—with a heavy sigh. Starsky’s crassness and his pursuit offended him.

“But you won’t give me a different answer,” Starsky fumed.

“It’s implied. You’re a detective. Make the deductions.”

“You’re not giving me any clues. Cough one up and I will.”

Starsky could tell by Hutch’s expression and his glib replies that Hutch had, indeed, rebuilt that wall around him. It probably wasn’t wise for Starsky to ask him for his specific reasons, but he couldn’t help himself. He had Jade for backup and he wanted to use him. “So … are you ever going to tell me what really stops you from letting me—”

“Power,” Hutch said on impulse. He said it to surrender to the interrogation Starsky and Jade had leveled against him that afternoon—and perhaps put an end to it in the doing—but he had inadvertently set his own trap.

“Power, hm?” Starsky echoed; he never thought Hutch would admit it. “Just like I said, right? You’re on a power trip.”

“Yeah, just like you said,” Hutch said solemnly, “but not for the reason you think I’m on it.”

It was the way Hutch answered, with that quietness in his voice, with that hint of emotion, that made Starsky take notice of something serious beneath the surface. “Does it have to do with what they did to me?” he wondered aloud. “You’re afraid I’ll feel degraded all over again—or because you’re afraid you might feel the way I did when they raped me if I’m inside you?”

“It has to do with how I feel,” Hutch explained. His answer was still vague. And he realized it was about to corner him, too. He clenched his jaw and stared, unseeing, at the back of Jade’s desk.

Starsky’s mind raced. He desperately wanted to know what tripped Hutch. “Does it have to do with how you feel overall about … anal?”

Hutch didn’t answer.

“Or how you feel about …?” Starsky couldn’t finish the sentence because he didn’t know which direction to take. Hutch had admitted to ‘power-tripping’ because of how Hutch ‘felt’—not, apparently, because he feared he’d make Starsky feel the way he had when he was attacked—but Starsky still couldn’t make the distinction between how Hutch felt, whatever it was, and ‘power-tripping’. He fished. “Is it about how you feel about me? Is it that you don’t love me enough or trust me enough after what they did—or want me as much as I want you?”

Hutch almost laughed. Starsky had gotten too close to a truth. “It’s one of those things,” he finally said, cryptically.

Starsky was unnerved. He got out of his chair, sat on the floor between Jade’s desk and Hutch’s feet, to make Hutch look at him instead of anything else in the room—and succeeded. “Hey,” he said, when Hutch still didn’t explain himself. “It’s because you don’t love me enough?”

Hutch bit down again and didn’t answer.

“Or because you don’t trust me?”

Hutch’s demeanor didn’t change. He didn’t even blink.

“You don’t want me as much?” Starsky then asked. His heart pounded. He didn’t like not knowing which of those things was the reason Hutch wouldn’t allow him to complete a sex act with him—or maybe it was all those reasons. “It’s one of them,” Starsky recalled Hutch telling him, “so which one is it?”

When Hutch still didn’t answer, Jade left his desk and sat in the chair Starsky had vacated. It got him closer to Hutch and enabled him to see Starsky on the floor. Jade also thought he knew the answer Starsky sought and it was his job to flush it. “C’mon, Hutch,” he implored him. “Don’t leave your man hanging.”

“Okay,” Hutch said, committing himself, but still averting his eyes. “So I don’t trust you as much as I used to.”

“Wow,” Starsky said under his breath, shocked to hear what he had. He hoped Hutch would look at him then so he could convey how disappointed and depressed he was to learn such a thing—and Hutch did just that, as if he knew, because he did, that Starsky needed the eye contact.

“It’s not what you think,” Hutch told him. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, specifically; it’s that I don’t trust life. Life will throw us another curve ball and you’ll make a decision that factors me much lower on the list.”

“You think I’ll do something that stupid again,” Starsky assumed. “Or you think I’ll put my safety first next time and—”

“Those aren’t the kinds of choices I think you’ll have to make.”

“What then?”

“Choices of life … who’ll you’ll need … who you’ll … love.”

“So, that’s what this is about?” Starsky wondered. “Do you need me to tell you that, if it came to choosing you or Grace, I’d choose you? Is that what you need to hear from me? Haven’t I already made my choice clear enough if it ever came to such a decision?”

Hutch didn’t want the conversation they had, but there it was. He could shut down to it or he could go forward into it—and he hated the predicament. Purely out of his frustration, he impulsively answered Starsky. “It won’t be a choice between Grace and me.”

“Then who and you? Adam? Some other guy?”

Hutch didn’t answer.

“There is no one else,” Starsky reminded him. “And there won’t be. I made you that promise—or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten. But other lovers aren’t what I’m worried about.”

There was a momentary silence while Starsky tried to figure out what Hutch meant. He couldn’t. He nudged Hutch to force him to explain. “C’mon, man. You wouldn’t want me to not answer you.”

“Suppose someday,” Hutch then hypothesized, “your wife decides she doesn’t want her husband to have a boyfriend anymore, so—” Starsky began to answer that supposition, but Hutch cut him off with a raised hand. “You tell Grace you choose me,” he continued, “and she wants a divorce—and things turn nasty. She wants full custody of your kids and tells the judge you’re an unfit father because you’re having an affair with a man. Now the choice is between your children and me. We both know the outcome of—”

“We don’t know,” Starsky emphatically said. “How can you say you know what I’d do?”

“Your children, Starsk?” Hutch impressed on him.

“Maybe my children are assholes.”

Hutch wasn’t pleased with the answer; it was a sarcastic cop-out of a serious concern he had. And Starsky knew it.

“I guess it’s that I trust Grace more than you trust me,” Starsky said more honestly.

Hutch believed him. In the end, it wasn’t so much what Starsky would do, as what he had already done. There would be no escape from that room until Hutch told them what they so desperately seemed to want to know—even if it was brutal honesty. “I don’t trust you as much as I did,” he said, “because I learned the hard way that there are things greater than me in your life. It—”

“What things?” Starsky wondered. He was too alarmed by Hutch’s disclosure to be offended. “What things do I put above you? Name one.” He couldn’t think of any himself.

It was the last thing Hutch wanted to talk about. His private battle had been just that, private all those months. In fact, it wasn’t even necessary for him to talk about it because he’d reconciled it on his own. Things were where he wanted them and to expose them, he believed, would only cause trouble where trouble needn’t be. “If we talk about this, things change between us,” he warned Starsky. “Do you want things to change between us?”

“I think they just did,” Starsky said. “I mean, you can’t really think you could say things will change if you tell me something, then not tell me what it is, and things stay the same, can you?”

Hutch had thought they could, but when Starsky explained it to him that way, he realized how foolish he was. And how trapped he’d just made himself. There was no more room to be evasive. It was time to confess—even if it did change things between them. At least the change would be an understanding as opposed to a festering wound. “Okay,” he surrendered, “I’m going to tell it like it is, all right?”

“When have you ever done different?” Starsky chided him.

“You would agree,” Hutch said, “when it comes to you and me, that I’m more emotional about things than you are, right?”

Starsky leaned against the back of Jade’s desk and leveled Hutch’s gaze. He accepted in that moment that Hutch wasn’t out to accuse him of any wrongdoing, but to explain himself, and Starsky needed to wait for it and not feel he was about to be abused or punished. “Okay,” he finally agreed. “I’d say you’re a more feely guy than I am. So what’s that got to do with our sex? Are you saying you feel more for me than I do for you?”

Had it been that easy? Hutch wondered. All he had to say was “yes” and he could end it at that? The longer he looked at Starsky, the sooner he realized the conversation had only begun. Starsky was a boy at heart—and a detective; he’d have nothing but continuing questions until he got to the bottom of Hutch’s deepest thoughts. Still, Hutch tried a way around it. “I have more meaningful feelings about our sex than you do, yeah, I believe that,” he said, “which doesn’t mean you don’t care—or that you don’t love. We’ve had that conversation already.”

“Yeah, okay,” Starsky said. He watched Hutch’s face and had listened closely to his tone of voice, its inflection, but mostly he was keen to the context. That’s what made him a good detective. “But you’re also saying you don’t want me to anal sex you because, despite how much it would mean to me, you think it wouldn’t mean as much as it would to you. Is that where you’re going with this?”

Hutch locked eyes with him. He was on the threshold of truth; his answer would make or break whatever they had in their lives together at that moment. He could take the superficial route or he could go right through his reality. Had he ever been dishonest with Starsky? Not once. “I’m saying … you mean something different to me than I mean to you. But I don’t want to make this comparison, okay? I’m telling you what I think and it doesn’t mean you have to think it, too. Or that I want you to feel anything you don’t. Or that I could be any happier than I am these days, because I couldn’t be.”

Starsky eyed him for a moment. “You have to know this thing between us means something to me.”

“I’m not saying it doesn’t,” Hutch said. “I’m saying it means more to me—and it means more differently.”

“Because you got dragged into it?”

“Obviously. Willingly.”

“Whatever that means.”

“That I must want to be sexually here with you, after all.”

“Then, it means more to you … because … I’m also with somebody else and therefore it can’t mean the same to me?”

“Partly.”

“What’s the other part?”

“Because …”

Starsky hung on the end to that sentence as if it would change their lives; isn’t that what Hutch wanted him to believe would happen?

Even Jade held his breath because he thought he knew how the sentence would end and he really hoped Hutch would finish it. Misunderstandings killed relationships, not honesty.

Hutch exhaled his tension and his guard and even his pride when he resumed what he knew he had to say. “Because—unlike you—I’ve never had sex with anyone I wasn’t sincerely in love with. Or, at least, thought that I was.”

Starsky had sex with women he was in love with, too, but he didn’t always have sex out of ‘in love,’ so his brow furrowed as he struggled to decipher the words he heard in context. In the same moment that he understood Hutch’s comment, that Hutch had been in love with the women in his lifetime with whom he’d had intimate relations, he coupled that knowledge with the fact that Hutch also had sex with him. Did Hutch mean to say what he did? Starsky wasn’t sure. He needed confirmation. “Are you saying you’re in love with me?”

Hutch wasn’t brave enough to speak the answer. He sheepishly shrugged at Starsky instead—all the while keeping affectionate eye contact with him. He didn’t want to put Starsky on the spot, nor did he want to be ridiculed because of how he felt, but the truth had a way of overcoming him; it was no longer in his hands. Starsky was desperate for an answer; it was written all over his face, so Hutch said the only thing he had the courage to say. He said, “Oops”—to imply his falling in love with Starsky had been a helpless mistake. He also thought it might give comical relief to what was quite serious—but it didn’t succeed.

Starsky settled heavily to the floor and against the desk behind him. He didn’t leave Hutch’s eyes, nor the look of embarrassment and sincerity on Hutch’s face, as he silently cycled through as many words of the conversation they’d had in order to piece them together.

Jade watched them. In their silence, they spoke volumes. Starsky was stunned, but he understood what he’d heard. Hutch was exposed, but he felt relatively safe still. Their eye contact lasted. Hutch wasn’t about to say another word because he didn’t want to get into deeper territory if he didn’t have to, and Starsky didn’t say a word because he still examined the ramifications of Hutch’s answers. They watched each other, speechlessly, for a lengthy period of time. It was Jade who needed to break the silence.

“How long have you felt that way, Hutch?” he asked.

Hutch heard the question; he even knew the answer, but because Starsky didn’t ask it, he didn’t feel compelled to honor it. He continued to look into those blue eyes and wait for Starsky’s next move.

Starsky asked it instead. “Yeah, how long have you felt that way?”

Hutch slid his hands to his knees to wipe the sweat from their palms on his jeans. He shrugged as if he didn’t know, but his words caught up with him. “I suppose, looking back, I’ve been in love with you since the day we met.”

“Well, yeah,” Starsky debated him, “we’ve joked about that, about us being in love with each other all these years, but we’re talking about real ‘in-love’ now, aren’t we?”

“We are,” Hutch said. “I wasn’t being facetious. I think the only way I could have gotten ‘dragged’ into sex with you was because, all along, I’ve had very deep emotional feelings for you since the beginning. I wouldn’t have gone to bed with a guy because he wanted me to; I had to feel something and have felt it for a long time.”

Starsky sat between Hutch’s feet while he listened carefully to what he just heard. “Well, I guess it goes without saying,” he admitted, then holding Hutch’s ankle, “that I’d never have wanted sex with you in the first place, either, if strong feelings like that weren’t there in me, too. Isn’t that what we learned here with Jade?”

Hutch didn’t think he could explain it, the dissemblance, that is. He slightly nodded at Starsky to let him know he appreciated what he’d just said, but he still thought there was a significant difference between them.

Jade flushed it. “Are you saying you’re in love with Hutch, Starsky?”

Starsky had been so caught off-guard, he could only impulsively respond. “I get the feeling I’m missing something, so maybe we need to define what it means to be in love.”

“Hutch?” Jade prodded him.

“It means what it means,” Hutch said. “In love. In my heart of hearts, I don’t want but one person—intimately, physically, sexually—and that person is you.”

Starsky looked into those compelling, blue eyes. “We’ve both agreed there’ll be no other men,” he reminded him again.

“Yeah, but, for me,” Hutch said, “I’m not interested in anyone else, male or female.”

“No women?”

“No women. I have what I want. I’m happy with it. What else do I possibly need?”

“Romance,” Starsky assumed.

“You don’t think I have romance? Haven’t we eaten by candlelight in the kitchen and then had sex on the counter? Don’t we hang out on the sofa, drink wine, and watch movies, you in my lap? Shower together? Sit in the rain in the garden together? Shuffle cards in the nude together—and not because it’s Strip Poker? How often have you asked me to play the piano for you—and I do—and we just immerse ourselves in that? Tell me where I’m missing the romance. Tell me what else anyone can give me that I don’t already have with you—other than biological children, and you know I don’t want those. Tell me there’s somebody else out there who can make me feel as good or make me more honest or make me laugh as much. Go ahead. Tell me.”

Starsky realized how differently they viewed their relationship and how suddenly accurately romantic it was in light of Hutch’s description. He laughed, quietly and with surprise, to realize what he just did. “Why not let me know this sooner?” he asked.

“Because now you’re going to be careful with me—the way you are with Grace—to make certain you don’t hurt my feelings, and I didn’t want you to be responsible for me or to change how you treat me or how you are with me because of it. That’s why I never said anything sooner; that, and what difference does it make how I feel?”

“You think I’m careful with Grace because she’s in love with me?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m careful with Grace,” Starsky said, “because she’s a woman and her feelings go deeper than …” He understood what he said as he said it. Hutch’s feelings also went deep, much deeper than he’d known before. He stopped himself and made lengthy eye contact with Hutch again. “Okay,” he said softly. “I get what you’re afraid of. But suppose you go ahead and be free to be you—and how you feel about me—and I make certain it doesn’t change things?”

Hutch laughed at the notion. “It’s not that simple, Starsk. Understand what I’m saying here: You’re it. Forever and always. There, I said it. Happy now?”

Starsky didn’t understand Hutch’s sarcasm. He didn’t say a word then out of fear he’d say the wrong thing. Hutch had just gone from vulnerable to borderline hostile and Starsky wasn’t about to push him over the edge.

Jade thought he understood it. “Do you feel overexposed, Hutch?”

Hutch only then realized he unnoticeably trembled. He broke eye contact with Starsky to focus on the internal conflict inside him and thought about Jade’s question. “I feel … alone in this.”

“This being, what?” Jade pressed him.

“This ‘in love’ place. And because I feel alone in it, I get nervous that it’s going to be trampled all over—another reason I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Do you think Starsky’s the one who’ll ‘trample’ all over it?”

Hutch lifted his eyes then, past Starsky, to turn his head slightly and look more toward Jade, so he could answer without it appearing that he meant to attack his partner. “Who else has the capacity to truly hurt me?”

“And could I hurt you,” Starsky asked Hutch, “because I’d be ‘careful’ with you now that I know how you really feel, and somehow that will fuck things up? Or do you think I’ll hurt you because I don’t feel the same way? I mean, apparently I don’t feel the same, right? because there is a woman in my life, there is someone else that I have ‘desire’ for.”

Hutch looked sharply at him. He wasn’t certain the answer to his fears had anything to do with either of Starsky’s questions, so he answered impulsively. “Sex with me doesn’t mean as much to you as sex with you means to me,” he repeated, “so, therefore, the experience and the relationship I’m having with you doesn’t mean as much to you as it means to me—which doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to you; it just doesn’t matter as much. Or it matters differently. Or it matters differently in degree. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“I hear you—even though you’re talking in riddles.”

“But you understand what I mean, right?”

“Yeah,” Starsky said solemnly. “I understand.”

Silence enveloped them again. Starsky could tell Hutch was then on the defensive and it troubled him. In that moment, despite Hutch’s ability to hurt him with words, the way he often did, Starsky felt more empowered. It was Hutch who was weaker because it was Hutch who was more emotionally invested, and that’s why Hutch was defensive, because he protected himself with the best of his strength. Starsky finally understood that and wished he could find a way to make Hutch feel safe again. He hoped Jade would help him. He glanced at the doctor and silently asked for direction.

“And if it doesn’t mean as much to Starsky,” Jade assumed, right on cue, “then it follows that Starsky won’t be as protective of it as you are. But what are you afraid he’ll do, Hutch? What specific thing are you defending yourself from?”

Hutch felt choked up at that moment. He didn’t realize until then how sensitive he still was to events of the past. But the hurt it caused him was so sudden, it was irrepressible. He released it with an answer. “I don’t want him to walk over me again.”

“Again?” Starsky asked.

Hutch looked into Starsky’s blue eyes as deeply as he could. He needed to remind himself that Starsky was there for him, that Starsky would never do anything intentionally to hurt him, that Starsky even visibly wanted to understand: It was on Starsky’s face and in his expression just how much he desperately wanted to know the heart of Hutch’s heart. “Again,” Hutch said in a low voice. “I don’t want you to walk over me again. I couldn’t handle it if you did.”

It took all the courage Starsky had to ask the begging question. “When did I walk over you before?”

Hutch’s hurt deepened. “That you don’t know when is why I’ve stayed guarded.”

Starsky inspected the past few weeks and then further into the previous few months until he came up against the hard truth. Guilt instantly consumed him, as did shame and sorry. “I went to see Adam after you asked me not to.”

“I begged you not to,” Hutch reminded him, and his voice cracked when he spoke because the hurt was just that great—still.

“Starsky did what he had to do,” Jade injected.

“It’s what he didn’t do,” Hutch replied. His eyes never left Starsky’s even though he spoke to the doctor. “And what he didn’t do was give me the second chance I so feverishly wished for.”

Starsky could see the pain in Hutch’s soul because it was right there in his blue eyes and in his defensive expression, that clenched jaw of his, that furrowed brow. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Hutch ignored the apology. “Not in a million lifetimes,” he told Starsky, “could there be anything that would keep me from giving you a second chance—for any reason. Ever. Especially if you begged for it.” Hutch didn’t want to attack him and he didn’t want to punish him for that thing he ‘had to do,’ so he quickly added, “I’ve stood by you through this and I’ll stand by you through anything else for the rest of my life. I’m only bringing this up now because you’re asking me—because you and Jade are asking me. You want to know why I don’t want to give up any more of me for you than I already have. That’s the only reason I’m telling you any of this.”

He looked at Jade, sorry he’d been cornered, and explained, “You need to know I’m the happiest man on the planet, that there isn’t anything more I want out of life than what I have right now. I didn’t come through that door today unhappy. I’m not unhappy. I’m the farthest thing from unhappy. My life is perfect. But things aren’t perfect for Starsky; he still needs to get everything he wants—while I’ve already got everything I want. So he’s asking questions still and I’m giving the answers, but they’re not things I wanted to ever talk about. Nor did I need to—for me—okay? So I want it on record that everything I’ve said here today I’ve said because it was expected from me, not because I have any problems with anything.”

Jade didn’t believe him and bluntly said, “Except for the fact that you are still hurt by what Starsky did with Adam.”

“It’s not what he did with Adam that haunts me. It’s that Starsky wouldn’t even give me an hour when I asked him for one. If he hadn’t given me another chance for any reason, it would hurt as much. Does that make sense? Don’t confuse the issue. I figured out on my own that I forgave him for what he did with Adam, but I haven’t forgotten what he did to me in order to do it.”

Jade understood the difference, but he also understood Starsky. “It’s your guardedness that’s confused him. That’s why he’s asking. He wants to understand.” He looked at Starsky then because Starsky had turned to look at him when Hutch wouldn’t, and to Starsky he said, “And now you understand why Hutch has been reluctant to ‘go all the way’ with you, right?”

“He said it was a power thing.”

Hutch explained it when he and Starsky finally made eye contact again. “It’s a power thing because it keeps me safe. I have something you really want, Starsk, something only I can give you—because that’s a promise you made to me, that there’ll be no other men ever again—and as long as I have something you want that you can’t have, then I know I haven’t given every piece of my heart and soul to this relationship. That’s the power I hold, the one that protects me from giving up every part of me should I get passed over for some other life reason that might come down the road.”

Starsky stared at him. “Wow. That’s …”

“That’s what?” Jade asked him.

“That’s sad.”

Hutch laughed at him, incensed. “Don’t patronize me.”

“No, I mean, it’s really sad,” Starsky defended himself. “I’m the one to blame for it. I’m responsible for this sad situation. It doesn’t make it less sad. And it doesn’t make me less sorry than I am, either. I mean, this isn’t something I can fix, is it? How am I supposed to take it all back? I can’t. I did what I did. It’s done. And now you won’t come all the way with me because you’re afraid I’m going to walk over you again.”

“You could,” Hutch told him. “It’s a possibility.”

“I could … but I won’t,” Starsky said. “And maybe there isn’t anything I can do to fix it, to turn it around, or to make you believe that, but I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying—and not so that I can top you, but so that I can have that trust back, because I had it once and it means everything to me. Even if I never get it, I’m going to try.” He pressed upon Hutch with his eyes how desperately he meant what he said. “Do you have any idea how heartbroken this makes me? After all we’ve been through together, all these years now, dodging and taking bullets for each other, nearly losing each other, depending on each other … and … to not have you trust me now?“

It sounded too much to Hutch that Starsky wanted forgiveness, that Hutch punished him. That hadn’t been his intent, in either case. “You wanted to know how I felt,” he reminded Starsky, and he lowered his voice and softened his tone and relinquished some of his internal tremble, “and I told you. All of it. Completely.”

“I’m apparently not in love with anybody,” Starsky said. “If being in love means you’ve only got it for one person and one person only, then I’m not in love. Not with you and not with Grace. So, in a strange way, I guess you could say that you and she have something in common with each other that you don’t have with me: You’re both in love with somebody who isn’t in love with you.”

Hutch laughed, but it wasn’t from humor, more from the irony of the situation. The woman he thought hated or at least tolerated him was someone who probably understood him better than the man he loved.

Starsky hadn’t finished what he needed to say. “But if you wanted to define what it means to be in love by my terms, then you’d both know that I see it like, I’d give my life for both of you. I’d sacrifice anything. What I feel for each of you is very different in some ways, but in one way it’s the same: I’d never want to be without either of you, and you more than her. That’s what I mean by, if I had to make a choice, I’d choose you.”

Hutch knew.

“Is that what you want me to do?” Starsky asked him again. “Do you want me to choose? With Jade as my witness, do you want me to make that choice a solemn promise, and I leave her—now, today—for you? Because I will.”

“No,” Hutch cut him off. “You’re not hearing me if you think I want that. I’m happy with the way my life is—and I’m happy for you and your life, too. Can I say it any plainer? It isn’t what I don’t have that keeps me from giving you more—it’s what I want to avoid, it’s what I want to keep from happening again; that’s what keeps me from giving you more. This way, you see, if life takes you in a different direction, meaning you have to stop this sex and this intimate closeness between us someday, then you’ll go down that road and I can know I didn’t give up every aspect of who I was and how I felt for someone who didn’t or couldn’t or wasn’t able to give likewise back to me.”

Hutch’s words had been from his heart; he wasn’t careful. And they caused a strained silence. Starsky didn’t know how to answer him, how to argue with Hutch’s feelings. In the end, he realized he couldn’t. Hutch’s experience had been different from his own—and Starsky had been partly to blame. He squeezed Hutch’s ankle, through his jeans, and encouraged him, with his eyes, to relax, that he never meant to push him that far.

But Jade provoked Hutch further. On purpose. “Then can’t we say you’re not really in love with Starsky,” he supposed, “if you don’t give him your all?”

Hutch didn’t back down. “Define it however you wish,” he said. “I think I’ve explained myself.”

Starsky lowered his eyes and stared beneath Hutch’s chair to the floor. He silently agreed that Hutch had said all that needed saying. Hutch didn’t want to give Starsky any more than he’d already given because Starsky might one day dismiss him again. He audibly sighed with his sorry.

Jade noticed his sullen demeanor. And he saw Hutch notice it, too, but Hutch wouldn’t console it, so Jade encouraged Starsky to express his feelings. “Tell us why you’re heartbroken, Starsky.”

Starsky didn’t look away from the floor. He looked inward. “I’m sorry for what I did to him,” he said, “but at the time, I did what was best for him, not what was best for me, therefore I’d do it again the same way if I had to do it over. But I’m also sorry Hutch doesn’t get to experience me the way I’ve gotten to experience him. That makes me sad, too, because, you know, you can call it sex all you like; in the end, it’s more than that, and I know he knows that, but I’m sorry he’s been forced into a place where he has to put a restriction on what we do.”

“Don’t bait me,” Hutch warned him.

Starsky closed his eyes. He hadn’t meant to convey the wrong message behind his words. He was sorry for that, too. He audibly exhaled a final time to relinquish any further desire on his part to talk about the matter, and silence filled the room again.

Hutch looked at Starsky as he sat there with his eyes closed and seemed melancholic and defeated. And Starsky waited for the weight of his sorrow to lift so he could find something else to say, something about anything that wasn’t about sex or love or faith in another person.

But Jade wasn’t about to let them go that easily. His voice, as quiet as it was kind, asked a question he thought might lead to repair. “Starsky, you said you did what you thought was best for ‘him,’ not what was best for you. Best for Hutch? or best for Adam?”

Starsky opened his eyes, sharply looked at Jade, and said, “It was best for Hutch that I saw Adam. At the time, I needed what I needed; that’s what I thought then, that I should take care of my urges with someone else, that I experiment with someone else for Hutch’s sake. Looking back, knowing what I know now, knowing what I knew not long after, in fact, I realize my mistake, but first I had to make it.”

Hutch nudged Starsky with his calf; it made Starsky look at him, into his eyes. “You thought it was best for me that you saw Adam?” He wanted to laugh at that notion, but the innocence with which Starsky had said it, and the way Starsky had passed over it, made Hutch believe there was something more at play than Starsky’s effort to explain himself.

“I thought it was best for you,” Starsky repeated. “I told you that then, remember?” He didn’t understand why Hutch wanted him to rehash it. “I told you I couldn’t let you do what wasn’t in your nature to do.”

“Apparently it was in my nature to do.”

“But neither of us knew it at the time,” Starsky argued, frustrated. He had to think back a couple of months to that terrible day when he drove to Adam’s house, when he didn’t give Hutch that second chance Hutch wanted, and he ended up doing something that permanently altered his relationship with Hutch in a way he never could have predicted. Then he remembered that clear-cut reason and looked at Hutch, carefully, when he tried again to explain.

“Something had happened,” he recalled, “and it made me not want to put you through something you’d regret. I didn’t want to go to Adam. If I’d had my way, I’d have stayed. I’d have done that with you; you’re the one I wanted to do it with. But you only changed your mind about anal-sexing me because you didn’t want me to go to him, not because you wanted to anal-sex me.”

Hutch nudged him again. Starsky had missed the underlying question, but he’d also inadvertently given Hutch more detail. “What happened?” he asked.

“What happened?”

“You said ‘something had happened.’ What happened that made you not want to put me through something you thought I’d regret?”

Starsky realized what Hutch wanted to know, but was reluctant to tell him because he didn’t want to embarrass him.

“Do I beat it out of you?”

“Things were raw then,” Starsky began.

“Yeah. And?”

“And emotions were running high.”

“I remember.”

“I was confused,” Starsky said. “I wasn’t even sure at the time that you wanted to be … French-ing me. That’s why we ended up here in this guy’s office in the first place, remember? We started seeing Jade before we ever had sex. Remember? We were only kissing at the time.”

Hutch vividly recalled it in his mind, that first meeting with Jade, the one in which it was he who had to tell Jade why Starsky wanted to talk to a psychologist, not because of the ‘kiss,’ but because of the ‘kissing.’ He and Starsky had crossed the line into sex only after they’d begun to see Jade. “I didn’t realize you thought I didn’t enjoy that early intimacy between us,” Hutch said. “You were the one who was troubled by it; I argued that it was natural for us. But what’s your point?”

Starsky held eye contact with him. “Well, that was a couple months back. We didn’t really know where we stood with each other. Things were new and, at least for me, they were also confusing. We started handling each other after we hired Jade, and I think we both liked it, but then I asked you if we could ratchet it up a notch and … um …” He paused and glanced at Jade; the doctor’s genuinely concerned expression made him feel safer in that room, so he looked back at Hutch and finished his sentence the way he’d planned. “I asked you if you’d fuck me, and you basically told me to go fuck myself instead.”

Before Hutch could reply, Jade injected what he remembered from their conversation that day. “Hutch not only rejected you,” he reminded Starsky, “but he degraded you when he did it. He hurt your sensibilities.”

“Why do you keep bringing that up?” Hutch asked Jade, somewhat heatedly. “Do I have to pay for that behavior for the rest of my life?”

“Because it lends itself to why Starsky felt a need to go elsewhere for it,” Jade explained.

Jade’s explanation made sense to Hutch. He accepted it and silently forgave him. Then he looked at Starsky with an expression that told him to continue.

“Well, I didn’t want to go to Adam,” Starsky repeated. “Like Jade said, I didn’t have a choice.”

Hutch assumed Starsky tried to tell him that his refusal to anal-sex Starsky when Starsky first asked him was the ‘something that happened’ that made Starsky do what he thought was best for Hutch when Hutch changed his mind. He unknowingly interrupted Starsky. “But I gave you a choice an hour before you left to see Adam—and you chose him.”

“Can I finish?” Starsky asked. “Can you sit still and let me tell you this? It isn’t easy.”

Hutch didn’t realize Starsky needed courage to say whatever was on his mind. Starsky had never let on that he was secretly anxious, either. Hutch tapped Starsky’s hip with his foot to tell him he’d hear him out.

“Well, the day before I went to Adam’s,” Starsky said, “I spent the night at your house, remember?”

Hutch thought back and confirmed that memory with a nod.

“We played around that night quite a bit,” Starsky said. “I think we probably handled each other a couple of times before we went to sleep.”

Jade keenly watched Hutch; he was impressed by how intently Hutch listened to Starsky—and how genuinely he appeared to care about what Starsky had to tell him. Jade didn’t breathe a word. He didn’t want to interrupt what he thought would be an overdue and groundbreaking revelation for his clients.

“You got up in the middle of the night to take a piss,” Starsky said to Hutch. “I think you had a drink of water out of the tap, too, which I remember laying there and laughing about—you drinking tap water.”

“It’s well water,” Hutch corrected him.

“Yeah, ‘well,’ anyway, when you came back to bed, I rolled over and put my arm around you—to let you know I was awake and ready to play if you wanted.”

Hutch didn’t remember those details specifically; they were ones he often did when Starsky spent the night. He waited to hear more.

“You took a hold of my hand,” Starsky recalled, “and you started to push it to your … dick.” He was aware again that Jade listened, but reminded himself that Jade was no judge, so he continued. “I thought you were going to get something started. I was excited about that because, up until then, I was usually the one to jumpstart us. But before I could touch you, before my hand got to your member, you stopped us. It was like you changed your mind or something. Halfway through the push, you stopped pushing. So I waited to see what you were going to do…”

Hutch didn’t remember what Starsky told him, though he didn’t doubt Starsky’s story. But, as Starsky forged ahead, the details became more than vivid for him; they would liberate him.

“I think you thought I’d fallen asleep,” Starsky said, “because after a couple of minutes, you … um … started to …”

“To what, Starsk?”

“To … cry.”

That’s when Hutch remembered the details of that night. He didn’t understand how they related to Starsky’s rendezvous with Adam Love, but he intently listened—and his posture and his expression softened the longer Starsky spoke.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Starsky admitted. “When I was in the hospital after those men attacked me, you cried one night in the bed, the one Dr. Mitchell gave you, when you thought I was asleep, but I woke up and you said I must have heard you snoring. But I know what I heard. And I wish I hadn’t interrupted you because I thought you needed to get it all out. So when you cried that night, the night before I ended up going to Adam’s, I didn’t know if I should let you know I was awake—and stop you—or just listen to you.”

Hutch remembered that he cried that night for a while—and how he felt, too. “So you decided just to listen.”

“I did,” Starsky sheepishly confessed. “I thought you should get out whatever was bothering you. But the longer it went on, the guiltier I felt, and then I couldn’t bring myself to let you know I was awake. I thought I should hear it to its end because I’d caused it.”

“You’d caused it?” Hutch asked.

“Hadn’t I? You were about to start another handjob that night and then how you really felt about it must have gotten the better of you. That’s what I believed then. So I promised myself, while I listened to you cry,” he added, noticing that tears shimmered in Hutch eyes even as he spoke, “that I wouldn’t put you through any of that homosexual stuff anymore and I’d go see Adam instead.” He choked on his next words because, in hindsight, and even then, he wished he’d given Hutch that second chance. “I thought it was best for you that I go,” he explained, “so no matter how much you begged me that afternoon not to go, I couldn’t bring myself to take advantage of you anymore—and you had no idea how badly I wanted to.”

Hutch lifted a fist to his mouth to keep the sound of a cry from erupting. He didn’t leave eye contact with Starsky, even though Starsky was blurred behind his tears. He laughed, though; it was the only way to get rid of his urge to sob, and it was a happy, sad, sorry, delighted laugh.

Starsky didn’t understand it, but he lightly laughed with Hutch. It surprised him that Hutch laughed when he thought Hutch should cry or at least be angry. Hutch even appeared happy to have heard what he just learned. The tears in Hutch’s eyes gave away underlying feelings.

“Why are you emotional?” Jade asked him.

“Because now I understand what he believed I really felt at the time,” Hutch said, not leaving eye contact with Starsky. To Starsky, he said, “When you rejected my change of heart … that afternoon when you drove to Adam’s … I asked you to at least give me one hour to talk about it before you left, but you believed you knew my heart of hearts.”

“Everything we did together, I had to fight for,” Starsky explained. “We’d talk about it. We’d argue about it. We’d plan it. We even got professional help over it. You’d do it, but you did it for me, not for you. And I couldn’t let you do it for me anymore. The fact that my going to Adam turned out to be a mistake doesn’t change the fact that I’d do it over again because I had to do what was best for you.”

Starsky’s face came into focus as Hutch’s vision cleared. “You just proved it,” he gently said. He sat forward in his chair and tenderly touched Starsky’s cheek with his fingertips. It was the only affection he felt comfortable showing him with Jade in the room. But his eye contact with Starsky’s blue eyes went very deep and he could tell Starsky felt the love he sent him. “Now let me tell you what was really going on that night,” he said. “Let me tell you what made me cry.”

* * *

It was a peaceful 3:20 a.m. But Hutch was dehydrated and woke from intense feelings of thirst, reluctantly got off the bed in the dark, and found his way to the bathroom, where he both emptied his bladder and afterward drank volumes from the sink faucet. On his way back to the bed, he tripped over one of Starsky’s shoes that had been tossed on the floor earlier, and then uncontrollably cussed out loud before he remembered he wasn’t alone in the room. Luckily, when he fell against the foot of the mattress, Starsky didn’t seem to notice the bump against the bed; he was as quiet in his sleep as he had been when Hutch left it minutes earlier.

Hutch crawled to his own side of the mattress and gently dropped to his back against it. He stared into the dark at the ceiling as he slowly let out his breath, then he closed his eyes and surrendered to his drowsiness. He didn’t cover himself with a sheet or blanket—and Starsky hadn’t, either. It was still warm in the house from the day’s heat, so they let the ceiling fan overhead cool them.

Half-asleep himself, Starsky rolled against Hutch and slid his arm across Hutch’s chest to cozy up to him.

But Hutch thought Starsky made contact with him out of solicitation for sex and not from his need to feel close, the way Starsky liked to be when they slept together. Hutch wanted sex; he assumed Starsky did, too. They were both nude, and they were both able, after all, but Hutch was unknowingly somewhat on his own. He gripped Starsky’s forearm in both hands and gently pushed it toward his own brand new erection. He also couldn’t know that Starsky woke more fully then, realized Hutch’s intent, and silently anticipated the contact.

But it was in that suspended moment between Hutch’s initiation and Starsky’s anticipation that Hutch gave up the effort. In what was simply a micro-pause, a fleeting realization that Starsky didn’t noticeably help him—because he wasn’t awake enough to play, or wasn’t interested in satisfying either of them—that Hutch made his fatal mistake, an inaction that would unknowingly cost them months of heartache. And all because of a misunderstanding they had as they lay in the dark with each other and read the wrong signals. Or, rather, they read the signals wrongly.

Starsky waited. He was content and sleepy and excited, but he waited. He wanted to see how far Hutch would go on his own with him and soon learned how reluctant Hutch was still. The pause disappointed him, but not for himself; he was sorry Hutch didn’t yet have the courage or the self-confidence to know, like he knew anything, that Starsky would never reject him, least of all sexually. Starsky too surrendered to inaction. Maybe he needed to wait longer. He felt Hutch’s warm and nude body beside his and in his embrace, and he felt Hutch’s hands on his arm, holding him tightly, and he heard Hutch’s quiet breathing, but he continued to wait. Until Hutch fell asleep, the option to sexually engage each other was still viable without having to wake the other.

Hutch couldn’t remember a time in his life when he felt more alive or more loved or more bonded to anyone—even to Starsky. He didn’t think he could be closer to another human being if he spent the rest of his life in search of such a person. That person was already in the bed beside him, on his bed beside him, in the nude beside him.

Maybe their sexual relating didn’t go as far as Starsky wanted, or that Hutch himself wished he could go, had the ability to go, into reciprocated penetrating sex with Starsky, that is. What they did share was more than Hutch could have imagined—and he never wanted to wake from that dream. That Starsky wished to be close to him in those private ways had been beyond flattering; it had been necessary. Hutch had been, from the beginning, more emotionally bonded to Starsky than Starsky was to him—and, make no mistake, the depth of Starsky’s bond was immeasurable—but to have that loyalty validated by sexual intimacy gave Hutch an enormous joy he could never explain, let alone express. He could only revel in it.

He listened to Starsky’s quiet breathing. Though Starsky didn’t sound as if he was asleep, Hutch believed he must have been because Starsky didn’t follow through on that initial push in a certain direction. Hutch could have nudged Starsky further, but if Starsky was so sleepy he could drift away in the middle of one of Hutch’s rare invitations, Hutch didn’t want to pursue it. Starsky should sleep then. They both should sleep.

But Hutch couldn’t. And not for any particular reason. Maybe it was just the reminder of his unbreakable bond to Starsky that kept him awake, the compelling notion that he was the luckiest man on the planet to be where he was in those minutes, in that time, with that person right there with him. His dissolved marriage and his other failed relationships with women were light years away. He was never meant to be with anyone other than Starsky. If only he could get past his insecurities and his sensibilities, perhaps he could have an even deeper relationship with the friend he considered the single most important person in the world to him. He squeezed Starsky’s arm when he thought a slight nudge might wake Starsky enough to take them there.

But Starsky didn’t move. He waited—still. He felt the squeezing strength in Hutch’s grip and hoped it meant what he imagined it did. He simply needed to give Hutch a little more time to deliver on his own.

When Starsky didn’t respond, not even slightly, Hutch listened more closely to Starsky’s breathing; he searched it for telltale signs of Starsky’s degree of sleep. Starsky’s breath was quiet, light—and comforting there in the dark. Hutch inwardly smiled when he recalled how heavy Starsky’s respiration could be, how Starsky could be so out-of-breath, so winded he would moan with every exhale. The memory stirred Hutch’s arousal again. Maybe he could wake Starsky enough to masturbate him or maybe he could just take care of himself and leave Starsky to sleep. He didn’t know which to do—or whether he should do either. He hated where he was caught and yet he found it quite funny, too. Were he more awake himself, he’d have laughed.

Laugh. That was something else he shared with Starsky—serious laughing. Free laughs. Sometimes out-of-control laughs. Laughing jags. Knowing laughs. Hutch didn’t have that with anyone else—and never had. It was as if they were of one mind when it came to all things funny or ironic or simply absurd. One look and they’d break into a good laugh—but more than that, a shared laugh, one they both knew told the other they were of that one mind.

One mind.

One heart.

Maybe they didn’t share the same degree of interest in politics or religion or culture, but they did have the same heart. It beat as one. They were committed to a life served for others. They were equally offended over the plight of those who were less fortunate, those who’d been victimized. They were dedicated to the salvation of lost souls and to justice. And, sometimes, inside that enveloping heart of hearts, their hearts also beat in physical harmony between them, just from the presence and the sight of the other—from ten years earlier to that night—and from, during, and after their shared orgasms. How their hearts pounded in such times. Maybe Hutch’s had been as powerful with every sexual relation he’d had with a woman—or by himself—but he didn’t remember it ever being that strong. Or maybe he was aware of its strength because he’d felt Starsky’s at the same time, just as strong, just as pounding. No woman’s had beat with such force. Hutch was sure of it.

The reminder made him feel then for Starsky’s heartbeat. He pressed his thumb into the small pocket between bone and bone where Starsky’s hand joined its wrist. Hutch’s was a small gesture; he already held Starsky there and simply had to press his thumb into Starsky’s skin a little deeper. The darkness enabled him to feel Starsky’s pulse as if it were the only light in the room. Its rhythm was slow and steady. Hutch imagined its biology: The contraction of Starsky’s heart as it pushed blood through his veins, paused, contracted again, pushed. Push. Pause. Push. Pause. For forty years, Starsky’s heart, like his own, only months apart in age, had pumped the life blood through them. It supplied their brains with nourishment, their lungs with breath, their penises with engorged pleasure. Life blood. Hutch focused more keenly on the feel of Starsky’s pulse beneath his thumb and realized all over, yet again, how fortunate he was to have this man beside him on the bed, in the dark, on life’s journey.

It was the same heart that had pumped—pushed, paused, pushed again—the blood through Starsky’s veins while he once lay dying on that warehouse floor not so many months earlier, and kept him alive. It was a long way from the cold tile of that empty, abandoned room to the warmth of the mattress on which they found themselves that night. And it was only by a fluke of chance, from one criminally minded man’s second thoughts, the one who put the police on Starsky’s trail that fateful morning, to enable Hutch to reach Starsky in time, to keep that life blood pumping through Starsky’s veins.

Had it gone any other way, had that particular attacker taken his own life before he gave the police the address of Starsky’s whereabouts, and not later when the they closed in on him to make an arrest, Starsky would not be on the bed beside Hutch in those eternally grateful and precious minutes. There would be no heartbeat to feel. No breath to hear. No moan to be responsible for. No more of that rare trust, that unconditional love, that impenetrable and unbreakable bond between them. The loss would have been beyond heartbreaking. It would have been close to terminally devastating. Hutch could not live without Starsky in his life. Maybe it would have been him, instead of a cornered rapist, to have put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

As he lay in the dark beside Starsky, with Starsky’s heartbeat in his hands, conscious of their nudity and their love and their circumstance, Hutch couldn’t help but think that even his own death could not have spared him the pain of losing Starsky.

He tried to repress the sob such a notion triggered in him, but he couldn’t. He could only succeed in muffling its sound. He had cried like that only one time before and that was on a hospital bed in Starsky’s room while he waited for Starsky to come out of unconsciousness and be among the living; Starsky there cast and bandaged, monitored by machines, fed intravenously, ruptured and beaten and humiliated, ashamed and soon wishing he’d die. But on this night, the night of Hutch’s second emotional purge, the picture in Hutch’s mind was of Starsky right where he was: On the bed beside him in the dark, undressed, warm, alive, pressed along his length, inside Starsky’s arm, while Starsky slept. Or so Hutch thought.

That he lived a love so great not even death could spare him the pain of its loss made Hutch the happiest man in all the world, the happiest and the luckiest, the most privileged person anywhere in the universe, and he knew in that epiphany of a moment, as the tears of gratitude streamed from his eyes and off the sides of his face to his pillow, as he quieted his sobs and his weeping joy to the best of his ability, that he would do anything for David Starsky. Maybe they didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Maybe they didn’t share the same god. Maybe they didn’t want the same wants or dream the same dreams or have the same needs. But they did have that same laugh, that same breath, and that one shared heart. All the rest was just the cradle that held it together.

* * *

Hutch stood by the window in Jade’s office and stared out to the ground below. They finished their unusual two-hour session, so while Jade stepped out of the room to make a call home, he enabled his clients a chance to stretch their legs before they said their afternoon goodbyes.

Starsky slowly approached Hutch at the window. He turned his back to the outside, set his butt against the window sill, and crossed his arms. He felt overwhelmed, tucked his chin, but lifted his eyes to watch Hutch, who continued to stare into the sun-fading day. They stood close and didn’t speak for a few minutes—because Starsky didn’t know what to say and Hutch had said all there was in his heart to say.

After a while, he couldn’t take the scrutiny. He turned his head and looked at Starsky. “Is there something else?” he asked. He couldn’t help but notice the intent expression in Starsky’s blue eyes.

“Yeah,” Starsky said, “but I don’t know what words to use.”

“Try English ones.”

Starsky smirked at him and it broke the tension between them. His study of Hutch softened. “I don’t know what I think,” he explained. “I need time before I say anything, but I do feel like saying something. I just don’t know what.”

Hutch straightened. “Don’t make this a bigger deal than it is, okay? I don’t want to regret what I told you.”

“Nuthin’s going to change,” Starsky assured him. “I mean, it’s not about you. I have to figure out why I’m not capable of being in love with somebody when the two people I care about and need the most are capable of it. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.” He didn’t say it flippantly or with any self-pity, but because he was genuinely concerned about himself.

“Or maybe …” Hutch began, but he didn’t finish the sentence; he thought it might sound trite. Or patronizing.

But Starsky had gotten to know Hutch’s mind better in those months of counseling, so he finished what he thought Hutch would have said. “Or maybe it’s just the way it is?”

“Yeah,” Hutch mused. “Or maybe that.”

“And it doesn’t bother you that I don’t feel about you the way you do about me?”

“So long as things don’t change between us, no. What we’ve had for the past ten years has always been good enough for me.”

Starsky wasn’t certain he should believe Hutch. Maybe Hutch lived in denial about it. Maybe Hutch would eventually be very conflicted by the discrepancy between them, especially one as big as that one. His uncertain expression lined his face.

“Seriously,” Hutch said, in reply to it, “you have to know me better than that by now. I like how I feel. I’m thoroughly enjoying this. I’m on such a high, not even you can’t knock me out of it.”

Hutch’s good humor reprieved Starsky from the things he didn’t feel, though he didn’t want the feelings he did have for Hutch to be diminished, either. “You know I’d defend—with my life—your right to be in love with me, don’t you?” he asked lightly.

They laughed with each other then and Hutch gently punched Starsky in the arm. “Yeah, I know that,” he said humbly. He also knew what else Starsky had conveyed to him in that sentiment, that Starsky loved him enough to give up his life for him—for any reason. “Why don’t you stop worrying about this?” Hutch said. “You could grow to hate me the rest of your life, but I’ll always be in love with you, so what does it matter what you feel and what I feel? What we have right now is what we have. What we feel is what we feel. Who we are is who we are.”

Starsky thought about Hutch’s words and how they hadn’t changed over the months. “That’s what you said when we first walked in here.”

“You just needed to find out better who you are, is all,” Hutch explained. He didn’t want Starsky to think the therapy had been a waste of time or money. “You’re still on that journey and you have a ways to go. Who knows where it will lead? But I’d stop worrying about it, were I you. The path is going to take you wherever the path goes.” He watched Starsky contemplate what he heard and then slightly nod to himself. But Hutch also wanted Starsky to know another truth, too. “I’ll be right here beside you all the way, no matter where you end up,” he said, “whether it’s just with me, with me and her, or strictly with her. That’s my solemn promise.”

Starsky looked him in the eye. “I’ll always want you.”

For a minute, they communicated without words. The acceptance of their situation shone in their eyes, despite the differences between them. Since they’d met, it had been the similarities that held them together—and then was no different.

Starsky wished Jade wouldn’t come back into the room so he could kiss Hutch, so he could push him up against the wall, and then take him to the floor. He didn’t realize he had such thoughts until he noticed Hutch squinted at him. It embarrassed him to get caught in that moment, though he couldn’t say why, but he shifted his posture against the window and eased himself of the discomfort. He thought instead of a better reality. “Let’s go across the street to that cowboy bar I saw earlier. Maybe a drink will help me enunciate my thoughts.”

“You mean ‘elucidate’ your thoughts,” Hutch said with a wink.

“Whatever I meant,” Starsky playfully sneered in reply, “I forgot to end my sentence with ‘fuck you, asshole.’”

They sobered on that wisecrack because it had a different meaning in the context of that afternoon’s conversation than it had before, even though that hadn’t been Starsky’s intent. It was a delicate moment, one Starsky broke to spare them the difficulty of taking it in the wrong vein. He asked instead, “What say sometime you and me take a trip someplace, just the two of us? Go up to the mountains or something. Rent a cabin. You like the woods. I can go to the ocean with Grace and you and me go to the mountains sometimes. What says you to something like that?”

Hutch liked it. A lot. “Now you’re thinking, partner.”

“Yeah. That’s a good idea, isn’t it? We get a case of beer, a chest of food, take off for a few days, just us. Rough it in the woods. Rough you up in the woods.”

“I’m liking the sound of it better by the minute.”

“want to go this weekend?”

“Just drive me there in one piece.”

“Anything special I should bring?”

“Your charming smile,” Hutch said, “and your birthday suit.”

Starsky flashed a grin at him.

One of the many reasons Hutch loved Starsky: His charming smile. And his birthday suit. That reminded him … “Sunday is actually my birthday,” Hutch said.

“I know,” Starsky replied. “Your 40th.”

He knew more than that, too.

* * *

Starsky ordered a beer because Hutch did. He wanted something stronger, but he also didn’t want to end up more intoxicated than his partner. They were fortunate to get two stools to themselves at the end of the bar from which they could watch the clientele. Their interest in customers was spurred partly by their police instinct to keep an eye on the public and partly because it simply interested them. Hutch further enjoyed the country music and the ambiance of the crowded room.

But Starsky mostly watched Hutch. He studied him with his eyes while Hutch inspected the dancers on the floor and the wall decor of stuffed animal heads and vintage cowboy boots and ropes. Starsky watched Hutch sip his beer, too. He liked having those minutes to himself to watch Hutch when Hutch didn’t know he watched. He examined Hutch’s look, his comfortable clothes and his beautiful blond hair, his smooth profile and his soft eyes, his contented posture and his aliveness, and Hutch’s way of being in that room, lost in his own private thoughts.

Despite Hutch’s uneven temper sometimes, Hutch was a good man and Starsky knew it. He couldn’t have wanted anyone else as his partner, not in crime, not in punishment, and not in bed, either. Hutch wasn’t always as easy-going as he pretended to be, but he was definitely a forgiving man, a kind and generous person, a heart of gold at heart. His love for Starsky had been tested and there was no destroying it, not by anything or anyone. Hutch would follow Starsky into that proverbial hell if he asked him. He might go kicking and screaming, but he’d go. Starsky had no doubt about it. Put a pistol in Hutch’s hand and ask him to choose between Starsky’s life and his own, and Hutch would choose to take the latter.

The flash of that mental image made Starsky inwardly flinch. He picked up and ate a pretzel to allow the salty treat to break his suddenly grisly stream of consciousness. He followed it with a long swallow of refreshing beer and felt the sedative immediately release him of his disturbing thoughts.

But Hutch happened to glance at him. “What did you say?” he asked, raising his voice above the cacophony, pretending he heard Starsky speak.

“Nuthin’,” Starsky lied, realizing he’d inadvertently said something with his face. “Just hoping I can get out of this bar without a redneck accent is all.” He had to raise his voice above the music to be heard, but it wasn’t loud enough to carry into the room, and his tone was light and easy, despite the grimness of his previous thoughts.

Hutch didn’t believe him. “C’mon. Explain that look I just saw.”

Starsky sometimes hated how well Hutch knew him. He couldn’t hide. “I pictured you putting a bullet through your head to keep from putting one through mine,” he confessed. “I was just thinking how far we’d go for each other.”

“And yet you thought too far,” Hutch joked, making warm eye contact. “Don’t flatter yourself, Romeo. There’s no way I’m going alone. It’d be a murder-suicide.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you,” came the same playful reply.

They listened to music for a few minutes and watched the bartender and his clients, but Hutch was soon distracted from enjoying the view when he felt Starsky tap his arm. He turned his head toward him, realized Starsky actually had something serious to say, and leaned in closer.

“I think I can elucidate,” Starsky said.

“Go ahead.”

“I feel I owe you both better.”

“Better than what?”

“Better than what I’m giving either of you. I owe you both my undivided attention—and it’s not possible to divide it so long as I’m involved with both of you.”

Hutch drank beer, allowed the alcohol to coat his mouth before he swallowed it, and stalled for a moment to grasp Starsky’s concern. “So what’s your choice then, Starsk? To continue feeling guilty or to choose between her and me?” When he was answered by silence, Hutch lifted his chin and turned his eyes to meet Starsky’s. The expression he saw there broke his heart. Starsky’s decision would be a terrible choice for all concerned. No one among the three of them deserved to be hurt.

A wetness shone in Starsky’s darkened blue eyes. He hadn’t meant to get emotional, nor that suddenly, but Hutch had just summed it up for him—and he didn’t like the assessment, either. They both knew he would choose Hutch—and that would break Grace’s heart. “Must be the country music,” Starsky joked, having been caught in that private purge.

“Well, there is a third choice,” Hutch quickly told him. “You could simply stop feeling guilty.”

“You’re right,” Starsky said, as if that was easy.

Had Hutch not been as tuned into him as he was, he may not have heard Starsky above the volume of the music, but he heard him quite clearly, and that Starsky wasn’t convincing. He tried humor. “Of course, I’m right. Aren’t I always?”

“Seriously,” Starsky said, ignoring the rhetorical question. “I don’t know how, but I’m going to find a way to stop feeling guilty. You both love me, don’t you?”

“To the moon and back.”

Starsky glanced over at the bar patrons. “But what do you suppose some of these guys in here would do if they knew what we do in private,” he asked.

Hutch again noticed the cowboys in their ranch gear, baseball caps, tattoos, and boots. But there were also women in the bar—wives, girlfriends, waitresses, dancers. Still, he couldn’t escape Starsky’s intention. “They’d kill us,” he said, as quietly as possible so only Starsky could hear him.

“They’d kill us,” Starsky noted as solemnly, repeating Hutch’s words as truth. “They’d kill us because of something we did with each other, something that’s nobody’s business, but ours.”

“Which is why we keep it our business,” Hutch reminded him. He tried a smile to ease Starsky’s concerns, but it was weak.

Starsky made firm eye contact with him. “Exactly. We keep it to ourselves. Is that how you want to live for the rest of your life? In hiding?”

“Hell, I wouldn’t fuck a woman in front of them, either,” Hutch explained, but he knew the reply was a cop out. “Okay, okay,” he quickly said to avoid Starsky’s verbal reprimand. “I get your point. But the question was, Do I want to spend the rest of my life in hiding? I don’t let myself think about it that way. If what I have is something I have to keep ultra private, I’m willing to pay whatever price it costs. Are you having trouble with the trade-off?”

“I don’t have to hide all of my affections,” Starsky reminded him. He didn’t say it with any pride or smugness, purely as fact. “I’m living a different life than the one you’re living.” He drank beer, ate more pretzels, and waited for Hutch to climb out of his deep thought to answer him.

Hutch grabbed a pretzel and ate it. He winked at Starsky, which wasn’t the affection Starsky expected, and then, reflecting to the satisfying sexual and intimate relationship he had with Starsky, he quite sincerely said, “You’re right. I’m living a different life from the one you’re living—one that, in some ways, is freer than yours. So, to that I say: Lucky me.”

* * *

“Suppose we talk about the elephant in the room?”

Both men looked sharply at Jade. They were usually able to identify such a beast, but they were at a loss to see the one Jade referenced.

The looks on their faces were all Jade needed to break the tension with another question. He made firm eye contact with a bewildered Starsky. “Suppose we talk about whether this romance you have with Hutch is a genuine connection you’ve made,” he carefully explained, “or if it’s a distraction from what those three men did to you earlier this year.”

Starsky was momentarily taken aback. He didn’t know what to say. The last thing he wanted to talk about was what those three men had done to him and its conceivable connection to his sex-making with Hutch. Even if that were true, that there was some sinister connection, it couldn’t possibly be enough to be talk-worthy.

Hutch was as speechlessly surprised. He hadn’t realized the ‘elephant’ in question was that enormous.

Both men were instantly anxious. That Jade asked such a thing made them believe there was something to the observation—and that their ‘romance,’ as Jade put it, was disingenuous in its context.

But Hutch’s alarm surrendered to curiosity when he noticed that Starsky stalled in his reply. He propped his chin in his hand, his elbow on the chair’s arm, and watched Starsky as keenly as did Jade. It puzzled him that Starsky didn’t have an immediate response.

Starsky sensed the subtle tension in the room. He glanced at Hutch, noted the blue in those kind eyes, and then returned his visual contact with Jade. He shrugged. “It all feels pretty sincere to me.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t sincere,” Jade corrected him. “I’m just wondering where it comes from. You feel quite torn between your relationship with Grace and your relationship with Hutch, so maybe we dig deeper than we have and see what we find underneath it. Maybe we find nothing. Maybe we find inroads. Maybe we actually find ways to alleviate your guilt.”

Starsky wanted a solution, but he hoped it wouldn’t be because of a ‘distraction.’ He didn’t want to believe the emotional roller coaster he and Hutch had ridden the past few months was the result of his avoidance of pain, but rather his pursuit of pleasure. Still, he wanted to move forward into his life, too, despite how scary it might be. “Okay,” he said meekly. “Where’d you want to start?”

Jade turned in his chair to completely face him. He intended to be as physically direct as he would sound. It pleased him that Starsky was open to the exploration. “Let’s begin at the beginning,” he said. “You opened the door and three men tackled you to the floor.”

Starsky remembered it vividly. He could still hear the sound of his own weight when he hit the tile, how it knocked the breath out of him, the dismissed groan he’d made. They bruised and abraded him when they smashed him with their accumulated mass, so it was easy to remember the pain and his panicked determination to breathe. His survival instinct was immediate, his struggle formidable, but useless. “I was outnumbered,” he defended himself.

“I’m not passing judgment,” Jade replied.

Hutch lowered his line of vision to the floor, to the same hardness Starsky had felt in the attack, and stared into that unforgettable past. He was sorry Starsky still felt a need to defend himself. He truly believed they’d gotten beyond that. Maybe there was more truth to Jade’s question about a ‘distraction’ than either of them wanted to entertain. By his silence he would let Starsky know he wouldn’t side with Jade’s determinations—unless Starsky thought he should.

Jade tried another approach. “When they grabbed you out of your house, what did you think they wanted with you?”

“Not that,” Starsky said.

“Of course not that,” Jade agreed—mostly to drive home the message that he, too, had Starsky’s interests at heart. “But what did you think they wanted?”

Starsky appreciated the escape Jade’s question gave him. “I thought they wanted information. I thought they wanted to know something I knew, something they could use for some crime they planned or something that would help them free one of their compatriots. I thought maybe they figured if I’d put one of their friends behind bars, I could help get him out.”

“What did they say or do to make you think that?”

“Nothing in particular—just that they didn’t kill me, I guess. They hauled me off to someplace and tied me up—as if they were going to torture me into telling them something they wanted to know.”

“You never saw their faces?”

“My head was covered in a hood the whole time, except when they had me set up so I could talk to them; that’s when they used the hood as a blindfold. I didn’t see anything for days—until Hutch found me and took the hood off.”

“They had you ‘set up’?”

“In a chair with my hands tied behind my back.” He remembered the hardness of the chair, too, as well as the hollowness of the room, and that it seemed dim, despite the effective blindfold. Or maybe the feel of it was dismal.

“Did you think you’d escape?” Jade wondered.

“At that point, no. I’d spent half an hour trying to get free of them. I had no illusions about it at that time.”

Jade noticed how brave Starsky appeared; it was in his forward posture and his firm eye contact, in the direct answers he gave, and the strong, evolving tone of his voice. Reliving those experiences had to be frightening, but Starsky was determined to perform the experiment for the sake of a higher truth. Jade wouldn’t ask for every detail of the nightmare—just the pertinent ones. “So you thought they’d torture you, yes? I mean, if you didn’t believe you could escape them, then you had to endure them.”

Starsky felt Hutch’s presence near him, but didn’t look to see. He was afraid Hutch would give him permission to be emotional and he didn’t want to be. “I thought they’d hurt me,” Starsky agreed. “I figured they’d beat the shit out of me, knock me around pretty good.”

“And did they?”

“Not until I resisted them.”

“How so?”

He shifted uneasily then, remembering how uncomfortable in that hard, metal chair he’d been that first fateful night. “I resisted when the one tried to untie my shoe.”

“And you kicked him in the face,” Jade remembered.

Starsky wasn’t proud of it; it was merely a fact. Had it actually succeeded to free him, he could feel smug about it, but it hadn’t—so he didn’t. “It was just a strange thing to do, you know?” he said. “I mean, if you’re gonna hurt me, hurt me; punch me in the nose, but don’t undress me.”

“So they punished you for resisting them.”

“I think they loved it,” Starsky said. “I think they wanted an excuse to go to town on me at that point—and I’d given them one.”

“On purpose?”

“It was purely reflex.”

“Did you think they had rape on their minds then?”

“No. Even when they forced me to the floor and started to strip me, I didn’t think that’s what they had planned. I thought they figured if they stripped me, I wouldn’t try to escape—to someplace public.”

Hutch bit down on his discomfort as Starsky relayed details he hadn’t heard before. He couldn’t help but imagine Starsky was filled with memories and thoughts about that ordeal that he’d never shared with anyone, purely from the avoidance of reliving them. How much was bottled up inside him? How right was Jade about Starsky’s romance with Hutch being a distraction from those very memories and those very thoughts? And, if it were, would it change what had romantically developed between them?

Jade sensed Hutch’s apprehension, but he didn’t help him—or Starsky. “At what point then did you realize they would rape you?” Jade asked.

“When they had me stark naked …”

Jade also sensed there was more to Starsky’s sentence so he encouraged it with an, “And?”

“And they got me into … position.” He remembered other details. “They were laughing, too, about who was going to go first and why.”

Jade broke eye contact with him to stare at the top of his desk. He did it to both ease the blow to Starsky’s pride and to search for the obvious answers to questions he wouldn’t ask. Quite humbly, he said, “I can’t even imagine how that must have felt.”

“No,” Starsky said, “you can’t.”

Neither could Hutch—and he’d witnessed part of it. There could be nothing like the endurance. He tightly closed his eyes for a minute to absorb whatever he could of Starsky’s pain when Starsky recalled those memories for the doctor. When he opened them, he saw that Jade looked at him.

Their brief contact gave Jade his next question. He shifted his eyes to Starsky. “Was Hutch on your mind at all during that time?” he asked.

Starsky snorted. He was repulsed by the implication. He sat back in his chair as if he planned to end the session. “Really, doc?”

Jade realized he’d been misunderstood and quickly reworded his inquiry. “Did you ever think that maybe somehow, someway, by some miracle of sorts, that Hutch was going to save the day? that he’d arrive in some fantastic superhero moment and prevent what you endured?”

Starsky realized he’d misread Jade. When would he stop assuming Jade was out to belittle him? He calmed down and thought about the question the way it was intended. “No,” he finally said with conviction. “There was no way Hutch would find me. Not that night. Not any of those nights. Those guys really knew how to cover their tracks. Not even a super-hero detective like Ken Hutchinson could have busted their code.” He didn’t mean to be sarcastic, but he wanted Jade to appreciate that he’d never expected Hutch to save him. He didn’t want Hutch blamed for any of it.

But that’s not what Jade meant. “Then you must have felt utterly alone,” he observed.

The reality of that truth so jarred Starsky in that moment that he was speechless. More than that, he was emotional, just the way he’d hoped not to feel when he avoided eye contact with Hutch. Jade had hit the nerve.

And Jade could tell he had because he could see the pain shimmer in the wetness of Starsky’s eyes. He hadn’t meant to hurt him, but it was definitely the result of his dig. “Which was worse, Starsky? The rape or the fear?”

Starsky had to find his voice before he could answer. “That last one,” he admitted.

Just as Jade suspected. “Could you and Hutch have fought those guys off had they nabbed you together?”

Starsky didn’t know. “Maybe.”

“But it’s a sure thing,” Jade noted, “that you wouldn’t have felt alone had he been there.”

“Where are you going with this?” Starsky asked. He didn’t like how many hard truths Jade had cornered him on and he didn’t understand where Jade specifically wanted to take him in that instance. “Do you think I wish he’d been raped, too, so I wouldn’t have gone through that by myself?”

“Not that he’d been raped, too, no,” Jade sternly clarified, “but that he’d been there, that he’d been there so you wouldn’t have been so alone.”

Starsky hadn’t wished for such a thing, not then, not during those terrible attacks, but in that moment, right there in Jade’s office with Hutch seated near him, in the quiet of that ticking office clock and Jade’s persistent questions, in the aftermath of his memories and his hurt, he had a moment, a fleeting one, where he imagined Hutch had been with him—and how un-alone he would have felt, how that would have changed … everything. The supposition was so profound, he broke a sob, one he didn’t even realize he would voice, and immediately put a fist to his mouth to prevent another. “Jesus,” he whispered under his breath. And then he followed his impulse. “I’d have given anything to not have felt that helpless and that alone. Anything.”

Jade didn’t want to backtrack. “I’m not asking you to be sorry because it went down the way it did. I don’t want you to entertain the ‘if only’s—because they lead nowhere. What I want is to understand why you do some of the things you do when it comes to him.”

“What things?” Starsky managed to ask.

Hutch thought Jade would wonder aloud about Starsky’s sexual relations with him, but Jade said instead, “Like why you feel a need to be in physical contact with him when you’re sleeping with him … and I don’t mean sex in this instance; I mean sleep.”

Starsky didn’t realize he was physically connected to Hutch while they slept. And then he didn’t understand how Jade would know such a thing. He finally looked at Hutch. Their eyes met, fondly and with kindness, but also with a certain caution. “When did you tell him that?”

Hutch dropped his hand from his chin and cleared his throat to speak; he hadn’t said a word during that session and he had to wake up his voice. “One of those times I met with him privately. I think it was when you and I had that misunderstanding about what the other wanted and we didn’t play during that time.”

“Okay. So why would you tell him that?”

“I was confused at the time,” Hutch explained. “I didn’t know whether you wanted what I wanted. But we answered that question with eggplant in the kitchen, remember?”

Starsky remembered.

“I told Jade you seemed to like me,” Hutch continued, and not facetiously, “because you’re always in physical contact with me even when we sleep.”

Starsky didn’t know he did such a thing; he gave his slumbering behavior a brief study, but then he sought satiation for his curiosity instead. “And what did you guys conclude from that? That I must really like you?”

Jade remembered what they had discussed, so he answered for Hutch. “We wondered if you needed the contact in order to know that Hutch was nearby should you require his muscle.”

“His man muscle?” Starsky joked. He laughed at his own interpretation and then sobered when he realized what Jade actually meant. “I see,” he said in a low voice. “You think I need him there because I’m afraid somebody might try to hurt me again.”

Jade wasn’t certain it was that dramatic. “Maybe you like to know he’s there for that reason,” he clarified. “It isn’t necessarily a need.”

“But you think I might like it because Hutch is my bodyguard, helps me get a good night’s sleep, and … what? I pay him back for the security by sucking him off and letting him fuck me on a regular basis?”

Jade wasn’t fazed by Starsky’s crassness, but it did create a temporary stall in the conversation. Jade knew his client wanted a serious exploration, but the subject was so tender, Starsky was guarded by his sarcasm.

Hutch and Jade waited for him to climb beyond it, which he did when he noted the silence in the room. “I like knowing he’s there,” Starsky admitted. What else could explain that detail about his physical bond to Hutch when they slept? “Yeah, I suppose it helps me sleep better, too,” he imagined. “I do sleep better in his bed than my own, but I always thought that was because the sex is more intense in his and I’m more exhausted there.”

Hutch was pleased to hear what Starsky said—whether it was because the intensity of their sex gave him ‘job security’ or whether it was because he liked to know that his brother-by-fate was as satisfied by him as he was in return could be analyzed later. He slouched further in his chair, pressed his palm to his chin again, and waited to hear more of Starsky’s deeper thoughts.

“But because of that,” Starsky said to Jade, “you’re wondering if Hutch is my escape from dealing with what happened to me.”

Jade waited for Starsky to answer his own question.

“How do I figure that out?” Starsky asked.

“Tell me about the attackers’ fate,” Jade said, “and tell me how you feel about that punishment.”

“I’ve told you,” Starsky replied. “Two went to prison for life and the third shot himself. What more is there to say?”

“They went to prison for life for kidnapping you, isn’t that right?”

Starsky nodded. It was a mandatory sentence for abducting a police officer.

“What’d they get for raping you?” Jade wondered.

Starsky shifted uneasily in his chair again—and was aware he did. Still, he answered Jade because it might lead him someplace new. “They got nine years each.”

“Nine years each for rape,” Jade noted. He knew it went without saying, but he said it anyway. “And they got life for kidnapping you. So, you tell me: Which was more devastating to you? The abduction or the forcible sodomy?”

They all knew the answer, so Starsky saw no reason to verbalize it.

“How does that make you feel?” Jade then asked. “The punishment they got doesn’t forgive the crime. How do you live with that?”

Starsky tried to get comfortable again in his seat, but couldn’t. He abandoned the effort and searched his mind for some semblance of an answer. “How do I live with that?” he sarcastically asked, then said, “Oh, I know: I let Hutch fuck me in the ass so I can replay getting raped over and over again.”

Neither Jade nor Hutch laughed. Starsky didn’t even laugh. He realized he’d said it to defend himself and felt stupid for it. “It’s like I told them—” Starsky began, but Jade interrupted him.

“Them who?”

“Them, the guys who raped me.”

“You spoke to them?”

“The Internal Affairs agent took the gang leader on a detour after his arrest,” Starsky said, “so I could have one-on-one time with the asshole before he was booked at headquarters, and I had a few minutes to ‘chat’ with him before Hutch took a crowbar to the guy’s dick.”

Jade remembered that part of the story, how Hutch had nearly severed the rapist’s penis and completely destroyed one of his testicles. It had surprised Jade that Hutch had been so violent, but having gotten to know the men, he understood it better, though he hadn’t been told that Starsky, too, had himself confronted them. “What did you tell the guy?” he asked.

“That I wasn’t going to give him a single other thought,” Starsky remembered. He’d never forget Dennis Fisher’s face, those eyes, that fear in them he’d caused when it was his turn to be the abuser. “To give him another thought—like I’m doing here right now—is to give him another piece of me and I’d given him all the pieces I was going to give.”

Hutch relished the memory of injuring the man. He looked to the floor to focus his mind on it. When he lifted his eyes, he met Jade’s. Then he shrugged at the doctor to let him know he’d been caught in that personal moment of satisfaction and didn’t mind.

“So have you?” Jade firmly asked Starsky. “Have you given him any thought since then?”

“Only when you ask about him.”

“On your own, I mean. You don’t recall any details of the rapes whatsoever or you recall them and then work to ignore them?”

“I’ve had a couple of moments, you know, when something reminds me, like the time when Hutch and me had each other on the counter, eating eggplant.”

“I thought that went smoothly,” Jade said, straining to recall what he’d apparently missed.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t tell you about it at the time, but the truth is … before it went smoothly, it went all wrong.”

* * *

When Hutch tugged, Starsky willfully lifted his hips from the tiled counter to allow him to pull down his jeans and, together, they lowered them enough to release Starsky’s yearning penis into the soft candlelight.

Starsky noticed that Hutch couldn’t look at him soon enough; his penis was obviously hard and upright, already visibly veined and dark with heated blood. He could tell by Hutch’s soft expression that he was pleased by its obvious desire and further aroused by the eager evidence of Starsky’s want.

Hutch gently cupped Starsky’s sensitive scrotum and briefly glanced at his eyes again to get a read of Starsky’s no smile, detecting in its absence a pure mix of excitement and anticipation. When Hutch then gripped Starsky’s shaft in a loose and caressing fist, Starsky sucked a deep breath between his teeth; the pleasure was beyond tantalizing. There was simply nothing like the feel of Hutch’s hand on him—a brotherhood, a lover, his hero. But in the touch was the heart of the man who touched him.

They watched each other’s eyes and faces—and heard words no audible sound could convey.

Hutch winked at him and then bent down to tenderly kiss Starsky’s bared hip, his haired, but naked belly near his navel, further and he felt the hair between Starsky’s legs tickle his face—his eyes and his nose and his mouth—and he inhaled deeply. Starsky’s musky aroma and Starsky’s apparent heat fueled his own appetite.

Starsky closed his eyes to concentrate on the feel of Hutch’s soft lips, warm tongue, gentle hand. He breathed heavily, in halting cadence, and with an eager expectancy. The wait had already been too long.

But then he felt the tug on his shoelace.

And he reacted.

In a way neither of them expected.

Starsky’s entire body wrenched as he instinctively fought to protect himself against what he didn’t realize at the moment was purely a nonexistent threat. He hit Hutch’s jaw with a blow from his thigh, so forcefully he nearly cracked it. The punch knocked a painful groan out of his partner, not just his breath, and Hutch straightened, grabbed Starsky’s flailing fists in each of his own and, after a brief wrestle, ended the confrontation.

They panted heavily as they stared into each other’s eyes, the both of them as bewildered and shocked by Starsky’s unintended action as the other. Starsky broke a cold sweat while Hutch internally pushed against the pain in his jaw. He didn’t let go of Starsky’s fists. But they never left eye contact with the other, not for a long minute, not until their respiration slowed and their heart rates returned to some semblance of normal. Only then did Hutch finally let go of Starsky. He was tempted himself to rub his jaw where he’d been slammed, but he didn’t want to add injury to insult. He thought he knew why Starsky had reacted the way he did to the untying of his shoe—and then he knew why for certain when Starsky covered his face with his hands to hide his shame.

“I’m sorry,” Starsky whispered.

Hutch waited for his own adrenaline to finish its course through his veins before he could relax enough to get his wits about him. “It’s nobody’s fault,” he said in a forgiving reply.

Starsky lowered his hands to look at Hutch. Tears shimmered in his eyes. His erection was gone. “Did I hurt you?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Hutch said with a shy smile. Whatever pain he’d endured paled in comparison to the pain those rapists had caused his partner and he wasn’t about to diminish it with his own complaint. The blow was the least he could take in light of what Starsky had taken. “But let’s say we try that again.”

Starsky, wordless, nodded at him.

Not leaving eye contact, and despite the pain that throbbed in his jaw, Hutch slid his hand down Starsky’s jeaned leg to his shoe, grasped the end of the lace in his fingers, and pulled the knot loose. Both their expressions softened when Starsky didn’t react—despite that he clearly felt the sensation of his shoe being untied.

“That was a wee bit better,” Hutch lightly joked. It had been a milestone, in fact. He then stepped back. “Give me your foot.”

Starsky lifted his leg so Hutch could grasp his heel and prop it on his thigh. He retied Starsky’s lace, watching himself while he did, and then looked again into Starsky’s eyes when he was finished. That shimmer had lessened and he was pleased to see it dissipate. “Ready for one more time?” he asked. He read Starsky’s passive behavior as an affirmative and then untied the shoelace again.

There was no visible reaction except that Starsky heavily exhaled. “Okay,” he then whispered, purging his earlier reaction completely, “I promise that’ll never happen again.”

“We’ll see,” Hutch said. He wasn’t as certain. He needed a replay that wasn’t as expected, so he retied the shoe. He also didn’t want Starsky to feel obligated to keep such a promise. He dropped Starsky’s foot from his thigh and stepped back into him.

“Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?” Starsky asked, wiping his eyes. He knew how forceful that blow had been.

“Well, if you’ll give me your hard-on back,” Hutch replied playfully, and pretending to test his temporomandibular joint by moving it from side to side, “we’ll both be able to determine whether my jaw got relocated.”

* * *

“Unless something rare like that happens, unless I hit him in the face for doing something that reminds me of them, then no,” Starsky told Jade, “I don’t think about what they did to me anymore. Ever.”

“At least you didn’t kick me in the face,” Hutch said under his breath. He got the wink he expected and knew he hadn’t offended Starsky.

“And you don’t think about what they did to you anymore,” Jade assumed, purely out of provocation, “because you’re preoccupied with sex with Hutch?”

“Like, if I stopped having sex with him, you think I might give more thought to what happened to me?”

“Sex with Hutch is a rather profound experience,” Jade noted. He used Starsky’s own description to drive home that point. “And it’s not just physically intense, either. How would your life be different if you didn’t have sex with Hutch? Have you wondered about that?”

Starsky chuckled. “No.”

“What if you wonder about it now?”

“I’d probably … spend more time with Grace and put my family together instead.”

“And still no thoughts about how three men abducted you from your home, hauled you off to some empty warehouse, and repeatedly beat and raped you for three days and nights?”

Starsky glanced at Hutch for guidance, but Hutch simply met his eyes with the same curiosity. Starsky was on his own to answer the question. He didn’t know how. He voiced the only thought that occurred to him. “I wouldn’t want to think about that,” he soberly admitted. “Why would I want to think about what they did to me?”

“To assimilate it.”

“Meaning?”

“To put it in its place in your life.”

“It is in its place,” Starsky said. “It’s in the past.”

“Maybe it is,” Jade replied. “But wouldn’t you like to know for sure, as opposed to finding out that it simply hides behind the curtain?”

“And Hutch is the curtain?”

“Maybe. How would it change things if he were?”

“Wow.” Starsky scratched his head and searched his mind. He didn’t want to think about those answers, either, so he followed his instinct and spoke from his gut. “If Hutch is just a curtain, then this thing with him all this time would just have been … a lie … a means to an end or something.”

“But you had a good time.”

“Yeah, well, to use him even for a good time … well, I would have fucked him had I done that. And I don’t mean fuck fucked him. I mean, you know, fucked him over.”

“So, do you have sex with Hutch out of obligation?”

“No,” Starsky said emphatically. “Fact is, I’m having sex with him because I like it.” In the context of the conversation, he realized he needed to clarify himself. “I don’t mean I like it because I like sex with a man, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I like it because I like sex with him. He helped me figure that out. And so did you.”

Hutch exchanged a knowing glance with Jade and then turned his attention to Starsky again, to Starsky’s honesty and his frankness, to his blue eyes and his dark wavy hair and his muscled build, dressed in jeans and a tee shirt. If Jade wasn’t in the room …

“Do you honestly think,” Jade supposed to Starsky, “that you can go the rest of your life without considering what happened to you six months ago?”

“You think I’m eluding myself?”

“You mean, deluding yourself,” Hutch said.

Starsky sneered at him.

Jade saw it both ways. “Eluding. Deluding. What do you think, Starsky? Are you that grounded a person? Do you think anyone can go through what you went through and not be affected by it for years, if not a lifetime, particularly if they never face it head-on?”

“But I did face it head-on,” Starsky said. “Most people don’t get to stare down their attackers. I got to. All three of them. And after I had my say with the ring leader, I watched my buddy here bash him where he had it coming. The second one I confronted after he was arrested, look him in the eye, remind him I had something he’d never have again: Freedom—not to mention all the things I had that he never did, like morals. The third guy shot himself in the head when we closed in on him—rather than face me or himself.”

“He knew you, specifically, were the one who closed in on him?”

“We talked through the window before he blew his head off. How many rape victims do you know who get an outcome like that?”

Jade had to admit that Starsky experienced unusual circumstances, from his abduction to its absolution. “Okay,” he surrendered.

But Starsky wasn’t finished. “I lived with the fear of them coming back before they were caught. I hid out in Hutch’s guest room for days with my pistol—and him and his big gun in the house with me. I know what it meant to be afraid of them.” He would never forget. From the moment they’d grabbed him until the moment of his epiphany, he lived with the terror of what they’d done, of what they could have done, and that they might do it again to finish the job.

“Then I started to sacrifice what Hutch and me had, that connection we had that made those guys think we were gay and come gunning for me in the first place. I didn’t want Hutch near me. But when I realized what I was giving up—that I was giving those guys the biggest and the best part of me after all, that I was throwing away my brotherhood with Hutch on account of them—I swore to stop that in its tracks and to never let them interfere again.” The tone of Starsky’s voice had changed; it was heavy with his resentment for what they’d nearly cost him.

Jade noticed it and didn’t breathe a word. For the first time in all the sessions they’d had, Starsky was impulsive and direct, more certain of himself and how he felt than at any other time in Jade’s office. Jade wasn’t about to interrupt his purge.

“So I don’t think Hutch was—or is—a distraction,” Starsky continued, as firm in his delivery as he was in his sentiment. “If anything, those guys reminded me of what mattered to me, of what was the absolute most important thing to me. They made me take another and a closer look at Hutch. Because I’ll tell you something, doc. When those fuckers left me for dead that last night after they pissed all over me, I knew, like I know night follows day, that Detective Ken Hutchinson was out there looking for me. And he’d been looking for me from the second he knew I was gone. And I knew he’d do anything and everything in his power to get to me—even though I believed he wouldn’t be able to find me. He’d try. He’d try like nobody’s business. He wouldn’t eat and he wouldn’t sleep until he found me. I knew this about him. It was the only thing I had to hold onto during that time. It was the only thing that kept me from being heart-and-soul alone.”

His voice cracked on his last sentence. He had gotten emotional without realizing it until it was upon him. He didn’t look at Hutch; he couldn’t but hold eye contact with Jade. He wanted the doctor to know what he realized all over again for himself.

Hutch felt the palpable bond between himself and Starsky—and Starsky’s unwavering certitude. He had to swallow the choke in his throat to keep his own emotion from overshadowing Starsky’s. He’d have traded places in a heartbeat with Starsky for those terrible experiences. If only he could even then.

“So I got out of there alive,” Starsky said, “and the one person I was afraid to lose most was Hutch, that he’d leave me. Stupid, because he was, in the end, the last person to abandon me. Strike that. He is the only person who’d never abandon me.”

“Despite that you often fear he might.”

“Whoever said how we feel is rational, right?”

“Right.”

“But I know in my heart of hearts—like I know in my rational mind—that he’s forever there for me.”

Starsky was pleased Jade listened carefully because he knew his words were heard beyond their superficial meanings. “He didn’t leave me—and he’d seen what they’d done to me,” he reminded the doctor. “He pulled me out of my fear, do you see?”

“I see,” Jade quietly said. He, too, was glad Starsky knew himself that well when it came to Hutch.

“So maybe he pulled a little too hard,” Starsky added with a lighter voice. “Pulled me up right out of my fear and onto the top of him.”

“Maybe,” Jade said with a slight smile.

“Or, maybe …” Starsky said, further making a sexual reference, “he pulled me under him. He’s still the one-and-only top between us. But, okay, I think he didn’t leave me because of that connection we have. Just like I told you when I got here. He was there for me—not as a distraction, but as something quite real and necessary—and there for me when he didn’t have to be. I didn’t know any other way to tell him how grateful I’ve been except to kiss him. And when he didn’t resist me, well, you know, I think it just allowed me to follow on through. Now here we are.”

“Okay,” Jade agreed. “Now here we are.” He couldn’t but notice the light in Starsky’s blue eyes, the way he sat more assuredly in his chair when he spoke from his heart, and the way he was comfortably dressed, the tenor of his voice and his manner. Jade was pleased. “Now here we are,” he said again, more conclusively.

Starsky realized where ‘here’ was and immediately addressed it. “The problem is that I don’t think I’m giving him a hundred percent. I mean, I can’t give him a hundred percent as long as I’m doing with her what I’m doing with him. What kind of a sick fuck does that to the people he loves?”

Jade analyzed Starsky’s question in the context of the previous few months and realized a thread. “You were a ‘sick fuck’ for that first kiss you gave Hutch,” he recalled. “You were a ‘sick fuck’ for wanting to masturbate him and have him do to you in kind. You were a ‘sick fuck’ for giving and receiving fellatio from someone who is male. You were a ‘sick fuck’ for having anal intercourse with someone of your gender. And now you’re a ‘sick fuck’ because you have two lovers. Is there a point, do you think, Starsky, where you stop being a ‘sick fuck’ and you stop finding new reasons to feel like one?”

Starsky was taken aback. He shifted his eyes to Hutch’s. He wanted to know what Hutch thought, but he could tell right away that Hutch wouldn’t articulate aloud; Hutch never thought Starsky was sick or perverted or guilty of any crime, moral or otherwise. It was he, Starsky, who labeled himself in such derogatory terms. He glanced back to Jade’s questioning eyes, though he didn’t think the doctor actually expected an answer. “Okay,” he corrected himself. “Let me scratch that and just say this: It’s that I owe him more than I’m giving him.”

“Does he think so?” Jade asked. He saw Hutch shrug off whatever Starsky intended. “He doesn’t act like he thinks so,” Jade noted to Starsky about Hutch, “but you must think he does.”

“He says he’s the happiest man alive,” Starsky said.

“But you don’t believe him.”

“I think maybe it’s a temporary happiness.”

“I see.”

“You think I won’t be satisfied forever with the way things are,” Hutch said to Starsky.

“I think you’ll want more over time. Not that I’d blame you,” Starsky added quickly, “but by the nature of the thing, you know? And Grace will want more, too.”

“And you’re giving all you can right now to each of them,” Jade surmised. He had kept Starsky from looking back at Hutch when he unintentionally intercepted him with his comment.

Starsky had to analyze it for half a minute. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “That’s the thing. I feel like I’m not giving either of them enough and I’m giving them each what I can and one of them less than I want to.”

Starsky’s last notation made Hutch sharply look at him. He’d never known Starsky wanted to give one of his lovers more than he gave—and it made Hutch nervous to think it wasn’t him. The brief wait was excruciating. Had he pushed Starsky too far? Had he taken too much by limiting their intercourse to just his own? Or was it possible Starsky wanted more quantity sex with his man lover than with his woman?

Starsky didn’t want his feelings to be about anyone but himself, and not for selfish reasons, but because he was in pursuit of a solution. He leveled his gaze at Jade and cleared up what he meant. “I’d fuck around with Hutch six times a day,” he admitted, “and more if I physically could. I’d spend every night in his bed. I’d get better sleep there, too,” he added to lighten the mood, if not his own. “But sex with him isn’t a distraction. I’m sure of that now. It’s a … privilege. It’s more than I deserve. I’ve loved this guy for the past ten years and nothing will stop me from wanting him the rest of my life. Nothing. What I have with him is a brotherhood of loyalty and trust and respect, of admiration and, shit, as corny as it is, love, too. We get each other. We don’t always see eye-to-eye and we don’t have the same politics and religion and all that, but we get each other.”

Hutch couldn’t agree more on that salient point. He was also emotionally relieved to learn that it was he himself Starsky wanted to please more than he already did. “We’re joined at the hip for life,” he commented.

“And we each know that we know that, too,” Starsky added, speaking to Jade and seeing a slightly envious look on his face, “and we know that the other knows we know it—and knowing is … hell, it’s like nothing else in my life. It wouldn’t be possible to have it with anyone, but him. You can’t fake chemistry and you can’t bullshit affection. It’s either there or it isn’t. I don’t have his vocabulary and I don’t have his school smarts and I don’t have his goddamn good looks, but I have his back—and he’s got mine. So, now I ask you, doc: Can you say that about anybody in your life? I mean, say it with all the conviction of your heart?”

Jade knew some of what these two men had been through together and he understood what Starsky wanted to know in its context. Jade couldn’t say it about anyone in his own life; he might feel it, he might delude himself into believing it, he might hope he had it, but he couldn’t say it with conviction of the heart. He understood how Starsky could. These two men had been tested. More than once. And despite their differences—or maybe because of them—they’d withstood the tests. That they’d crossed the sexual line with each other was simply another milestone they’d passed. Jade was satisfied that Hutch was no distraction.

“You’ve got three choices,” he told Starsky. Before he could list them, Hutch interrupted him with a certain relief in his voice.

“That’s what I told him,” he said. He was heartened by Starsky’s honesty about his sex life with him; he was pleased and he was grateful for it, too. And he wanted to help Starsky find a solution to his dilemma—as he’d always wanted to help Starsky—but he didn’t want to lose what he had, either. “You can choose between her and me,” he reminded Starsky, “or you can live with the guilt you feel and have us both, or you can stop feeling guilty and still have us both.”

“Exactly,” Jade said.

“You make that last one sound so easy,” Starsky debated Hutch. “Life isn’t that easy, you know.”

“No?” Hutch sarcastically replied. “Gee, I thought this past year has been a romp in the park.”

“Fuck you,” Starsky said.

“Fuck you back,” Hutch retaliated with the same affection.

Jade was mildly amused and he laughed, despite his wish that he wouldn’t. “You guys amaze me. You get down into the deepest of the human condition and come up out of it with such childish behavior.”

Starsky and Hutch chuckled at the doctor’s amusement. “He started it,” Starsky said—which made them all laugh, and the comic relief was welcomed.

“So what about this idea?” Jade proposed to Starsky. “What if we could find a way for you to believe—with that same conviction of the heart you spoke of about Hutch—that Hutch and Grace are quite happy about their relationships with you and have completely accepted the other in their lives? If you could believe that, would you have any reason to feel guilty?”

“I can believe that now,” Starsky said. “But it’s the future I worry about. Hutch has been nervous about the future, too, remember? It’s not like I’m the only one who wonders what will happen down the road. And I guess I feel the pressure of that future more as time goes on because more and more I’m running up against situations where I don’t know what to do—like, if we ever needed to share a hotel room with Grace on some trip we all take, I don’t know which bed I’m to sleep in.”

“Maybe it’s a custody issue,” Jade suggested. “Maybe before you go on such an adventure, work out the logistics, and don’t wait until the last minute to do it. Make sure all parties are comfortable beforehand.”

“Exactly,” Hutch said, “but we can work out the logistics right now: We get separate rooms—and you sleep in hers.”

“I’m saying if we had to share a room,” Starsky repeated.

“Then you sleep in Grace’s bed. I can handle you sleeping in her bed—or in a room with her—better than she could handle you sleeping in mine. You put her first when we’re in those situations. We never lose sight of the fact that she’s a woman and can be more easily and permanently hurt.”

“So, what you’re saying,” Starsky reluctantly said to Hutch, “is that … if I’d talked to you about this kind of thing sooner, I could have stopped worrying about it sooner.” He kicked himself for his own stupidity and got Hutch’s roll of the eyes as punishment before he let it go.

“How many times do you think the three of you are going to be together in a complicated situation?” Jade wondered aloud.

Starsky and Hutch had no idea how often. They also couldn’t know at that minute how their lives were about to take another turn in an unexpected direction. But before the future could begin, Jade strove to resolve the past.

“Lets talk about how you felt during those three nights you were held hostage,” he advised Starsky.

“You mean, other than alone?” Starsky replied.

“I can assume a lot,” Jade said. “You were hungry, scared, injured, humiliated, helpless—”

“Mostly humiliated and mostly scared,” Starsky admitted. He may have been hungry; he hadn’t eaten in three days, but he was definitely far more humiliated by the rapes and terrified of dying. What did Jade look for? “I felt sorry, too,” he said impulsively.

“Sorry?”

“I felt sorry for Hutch,” Starsky added, following his gut then, despite that he didn’t know himself where his thoughts would wander. “I had times when I imagined him finding me—long after I was dead—and what he would have to piece together, how he’d have to live with the facts surrounding his partner’s death. He’d be the one to be humiliated.”

Hutch was sorry to hear about Starsky’s sorry.

“Did you get comfort in that?” Jade asked Starsky.

“Comfort in him being humiliated?”

“Did that idea make you feel less alone?”

“Like I said, I felt sorry for him, not glad for me.”

“When you imagined his humiliation,” Jade asked, “did you—”

“Humiliating him,” Starsky interrupted Jade, “would only have made me a bigger loser.”

“Because, not only did you allow yourself to get raped,” Jade surmised, “but you would have died a ridiculous death, too, and that would have been a reflection on him somehow, on Hutch.”

“Yeah, like that,” Starsky replied. He thought back to the ordeal. “That’s what I thought then, you understand. I don’t think that now.”

“I understand,” Jade assured him. “But since we’re exploring things in context, we’ll talk about then.”

Starsky exhaled with a quiet grunt. Sometimes he didn’t realize how much the memories of that ugly experience haunted him until his body reacted. “Okay,” he said under his breath. “What I think I felt most was ashamed. Yeah, I know that now. I felt ashamed—for all of it. For opening the door. For not fighting them off. For not being able to keep them from fucking me. For blowing them. For shitting on myself. For the crying I did. For the fear I felt. For the lasting impression I thought I’d make on Hutch.” He had to stop himself at that moment because, if he dwelled on that last point, he might cry then, too.

Hutch inhaled a soft strength for him and exhaled, but Starsky didn’t look over; he simply heard the breath Hutch took and used it for the courage he needed.

Jade noticed it and eased away from it. “When you lay there that last night,” he recalled for Starsky, “chained to the wall, believing they weren’t coming back for you again, you said you never felt more alone in your life.”

Starsky remembered.

“Mixed in with everything you felt in those remaining hours,” Jade said, “or maybe buried beneath it, did you think at all, even a little, that you deserved what happened to you?”

Starsky frowned at Jade. In all the soul-searching he had done, he couldn’t even imagine a different answer from the one he gave then. “Shit, no.”

“Even despite the shame you felt?”

“You mean, because I’d done something shameful—opening the door, not fighting them off, doing what I did for them—for that reason I deserved what I got?”

“Did you ever think so?”

“No,” Starsky said, just as certainly. He explained his position because he wasn’t sure Jade wanted him to feel he deserved it. “They fucked me because they believed I fucked him.” He gestured at Hutch. “And I hadn’t fucked him. I hadn’t even kissed him—on the mouth, I mean.”

“Did you feel you deserved what they did to you for all the public affection you showed Hutch prior to the abduction?”

“Well, god, no,” Starsky said emphatically. “We were just friends being affectionate with each other. No one should have to pay for that.”

“In times since the attacks,” Jade asked, “when you’ve felt ashamed about kissing Hutch and ashamed for having sexual relations with him, have you ever felt you deserved what they did to you? Or that what you’ve since done with Hutch is punishable by the kinds of things they did to you?”

Starsky had to think about the answer. He had to remember when he also felt ashamed for his sexual behavior with Hutch. But did it justify—or would it justify—a gang rape, a sort of three-day torture of starvation and repeated beatings, of being left for dead? “No,” he said with confidence. “Nobody deserves that kind of thing.”

“What sort of punishment would eternal damnation to hell be like?” Jade asked. He wasn’t facetious and Starsky didn’t read him that way.

“I guess you could say what they did to me was hell,” Starsky soberly replied. “Whatever God had in mind for me—or may yet—pales in comparison, I think.”

“Okay, so you’ve done the time for the crime. In some sense, you did the time before the crime.”

“It’s no crime,” Starsky said in a quieter voice. He contemplated the past four months of sex with Hutch and realized only then that he’d come to that conclusion. “And now that you’ve made me think about that,” he said to Jade. “I remember thinking some of this stuff back then, on that last night after I believed they weren’t coming back, and I was going to die.”

Hutch looked over at Starsky to size up how deeply Starsky’s memory had just taken him. He was sorry Jade put Starsky through such paces, but it sounded then that Starsky had a revelation and sincerely wanted to explore it.

“I remember trying to figure out why they’d done what they did,” Starsky said, contemplating the past. “I remember deciding it was about me and Hutch—because of things they said, things about me fucking him or him fucking me, ‘bum buddies,’ and other things they called us. At first, I thought they were pissed by the way he and I touch each other or how close we are, physically, I mean, in public, but the more I played out the things they did and said, I realized it was because they thought Hutch and me was queer.”

“How did that make you feel? To think someone pegged you guys as gay?”

“Well, it was a wrong peg, you know? We weren’t. I mean, we aren’t. We’re just close is all. We’re just tight. Then and now. So I knew they were wrong.”

“I’m beyond happy to hear you say this,” Jade told him. “It’s so far from the way you saw things when you came in here the first time.”

“Yeah? Well, I guess you’re better at this than you think you are,” Starsky said with a wink.

“And you’ve gotten better at finding who you are underneath the layers of what other people—and culture and religion—think of you. So, why don’t you reach even further into yourself, putting aside what you already know about why you kissed Hutch that time in the grass, and tell me what you find when you search for the answer to this question: What made you want to explore a sexual relationship with him? If you now know it wasn’t what they did to you, and you know it’s not because you’re perverted or a ‘sick fuck,’ and you can conclude you didn’t pursue it purely for the pleasure of sex, why did you proceed forward into that kind of relationship with him—in fact, you instigated it—throughout this therapy rather than retreat?”

“I’m not sure I have to reach that far into myself,” Starsky said. He gave the answer the weight of its merit by way of his tone, not just his words. He wanted to be as clear in his delivery as he was in his conviction. “After the investigation, when I met Adam—before this sex thing with Hutch—I began to wonder what it was Adam had done to make those guys do to him what they later did to me, about whether he deserved what he got from them—given that he was a guy who has sex with guys. After serious thinking about it, I decided he didn’t deserve the punishment.”

He lowered his eyes then to stare more deeply into those initial thoughts and beliefs he’d mulled in the weeks and months after the rapes. And he felt Hutch’s presence on the sofa beside him, unmoving, waiting, listening, and he appreciated the time to decipher and unravel the roller coaster of emotions and thinking he’d done during that time. The journey through those memories had to be made one step-at-a-time, just as they had been then. “So I began to wonder,” he said, “about I’d feel if one of the male police officers in my squad room came on to me, and would that disturb me so much, I’d want to bash his head in? I pictured in my mind some guy wanting to blow me, you know, asking me if he could, and would I be offended? I really did think about it, about what I’d do, and I decided, as bad as this sounds, that I’d probably let him do it because I’d take a blowjob from anybody.”

Neither Hutch nor Jade laughed; they didn’t even smile. They knew Starsky wasn’t facetious, that he was honest, and that he genuinely walked them through his thought process following his immediate recovery from those horrific attacks on him.

And Starsky appreciated that his words were as sincerely received.

“So I thought, well, maybe it’s not a blowjob issue; maybe these guys didn’t like man-on-man anal sex. I then supposed some guy in my squad wanted to fuck me; would that piss me off enough to punch him in the face? beat him to a pulp? to do to him what he was suggesting he do to me, except do it out of vengeance? No,” he said, knowing his answer was already predicted, but using it to continue. “I’d have turned him down, probably avoided him after that, but I wouldn’t have harmed him. So … that left me wondering what I’d do if I was propositioned by someone I knew, someone like Huggy Bear or Capt. Dobey, someone I have friendships with, you know? And I decided I’d have turned them down, too, but probably not have avoided them after that. I probably would have felt sorry for them for being gay, but I wouldn’t have used it against them.”

Despite Starsky’s previous prejudices toward gay people, he had come to an enlightenment about them even before he solicited Hutch, and that gave Hutch insight into the man in a way he hadn’t known before. He exchanged a silent, affectionate glance with Jade, who was also obviously proud of Starsky’s apparent evolvement.

“That left Hutch, of course,” Starsky said. “That left me wondering about what I’d do if he asked me for sex. We’d already had that kiss in the air duct three years prior, but suppose it had gone further? Suppose he tried to French me, or he wanted to blow me, or he wanted to fuck me? Trying to answer those questions for myself was really eye-opening. First, I had to get past the idea that he was one of ‘those guys.’”

Jade propped his chin on his fist, his elbow on his desk, and listened. He appreciated Starsky’s purge more than he could probably ever tell the man.

“Maybe we’re all animals,” Starsky said, noticing the fondness for him in Jade’s eyes. “Maybe you and maybe me and maybe Hutch, and maybe every other guy, gay or straight, would take a blowjob from a guy because we’ll take blowjobs from anybody, anywhere, anytime. We’re all just horny enough that way, know what I mean? So, I could see myself letting Hutch suck me off, though that disturbed me a lot at first because I never wanted to have those kinds of thoughts about him or around him, but it bothered me more to think it would be something he’d want to do to me. Would I want to beat him senseless if he felt that way? Would I be so pissed by his want that I’d get a couple of other guys to help me break his bones and leave him for dead somewhere? Would I fuck him until he was blue in the face, and against his will, to teach him a lesson about never having thoughts like that again about me?”

He knew the answers were rhetorical, so he didn’t voice them.

“That left me thinking: Well, maybe those men knew something I didn’t. Maybe they had a better idea of what it meant to have sex with a guy—and how godawful immoral and nasty and perverse it is—so much that, if I really knew the details, I’d feel as they felt. I mean, maybe there was more to it than just two guys sucking each other’s dicks or two guys fucking each other in the ass. Maybe I was missing something in my thoughts about what two guys do in bed.”

Hutch was fascinated, so much that he didn’t move a muscle lest it stop Starsky’s roll. And Jade was likewise.

“So,” Starsky continued, “I decided to take some time and figure out what it is two guys really do in bed and to each other so I could better understand why I took such a beating. And, because they were obviously upset with me and my partnership with Hutch, I used Hutch as the guinea pig in my scenarios. I pictured him and me kissing like we did in that air duct. Then I pictured us French-ing … handling each other … sucking each other … and, you know … fucking each other. I went over it in detail, again and again, from every which way I could see it. I’m not ashamed to tell you that, in the beginning of my mental pictures, I wasn’t all that comfortable with the thoughts. They made me uneasy and they made me feel sick to my stomach sometimes, but then I’d get to asking myself why was that? Why would I feel that kind of sick over fucking my partner, someone I’d give up my life for?”

It was, indeed, a strange priority, wasn’t it? To be willing to die for someone, but not willing to share an orgasm with him. Starsky laughed at that silent notion, and said, “It’s when I stopped using words like that—like ‘fuck,’ ‘suck,’ ‘blowjob’—that I began to feel different. I remembered that kiss in the air duct and how affectionate it was … that it was real and it was … honest … and funny … and I realized that doing anything with him like that wouldn’t be sickening; it would be those things: Real and honest and maybe even funny.” He chuckled even then when he realized sex had, indeed, been those things, too.

“After a while,” Starsky admitted, and not ashamedly, “those ideas, of being close to him like that, didn’t seem so terrible after all. In fact, when I was having those thoughts, unbeknownst to him, I started feeling like it would not only be okay to have that kind of thing with him, but that I wanted it.

“So, if you were asking me today if my getting raped was the cause of my sex now with Hutch, I’d say, I guess so, in a roundabout way, but not because he’s a distraction from dealing with what happened to me, but because they opened my mind—and my heart, too, I’d say—to having something more and something else with him that neither he or I ever dreamed we’d have. The only thing I had to get past, in the end, were all those thoughts I had about me being a bad person because I wanted it, but those were thoughts I had when I expected myself to think the way I thought God and society wanted me to.”

Starsky rested his case. He was as certain he meant every word he’d spoken as he was in his revelation at that moment that his intimate relationship with Hutch was purely an evolution, spurred over time by a range of experiences and emotions that included the attacks on him, but weren’t limited to them.

“You were destined to this relationship with Hutch,” Jade said quietly, concluding it then for himself, as well.

“Yeah, I like that,” Starsky replied. “We were destined to be where we are now, despite how rocky the road was to get here.”

Hutch liked it, too. He smiled, mostly from within his heart. “Haven’t I said that very thing to you over the years?”

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed, giving Hutch as warm a smile. “Something about being ‘preordained by the stars.’”

Hutch winked at him and got back an air kiss.

“Then, can you see,” Jade asked Starsky, “that there’s simply not a label to put on someone like you? Maybe you can find pride in yourself for having overcome what you’ve overcome, but also for being able to love without definition or attached strings or fear or obligation or prejudice or hardwiring? Can you give yourself credit for that? If you need a label, I’d say that you’re a polyamorous person in a polyamorous relationship, meaning that you’re a person capable of deeply loving more than one person at the same time and in all ways possible—but that you’ve also, knowingly or unknowingly, chosen two people who are as capable of it with you?”

Starsky swallowed the choke of emotion Jade’s words caused him. He didn’t expect they’d come to that answer when he first walked into Jade’s office some four months earlier. ‘Gay or not gay?’ had been his question. ‘Damaged goods or perverse?’ But not that he was as capable of the kind of love Jade had just described to him. It made him speechless. In fact, though packaged in different words, it had been what Hutch had tried to tell him on that first day, the day they lay in the grass together and Starsky kissed him. He glanced over at Hutch then, who had shifted just his eyes to meet Starsky’s, and flashed him a genuinely heartfelt smile. “Okay,” Starsky said, almost breathlessly, “You win.”

“I wasn’t out to win,” came Hutch’s yielding reply. “I was just as lost as you were there for a while.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one who’s said all along that ‘it is what it is.’ And now I finally believe you.”

* * *

WITH ALL THE LOVE IN THE WORLD

“Really, Starsk? You rented us a place without a bed?”

They stood on the wooden porch beside its two wooden chairs and peered into the mostly log cabin through its open door. Other than the fact that there was no bed in the main room, it was a rather quaint homestead with its rich wooden beams and its inviting stone hearth. It was also large enough for the two of them to not feel crowded, but small enough to be intimate. Hutch imagined spending cold winter nights in such a cozy place, up there on that mountain, in the woods, with a fireplace aglow, alone with Starsky.

“There’s a bed store seven miles from here,” Starsky explained, defensively. “How was I supposed to ask for one bed when there are two of us?”

“Two of us can’t sleep in one bed?” Hutch wondered.

“You know what I mean.”

Hutch didn’t like it any more than Starsky did, but he understood. “So did you figure out how we’re going to get a mattress here? Strap it to the roof of the car, are we? or did you want to sleep on the floor?”

“We’ll work it out. Somehow.”

“You and your ideas,” Hutch mumbled. He walked into the cabin and spun around to examine it closer. The structure seemed to be in good shape and its solidness satisfied his privacy concerns, that, and the blinds-shuttered windows. “You found this place in the classifieds, did you?” It was more than he expected it would be. This particular cabin in that specific place in the woods off the highway felt more like a retreat, a place where, with a power line of electricity, it could serve as a permanent home, too. He assumed a few days away in a cabin meant some one-room shack only feet from another one-room shack—and rented for a lofty price. This structure, the one he found himself in, was much closer to a dream house, and one he’d never dreamed.

Starsky didn’t answer the question about where he’d found the place. “Why don’t we get the bed?” he said impatiently.

Hutch spied the wooden chairs he’d passed on his way in. “Suppose we play house first?” he suggested.

Starsky read Hutch’s mind, so he retrieved a chair from the porch, brought it into the cabin, closed and locked the door, and set it in the center of the room. Though the windows were shuttered, enough light filtered through their slats to give Starsky what he needed to see—and what he wanted was to be able to measure the pleasure he gave. It was Hutch’s birthday, after all, and he intended to make the boy happy he’d been born.

Hutch watched him, curious about Starsky’s actions—while just the sounds of Starsky’s footsteps on the hardwood floor and the chair scraping it as he positioned it to face the opposing window were heard.

He made certain the chair faced the right direction to shed its light on Hutch’s face and, especially, his penis—and then he straightened to notice that Hutch watched him. With a silent bow, he presented Hutch with the chair, inviting him to sit.

“You’ve done this before,” Hutch said, charmed by Starsky’s deliberate playfulness.

“Never,” Starsky replied. “I’ve only ever sucked your dick, remember?” He slowly approached Hutch when Hutch didn’t immediately act on the offer and then sensually kissed him while he unbuttoned and unzipped Hutch’s jeans—without any resistance on Hutch’s part, save his verbal protest over Starsky’s choice of words.

“Can you not refer to me as some crass behavior?”

“Are you going to let what I say stop you from enjoying this?” Starsky asked.

“Bite my tongue,” Hutch said, “but I believe it’s my turn to do you.”

“Not today,” Starsky advised him. “Today I make the birthday boy glad he’s lived this long.”

“Suppose the birthday boy wants to give head, too?”

“He’ll have to wait. Birthday rules outrank his wants—and I’m here to enforce the law.”

When Starsky lowered Hutch’s jeans to his knees, Hutch felt the cool air tickle his bared skin, his thighs and his buttocks first, then his enlarging penis; the sensations aroused him and heightened his awareness of his nudity as he stood in the middle of the room. Starsky then further lowered Hutch’s jeans to his ankles, making him feel momentarily vulnerable. Or maybe it was permanently.

Gripping Hutch’s elbows, Starsky maneuvered his lover in front of the chair and then pushed him down onto it. Hutch’s erection was already halfway agreeable to the plan and it rose off his lap when he sat.

Starsky couldn’t miss it—and didn’t want to. He would forever be amazed by how quickly his lover was aroused and wanting, something he wasn’t used to with women, and matched only by his own tugging urges and desire.

He first pulled Hutch’s jeans off him completely, one leg and then the other, while Hutch helped him. Then Starsky opened Hutch’s shirt and tucked its bulk inside Hutch’s elbows, but he didn’t take it off him, nor Hutch’s socks, to make sure the coolness in the cabin didn’t detract from the gift he’d give. Starsky then sat back on his heels to admire the penis that had grown visibly larger in those last few moments.

Hutch glanced at himself, his penis still somewhat sheathed, and then at Starsky. “He likes you,” he said about the obvious salutation.

“You like me,” Starsky focused him. He pushed Hutch’s legs open at the knees to have a fuller view of Hutch’s sac. The hairless curve of his buttocks where they joined a dark hollow that led to his otherwise concealed anus also intrigued Starsky’s senses. He lifted his eyes and followed the line of Hutch’s smooth perineum up over the fullness of his testicle sac to the upright shaft of his engorged penis, where it ended with its semi-blanketed tip. “God,” he said with a whistle, “you’ve got such a fine specimen of man muscle there.” He, himself, fully dressed and planning to make the experience last a while, admired what he saw, and his personal satisfaction shone in his eyes and in his words.

Hutch’s stiffened penis was nearly snug to his bared belly, nestled in a light patch of soft brown curly hair at his groin, which was diminished by the swelled size of the penis it cradled. Hutch’s shaft didn’t have an angle, proud as it was; straight as an arrow up to his navel, a big, fat, healthy arrow, full of blood and life, of nerve and want.

Maybe Starsky’s was as memorable. He’d never studied himself that closely. Did his own penis have that raised tumescent vein running its length? was it wrapped in similar smooth, unblemished skin, or rooted to such a perfectly rounded scrotum? Did a textured seam of skin divide each of his testicles the way it did Hutch’s? Was his sac as snugly packed, as bulging and large, as proportionately placed, appearing as if it alone held the shaft that emerged from it?

Starsky’s should be so beautiful. He gently cupped Hutch’s left testis and carefully squeezed it.

The sensation took Hutch’s breath away. He watched Starsky’s eyes study him. They did not lie. Starsky genuinely admired him—with obvious appreciation—and all while Starsky massaged and fondled him.

After a minute, and especially when it seemed Starsky would never end the handling, Hutch couldn’t watch him any longer. He closed his eyes and lifted his head to focus as much pleasure at each of his testes as Starsky gave him—and he didn’t look back till Starsky released him.

“Everything about you is perfect,” Starsky said, raising his eyes to meet Hutch’s. “Look at these.” He lifted Hutch’s hand from his thigh and showed Hutch his own fingers. “Right down to your nails. Everything about you … all perfect.”

Hutch preferred Starsky’s study of his genital, not his hand, and hoped Starsky would go back to it. He couldn’t help but think Starsky enjoyed teasing him, so when he gave Starsky a shy smile and got back a confident one, he knew he was right.

Starsky stood, unzipped his jeans, and lowered them to his ankles, only then untying and removing his shoes. After he awkwardly stepped out of his pants, he rotated his hips in the cooling air and showed off his own budding erection. “See that?”

“Bring it closer and I’ll suck it,” Hutch said.

“Do you see that?” Starsky repeated, flopping his penis from side to side for half a minute.

“I can’t miss it,” Hutch replied, eyeing Starsky’s penis and wishing Starsky would do something with it other than show it off.

“It pales in comparison to that,” Starsky said, pointing to Hutch’s. “You know it. I know it. But you can appreciate it more when you can compare it to something average.”

Hutch reached for Starsky’s penis, but Starsky bent over to push his pelvis away from him and prevent the contact. “Hey, Birthday Boy,” he warned, “what did I tell you about the rules?”

“Well, stop flaunting that thing in front of me,” Hutch begged him.

“I’m just showing it to you. You see the difference between us?”

“I don’t care,” Hutch said with a frustrated sigh. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“I’m not asking you to care,” Starsky insisted. “I’m showing you the difference so you better understand why I think yours has to be the most beautiful dick in all the world. The cock of the walk, it is.”

“You like me.”

“Some things are facts,” Starsky said. He removed his shirt and knelt in front of Hutch again, using their clothes as a cushion for his knees from the wood floor, and then he pushed a finger against Hutch’s aching penis, conscious of its firmness. “And look how hard you are already.”

Hutch sat squarely in the wooden chair, his bared butt cooled by its surface, his legs open at the knees, fully exposed to Starsky’s deliberate eye, his back firm against the firm back of the chair, his arms to his sides, hands on his naked thighs, while his penis got intermittent enjoyment from where it snugged his belly—and the occasional touch Starsky gave it. Hutch wanted more. The building ache between his legs, one that came from deep within his groin, spurred by the cool air and by his urgent want for a resolution, and hoping for that anticipated ecstasy-filled conclusion, begged Starsky to stop teasing him.

“One of these days I’m going to really edge you,” Starsky told him. He trailed a finger from one end of Hutch’s shaft to the other, light enough to tease, firm enough to give Hutch pleasure.

“Not without my permission,” Hutch managed to say after his moan. He couldn’t figure out what Starsky meant and didn’t plan to try. “Just suck me already.” His penis noticeably throbbed, lifting off his belly for half a second before it touched down again.

Starsky fondled himself while he further studied Hutch. The head of Hutch’s penis had completely emerged from its protective cocoon and a loose nape of gathered skin wrinkled beneath its crown. The curved head was smooth, a perfectly sized cap that topped its thick, blood-filled shaft, so hardened it had visibly lifted Hutch’s scrotum and stretched the skin over each testicle, defining them in the subtle outline. Hutch’s sac was larger than average, too; it was hairless, and flawlessly blended into the shaft it served. Starsky had to touch the man’s penis again. He had to hold it. To feel it. To caress and massage it. It was just that beautiful and it was just that compelling.

He lifted his eyes to Hutch’s face when he heard Hutch moan from the initial contact of Starsky’s light kiss, followed by as light a lick, planted deliberately on Hutch’s anticipating penis. Hutch’s closed eyes and the sound of his abbreviated breaths, his already heaving belly, coupled with the sex pleasure Starsky gave himself, made Starsky harder, too.

He bent forward and first inhaled the scent between Hutch’s legs. As he expected and as he hoped, the smell was aromatic and animal, mixed with sweat and the promise of semen. Ignoring Hutch’s desire to have his penis stroked or sucked, Starsky wet his lips with his tongue and then gently nursed Hutch’s warm and bulging testicles, first one, slowly sliding it into his mouth and thoroughly sucking and licking it once in, then releasing it after a minute to do likewise to the other. Hutch’s deep inhales and Hutch’s moans and Hutch’s willing helplessness kept Starsky rooted where he was, sucking and licking Hutch’s sac for unending minutes of time, knowing how much it made Hutch want his penis in that mouth instead—and Starsky not giving it to him.

“Oh … you’re my buddy,” Hutch murmured. The sensations made him dizzy and crave for something more. His voice, a cadence of ‘oh’s, carried loudly in the otherwise stillness of the room. As did Starsky’s sucking and lip-smacking as he continued to hold Hutch’s legs open and shower Hutch’s scrotum with wet licks and kisses.

Hutch thought Starsky wouldn’t give him more than he got and that he could ejaculate just from what Starsky did. So he slid his hands under each of his thighs and pulled his legs open further; he also rotated his pelvis upward to make his sac more accessible to Starsky’s lips and tongue. If Starsky wouldn’t suck his penis, Hutch wanted more out of the pleasure he did get at his testes. But just when he settled into the enjoyment of Starsky sucking his sac, and right before he was about to engage the mindset that he could ejaculate from the stimulation Starsky did give him, Starsky trailed a lengthy, sopping, and indulgent lick up his shaft instead. The unexpected and much more pleasurable sensation jolted Hutch from his contentment and he cussed.

Starsky released him to tease him further.

Hutch opened his eyes and lowered his head—and then his feet back to the floor. His mind was not engaged. He panted. “That felt good,” he finally said. “You’re so good at that. I think I could come that way.”

Starsky winked at him. And he, too, had broken a sweat; his hairline glistened with it.

“But is this any way to treat the birthday boy?” Hutch asked, impatiently—and with a bit of a growl.

Starsky laughed at him while he fondled himself. He knew how good Hutch felt; he felt that same good himself, to a lesser degree. “Isn’t it?” he asked. “Isn’t this the only way to treat the birthday boy?” His own penis was rigidly erect, though not as much as his partner’s; Starsky was glad for it because he didn’t want their anticipation of that day to end sooner than it needed to. He rose fully to his knees, his hands firmly opening Hutch’s legs again, and examined Hutch’s penis from a slightly different angle. Then he stole a glance at Hutch’s face—till Hutch dropped his head back again, looked briefly at the ceiling, and closed his eyes.

Deeply inhaling the aroma of Hutch’s freshly perspiring skin, Starsky also drank in the animal scent of Hutch’s maleness, and felt its heat warm his own skin. He licked his lips again, softened his tongue, and made contact—first by a small tease at the base of Hutch’s shaft, and then with wet, sensual kisses. He licked as he kissed, giving Hutch two sensations, one from his tongue, the other from his lips. Hutch’s new moans made him moan, too; he imagined how it must have felt, he kneeling between Hutch’s legs with his own penis hardened and hanging in the room’s cool air, wanting similar contact.

The sounds of their moans spurred the other, the smacks of Starsky’s kisses as he showered Hutch’s erection with them, first from base to tip and then back again, wetting his skin, heightened their arousal together. Starsky had to release one of Hutch’s thighs, which Hutch quickly held open for him, so Starsky could gently stroke his own penis in a loose fist, briefly, and keep his mouth on Hutch’s saliva-coated penis at the same time. He concentrated so intently on how broadly he flattened his tongue to cover as much surface in those strokes that he could feel the engorged raised vein that ran the length of Hutch’s shaft. He then generously licked and nursed it from end to end.

Hutch didn’t just feel the ecstasy from Starsky’s warm tongue; he heard Starsky’s quiet smacks and his more audible moans, coupled with their combined labored breathing, and Hutch’s irrepressible “Oh”s—and the noise alone that filled the room was tantalizing. Hutch was subconsciously aware that he sat in a chair in the middle of a small, sealed building adrift in the wilds of the woods, naked from his waist down, his butt at the edge of the chair seat, his legs wide open and accommodating his sexual desire and Starsky’s access. He knew one of his hands, gripping open his thigh, helped to expose as much of his private self to Starsky as he was able, so that Starsky could suck him at will and at his indulgence, while the other, somehow, had found its way into Starsky’s hair, all while his rigid shaft was eagerly licked and sensually kissed in what felt like minutes that would never end.

How had he come to such a moment?

He was also consciously aware of the physical sensations: Starsky’s skilled tongue caressing his moistened and hyper-charged penis, Starsky’s lips occasionally and audibly sucking his shaft, interrupted only by a sensual kiss, and Starsky’s breath on him, cooling where he was wet with every heavy exhale from his lover. But when Starsky finally gave him pleasure at the head of his penis, sucking the edge of its crown and licking its smooth cap, that he had to look, despite that he didn’t get to see for long because Starsky finally slid his penis into his mouth.

Starsky could read the breathing between them, the measurement of their excitement and desire. He needed to suck Hutch’s penis at that minute as much as Hutch wanted him to suck it. Starsky encircled its crown in his lips, licking it to a glistening wet, tickling its frenulum, and then drew it further into his mouth, tonguing it along the way. He slid Hutch in as far as his penis could go into his mouth, protecting it from his teeth with his lips, and then he withdrew it, slowly, feeling its length and its heat—licking it along the way of its departure with his firm tongue. Then into his tight mouth again it went.

Hutch couldn’t watch. If he saw another second of it, of his penis disappearing and reappearing from Starsky’s mouth, he’d ejaculate. He threw his head back again, closed his eyes, loudly moaned, and pushed into Starsky’s face with his hips.

Starsky pumped himself to fuel his own frenzy. The strokes of his mouth from Hutch’s cap to halfway down his shaft and back again were smoothly intense in their deliverance. He held Hutch tightly in his lips while he pushed him in and pulled him out and pushed him again, first at a rhythmic and tempered pace and then more urgently. A drop of semen emerged from the slit in Hutch’s penis and Starsky used it to further lubricate Hutch’s shaft with his lips and tongue. He got it slick enough to take Hutch’s glistening shaft in his hand, to slide it in and out in tandem with his mouth and lips. The shaft he created for Hutch’s shaft enabled much longer strokes. Each pause of pleasure at the head made the returning stroke’s sensation brand new and all over again intensely stimulating.

Each pass made Hutch moan louder, too. “Let me come,” he was able to say between breaths. He held his legs open for Starsky, up and wide, while Starsky pulled Hutch’s penis forward to deliver the fervent strokes, each of Hutch’s hands under each of his thighs, holding tightly, so Starsky could keep both of his own hands busy, one on Hutch’s shaft and the other on his own.

Starsky pumped them both, but he never lost mindfulness of the ecstasy he gave through his tightly wrapped lips around Hutch’s swollen penis, or the licks he gave its crown on each upward stroke, nor the urgent sucking of its head, the tease he gave its frenulum, when it briefly emerged from his mouth—just to slide back in deeply as far as it could go, sometimes to the point of gagging him.

“Oh,” Hutch moaned, rolling his head from one side to the other. “Oh, oh.” He held his legs open so tightly, the grip was almost painful.

Starsky had pulled Hutch’s penis forward, away from his belly, to better devour its meaty flesh in his mouth and fist. He noticed Hutch’s erect nipples in the soft light of the room, saw the underside of Hutch’s chin, and fueled his own ecstasy simply by watching Hutch’s heaving belly, hearing Hutch’s plaintive, “Oh,” and tasting drops of semen that occasionally seemed squeezed from the crown’s slit on an upstroke.

Starsky finally had to pray that Hutch would climax because he was so close to his own. He feared he’d ruin it for Hutch if he ejaculated first. But his worry was worthless. Hutch finally exploded. First his audible moans, louder than Starsky had ever heard them before, too overwhelming to form any words. Hutch’s body spasmed, almost violently. Moments later, the pulse of hot semen filled Starsky’s mouth, mounds of it, as if Hutch hadn’t emptied himself in months. Starsky was able to intercept his own climax. Instead, he gulped each wave of Hutch’s semen down his throat as it was delivered and squeezed Hutch’s shaft as if to milk it of every drop.

Hutch convulsed. Each expulsion of his ejaculate was nearly as intense as the previous one. The delivery lasted long. The ecstasy was beyond bliss. He was overwhelmed. His belly heaved with loud exhales. The room spun behind his closed eyes.

Starsky watched him. He drank and he watched. When there was no more to swallow, he still didn’t release Hutch from his mouth. He closed his eyes and held Hutch’s penis, felt its warmth still in his lips and at his tongue, tasted the slipperiness of its shaft, and used those sensations to pump himself in a rather dry, but appreciated series of quick strokes. He was impatient for his own pleasure by then and it couldn’t come fast enough. He uninhibitedly crested, but seconds before he came, he let go of Hutch, lest he hurt him during his own blissful convulsions. The ecstasy he experienced then was purely self-indulged as he deposited pulses of his own semen onto the floor beneath the chair. They were delivered in powerful spurts that coated the wooden planks.

Hutch heavily panted while Starsky emptied himself inside the halo of his own loud moans of pleasure. He had hoped to see Starsky climax, but Starsky couldn’t wait long enough to oblige him; seeing Hutch ejaculate had put him over the edge. Hutch then lowered his legs and pushed himself into a seated position on the chair while Starsky finished.

“Oh, god, you make me hot,” Starsky whispered, enjoying that final wave of his orgasm. “You turn me on so … much.”

Hutch laughed when Starsky laughed, purely from the pleasure they’d just shared that gave lightness to the moment. Hutch leaned forward as Starsky sank to his heels between Hutch’s legs and Hutch embraced him. He lowered his face to Starsky’s face and, together, they listened to each other’s slowly diminishing pants, felt the moisture from their sweat between them, and held each other for balance.

Starsky was the first to stand. He gathered his clothes, pat Hutch’s thigh, turned, and walked out to the porch in his bare feet while he pulled on his shirt, too exhausted to button it. He dropped his jeans to the planked floor, sat in the lone chair, and slowed his breath in the shade of the surrounding trees. It was several minutes before he could hear the sounds of nature, the birds and the light breeze through the leaves.

Hutch envied Starsky’s openly naked comfort outside, but didn’t have the energy to follow. He sat with his elbows on his knees instead and his face in his hands and summoned the strength to rise. Sweat still wet his hair and under his arms. He thought he should shower before they went to town for a bed and mattress, but, even without looking, he knew such an indulgence wasn’t possible there in the woods. Eventually, he rose to his feet, dressed only in his shirt and socks, and pulled on his jeans. He then took the chair with him, joined Starsky on the porch, positioned it near Starsky to face the same direction, and sat in it. “So who needs a bed?” he joked after a minute.

“You and I do,” Starsky grunted. “You’re not going to fuck me on a hardwood floor.”

“What’s that you say about being hard? Already again?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Hutch mumbled. He then noticed that Starsky was relatively nude—and comfortably exposed while he sat in the chair with his legs slightly apart, his fading erection drooped against his scrotum. “Shouldn’t you be dressed when we’re outside?” he asked. He noticed Starsky’s haired and muscled legs, too, his feet, and his toes. It made Starsky vulnerable. “Suppose somebody drove up?”

Starsky turned just his eyes to Hutch’s. He was mildly irritated because he didn’t like thinking Hutch thought he was an idiot. “Who’s going to drive up here?”

“I don’t know. Somebody. Anybody.”

As if on cue, they heard a car on the highway—the two-lane road was roughly six hundred feet from the cabin. Starsky quickly stood and fumbled with his clothes to pull on his jeans. When he sat in the chair again, they realized they could still hear the approaching car and understood just how quiet it was on their patch of ground, so much that sound carried for as long and as far as it did. A couple of minutes later, the vehicle finally passed on the roadway; they could make out its shiny red color as it filtered through the trees some distance away. They looked at each other when it was gone.

“Well,” Hutch said, “I guess we don’t have to worry about getting snuck up on around here.”

“And I could have stayed nekkid,” Starsky noted. He didn’t really mind. He was anxious to get to town and retrieve that bed so they would be ready for more sex by nightfall. That, and he wanted something to eat. He noticed Hutch survey the woods and the structure of the cabin from its outside. “What do you think?” he finally asked him.

“I think it’ll be better with a bed,” Hutch assumed.

“And a stove, too,” Starsky said, “so you can make us pancakes in the morning.”

“No stove in there, either? Why did you choose to rough it, you, of all people? What’s it costing us for our three nights here without a stove and a bed?”

“I didn’t actually forget those things,” Starsky said. He leaned forward in his chair so he could retrieve the document from his back jeans pocket. “What I forgot was to give you this.” He unfolded the paper and smoothed it out before he handed it to Hutch. “Happy Birthday, Blondie,” he said.

When Hutch laid eyes on the paper, he was first confused, but the neatly printed type soon cleared it up for him. “Grant Deed,” it read at the top. As Hutch scanned the document, he realized the cabin had been purchased by David Starsky and quit-claim deeded to Ken Hutchinson, making Hutch the sole owner of the property. He glanced up and into Starsky’s eyes and was too stunned to speak.

“I just hope you like it,” Starsky said. “I didn’t get a chance to see it before I bought it, but I trusted the realtor I worked with—and the video he showed me.”

Hutch was at a complete loss for words.

Starsky couldn’t tell what Hutch thought—except that Hutch was blown away. It made him smile, but it didn’t erase his apprehension. “You like it? I mean, you know, after we get a bed here? You think you could live with this place? All these birds and trees and privacy? Your place, so no one, not even me, can tell you what you can do up here or with who?”

Hutch didn’t correct Starsky’s grammar; he was choked with gratitude and tears were in his eyes.

Starsky laughed when he saw them. “Okay, so now I know you like the place.”

The gift was more than Hutch ever expected. “Yeah, I like the place. Jesus, man, what did you go and do this for?” He stared again at the deed, that time through his tears.

“Because it’s your birthday.”

“I told you not to get me anything.”

“And because I’m real good at doing what you say.”

Hutch quietly laughed. “You didn’t have the money,” he reminded Starsky.

“I had enough. I’ll have to go back to work eventually, but, hey, that has to happen anyway, right?”

Hutch stared beyond the document in his hands to the porch. He knew Starsky didn’t have all that much in savings and that he should have kept it for his upcoming marriage, but he also knew Starsky would only argue with him if he belabored the point. One thing did make him uncomfortable. “How’s Grace going to feel about how you spent your money?”

“It wasn’t a question about whether I should, but that I would,” Starsky said. “Luckily, she wanted this for you and me, too. She says you need to relax around her, so she can relax around you, you know?”

Hutch looked over at him. His eyes had cleared and he was able to see the sincerity on Starsky’s face, but he didn’t understand Grace’s generosity.

“Or maybe she just wants to get us off the property,” Starsky said with a sad laugh, “and have us fuck each other someplace else sometimes. Does it matter?” He kicked the leg of Hutch’s chair. “I get that it’s your cabin and can do whatever you want up here,” he said playfully, “but I’m trusting I’m the only guy you’re going to bring to this place, so what say we go get ourselves a bed and get busy?”

Hutch was still overwhelmed by Starsky’s gift. He didn’t move.

“I just want you to know what I know,” Starsky softly said when he realized Hutch was still emotional. He made eye contact with him and shrugged at his own sentiment.

Hutch slightly nodded. He did know. He knew he meant the world to Starsky. “Okay,” he gently said. “Thank you.” After a thoughtful moment, he added, “But I get to pick out and buy the bed, okay?”

“If you think that’s fair,” Starsky said, “it works for me.”

“Why did you choose a sole ownership for this place?”

“Because if I bought it for us, it wouldn’t be a gift for just you,” Starsky explained. “That, and because I wanted to do something extra special for the guy who saved my life—more than once.”

“That’s been a two-way street.”

“Not lately.”

“This isn’t a competition.”

Frustrated, Starsky asked, “What’s that they say about gift horses and their hay-smelling mouths?”

“Shut up.”

Hutch then straightened in his chair for an even closer look at the cabin, its porch, the surrounding woods. He saw it then in a different light, that the secluded cabin in the woods was theirs and theirs alone—because everything of his, in the end, belonged to Starsky, too, as far as he was concerned—and this was a private refuge, a sanctuary from any and all else, a home that was purely theirs. The gift couldn’t have been more perfect. Starsky did know him better than he knew Starsky did.

Starsky winked at him. “But what say we get something to eat first,” he pled, “before we get that bed, hm? How many fucking times do I have to ask you?”

“You reached your limit,” Hutch said—and then got to his feet. When he reentered the cabin for his shoes, Starsky finished dressing. Hutch returned to the porch and hit Starsky’s elbow to encourage him sooner to the car. “Drop me at the bed store while you get supplies,” he told him.

“Two things,” Starsky said as he jumped off the porch ahead of Hutch. “One: What supplies? And, two: Why can’t we eat first?”

“The sooner we buy a bed, the sooner we might have it delivered,” Hutch hypothesized. “We can kill time eating. And, supplies?” He got into the passenger side of the car as Starsky got into the driver’s. “You know, staples,” he explained, once seated. “Toilet paper. And get us some of those twelve-hour battery-operated lanterns. Get a four-foot piece of cotton rope. Get some canned food—soups and stuff like that—and a manual can opener. Find us a blanket or two. How cold does it get around here at night?”

Starsky started the car and drove the gravel driveway to the road. “It doesn’t matter. You get cold, I’ll heat you up.”

Hutch hoped that wasn’t Starsky’s serious answer about what they needed to be comfortable in the cabin.

“But what do you need a four-foot piece of cotton rope for?” Starsky asked.

“The lock on that outhouse is broken.”

“Who you trying to keep out?”

“Bears.”

Starsky sharply looked at him. “Bears? There are bears out here? So maybe I should get nylon rope, a big thick piece. Or maybe a chain? I’m warning you now: I’m sleeping with my pistol under the pillow or I’m bypassing the outhouse and pissing off the porch.”

Hutch growled at him. “Just get what I ask you to get me, okay? Stop worrying about the bears. And you’re not bringing a handgun to bed, either.” He thought about what else they needed that Starsky probably wouldn’t think to buy. “Bottled water.”

“There’s a well on the place,” Starsky informed him when he turned onto the highway and headed to town. It didn’t occur to him that Hutch hadn’t seen the pump—nor had he left the porch to the outhouse. “So maybe I need to get us a bucket to fetch water instead, hm?” Starsky asked.

“‘Fetch’ water? What are you now? a hillbilly? Get bottled water just the same—until we know the safety of the well. And while you’re at it, find us a portable water heater if you can. Looks like we’ll be doing the sponge bath thing, so get us some hand towels, too.” He had already brought soap with his personal toiletries.

“Sounds fun,” Starsky laughed. “I’ll bathe you and you bathe me.”

Sponge baths suddenly held a new excitement for Hutch then, too. He loved Starsky’s sexuality. That kind of freedom was what had been missing in his sex life all those years of other relationships. He wanted to get back to the cabin as soon as possible to experience more of it. “Maybe you can actually find a supply store in town so you don’t have to hunt all over for this shit,” he said. “Get us a pot and a burner to heat it on so we can cook up a few things, too—”

“Like pancakes.”

“Like pancakes. And buy a pair of heavy duty scissors—not the kind made for women. Pick up some groceries.”

“How’m I going to remember all this?”

“I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

Starsky thought it was the perfect motivator. He then enjoyed the scenery as they drove through it and was excited by their upcoming stay on the mountain. “There’s a power pole at the end of the driveway,” he said. “Maybe, someday, we might want to run electricity to the place. Should I get us a generator in the meantime?”

“We can look for one tomorrow,” Hutch decided. “I say we get the bed, the necessary supplies, something to eat, and then we can think about the next step. Because, if I know you—”

“And you do.”

“—then you’re going to want to eat halfway through what I’ve already asked you to pick up. Just do what I’m telling you, okay?”

Starsky looked over at him and winked. “You’re just in a hurry to get back to that cabin you own and fuck me before the sun goes down.”

“And you know me.”

* * *

Hutch was impressed by the selection of beds he had to choose from in that little store on the edge of that little town, but he knew what he wanted before he got there, so he decided quickly. Luckily, he had the Grant Deed in his possession and was able to give the female clerk the address to have both the bed and its mattress delivered, which he was told would be later that afternoon. While he was paying for the items, Starsky called him at the store from a payphone for an update.

“I found just about everything,” Starsky proudly told him.

“Scissors?”

The pause on the line told him Starsky hadn’t gotten everything.

“Don’t forget them,” Hutch reminded him. “Or at least a cutting blade. And if you haven’t gotten that piece of rope yet, make it six feet instead of four.”

Another pause on the line and Hutch realized Starsky hadn’t remembered that, either. “What about bottled water?”

More silence.

“What good are you?” Hutch bantered him.

“I’m good at sucking your dick,” came the disarming reply.

Hutch turned away from the store clerk, a young woman, to keep his embarrassment from showing. “Okay,” he agreed, “so you’re good at that.”

“What else matters?”

“Nothing else,” Hutch said. “But just get what I asked, okay? It’s not that difficult.” He almost said it wasn’t that ‘hard,’ but he knew Starsky would play on the word and Hutch felt bashful enough as it was. “They’re going to deliver the bed around 4:30,” he said, “so when you get finished, pick me up across the street from this place. I should be done here in fifteen minutes. How much longer you got?”

“I can pick you up now and we can try a dime store for those other things you needed, the rope and the scissors and shit, but I did get us some light to see by and a burner and other camping stuff. Found a great outdoor supply place geared to hunters, so I actually got more than you wanted.”

Hutch was afraid to ask what those things were. “Then pick me up in fifteen minutes,” he repeated. “Across the street on the corner.”

“What’s the matter with you? Afraid to be seen with me that close to all those beds?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

* * *

They sat in a diner booth shortly after their rendezvous. Because the bed had been purchased and would be delivered, Hutch agreed to let Starsky eat before they finished the supplies shopping they still needed to do. They had hours to kill before the delivery.

“What did you get us?” Starsky wondered after they placed their food order. He toyed with the glass of water the waitress had left him and anticipated Hutch’s answer.

“What did I get us?” Hutch asked. He didn’t understand the question. “A bed.”

“Yeah, I know you got us a bed,” Starsky replied with annoyance. “What size? Queen? King? Double?”

“Queen. It’s all they had in stock.”

Starsky imagined the bed size in his mind. Would they miss Hutch’s king-sized bed? “So it just means we get to be closer.”

“Or you sleep on the floor,” Hutch said.

“Or we get to be closer,” Starsky reiterated.

“Have it your way,” Hutch cracked. He realized why Starsky wanted to know. “I take it you didn’t get sheets or blankets, either.”

“I didn’t know what size,” Starsky explained. He looked at the blue in those eyes look back at him. “And I didn’t know what color you wanted, either.”

“Fuck you.” They both knew color didn’t matter, that Starsky abused him, and Starsky even knew it. “We can get what we need at the department store,” Hutch decided.

“But the question is: Do we get those things together?” Starsky wanted them both to feel freer in the world with their relationship, though remain smartly guarded, but he wasn’t too certain in that instance. “It is a small town,” he explained.

“Then … how about, um, no?”

Starsky lowered his eyes to the checkered table cloth and exhaled. He no longer wanted to play. The secrecy with which they had to purchase simple household items depressed him. “This world is fucked,” he mumbled.

Hutch removed a packet of sugar from its cup holder and flicked it across the table at Starsky to get eye contact with him. When he succeeded, he said, “It’s the price we pay for the wonderfully good things we have.”

“Everything has to have a price?”

“It’s just the way it is.”

“I like thinking about the world as it should be.”

“Which is why you get bummed,” Hutch noted. “But here’s the way it is: It’s fucked. Lucky for some of us, though, we get to rise above it. In our lifetimes, we have what most people don’t: A lifetime friendship, ultimate pleasures, unconditional love, implicit trust, unbreakable loyalty, and the knowledge that we have those things. Cheer up, buddy boy. The world as it is between us comes with a price is all. So we don’t get to completely be ourselves in public. Small price for the exchange, though, don’t you think?”

Starsky gave it thought. So they had to stay out of the bedroom aisle together at the local department store—in order to be on a bed together later, enjoying each other in ways not even they had dreamed possible. “Okay,” he agreed, accepting Hutch’s perspective with a nod, “so you get the bed stuff and I’ll get the other stuff. But you have to go with me for the groceries.” After half a minute, he added, “and now hand over a credit card because I’m maxed out.”

* * *

Hutch whistled through his teeth when Starsky opened the car trunk and showed off the camping gear he’d purchased while Hutch was busy buying the bed. Bags of “stuff” filled the compartment.

“All the comforts of home,” Starsky said, beaming at it.

They had just arrived at the cabin from their shopping spree, having acquired all the things Hutch wanted—and apparently a lot of things Starsky wanted, too. Despite his best wishes, Hutch was impressed with some of the loot: A portable table-top grill, battery-operated lanterns, and a variety of cooking utensils, pots and pans, plus cheap, ceramic plates and glass glasses.

Hutch twirled a bright purple coffee mug in his hand. They would definitely have a fully stocked kitchen, albeit eclectic. “You planning to cook for us, too?” he asked.

“I was going to make you teach me some things so I can impress those I love.”

“Make me?”

“Couldn’t see you offering to do it.”

“Oh, how little you know me. So you want me to teach you how to cook a meal?”

“Yeah, dummy. I’m not asking you to teach me how to fuck in the bedroom.”

“Nobody has to teach you how to do that,” Hutch said under his breath.

“You wouldn’t know,” came the punishing reply.

Hutch tossed the purple mug back into the trunk. He knew Starsky had just thrown an emotional punch at him for their one-sided anal intercourse, but he wasn’t about to let it dampen his mood. “What the hell is that?” he asked, pointing to an oblong and odd-looking metal container.

Starsky reached into the box it was in and pulled a nozzle and hose from it. “It’s a water heater with a shower head attached to it. This puppy will let us take showers in hot water—at more than a gallon a minute.”

“How is the water heated?”

“With that thing,” Starsky explained. He pointed to a propane tank he’d bought. “That’ll power our grill, too. Leave it to me, Blue Eyes. I’m going to make sure we have a grand time up here.”

“Yeah,” Hutch playfully said. “Me teaching you how to cook and then my watching you operate all this shit sure sounds like fun.”

Starsky ignored him and retrieved a few of the bags in each hand. When he walked past Hutch to take them into the cabin, he shoved him with his shoulder and about pushed him into the car trunk.

“I take it you filled that propane tank with propane, right?” Hutch called after him, subsequently regaining his balance.

“Fuck you,” came the telling callback.

They would need to make another run into town if they wanted to actually use any of Starsky’s toys, but Hutch was happy to see some of it—especially the lanterns. He wondered if Starsky had bought batteries, too, so he took the lanterns into the cabin as Starsky came out.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Starsky admitted as he walked past Hutch to the car. “We need propane and we need batteries. I forgot, that’s all.”

Hutch dropped the bags on the floor inside the cabin door and came out for more. “After they deliver the bed, we’ll go to town,” he decided. “We can get batteries then—and you can pay me back for all the fuel we had to use on extra runs to the store just to have some light.”

They stopped, together, at the rear of the car again. Starsky pulled a plastic bag from inside the trunk and handed it to Hutch. “We’ll have this light,” he said. “Candlelight.” He winked at Hutch.

Hutch peered into the bag at the assortment of vanilla candles Starsky had purchased and then looked up at him. “Tell me you remembered matches,” he said.

“You have no faith in me,” Starsky lamented.

“Tell me you remembered matches,” Hutch said again.

“I remembered matches.”

“Tell me you’re not just saying that because I asked you to.”

“Jesus,” Starsky swore under his breath. He rooted around in the remaining bags in the trunk until he found the box of matches, then tossed it at Hutch, and pointed to inside the trunk. “I got your bottled water and your goddamned rope. And you bought enough blankets and other shit to decorate a three-bedroom house, so what more do you fucking want from me?” He wasn’t really pissed. He knew Hutch had as much fun as he did that day and that they both looked forward to nightfall—or specifically the bed delivery—but he also didn’t want to feel like a loser, which was where he thought the conversation headed.

Hutch backed down. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get off your case. It’s my birthday and I should find joy in other things.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

Together they finished emptying the car, both its trunk and its back seat. Once done and inside the cabin, they unpacked the bags, including the personal ones they’d brought them, their clothes and toiletries, Hutch’s books and Starsky’s board games. Starsky then showed off things he bought at the stores, item-by-item.

“What are these?” Hutch asked, helping Starsky along. He held up what appeared to be two ceramic ornaments in the shape of insects, both of which fit into his palm.

“Those are ants—posing as salt and pepper shakers.”

Hutch looked at them again. “That’s just creepy,” he mumbled as he set them aside. “Sometimes you can be so weird.”

“I thought you were getting off my case.”

“I was, but then I slipped and fell on it.”

Starsky unboxed the one purchase he was most excited about while Hutch unpacked the cooking supplies. There was a short counter beside a large metal sink and a row of shelves on the wall above it, with enough room for the minimal items they needed to create meals in the kitchen.

Hutch positioned the portable grill on the counter top and looked forward to using it later to whip up something delicious for his birthday. Of course, he’d rather spend more time on the bed than in the kitchen, the thought of which aroused him even then. He glanced over at Starsky to see whether Starsky was of the same mind, but was instead distracted by what he saw.

Starsky had removed an amateur telescope from its packing box and bolted it to a tripod in the center of the room.

“Holy shit,” Hutch said under his breath. He approached to investigate. “Whatever made you want one of those?”

“What else are we going to do up here besides fuck?” Starsky casually asked him. He was intent on figuring out how to attach the star finder to the optical tube.

“Fuck some more,” Hutch replied, but he was just as sidetracked. He stood beside the telescope and admired it. “What a great idea,” he finally admitted. “But we’re going to have to find someplace to see the sky through the trees out here.”

“There you go again,” Starsky berated him. He figured out how to toggle the handle on the pack and bolt it to the tripod shelf. “Doubting me.”

“Well, no, I was just sayin’—”

“You were saying I bought a telescope without a way to see the sky.”

“That’s not what I was saying,” Hutch cautioned him. “Well, I mean …” He realized he couldn’t explain it without it seeming as if he didn’t trust Starsky’s instincts, so he shut his mouth instead.

Starsky stood back from the telescope and admired it with Hutch. “Cool, hm?” Then he removed a quarter-folded piece of paper from his back jeans pocket, smoothed it out on his thigh, and handed it to Hutch. “I meant to give you that earlier.”

Hutch took it from him and noticed immediately that he needed to turn the paper horizontally. It was a map. A plot map.

“We can hike or drive out to the pond where there aren’t any trees,” Starsky explained, “and see the sky from there. Maybe sometime we’ll even camp out there, you know? Sleeping bags and all—and just watch the stars pass by.”

Hutch stared at the map. He saw the area Starsky had described as ‘the pond,’ a rather large one on the northwest portion of the property—which he learned, from reading the fine print, was a twenty-six acre parcel. He abruptly lifted his head to look at Starsky.

“Well, you didn’t think I bought a piece-of-shit house-of-logs surrounded by a bunch of trees, did you?” Starsky said with a squint. “Have you lost that much faith in me?”

Tears shimmered in Hutch’s eyes for the second time that afternoon.

“I figured maybe someday we’d bring a couple of horses and go riding, you know?” Starsky added. “You’ve said you want to do that sometime. Or we’d need to see the stars at night if I bought a telescope. So, naturally, I had to find a place where there were trees and meadows—but also hills and valleys to ride in and a creek to swim in and trails to hike—all that shit you like to do, and some shit I’m growing to like.” He was happy to see the tears in Hutch’s eyes because he knew he’d done right by him.

“Starsky …” Hutch began, but then he was speechless. He lowered his eyes again to the parcel map and found the creek that entered from the northeast corner and ran along the eastern boundary to a neighboring property. He was able to decipher where there weren’t wooded areas and where there were, and what the elevation was on the property that confirmed Starsky’s ‘hills and valleys’ comment. He was speechless and he was humbled and he was grateful. “You shouldn’t have,” he whispered, “but I’m glad you did.”

Starsky smiled at him and squeezed Hutch’s arm. “Hey … it was the least I could do for all the things you did for me this past year. I mean, really, if you think about it, it pales in comparison to all I got because of you: A new house and then another new house. A beautiful woman. Man sex.” He laughed at his last item and was glad when Hutch did, too, because he didn’t know any other way at that moment to describe what he had with Hutch. But Hutch knew.

Hutch returned his attention to the paper in his hands. He exhaled and slowly nodded as he gave it all careful thought. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll teach you how to cook something to impress Grace. You won’t mind if it’s vegetarian, will you?”

“She eats mostly that way already,” Starsky replied.

“I still don’t know how you were able to afford this place.”

“Okay. Truth is,” Starsky confessed, “that I sold the first house you bought me about a month ago, the one I was taken from, the one I decided to rent out the rest of our lives for working capital or some dumb shit idea of yours like that. You know, that house.”

They would never forget that house. When Starsky was abducted from it, it had never been emptier. Starsky had finally agreed to rent it and build a new house on Hutch’s property, the one he lived in then with Grace. But, unbeknownst to Hutch, Starsky had sold the first house. He had proposed to Starsky months earlier to sell it and keep the money, but Starsky thought it better, due to the housing market, to instead rent it for investment income. But when Hutch’s birthday neared, Starsky wanted to do something meaningful for Hutch. It was the only way he knew to repair the pain he’d caused and to authenticate the love and loyalty he felt.

“That was yours to keep,” Hutch reminded him about that first house when he made eye contact. “To rent out or sell and pocket the money yourself.” It was the least he could do to make amends for the pain and humiliation Starsky had endured at the hands of his attackers, to give Starsky his own avenue of liberation.

“Yeah, I know,” Starsky said quietly. “But …” He couldn’t explain it. He didn’t think he had to, either. He could tell by the look on Hutch’s face that Hutch understood how much Starsky loved him, even without his words, or maybe because he lacked them.

It had been a tumultuous six months, one filled with as much pain and fear as it had been with love and kindness. They were both at a loss for words, so all Hutch could do to thank him was to step up and take Starsky in his arms. He hugged him with all his might and felt the strength returned to him in kind. Their friendship wasn’t a competition, so he himself should learn to stop suggesting it was. Theirs weren’t gifts in exchange for gifts; they were gratitudes as expressions of love. What Hutch held in his arms just then was all he ever needed.

After their lengthy, tight hug, Hutch then studied the telescope for a minute while he dried his eyes, found his direction, and sportively said, “If we end up sleeping under the stars out there one of these nights, are you going to have a problem with a little man sex mixed into the equation? Or does it all have to be romance with you?”

* * *

Starsky sat, cross-legged and comfortably, in the dirt on the side of a slight incline. Hutch lay near Starsky’s feet, on his side, relatively in a cushion of newly fallen leaves, wild grasses, and soft ground. Together they surveyed the wooded hillside while they relaxed to the natural sounds of a quiet wilderness. Birds sang, insects chimed, and even the blue sky seemed to echo a wild chorus.

Hutch lifted his head to look back over his shoulder and make eye contact with Starsky, then asked, “You enjoying yourself?” He sensed Starsky was deep in thought, too.

“I was thinking about this movie with subtitles that me and Grace watched,” Starsky said, “about two guys fucking in the woods.”

“Why would you have seen a movie like that?” Hutch asked. He returned his gaze to the gradual slope of the hillside below them and scanned the green tree-line.

“Grace wanted to see it,” Starsky replied. Hutch had missed his point and Starsky’s annoyance tinged his tone of voice.

“Why would Grace want to watch a movie like that?”

“I dunno. Something about it showing me that what you and me have isn’t abnormal.”

“Well, it is abnormal,” Hutch replied. “Abnormal means it isn’t normal, and two straight guys having gay sex together isn’t the norm.”

“Maybe I meant so we would know we’re not alone, we’re not the only guys in the world having gay sex with each other—and I don’t just mean gay guys having gay sex with each other.”

Hutch accepted that answer, then asked, “When did you see this movie?”

With an audible exhale, Starsky said, “I don’t know. Some time ago. But none of that matters. I thought maybe you’d seen the movie and you knew what the hell I’m talking about.”

Hutch was amused by Starsky’s perplexed mood. They’d hiked onto the property to spend their time in the fresh air while they waited for the 4:30 bed delivery—and already Starsky was rankled by him. “Why would I watch a movie about two guys fucking in the woods?”

Starsky was too pissed then to answer him. He stared off across the meadow to watch a red-winged blackbird circle in flight.

“More importantly,” Hutch further asked, “why would you?”

“Why would I what?”

“Why would you watch a movie about two guys fucking in the woods?”

“I’d be careful if I were you,” Starsky warned him. “You’re close enough for me to put a foot in your face.”

Hutch looked at him again. “Why are you mad at me?”

“Because you wanted to come on this walk,” Starsky said, looking back into Hutch’s eyes, “and I wanted you to fuck me.”

Hutch returned to his wilderness gazing. “In a chair?” It wasn’t Hutch’s fault that Starsky didn’t get to indulge his whim. “You’re the one who said I couldn’t fuck you on a hardwood floor and all we’ve got for now is a chair.”

“Yeah, but there were other places,” Starsky said. “Like in the car. I thought if you’d seen that movie, you’d appreciate what else we could be doing right about now.”

Hutch didn’t think Starsky was serious. Despite how far they’d hiked, no place in public was safe—not even the car. He looked over his shoulder again at Starsky and got friendlier eye contact that time. “Okay, so find us a bush,” he told him, “and we can reenact a scene from your movie.”

Starsky knew it wasn’t safe, either, and that’s what primarily riled him. Despite that it was private property, who knew who might happen along? Hikers. Hunters. Under his breath, he mumbled, “It isn’t my movie.” Upon reflection, he remembered that he didn’t like how the movie ended, either. “Never mind,” he quietly added. He broke eye contact with Hutch to look off into his life.

“Let’s go back to the cabin,” Hutch suggested. “Maybe we can put those chairs to some use again. I don’t have to anal-sex you. I can blow you, can’t I, the way you did me?” He didn’t plan to get up off the ground until Starsky moved and Starsky didn’t budge. Hutch was relaxed, more than he’d been in a while. The blue sky and the wild grass and the birds in song, alone there with Starsky on the side of a wooded hill, gave him an escape from the trials and tribulations of the past six months and more. He didn’t realize how life-altering it had been until he was in wild country with just his aimless thoughts and his companionship with Starsky to contemplate.

“I guess I can do you standing, too, no?” Hutch lazily added. “Or bent over the chair?”

When Starsky didn’t move, Hutch noticed that Starsky was as relaxed; he simply didn’t want to admit it. It was the reason he didn’t budge when Hutch proposed they return to the cabin. Even for sex, Starsky was in no hurry. Where they were just then was enough. Besides, by the time they returned to the cabin, it wouldn’t be long before the bed would be delivered, and they would feel pressure to perform within that window—when both of them preferred to take their time.

Starsky sensed Hutch’s attention and eventually made eye contact with him. To avoid confessing that he enjoyed the contented nature of their visit on the hillside that day, he explained himself. “I just thought that, if you’d seen that movie, you’d know we’re doing what they did in it.”

Hutch didn’t know. Starsky’s description of the movie led him to believe it had been about more than just two men lying on a hillside together. “You said they fucked each other.”

“I said that’s what the movie was about,” Starsky corrected him. “But in it, they were hanging out together like this. In the woods. Just like this. But they were supposed to be watching sheep.”

“Watching sheep?” Hutch asked. “And yet they fucked each other?”

Despite himself, Starsky laughed. “I think you just destroyed a perfectly good movie.”

“It sounds like porn. How far could I have destroyed it?”

Starsky leaned back on his hands and cocked his head at Hutch. He didn’t want to laugh, but Hutch was uncooperative in a playful sort of way, so Starsky couldn’t repress his smile. “It isn’t porn,” he explained. “It’s, well … now that I’m thinking about it … it’s a love story.”

Starsky’s realization of the movie’s underlying message stunned them both. Hutch was surprised to learn that a movie about two men fornicating in the woods had been a love story and Starsky was surprised because he hadn’t realized until then just how much of an emotional epic the picture had been. For a minute, they were sober and speechless.

“So … on that note,” Hutch said, easing into his words, “you’re saying that what we’ve got going here is a love story.”

Starsky examined Hutch’s notion. “Well, yeah, okay, yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

“Did the movie have a happy ending?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The one guy … he got … killed. Murdered.”

“For fucking a guy?”

“Yeah,” Starsky said solemnly.

Hutch grunted and looked back over the meadow. He didn’t want to dampen their mood with conversation about hate crimes. “So much for the love part,” he mumbled, studying a grey squirrel that had come into view. “What about the other guy?”

“He missed his chance,” Starsky recalled.

“To what?”

“To live a life beyond the lie.”

Hutch lowered his eyes to the ground near him. He picked at a twig and hoped Starsky would abandon his review of the movie—or any comparisons he may have made to their real lives.

“Know what else?” Starsky asked. Hutch didn’t want to know, but Starsky told him anyway. “One of them was dark-haired and the other was a blond.”

Hutch looked up at him. “I don’t want to know which was which. Do me a favor and tell me why you’d call a movie like that a love story.”

“Because they were two guys,” Starsky explained with emphasis. “They crossed the line. They wanted each other and the world wouldn’t let them be; they had to fuck in the woods where nobody could see them. I didn’t say it was a happy love story.”

“How could you with a plot like that?”

Starsky sat forward and rubbed his palms together to wipe off the dirt and debris that had stuck to them. “Anyway,” he said, ignoring Hutch’s comment, “there was this scene where they were in the woods and talked about what they thought.”

Hutch studied Starsky’s face, the line of his nose, the shape of his brows, the dark in his eyes, those lips he’d kissed. He loved Starsky’s face—and his hair and his build. Even the way Starsky was dressed, in jeans and an open-collared denim shirt, pleased Hutch’s visual senses. He wanted nothing more than to gaze at Starsky, to inhale the look of him as Starsky sat there cross-legged in the dirt and returned the eye contact. He wanted to reflect on Starsky’s charisma and his playfulness and his sometimes brute force seriousness, but Starsky had different plans for him, so Hutch surrendered to them. “Is there something you want to say?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Starsky said. He liked Hutch’s tone of voice when Hutch asked that last question. It was inviting and harmless and made Starsky want to speak his mind. Hutch was friendly in his expression and in his body posture, stretched there on the ground near Starsky’s feet, looking up at him with those innocently blue eyes, and patiently waiting. He was masculine and male. Starsky may have been vulnerable there in that wilderness at the edge of a mountain meadow should hikers or hunters happen upon them, but he was flanked by a formidable force, the muscle and willpower of one Ken Hutchinson.

But when he realized that Hutch’s expression had softened into curiosity, he abandoned his inventory and spoke to the question. “The guy who got killed, he wanted more, you know? He wanted more than to live his life in hiding.”

“Do you think I want more, despite what I’ve already told you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you want more?”

“I have more than I deserve already,” Starsky quietly replied. “I’d like to not live my life in hiding, but like you said, it’s just the way it is, I guess. But I don’t want more. It’s you who might want more after I get married, despite what you already said. Life is what happens, right? You won’t want an affair with a married guy.”

“How will it be different from the way things are now or how we’ve already talked about this?”

“It’s an ownership thing. Under the law, she’ll own me then. What do you think about that?”

Hutch lowered his eyes again to stare at the ground before him and into that future Starsky posed. He realized what Starsky had suggested. It would be she, not he, who would make decisions about Starsky’s belongings and his health; it would be she, not he, who would have first rights to Starsky’s children, she who would inherit Starsky’s estate, and she who would be the primary person—under the law—at Starsky’s side throughout his lifetime. Such were the gains of marriage. Ken Hutchinson would be demoted. He lifted his eyes to Starsky’s. “Isn’t that how we expected it would be, long before we got into this between us?”

“Well, yeah,” Starsky said, “but now there’s this ‘between us,’ so it changes things, doesn’t it?”

“Only for me, I guess,” Hutch said solemnly. “But I have a choice to be married, too, don’t forget.”

Starsky made firm eye contact with him. “No, you don’t,” he said, not unkindly. “You’re in love with me. You have no choices.”

“I can be in love with you and still marry someone else.”

“But you don’t need to be married. You said so yourself.”

“Neither do you.”

“I’m going to have kids.”

“You don’t have to be married to have kids,” Hutch said. “Or didn’t they teach you that in sex ed?”

Starsky couldn’t explain it, but he tried anyway, and in trying, he spoke impulsively, without regard to how Hutch might react. “For my kids’ sake, I want to be married,” he said, frustrated. “So they have all the legal protections. And they wouldn’t be legitimate.”

“You mean, illegitimate.”

“Yeah, so they wouldn’t be that, either.” He thought further. “I want kids. That’s something you can’t give me.”

Hutch could belabor the point by further reminding Starsky that same-sex couples, male or female, found ways to have children together, but he understood what Starsky meant—to have babies with the other biological parent and to be a family ‘unit,’ the kind Starsky never had growing up because his father died when he was very young. Hutch let him know he understood him by not saying a word. He also didn’t understand why Starsky said any of what he said while they sprawled there on the side of a hill that overlooked a wild meadow, except that Starsky was impulsive and the intimacy he shared with Hutch right then reminded him of a movie.

Hutch let it go and rolled onto his back. He crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and concentrated on the warm feel of the sun on his face.

“I made you mad,” Starsky said.

“No,” Hutch replied.

“I hurt you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Why are you turning away?”

“I have nothing to say. I hear you, but I have nothing to say. That, and the earth feels good.”

Starsky studied Hutch, there on his back, in the afternoon sunshine, doing what Hutch loved to do, lie on the ground under a blue sky. Starsky would have to accept that he hadn’t angered or hurt Hutch because that’s what Hutch said he hadn’t done. “Well, I’ve got something to say,” he added.

“I’m listening,” Hutch said. He heard birds in the close distance and the sound of an occasional winged insect as it passed, but he focused his attention on Starsky. It was peaceful where they were and he hoped Starsky’s voice would only mellow it further.

Starsky was reflective and almost emotional. He’d been thinking about something since he’d begun his search for the cabin; buying such a gift for Hutch made him look inward and realize all over again just how much the man meant to him. He’d never really told Hutch how he felt, not really, not in the overall scheme of things as they were then. And the scheme of things was what was on his mind.

“You define being in love as two people who are committed to each other—” Starsky began, but he was interrupted.

“Not two people,” Hutch corrected him. “One person can be in love; it doesn’t require the person they’re in love with to be in love back.”

“Okay. So you define being in love as having a desire for only one person—”

“I’m not sure I’d say that, either,” Hutch said. With his eyes closed, he was able to examine his mind more closely. “I think you can be in love with someone and still desire somebody else. I think desire is a separate thing, a biological thing, whereas I think being in love is an emotional commitment, a condition of the heart.”

“A condition of the heart,” Starsky repeated in a low voice. “Then, by that definition, you could say I’m in love with you.”

Hutch almost laughed, but didn’t. Maybe there was a case to be made for how Starsky felt and Hutch was open to knowing it. What he would give to be able to believe Starsky was actually in love with him. “I’m listening,” he repeated.

“I had a girlfriend when I was fifteen,” Starsky reminded him, “that lasted until I was nineteen. Four years.”

“Wasn’t it on-again, off-again?”

“Yeah, but we never saw anybody else when we were broke up. We weren’t apart that long each time, either. But she went to college that last year and a long-distance relationship just wasn’t in the cards, so it finally ended.” He looked out to the tree-line while he fondly recalled his first love. “I joined the police force,” he continued. He liked that Hutch listened, and further that Hutch didn’t watch him while he spoke. It made searching his mind easier somehow. “That’s where I met you.”

Hutch grunted, a pleased sound for a fond memory.

“You remember those first couple of years,” Starsky said, “and how we didn’t get along so well, but we were busy getting our badges and moving up the ladder, so we worked it out. You were married at the time and I was still heartbroken, I guess. I didn’t have much interest in having a girlfriend.”

“Then you took a few bullets, got out of the hospital, and discovered commitment-free sex,” Hutch recalled.

“Yeah, I had the charm and the looks—”

“And quite the ass,” Hutch noted.

“Except you never paid it any attention until this summer.”

“Better late than never.”

“Anyway,” Starsky continued, “I went from woman to woman—with maybe three or four serious girlfriends thrown in, some I even loved—right up until I was slammed by those three guys.”

Like Starsky, Hutch sobered on that citation; somehow it seemed a worse memory than the one they had of Starsky nearly losing his life in a hail of bullets some three years prior. They were quiet for a minute.

“I went from woman to woman,” Starsky finally reiterated, “like a bee to a flower. To a bunch of flowers. I got laid as much as I wanted to. Good sex mostly. Sometimes great sex, sometimes sex I could have done without, but good overall. A rather satisfying sex life I had.”

Hutch didn’t argue.

“I wasn’t out to just fuck them, either,” Starsky defended himself, or rather, to explain himself, as if he had to. “I liked them, too. It wasn’t just about body parts. But I never let myself get emotionally involved. The minute I felt that was about to happen, I’d pull out, no play on words intended.”

Hutch didn’t laugh. He couldn’t count the number of women Starsky had bedded in the past few years since his relationship with Kira went all wrong. Hutch didn’t judge it, but he didn’t find it amusing, either. He imagined Starsky’s inability to be close to a woman had been caused by the loss of his father at such an early age. Starsky had abandonment and trust issues. That’s why it took him so long to trust Hutch all those years ago—but once Starsky did, the trust was implicit and unconditional. Still, Starsky feared Hutch might abandon him, which was why he gave in so much to Hutch, why he gave Hutch the paternal power in their friendship.

Maybe that’s what Starsky now had with Grace, too. He finally met a woman with whom he could be vulnerable—and vulnerability built trust.

But Starsky had a different—and surprising—assessment.

“I got from women the thing I needed from them,” he said, “well, one of the things I needed from them—and the thing you couldn’t give me then.”

Sex.

“I didn’t get as emotionally attached to anybody else for the past decade because I was attached to you,” Starsky said with conviction. He looked back at Hutch. “I had a condition of the heart already.” He didn’t play on words. He wanted Hutch to take him as seriously as he was serious.

Hutch opened his eyes and saw only blue above. He heard a bird sing nearby. He felt Starsky’s presence beside him and felt the strength in Starsky’s words. Starsky’s revelation had escaped even him all those years. He choked back the emotion it caused him, though he couldn’t describe how he felt were he asked.

Starsky was sure of himself. He’d given it dedicated consideration for weeks, almost obsessively retracing every decision he’d made in the first two decades of his adult life. He noticed Hutch had opened his eyes and was speechless. He knew Hutch listened to him and absorbed the depth of his convictions. “What could anyone give me that I didn’t already get from you—except sex?” Starsky asked, but he didn’t look for an answer. The answer was self-evident—which was why Hutch didn’t reply to it, either.

“So,” Starsky continued, “now I get sex from you and the best sex—almost—I’ve ever had. Well, I mean, it is the best sex I’ve ever had; it’s just that I want it to be better.” He realized he’d strayed from his point, but he didn’t want Hutch to misunderstand him or to be offended; Starsky didn’t intend to make it a discussion about the one-sided intercourse they had, or about his desire to be inside Hutch, and he hoped Hutch didn’t think that was his intention, either. “It’s just … don’t get me wrong, I love Grace. She’s one of my closest friends, my second-best friend. She’s a good lover and a kind person and I really can’t imagine my life without her in it. But what I want and need most in life I get from you.”

Hutch closed his eyes again. Those were beautiful words he heard—and the warm tone of voice with which Starsky had said them made them significantly more poignant and profound. He was satisfied.

“So, you see,” Starsky concluded, “there’s still this other thing I can’t get from you, this thing of being married and having kids, you know, my own kids, and being in a family, a normal family, an acceptable family, I guess you might say.” He was frustrated because he didn’t think he explained himself well and he didn’t intend to be so inarticulate. Hutch was a wordsmith and he might take it wrong. Starsky didn’t want that. He tried again. “You’re not a kids person,” he reminded him. “Having babies isn’t anything you ever wanted. But it’s something I’ve always wanted. And it’s something Grace wants. And we want it together.”

“Which is why you’ll have it,” Hutch assured him.

“Which is why I’ll get married,” Starsky echoed, “and why she’ll have all the legal rights.”

Hutch understood.

“But it’s not the way I’d have it,” Starsky said, “if I could make it different. I mean, if I was God, I’d have made it so you and me could be that couple; we’d be able to have babies together. That’s where my heart is. That’s the condition I have.”

Hutch smiled. He didn’t open his eyes, but he did smile. He understood what Starsky told him or what Starsky tried hard to tell him. Starsky didn’t always have the perfect words, but Hutch had known him long enough to read the overall collection of them and to know Starsky’s heart of hearts.

“But that’s not the way the world is,” Starsky said. He knew full well Hutch already knew that. “Or the way nature is, for that matter. So here we are. You’re in love with me because you get from me everything you could possibly need in another person. And I’m in love with you because I get most of what I need from you. There’s another person in my life to make up what you don’t give me, what you can’t give me, what you’re not physically able to give me, but if that was different, I wouldn’t need that other person, either. It would just be you and me.”

He was sorry it couldn’t be different and his sorriness came through in his soft tone of voice.

Hutch opened his eyes, rolled to his belly, and looked up at Starsky, into those sleepy blue eyes, the ones that had such a hint of regret in them. It wasn’t the most telling eye contact they’d ever made; those were reserved for the more profound conversations that defied words, but it was a bonding look between them. Hutch conveyed that he heard and appreciated what Starsky had told him and Starsky knew he’d been heard.

Hutch tidied it for them. “So, with the exception of some minor differences,” he said, “the point you’re making is that I’m in love with you and you’re in love with me.”

Starsky smiled, pleased, and not because Hutch had put it into so few words, but because Hutch recognized Starsky’s message to be authentic. Hutch validated him.

“I like it,” Hutch said. “I like that we’re in love with each other.”

“But I didn’t say it so you’ll reconsider.”

“Reconsider?”

“Yeah, you know, I didn’t say it so you’ll feel better about being in love with me and then let me top you.”

The thought hadn’t even crossed Hutch’s mind. But he realized he needed to clarify something. “You not topping me hasn’t been because I’m in love with you and you aren’t in love with me,” he said. “It’s been because—regardless of how we feel about each other—there are greater forces at play. You just spelled out one such hiccup: Grace will have all the legal rights. My thinking has been that you don’t get all because I don’t get all. I know that sounds selfish, but I’ve never been keen on giving everything I have to this relationship between us, only to end up empty-handed.”

“You’ll never be empty-handed,” Starsky said kindly. “No matter how it is between us, you’ll always have me.”

“That’s not how I meant—”

“Yeah, I know,” Starsky interrupted him. “I hear what you’re sayin’.” He saw sorry in Hutch’s blue eyes, too, the regret that Hutch couldn’t be everything Starsky hoped he’d be. “It doesn’t matter,” he added. “I just wanted you to know what I’ve been thinking.”

“I’ll never break your heart,” Hutch promised.

Starsky didn’t think he’d ever break Hutch’s, but he realized he couldn’t say those words in return. That was Hutch’s point, after all, that greater forces than they could break Hutch’s heart, forces that could overpower Starsky and rip him away from Hutch, at least intimately. He didn’t like it any more than Hutch did. He stared off to the distance as if he could somehow see the future out there and know it before it arrived, but it was unseeable. He sensed Hutch’s patience and looked back at him. “I’ll do everything in my power,” he said to Hutch, “to keep anything from breaking your heart. I’ll do all I can,” he reiterated.

“That’s good enough for me, buddy boy,” Hutch decided.

“Or maybe I should not want to be married and have kids,” Starsky thought aloud.

“You can’t change who you are.”

“Would you rather I didn’t want those things?”

Hutch rose to his hands and knees and crawled the short distance up the incline until he overtook Starsky. He pushed him back against the ground, into the twigs and the grass and the dried leaves. “I’d rather you not change who you are,” he said. He liked the look of Starsky beneath him, there between his legs and his arms, even though they weren’t pressed to the other. He loved Starsky’s face, his haircut, his heavy lidded eyes, that mouth. He looked forward to the contact he was about to make, but he wanted to squelch the anticipation in Starsky’s expression, to answer that question in a way that made Starsky abandon it because he could believe the answer, so Hutch repeated himself. “Don’t change who you are,” he warned him. “Don’t change what you want out of life. I couldn’t live with your sacrifices any more than you could.”

There was no question in Starsky’s mind—not even the hint of one—about how he felt about Ken Hutchinson. And that Ken Hutchinson straddled him there on the side of that hill in the quiet of a peaceful meadow at the edge of a private woods was all Starsky needed to know about how Hutch felt about him in return. The eye contact they made then was the kind that defied words. They understood each other. Maybe it didn’t change the way they’d behave or the decisions they’d make, but it was imprinted on their hearts just how much and how deeply and how profoundly they were bonded.

“Okay?” Hutch asked, seeking closure to the question.

Starsky nodded with his eyes and by the shy smile that appeared on his face.

“Okay,” Hutch then said to end the matter. “Now kiss me like you like me.”

* * *

That kiss on the hill made them anxious to get back to the cabin—which they did, just in time for the bed’s arrival. When Starsky spied the delivery truck filtering through the trees some six hundred feet from the porch, he heard Hutch quietly tell him to ‘take a hike.’ Indignant by the necessity, Starsky quickly hid behind the cabin, set his back against the hard wood surface, and sank to the ground. He knew there could be at least a hundred reasons why two men might have a single queen-sized bed delivered to them in the woods and that none of those reasons meant they were in a sexual relationship with each other, but no one would think beyond what they saw: Two men, alone in the wilderness, having one bed delivered to their cabin. And so what if they were sexually intimate? Whose business was it anyway? Who did it harm?

He chastised himself then because he knew, in a different lifetime, he would have thought the same negative thoughts and passed the same negative judgments. Maybe after he was married and he wore a wedding band, people might not jump to the right conclusion. Maybe he should wear one sooner—just to throw them off track.

From where he sat, he spied the outhouse and cussed himself for not thinking faster; he could have brought the rope and fixed the lock while he waited for the all-clear from Hutch. Instead, he sat, bored, against the back of the cabin, in the wild grass and dried leaves, and sent his thoughts beyond his dismay to what he and Hutch would do as soon as the store truck left the premise.

Hutch helped the two delivery men unload the bed—its frame, mattress, and boxsprings. They asked if they should assemble it for him, but he told him he’d prefer to spend time doing that himself, so they left the bed parts leaning against the wall. Hutch thanked them for the delivery, handed them a $20 tip, and waved them goodbye. After they made the turn onto the highway, he put his finger and thumb into the corners of his mouth and whistled. When he heard Starsky enter the back of the porch, he faced him and said, “So … you come on a whistle. You’re such a good boy, Lassie.”

“Lassie?” Starsky asked, mocking that he’d been patronized. He hit Hutch lightly on the back of his head when he was close enough.

“I couldn’t think of a boy dog,” Hutch defended himself.

“How about Rin-Tin-Tin?”

They continued to chide each other as they entered the cabin. Starsky was anxious to get to the bed, but immediately disappointed when he saw it was still in pieces. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t have them put it together?”

“I wanted them out of here as soon as possible.”

Starsky decided to be glad for that, too. He hated sitting in silence behind the cabin—like some unloved dog abandoned to a chain. Lassie, he mused. He closed and locked the door, and then opened a window that overlooked the porch so he could hear everything outside. “Let’s get started.” He dug his bottle of oil out of his toiletries bag, walked to the mattress, gripped it by a sewn-in handle, and pulled it over onto the floor. It landed with a heavy thud. “This’ll do for now,” he said with a laugh, abandoning the assembly of the bed frame, at least for then. He tossed the bottle on the mattress and then sat on its edge to take off his shoes when he heard the reluctance in Hutch’s voice.

“Yeah, well …” Hutch said.

Two words were enough to make Starsky look up at him, dismayed by Hutch’s hesitation.

Hutch quickly explained before Starsky’s confusion turned to aggravation. “I never got a chance to wash after that initiation you gave me when we arrived here,” he said; he didn’t know any other way to say what he thought. “I mean …”

“What do you mean?” Starsky wondered. “I only had my mouth on you.”

“Yeah,” Hutch agreed with some embarrassment—and then found the courage to finish his thought. “And then I put the old boy back in his cave and baked him for the past six hours.”

“So the perfume will smell all the sweeter,” Starsky imagined when he figured out what Hutch told him. “Is that a problem for you—because it isn’t for me.”

Hutch still hesitated. He didn’t want to be offensive. Or maybe Starsky meant he didn’t plan to orally please him that time, that Hutch would have to be satisfied with intercourse—which would definitely be enough for them both.

Starsky noticed Hutch’s pause, and straightened. “Then wash,” he said. “I told you not to worry about me.”

“So … you won’t blow me then. I mean, I shouldn’t expect or ask for that, right?”

“How’d you get so hung up?”

Hutch didn’t realize he was. But, from Starsky’s question, he understood that he was more careful than was Starsky, and he envied him for that freedom. Still, he was proud of himself to have actually talked to his partner about his intimacy concerns, something he seldom if ever did with women. There they stood, in the big room of that small cabin in the woods, with a mattress at their feet, and talked about the hygiene details of their upcoming sex-making. That was new to Hutch.

“How did I get so hung up?” he asked to repeat the question and hear it again. “Women,” he said, factly. “Years of relationships with women.” That, and years of religious upbringing.

“Yeah, well, I’m no girl,” Starsky said, removing his shoes, “in case it hasn’t been obvious.” He watched Hutch pull off his own shoes and added, “Besides, your wholesome living has been good enough for me, despite where your dick’s been.” He next took off his shirt. “But how’m I going to get you past all this embarrassment shit, hm?”

Hutch unzipped and removed his jeans. “I didn’t realize it was your job.” His erection was already evident and he felt its pressure to be satisfied. The conversation was of little interest to him.

“Well,” Starsky said, “somebody has to do it. I’ll find a way.”

“You do that—and, in the meantime, shut the fuck up.”

They were nude in less than a minute. Excited, Hutch joined Starsky on the sheet-less mattress, straddled his calves, and immediately put his hands on him. That was another thing he never did with women: Bypassed the foreplay. He and Starsky sometimes indulged it, but often they didn’t. This was one of those times. Or maybe the foreplay had been the six hours that led up to that moment—the time they spent talking about a bed, buying a bed, thinking about what they’d do on the bed once they got it, and then finally finding themselves there.

Hutch kissed and licked Starsky’s penis, and drew a deep breath of his scent—which was actually rather pleasant and stimulating to his senses. If he himself smelled half as nice, he wouldn’t worry about Starsky’s experience should Starsky treat him in kind.

Because Starsky wouldn’t get to have the pleasure of penetration, he handed Hutch the small bottle of oil and then lay back on the mattress, closed his eyes, and enjoyed every moment of Hutch’s eager mouth, tongue, and oiled-stroking hand on him. He wished he could finish that way, but if Hutch should climax first, Starsky would have to coax Hutch into resolving it for himself. Starsky seemed to be the more capable one of furthering sex beyond his own satisfaction, so the only real problem he had with a male lover was how abruptly the sex ended when the ejaculates occurred; a woman would have continued to fellate him after her climax if he’d so desired.

But as Hutch’s well-practiced lips and fingers aroused him into a near-bursting erection, he forgot about what was missing. He could only focus on what he had in that moment—and it was powerfully pleasing. He would have gripped the sheet to contain his urgent need for an orgasm, but there wasn’t one, so he dug his fingers into Hutch’s bicep instead.

Hutch obliged the cue to slow down, and then released Starsky from his mouth, but he continued to slowly and more gently caress Starsky’s penis with his fingers. He did likewise to his own in the other. He looked up at Starsky, to the underside of Starsky’s chin, to his profile, to study his closed-eyed face while he listened to his deep pant. Then Hutch returned his visual enjoyment to Starsky’s penis—hard, glistening, and wanting as it was.

After a couple of minutes, Starsky heard his own heavy breathing and laughed at himself. Then he opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Hutch. Seeing Hutch admire his penis made him smile.

“I’m a lot closer than I thought,” he said in a low voice, appreciating how Hutch stalled him, but dismayed by how quickly he could have ended their play that afternoon.

“I can see that,” Hutch said. “And I can feel it, too.” The visual of his oiled hand stroking Starsky’s roused penis also gave Hutch a powerful urge. Starsky wasn’t alone with what he felt and that fueled Hutch’s stimulation; there was no guessing how turned on his lover was.

“And there I was thinking you’d go first,” Starsky said. “I’m not going to last when you fuck me.”

“You and me both,” Hutch said with a quiet laugh. He looked back into Starsky’s eyes and didn’t stop the self-pleasure nor the one he continued to give his partner.

“So what’re we going to do about this?” Starsky asked. He briefly closed his eyes to enjoy the feel of Hutch’s hand. If he let it go for another minute, he could easily climax and he didn’t want to. He wanted to savor it. He forced open his eyes and made contact with Hutch’s again.

Hutch didn’t have the answer Starsky sought. The only thing he could think to do was let it take its natural course, but he didn’t have the words for it. Instead, he followed his drive and took Starsky in his mouth again. Starsky’s grip on his arm intensified and increased Hutch’s own pleasure. Nothing excited him more than Starsky’s sexual appetite. As he listened to his moans grow deeper and more frequent and felt Starsky’s hold on his arm get stronger, he knew how close they both were. He then completely let Starsky go and maneuvered himself between his legs, into a missionary position.

Starsky had to release his grip on Hutch when Hutch reoriented them, but his pleasure was simply altered in kind, not by degree, and he excitedly anticipated Hutch’s entry.

Hutch gripped Starsky’s hips, opened Starsky’s legs with his own, and pulled Starsky’s butt up against his groin. They briefly watched each other’s faces while Hutch searched for the opening, first with his fingers and then with his penis, pushing into him when he sensed success.

“Oh, yeah,” Starsky whispered, closing his eyes to absorb the feel of the penetration.

“Oh, yeah, indeed,” Hutch agreed in a soft voice. He enjoyed the blissful sensation of penetration, too, but he, unlike Starsky, savored the added benefit of getting to watch it.

“I’m not gonna last,” Starsky then said, disappointed and excited at once.

“Neither am I, buddy,” Hutch assured him. “Neither am I.”

* * *

“Have I ever told you—?”

“Yeah,” Hutch said, “so—again—shut the fuck up.”

They had slept for half an hour after their second drain that day and then lightly dozed on the mattress for as long, aware the other was awake. They lay on their backs beside each other, listened to the birds outside, and the utter silence that filled in the spaces of their songs, as much as they listened to the quiet breathing inside the room, their own and each other’s.

Starsky tried again. “Have I ever told you that you’ve got a way with that thing?”

“That thing?”

“Yeah, you know, that decoration between your legs.”

“Oh, that thing,” Hutch said. He knew what Starsky meant, but he enjoyed the banter. He kept his eyes closed and dropped his hand against Starsky’s hip. “Tell me about it.”

“You’ve got a way with it,” Starsky repeated.

“Away with it?”

“A way with it.”

“And what ‘way’ is that?”

“You know how to use it,” Starsky said. He, too, kept his eyes closed and further enjoyed the sound of Hutch’s voice. Its sweet qualities seemed amplified in the tranquility of the remote woods.

“Well, I’ve had it for four decades,” Hutch reminded him. “It’s had some practice. Not as much as yours, but some.”

“Women must like having sex with you, too,” Starsky also decided, “despite their issues with orally pleasuring you.”

“I like to think they did.”

“Well, I mean … there’s a lot of muscle there,” Starsky noted in reference to Hutch’s size, “but you don’t abuse it.”

“Why would I hurt myself?”

Starsky knew Hutch played with him and he rather liked it, but he wished Hutch would let him make his point. “You don’t abuse your lovers with it,” he corrected him, though he knew he didn’t have to. “I mean, you could hurt somebody with that thing.”

“Why would I want to?”

“I’m not saying you’d want to. I’m saying you could hurt somebody just by the nature of its size, you know?”

Hutch finally opened his eyes. He stared at the wooden ceiling above them and examined what Starsky had said. Looking back over his relationships, he did remember times when his girlfriends were actually uncomfortable with penetration, particularly when he vaginally entered them from behind. For some reason, that position was more troublesome for them, perhaps because he was able to go deeper, and deeper was sometimes painful; he hit up against their cervix or uterus. He never did know the reasons. But Starsky had never complained, no matter which position Hutch took him from. “Maybe it’s because you’re built man-tough,” he said. “Or maybe the ass, given its ‘unlimited’ length, can take more. It’s a matter of physics.”

Starsky opened his eyes, rolled to his side to face Hutch, propped his temple in his palm, and prepared to give his own assessment. Or agreement. But he was distracted by what he didn’t expect to remember: Hutch’s nude body beside him. He indulged his visual desire as he scanned Hutch’s height, but also Hutch’s flat stomach and his flaccid penis, nested there against his leg, Hutch’s bared chest and pink nipples, his mussed, blond hair and perfect profile. Starsky also noticed that those blue eyes already looked at him when he made contact; he couldn’t help but smile.

His smile made Hutch smile.

“What?” Hutch finally said when he couldn’t fully read Starsky’s mind. “Do you want to go again?”

Starsky wished he could. He wished Hutch could. “It’s not just a matter of physics,” he said, returning to his original thought. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s that you have a way with that thing. You’re careful,” he said impulsively. He reached for other words because those weren’t sufficient. “You know how to build pleasure with it—without pain. You’ve never once hurt me.”

Starsky could tell he’d hit on some truth because Hutch’s expression softened and seemed pleased with his discovery. Starsky continued. “You have a careful entry,” he recalled. He then cupped Hutch’s scrotum to bring their attention fully to Hutch’s sex-maker. “And then, once in, you build slowly—and there’s a lot of you to feel. The fullness has its own pleasure.”

Hutch was intrigued. He tilted his head to get a better angle of Starsky’s already whiskering face and to read the authenticity in those blue eyes. Then he waited to hear what else Starsky would say while he fought the distraction Starsky’s hand caused him between his legs.

“Your length makes the stroke inside me more spectacular, too,” Starsky told him.

Hutch couldn’t help himself. Starsky’s description was too subjective. “More spectacular in relation to what?”

“In relation to what?”

“Yeah. Whose other stroke are you comparing it to?”

Starsky frowned. It wasn’t what he intended. “So can’t I have had another experience that lets me appreciate the ones I have with you? If I tell you you’re the best lover I’ve ever had, are you going to feel jealous about all those women, too? I mean, I had to have other lovers to know a good one from a bad one, don’t I?”

“Was Adam a bad lover?” Hutch asked. Starsky’s description that day in Jade’s office of his sex with Adam had made Hutch think otherwise, but, of course, that was before Hutch had intercourse with Starsky, so maybe Starsky now had something to compare, and that’s what Starsky meant.

Starsky dropped his hand to the mattress. He didn’t want to be intimate with Hutch when he talked about Adam. And he didn’t want to talk about Adam, either, but he was just as afraid not to. He drove home as much sincerity as he could from his eyes into Hutch’s blue ones and said, “It’s just a fact that the first time is going to be unique. I’ll bet you thought, like I did, that the very first time we got laid as kids, we thought it was the be-all and end-all of our lives, didn’t we? But with experience, we learn the difference between a good lay and a not-so-good lay.”

“So Adam was a gratifying first time, but not-so-good a lay, is that what you’re telling me?”

“What I’m telling you is that you have a special way with that thing of yours, that’s all.” Starsky was frustrated, but he was also anxious about where the conversation had inadvertently taken them. He didn’t want a fight, especially not in that cabin wilderness, nor on Hutch’s birthday. Sometimes Starsky’s mouth got him into trouble, but the only way he knew to get around it was to put the burden back on Hutch. “Why do you wanna talk about Adam? We were having a perfectly beautiful day up here until now.”

Only then did Hutch realize how uncomfortable he’d made Starsky, so he answered the question as directly as he could. “I want to know how bad a lay Adam was. It’s my birthday. Go ahead. Lie to me.”

“Is that what you’re fishing for? I’m not going to lie to you, but the one thing I didn’t tell you and Jade that day was that Adam isn’t all that big, if you know what I mean.”

“How big is he?”

“He’s not big,” Starsky repeated. “He’s smaller than me.”

“In length or girth?”

“Both.”

“Okay,” Hutch said, pleased, but not satisfied. “So?”

“So his stroke wasn’t nearly as good as yours. Bigger is better.”

“Yeah?” Hutch was amused. “You like the way I fuck you more than the way he did?”

“God, yeah. But, c’mon, you already know that.”

“Well, I know that you like me more than you like him. And I know that the like you have for me makes this a more rewarding experience for you in a different kind of way than just sexually. But only now am I hearing that you actually like my technique better, too.”

Starsky squeezed one of Hutch’s nipples and looked into his eyes. “I like your stroke,” he reiterated. “It’s long; I get to feel the entry for longer and I get to feel the exit for longer. Those are really nice sensations. I can’t even describe them. And your dick is big around,” he continued, not leaving eye contact with a rather obviously pleased Hutch, “so it fills me up more; it’s a fuller feeling. Combined, the stroke and the fullness make me … happier.”

Hutch liked what he heard. He also liked the sensation Starsky gave his nipple. He thought he’d kiss Starsky, but he could tell Starsky had more to say.

“It’s not just the physics of it,” Starsky repeated. His use of the word ‘physics’ in that instance made Hutch smile—unwittingly making Starsky think he’d said something wrong. He then laughed with Hutch about it, though he didn’t know why that particular word was inaccurate. They understood what Starsky meant and that was what mattered. Still, it didn’t stop Starsky from gently slapping Hutch’s hand to make him stop smiling. “Don’t make fun of me,” he said.

Hutch scratched Starsky’s haired chest to reassure him. “You’re adorable,” he said. “Can’t I be pleased by that?”

“Adorable?” Starsky mocked. “Like a baby seal?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Hutch joked. He dismayed Starsky, so he quickly said, “C’mon. Finish your thought. You know I love you.”

“Exactly,” Starsky said. He held Hutch’s chin to force Hutch to stay connected with him by way of their eyes. “I know you love me. It comes through in the way you fuck me. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The physics is only part of it. It feels good just by its nature, you know? You’re a big boy and big has its plusses. But you could easily hurt me with that thing, and yet you don’t. You have a gentle way in, and a loving way of being in there, and an easy retreat.” He noticed the light-reflected blue in Hutch’s eyes because they looked at him so intently. “And yet you still make me feel like I’ve had a good, hard … time. You’ve got some mighty powerful thrusts behind that machine.”

“And that’s a good thing,” Hutch assumed. He was drawn into the look in Starsky’s eyes and how important it was to him to tell Hutch what he did.

“Yeah,” Starsky said with emphasis. “There’s really nothing else like it. And what makes it so good, other than the physics of it, is that it’s you doing that to me. I like that the person who’s giving me this incredibly amazing sex is you. Of all the people in all the world, it’s you. And of all the people in all the world, the only one I want doing that to me is you, too. You’re it, cowboy. Get used to it.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Hutch said softly. He thought about Starsky’s conviction and understood it because he felt likewise about the sexual pleasure Starsky gave him. He liked the reminder of Starsky’s emotional investment and proved it with a smile.

Starsky then tousled Hutch’s hair. “Enough of the mush,” he said. “I just wanted you to know you’ve got a way with that thing.”

“Point made, point taken,” Hutch said.

“So let’s go back to town,” Starsky urged him, “and get the things we need for you to teach me how to cook something.”

Hutch reluctantly sat up to look for his clothes. “And let’s see how good we are at not being seen by those guys who delivered the bed.”

Starsky stalled. He wanted Hutch to get more out of their relationship than Hutch got. He still didn’t want Hutch to have to hide what they had or what he felt for Starsky from everybody. “Maybe we can find ways to stop worrying about that,” he solemnly said.

It was Starsky’s tone of voice that stopped Hutch from dressing, Starsky’s seriousness and regret. He looked back at him to read more clearly what drove his remark. Starsky appeared sincere and glad that Hutch had heard him.

“We have to protect us,” Hutch reminded him. “No one else will.”

“I get that,” Starsky said. “No one knows better than me about that.” He studied Hutch’s face and blue eyes, his almost white blond hair, his bared and strong chest, the muscle in his arms, the thickness of his legs, his overall imposing height and unmovable weight. Hutch was a beautiful man, a fact Starsky had always known, but Hutch was also formidable. He would desire Hutch for the rest of his days and he didn’t want to make them watch themselves simply because he himself had made a grave error in judgment when he opened the door that night and enabled those men to easily subdue him.

“But maybe it’s about being more aware is all,” Starsky said. “I mean, I don’t want us to get paranoid or anything, but maybe we learn how to be more watchful, the way we are when we’re anywhere and looking out for everybody else. Now we learn to look out for us, too. We don’t watch ourselves; we watch them.”

Hutch liked the idea. Maybe Starsky was right. They needed to be cognizant of the mindsets among them that would do them harm. “Okay,” he finally agreed. “So let’s go to town and get pancake mix.”

Starsky then dressed, but he had another request. “Don’t teach me how to make pancakes,” he said. “I want you to always make those for me. Teach me something romantic … the kind of thing you’d make for the love of your life.”

The love of Hutch’s life was Starsky.

* * *

First, they showered—themselves and each other. Then they assembled the bed—complete with its box springs, sheets, blankets, and pillows—before they drove back to town to get propane, batteries—and more food. While there, they were keen to the eyes of others, but they didn’t let it stop them from being together in the aisles at the supermarket or at the outdoor supplies store. It was a small step in a small town, but it was a step nonetheless. Starsky enjoyed the time with Hutch, out in public like that, the way it used to be before they got into the sex between them. Life was returning to normal and that had a more healing effect on Starsky than even he knew at the time.

They packed up the car with the things they bought, and returned to the cabin, mesmerized by the view of the scenery along the way as much as the natural closing of the day. When they walked through the door, together, they paused, each on their own time, separately, to admire the bed they’d assembled—and to briefly think about the pending sunset and what it would again bring them on that brand new mattress of theirs.

“Do you think about sex as much as I do?” Starsky asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Hutch replied.

And then they laughed at each other.

While Hutch set up the kitchen with their new supplies, Starsky busied himself with the operation of the portable grill and its accompanying propane tank. They were wordless while they worked. Hutch made executive decisions about where to put the few pots and pans they’d bought, the utensils and pantry items, and where to store the spices, and Starsky whistled each time he mastered the next step in the instructions manual. “Damn, I’m good,” he’d say. They made progress.

Hutch then gave Starsky his first cooking lesson—which consisted of an organic salad, a light pasta dish with sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and sautéd mushrooms, and a side dish of steamed and seasoned asparagus. He guided Starsky through each step, from boiling the water and cooking the pasta, to slicing and chopping the vegetables for the salad. But Hutch didn’t help him choose the correct utensils; he forced Starsky to figure those out on his own.

Starsky learned by doing, not by example, which made him rather proud of himself when he first laid eyes on the finished green salad in that big white plastic bowl. It was lush with three different leafy lettuces, bright red-ripened tomatoes, crisp green bell peppers, thinly sliced mushrooms, and light green avocado. He doused it with a pre-made pear-flavored dressing and stood back to admire it. “Holy shit,” he said, and then whistled again through his teeth. “I actually made that.”

“You actually did,” Hutch said, proudly smiling at him. “And I’m betting it tastes as good as it looks.”

Starsky did likewise with the pasta, steamed asparagus, and garlic bread. He never got frustrated; he was playful and too excited about the accomplishments he made and the motivating thoughts of producing such a meal to get flustered when he didn’t always understand what Hutch meant, such as the difference between slicing and dicing. But he persevered and the end result was admirable.

The cooling outside temperatures eventually forced them to lock the door and shut the windows, and then they sat in the two wooden chairs at the small patio table they’d bought and centered in the room near the foot of the bed. Starsky served them their portions while Hutch uncorked the wine bottle and poured a single drink; sharing one glass had become a ritual between them.

“Much better than I expected,” Hutch told him after he ate from each of the dishes Starsky had made. He especially appreciated the organic salad. “I mean, given that we didn’t really have a proper stove or the best tools,” he said, “this came out surprisingly good. Must be you have a secret knack for it.”

“Maybe so,” Starsky said. He too loved every bite he swallowed. “But what would you do to make it better?”

“Nothing,” Hutch said. “Seriously. It’s good. You did good, Pierre.”

“Pierre?”

“Aren’t most famous chefs from France?” Hutch asked with a shrug.

“How the fuck would I know?”

“You wouldn’t, so let’s just say I’m really proud of you.”

Starsky lifted the wine glass and winked at him. “Then, Happy Birthday, Man O Mine.”

Hutch had forgotten it was his birthday because he’d spent part of the day secretly preparing a gift for Starsky. “Thank you, Star-Starsk-Starsky,” he said, humbly. “You gave me one hell of a party.”

“It isn’t over,” Starsky reminded him. He sipped wine and then handed Hutch the glass to finish the toast.

“Oh, I’m well aware it isn’t over,” Hutch said.

That was another thing they appreciated about having a male lover: Promises of sex later were never broken.

They ate hungrily and savored every bite until they consumed all the food. Afterward, Starsky took the dishes to the tub in the kitchen and brought back a birthday cake with unlit candles.

“Tell me you didn’t,” Hutch said, laughing. “Damn, boy, why are you always calling me the mush?”

Starsky set the chocolate-iced cake on the table between them and lit each candle with a match.

“How did you manage to sneak this past me?” Hutch wondered. His eyes were filled with gratitude for Starsky and his own desire for birthday cake. He was further brightened by the candlelights.

“I got it earlier,” Starsky said, “when you were busy getting the bed”—and why he hadn’t forgotten to buy matches when he bought room candles.

“So, this whole day was one big romance on your part for my birthday,” Hutch realized. “Can I deduct from it, then, that you didn’t ask me to teach you how to prepare a special meal for Grace, but for me?”

Starsky winked at him and flashed that genuinely beautiful smile. “What a detective you are,” he commented. “Besides, I never said I wanted to make something for Grace. I said I wanted to learn how to make something for the love of your life.”

“The love of my life is you.”

Starsky realized his mistake. “Well, I meant the love of my life, but I never said Grace. I wanted to make something for you, for the birthday boy, for my hero.”

Hutch was touched; it was he who had assumed. It left him speechless.

In Hutch’s silence, Starsky quickly broke into ‘Happy Birthday,’ enjoying Hutch’s pleased smile with each word he sang. “I’m not the singer between us,” he said to Hutch afterward, as if he had to remind him, “so that’ll have to do.” He then encouraged Hutch to make a wish and blow out the candles, for which Starsky applauded him and then sliced up the cake. They ate some of that, too.

Contented, they sat at the table for a while and talked about whatever came to mind until it got nearly too dark to see each other. Hutch then assembled two of the battery-operated lanterns and strategically placed them on either side of the main room while Starsky lit the room candles and did likewise. In the dimmer kitchen area, they rinsed the dishes and put the remaining perishable food into the coolers. Eventually, they found themselves at the table again, sipping wine together, while the sounds of crickets, nocturnal insects, and bullfrogs from the nearby stream played background music for them outside the closed windows.

It had been—and continued to be—a satisfying day. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a birthday quite like this one,” Hutch admitted. He had been overwhelmed: The sexual favor Starsky gave him that morning. A 26-acre wilderness property. The delicious, homemade meal, prepared with all the love in the world for him.

Starsky himself.

Starsky looked at him from above the flame of the candle centered on the table, and then pushed it aside so he could better see Hutch’s face, aglow the way it was. “You’re beautiful even in low light,” he affectionately said.

“So are you, Sparky,” Hutch said with a wink.

Starsky sometimes thought he was a beautiful person, too, but Hutch was also outwardly beautiful. They both knew it. And where Hutch excelled in beauty, Starsky made up in charm.

“Seriously,” Hutch said. “You’re beautiful. You had to think all this through—from the purchase of this property to the candles on the cake. If I could be half as thoughtful as you have been—”

“A friend of mine once said this friendship isn’t a contest.”

Hutch had to eat his own words. He then leaned over the side of his chair, lifted a small brown paper bag from the floor, and set it on the table. “But I got you a present just the same.”

“You got me a present? On your birthday?”

“Sure,” Hutch said. “Why not? It’s my birthday. I get to do whatever I want, right?”

“I suppose,” Starsky said. He was almost afraid to look in the bag. Maybe it was a gag gift. He didn’t feel excited and he didn’t move. He didn’t want to be fooled.

“Go on,” Hutch encouraged him. “It doesn’t bite.”

Starsky still wasn’t certain and he gave Hutch an uncertain look.

“I guarantee you’ll like it,” Hutch said. “C’mon, you don’t really think I’m going to end this day with something to patronize you, do you? Starsky, you bought me—us—a twenty-six acre wilderness with a cabin in the woods on a mountain of trees and streams and birds and—”

Before he could finish his list, Starsky retrieved the bag. He trusted Hutch’s tone of voice more than he did Hutch’s words at that minute and Hutch sounded genuine. Inside the paper bag was a crumpled piece of newspaper, serving as wrapping tissue, which he removed and let drop to the floor. At first he couldn’t decipher what lay in the bottom of the bag, but he soon recognized it as the six-foot piece of white cotton rope Hutch had made him buy. He reached in and pulled it out—only to discover that it had been cut into four segments.

He quizzically looked at Hutch. “You want me to repair the outhouse?”

“I didn’t buy it for the outhouse,” Hutch confessed. “I haven’t even seen the outhouse.”

In fact, they used trees for privacy when they relieved themselves outside that day.

Starsky held up a piece of rope and studied it, not sure why Hutch would lie to him about the outhouse. Then he looked at Hutch again. “I don’t get it,” he said.

“There’s nothing to get,” Hutch replied. “They’re yours; a gift from me.”

“But I mean I don’t get it. What am I supposed to do with these?”

Hutch mocked sheepishness and shrugged. “I guess you do with them whatever you want to do with them. What would you do with four pieces of rope?”

Starsky dropped the rope into the bag and settled against the back of his chair. For the life of him, in that suspended moment, he couldn’t figure out why Hutch would have insisted he buy a six-foot piece of cotton rope on the excuse he needed it to fix an outhouse door Hutch had never even seen. And then Hutch gave that rope to him—in pieces. The scissors were purchased to cut rope—Starsky understood that then—into four segments. What would he do with four pieces of 18-inch ropes? What could he do?

He looked again at Hutch to let him know he still didn’t understand, but it was the expression on Hutch’s face that time that gave Starsky his first clue. Hutch appeared almost, well, timid, as if he’d just given Starsky permission to take the lead into a daring adventure. Starsky didn’t have a conscious reaction; his was purely sexual, a pang of a primal urge that made him look more deeply into Hutch’s gesture. Did he read the man right? Was the gift somehow related to sex? He remembered flippantly confessing once to a bondage fantasy in Jade’s office, of tying Hutch to a bed and having his way with him. That couldn’t have been what Hutch intended, was it?

Or maybe Hutch meant he’d use them on Starsky. “These are for you to use,” Starsky said, “right?”

“I got them for you,” Hutch reiterated. “I have no use for rope. Despite what you say, I’m no cowboy.”

Starsky then shifted his eyes to the bed. Perhaps he would find his next clue there. And he did. Only then did he realize that the bed Hutch had purchased—the same bed Hutch had been adamant that he alone got to choose and buy—was a bed whose head and foot boards were made of posts with slats that could serve as anchors onto which ropes could be tied. It wasn’t Hutch’s fantasy that he tie Starsky down; it was Starsky’s to hold Hutch in bondage. In fact, Hutch probably couldn’t tie Starsky up even if Starsky wanted him to; it would have been too close to the rape ordeal Starsky had endured—that, and Hutch’s own abusive behavior that first night they’d entered intercourse together—and Hutch’s nature and Hutch’s guilt wouldn’t allow him to play it out.

Besides, it was Hutch’s words, only a minute earlier, that gave Starsky permission to do so: “What would you do with four pieces of rope?”

Starsky shifted his eyes back to Hutch’s and noticed Hutch’s new expression, this one that said, “Do you get it now, lover boy?”

Starsky felt his erection emerge before he could even find his words. “Are you sure you want to do this?” He had to know for certain. He wanted to rebuild trust with Hutch, not destroy it—especially with an assumption as serious as that one.

Hutch eased into a smile. “Remember that day we were in Jade’s office and I confessed to being in love with you? We stood at the window later and you said we ought to rent a cabin to have our own private place.”

Starsky didn’t speak; he was too curious and already too aroused to have conversation. The idea of tying Detective Ken Hutchinson to a bed and penetrating him, of having his sexual fantasy turned into reality, overwhelmed him.

“Well,” Hutch added, “you said something profound that day. You said you felt sorry for me because I didn’t get to experience you the way you experience me.”

Starsky remembered. But he’d forced himself to abandon the idea once he purged it because he never thought he’d live to see it.

“When you were confused about the difference between forcible rape and make-believe force,” Hutch reminded him, “back when you were crawling out from under what had happened to you, you were upset with yourself because you had enjoyed bondage with women.”

“Well, not as a rule,” Starsky mumbled. “Mostly I was a lover, not a slave driver.”

“That being true, you’ve since said you’ve had impulses to tie me down and fuck me.”

Starsky couldn’t argue with him; it was also true, after all. He was keenly aware then that the only thing between those ropes in that bag on the table and blond, blue-eyed Ken Hutchinson tied stark-naked and helpless to the bed in the room was how to get him there.

“I didn’t want my pettiness,” Hutch concluded, “to get in the way of our experiences—yours or mine. That, and I’d like to experience you the way you experience me. So, here we are, in the cabin beyond my wildest dreams with the place and the opportunity to live yours. You have my permission.”

“What about your concern that you’re giving up everything to our romance? I mean, you said you didn’t want to be in love with me and have given it all to us only to have me leave this part of the relationship in the long run. That’s still your fear, isn’t it?”

“It is. But sometimes we have to face our fears.”

“I hope you believe I’ll never betray you again.”

“You didn’t betray me. But I also want to do this for the other reason I just gave you—that I don’t want to be in the way of us. I came to that decision before we had our little talk earlier today—and I’m not backing away from it.”

It was Starsky’s turn to be speechless. Hutch had planned his own birthday all along, too, without Starsky knowing he had. He’d asked Starsky to buy that rope and those scissors before they spent time on the hill, before Starsky told him he was in love with Hutch by his own definition.

“Any questions?” Hutch asked when Starsky’s silence lengthened.

“Yeah,” Starsky said, easing into one, “do you want a safe word?”

“A safe word?”

“A word you use to end whatever we’re doing—one we both take seriously so there’s no question about where the lines are. It works as an immediate stop. That way you won’t have to ever feel …”

“What? feel what?”

“Raped,” Starsky said under his breath.

“I won’t feel raped,” Hutch replied, sorry Starsky would think such a thing. “You’re not capable of rape.”

“You might misread me.”

“I won’t misread you. You want this. I want this. What’s to misread? You won’t hurt me, right?”

“Not on purpose. Not by having sex, anyway. But you know how easily you get offended by things I do and say.”

“I’ll be strong,” Hutch promised. “I’ll keep my mind on your intent and your intentions are always good.”

Such faith Hutch had in him. “Okay, then. Get ravaged at your own risk,” Starsky said, removing the offer from the table for a safe word. He was on his way to figuring out how to get his lover on the bed, tied to it, no less. “Do you know if these ropes are even long enough?”

“To do what?” Hutch innocently replied, but he knew that wasn’t the answer Starsky expected. Hutch simply wanted to play the game with him—from its humble beginning to its glorious end.

Starsky rose from his chair with the paper bag in hand. As he pretended to walk past Hutch to the bed—as if to determine whether the ropes could serve their purpose—he ambushed him. He used his dominant and stronger left hand to skillfully grab Hutch’s right wrist and then shoved Hutch forward in his chair, his shoulder against Hutch’s shoulder, to quickly pin Hutch’s forearm to his lower back. Nine years on the police force had finally paid off, he silently laughed.

Hutch laughed, too, but audibly, when he realized he’d been caught—that suddenly and that unsuspectingly. But he didn’t take it seriously until he tried to push Starsky away and get his arm back in front of him. He couldn’t. When he wrestled him, Starsky quite firmly raised Hutch’s arm higher into his back and caused him real life pain. “Hey,” Hutch said. “That hurts.”

“Well, if it didn’t,” Starsky explained, “what would be the point?” He really didn’t want to hurt Hutch, and felt bad for doing so. He froze then and waited for Hutch to surrender—that was the way it was supposed to go, after all—and which Hutch then did.

He again used laughter to reason with Starsky. “C’mon. I’ll do this with you,” he swore.

“I’m not taking any chances,” Starsky said. He believed Hutch had been sincere when he gave his permission, but Starsky’s insecurity made him afraid his fantasy would never come to fruition because Hutch wouldn’t want to play when reality set in. “If I’m only going to get killed for this afterward,” he explained, “it’s going to have gone down the way I wanted it to.”

“You’re not going to get killed,” Hutch promised. He was sure of it even if Starsky wasn’t. “You have my full participation. Which part of that aren’t you hearing?”

“The part where you change your mind,” Starsky said with a laugh. He kept a firm hold on Hutch’s arm. He didn’t dare let up, least of all then.

Hutch seriously hadn’t considered that their evening to fulfill Starsky’s fantasy would have begun that quickly or that abruptly or that unexpectedly. He had been immediately disarmed and it initially dismayed him. He’d had his own fantasy thoughts about being tied to a bed under Starsky’s appetite—ever since Starsky had talked about it with him that day with Jade—but he didn’t expect it would have caused him any pain, as his arm, pinned to his back just then, had. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me,” Hutch reminded him.

“If you don’t fight me, you won’t hurt yourself,” Starsky advised him. “But I haven’t hurt you—and I won’t hurt you,” he said emphatically, “if you do what I say. So, get up and come to the bed with me. Do it with or without pain, but you’re going to do it, so the choice of whether it hurts or not is your doing, not mine.”

Hutch was both amused by Starsky’s seriousness and alarmed by it. He didn’t want Starsky to take it too seriously, but he didn’t want Starsky to think he wouldn’t cooperate, either. It had been his intention all along. “I was going to go with you anyway,” Hutch replied. He dutifully stood nonetheless and, physically controlled by Starsky the way they had often controlled real life suspects, he was walked to the bed, and more specifically to its headboard. There, and still holding firmly to Hutch with one hand, Starsky pinned Hutch to the mattress, using his body as a weight against him to keep Hutch from turning enough to get his arm back.

Starsky then removed a rope from the bag in his other. He looped a noose around Hutch’s left wrist, and then secured a fixed knot, using one hand, to a bed post near the headboard’s center. It took him a minute. Hutch could have possibly wrestled away from him by then, but Hutch didn’t try—at least not then, not until the knot was actually tightened. When Hutch did resist, whether he sincerely resisted or because he played the game to please Starsky, Starsky ratcheted Hutch’s arm higher onto his back, causing him enough discomfort to surrender. “I told you you’d hurt yourself if you don’t cooperate with me,” he said.

“Yeah, but you don’t have to try so hard,” Hutch implored him.

“Don’t I?”

Starsky’s erection pressed for release from his jeans. He couldn’t wait to use it, but the pleasure he got out of forcing Hutch onto the bed and tying him there was all he needed in those first minutes. Dreams coming true had to be savored like a fine wine. He couldn’t remember a time when he felt that intensely aroused as quickly as he did then. And who knew if he’d ever get to play that game again?

Taking advantage of the fact that one of Hutch’s hands was already immobilized, Starsky leaned his entire body into him. The strength of his weight forced Hutch to crawl onto the bed in front of him and to lie on his stomach. Starsky then maneuvered Hutch’s arm from behind his back to tie his free wrist to a neighboring headboard post. The transition enabled Hutch to wrestle with him—but Starsky expected it; he pushed his knee into Hutch’s lower back, firmly, enough that Hutch simply couldn’t fully free himself without causing self-harm.

Wrestle, he did, though. He writhed his entire body, not just his hands and wrists, to rid himself of the ties that bound him—and of Starsky himself. If he could maneuver Starsky into the right position, he could thwart him with his legs instead, or throw Starsky off him, maybe even to the floor if he had to. But none of it worked. His own struggle made him laugh; yet, the more he failed, the sooner his laughter gave way to grunts of protest and disappointment.

And so it was that Hutch was undeniably fastened to the bed he’d bought, face down, his cheek pressed into several pillows, and both of his hands tied to the headboard. He no longer laughed. Somehow it wasn’t funny—nor really all that fun in those initial minutes. Imagining being helpless was one thing; actually being helpless turned out to be another. Maybe Starsky had a better understanding of changing one’s mind in the middle of the game, and that’s why he’d offered Hutch a safe word.

But it was too late. Weakened purely by the physical position in which he’d found himself, Hutch could only wait for the next opportunity to escape his restraints—as if there would be one. Or as if he could. It wasn’t that he completely wanted to, but to give Starsky what Starsky needed, he also had to try.

“If you kick me,” Starsky warned his partner, “I’ll happily tie your feet, too.” He straddled Hutch and kept him from turning over beneath him with his weight and his determination. “You’ll leave me no choice.”

Hutch didn’t doubt him. Something in Starsky’s assertiveness made some of what Hutch felt and some of what Hutch did more serious than play. “I think we’re supposed to have a safe word,” he said. He’d tried so hard to break free, twisting his wrists every which way, that the ropes had lightly abraded his skin. He didn’t want to worsen his injuries—after all, they were ones he’d caused himself—so he gave in.

“Too late,” Starsky said about a safe word. “You can’t make one up in the middle of the thing. You won’t be believed.” He felt Hutch drop his weight into the mattress beneath him, and praised him. “But you’re such a good boy,” he whispered, “you just do what you’re told and you won’t need a safe word.” Still, he reinforced the knots; the ropes were long enough to create secondary ones, and he wanted to make sure Hutch couldn’t get a fist free with which to hit him.

“C’mon,” Hutch encouraged him, “you don’t have to be this serious about it.”

Starsky didn’t laugh, though he wanted to. He felt quite playful, but didn’t want Hutch to know that. He was rather aroused and aching to enjoy the flesh contact he would make, and he wanted the experience to last, too. It was a lesson in discipline for him. He didn’t have intent to harm Hutch, either—nor to recreate the terrible things done to himself when he was in such a position, controlled by someone else’s muscle. He was purely excited about the prospect—one he had lived with for months—to have penetrating intercourse with the person he most wanted it with. He’d finally been given his chance. To Starsky, that was serious.

He sat over Hutch’s thighs, then lowered himself to his elbows to be near Hutch’s ear, and spoke with conviction. “If you’ll just let yourself go,” he said, “you’ll have as much fun as I will. You’ll see.”

It was only when Hutch felt Starsky’s erection pressed through his jeans into the backs of his thighs that he realized he had one himself. Starsky’s aggressive play was actually titillating, more than he had imagined it would be. “I’m doing my best,” he said, about letting go.

“Do better,” Starsky suggested. “I can still feel how tense you are. Relax and do us both a favor, okay?”

Hutch hoped to completely surrender without apprehension—and thought he could—but the situation had happened too fast for him. He didn’t expect to be purely taken; he wanted that first time to recognize his emotional investment, too. Would Starsky give him that chance? He wasn’t certain. When Starsky lifted away from him and scooted back on the mattress, Hutch was sure Starsky wouldn’t emotionally be there for him. Starsky was on a mission.

He untied and removed Hutch’s shoes and then his socks, handling each foot with a firmness that conveyed his strong determination. It sent the message to Hutch that he could easily have his feet tied if he resisted, so he didn’t. He allowed Starsky the time to undress him. Besides, despite his apprehensions, the experience could only end in his pleasure. He could already feel it in his hard erection, the one he had pressed to the mattress inside his jeans, the one that ached for as much sensual contact with his lover as did Starsky’s.

Starsky realized he’d forgotten their bottle of oil, so he slid off the bed to retrieve the small one from his travel bag, where he’d returned it earlier, and used the opportunity to take off his own shoes and socks, to unbutton his shirt, and to release the snap at the top of his jeans. He didn’t want to completely undress just then; he was afraid he’d take things to their end too quickly and he sorely wanted to enjoy the journey. Only the sounds of frogs and crickets outside were heard. It was pleasantly quiet in the cabin; the silence gave their intimacy an added purpose: No one was around to help Hutch out of his predicament.

Starsky took a minute to savor the view before him in the warm candlelight: That beautifully blond and blue-eyed Hutch, Starsky’s closest friend of ten years and his lover for only a brief time, was tied to the wooden bed by each wrist, his profiled face pressed into cushioning pillows, a soft blanket and comforter to cradle him, with just his ability to make sound his only weapon. Starsky had consciously and unconsciously longed for that moment, to get Hutch to a place and into a position where they could complete each sex act similarly, to know in his heart and with his body how it felt to be inside the man—the way the man had often been inside him.

How would that feel? What would it look like? He imagined Hutch without his jeans, lying there as helplessly, but accessible to him. He pictured Hutch’s bared and hairless buttocks aglow in the candlelight, each smooth cheek defining its inviting shape and hiding its desired asset, the tight entrance into which Starsky would bury his own penis, deeply and with free will. The idea made Starsky ache. He knew how easily he could fulfill that fantasy—and how quickly, too—but he wanted to wait. The stall killed him and yet it also drove him.

He crawled back onto the bed on his hands and knees. Just the sound of his movement on the mattress and the rub of his jeans against the blanket were heard inside the cabin. Those things, and their breathing, which was barely audible; Starsky’s more noticeable and faster. He straddled Hutch again, but didn’t touch him. Then he reached beneath Hutch, between the mattress and Hutch’s hips, to unzip his jeans. Hutch didn’t help him.

Starsky could see that Hutch stared at the neighboring wall, so he kept his eye on Hutch’s face when he slapped Hutch’s clothed butt with the open palm of his hand. He noticed Hutch’s responsive blink and heard the abrupt grunt Hutch made. The flinch pleased him. “Are you running away from me,” Starsky asked, “or are you going to be a bad boy and help me?”

“You’re the bad boy,” Hutch reminded him. “None of this was my idea.”

“I beg to differ,” Starsky said, laughing.

“Beg away.”

“You’re the one who had me buy the rope.”

“To appease your wants,” Hutch said defensively.

Starsky reached again between the mattress and Hutch’s hip to gain access to the zipper, but still Hutch didn’t help him, so he slapped Hutch, harder that time. He got the same grunt—as well as a disbelieving laugh—and upped his reprimand. “C’mon,” he said plaintively, “play the game with me, will ya? You’ll hurt my feelings if you make me beg for it.”

When he attempted again to reach Hutch’s zipper, Hutch slightly lifted his hips from the mattress to allow Starsky the access, but not enough to enable Starsky to release the button at the waistband. Starsky ordered Hutch to lift higher, and Hutch obeyed, but it still didn’t give Starsky the room he needed.

“Get up on your knees,” he told him, and he pulled at Hutch’s hips to encourage the maneuver.

Hutch did as instructed, despite the awkwardness of the position he was in, his arms stretched the way they were, and his wrists tied so snugly. He feared Starsky would have punched him otherwise, so he did his best to rise to his knees with his cheek still pressed in the pillows; it was the only comfort he got. He was able to give Starsky all the room he needed; he felt Starsky’s fingers unbutton and then unzip his jeans. The contact touch was close, but not close enough to satisfy his desire. Hutch hoped Starsky would reach inside his jeans then and stroke his penis to soothe its growing neediness, but Starsky didn’t grant that wish. He simply opened the jeans zipper and then pushed Hutch’s hips back to the mattress.

Starsky then slid off the end of the bed. From there he grabbed the seams of Hutch’s jeans, first at the waist, then at its knees, and finally at their hems, until he completely pulled them free. He tossed them to the side. “One of the things I like about you,” Starsky said as he finally laid eyes on Hutch’s bared buttocks and naked legs, “is that you don’t wear undershorts.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Hutch said under his breath. The air cooled his skin and made him aware of his nudity. But there was also something else unusual happening to him: The close scrutiny of his nakedness—something he’d often done to his women—from a position no one had ever examined him before, not even Starsky, or especially not Starsky. Hutch wasn’t embarrassed, he didn’t think, but he was definitely shy. Starsky had the sexier butt, after all.

“I like what I see,” Starsky told him, as if he’d read Hutch’s mind and wanted to reassure him of his sexiness. “It’s exactly the way I remember it,” he added, recalling all those stolen glances when Hutch rolled over in bed or when he walked into the bathroom, “except this time, it’s all mine to play with.”

Starsky was quite aroused by the hairless shapeliness of Hutch’s buttocks and how each cheek blended and separated so perfectly—as did everything else on Hutch’s body—into his muscled legs. But the arousal was also fueled by Starsky’s imagination about how he’d get to bury his penis deep inside Hutch for the very first time. The soft candlelight only enhanced Hutch’s beauty; it softened the lines of his body, of his arms and legs, and made Hutch’s virginity more enticing. Starsky couldn’t help but momentarily squeeze his own erection through his jeans and enjoy the feel. But he was so determined to make the experience last, mostly because he was afraid he’d never get the chance again, that he quickly let himself go to allow his pleasure to be purely visual instead.

“Don’t take me like this,” Hutch begged him. He wanted an emotional connection. Starsky paused too long to look at him and it made Hutch anxious; Starsky was up to no good, he decided. He could easily imagine what lay in Starsky’s mind and knew it wasn’t a matter of the heart.

“Don’t take you like this?” Starsky asked, incredulously. “Are you serious? You gave me permission and assumed the position and now you want me to forget it?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Hutch defended himself. But he didn’t get time to explain it.

Starsky crawled onto the bed and over him. “Well, say what you mean then, Mr. Wordsmith,” he replied, “because I have a boner so hard for you, there isn’t any way you’re getting out of this.”

“I just meant … I’d like to slow it down.”

“It’s been months in the making,” Starsky countered him.

“That’s not the kind of ‘slowing’ I meant. Maybe we could just—”

Starsky sat back on his heels and slapped Hutch’s bared butt that time to shut him up. It wasn’t hard enough to sting, but he enjoyed the abrupt and unexpected groan he heard in response. “You’re not listening,” he reminded Hutch. “You cooperate and all will go well.”

“I just want it to go better,” Hutch replied, “for both of us.”

Starsky had dreamt for months for that moment, that chance, that opportunity, believing he’d never get it, and he didn’t understand why it should be Hutch’s experience to direct. Hutch had had his, repeatedly. He’d anally sexed Starsky more times than either of them could count or remember—and Hutch enjoyed the pleasure of penetration purely by himself, selfishly satisfying its physical, sexual, and emotional needs. It was Starsky’s turn to experience the joys of penetration with his male lover. That Hutch couldn’t see that perturbed him. But he didn’t want to be angry; he wanted to be assertively sexual. In that heated moment, he could only think of one way to purge himself of bad feelings.

“On your knees,” he said. When Hutch dutifully raised his hips, Starsky pulled several pillows from the headboard, carelessly, including one of the two under Hutch’s head, much to Hutch’s annoyance, and positioned them under Hutch’s groin. Then he pulled Hutch’s penis back between his legs, toward himself, pushed Hutch’s pelvis into the pillows, and forced him to rest on them; they raised Hutch’s buttocks and propped his penis in full view between his thighs.

“Open wider,” Starsky said. He nudged Hutch’s knee away from him so Hutch would understand what he meant if he didn’t understand the words.

Hutch obeyed and opened his legs. He sincerely wasn’t prepared to have Starsky enter him, not then, not that way, not that quickly, not that impersonally, but he also understood that it was out of his control, too. If it hurt him, he’d endure it—for Starsky.

Starsky devoured Hutch’s penis with his eyes. Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe it had always been as beefy as it appeared then, but Starsky wasn’t certain. He couldn’t help but think the embarrassment he caused Hutch also aroused him—despite himself.

He also enjoyed the look of Hutch’s scrotum: Its hairless and fleshy soft shape, the skinned seam that ran its length and divided one testicle from the other, its textured, crinkly surface, the way its size snugged up against Hutch’s legs as if it was prepared to immediately empty its contents onto the pillow if Starsky wasn’t careful. He’d never seen Hutch’s penis so huge, so deeply red, so alive with raised veins along its lengthened shaft to its barely sheathed head. It lay so innocently against the white pillow case, yet stiffened and proud—and Starsky hadn’t even touched it.

That lucid thought was his cue. He opened the oil bottle and poured a generous amount into his hands, snap-closed the lid with his thumb, tossed it, and then slid his slick palms along each of Hutch’s muscled butt cheeks to where they joined Hutch’s legs. He fondled Hutch’s sac. The pleasure he provided with his warm, teasing, and gently firm touch, his oiled fingers and greased palm, was such a relief from the withholding of pleasure that Hutch loudly moaned. It was a lengthy sound, too. He didn’t intend to send a message, but he hoped Starsky would realize it was pleasure he sought and that they both could have it—if only Starsky would abandon his pent-up resentment for having waited so long for the experience.

“Don’t come yet,” Starsky pleaded with him.

“I can’t if you won’t let me.”

“I don’t know, man,” Starsky said. “You’re looking mighty close there.” He didn’t dare touch Hutch’s penis, but he wanted to delight Hutch, too. For a moment, he didn’t know what to do.

Hutch sensed Starsky’s hesitation. His own picture of Starsky’s fantasy was that he would be on his back tied to the bed, so Starsky would have to enter him as they faced each other. That was the intimacy Hutch hoped for, the recognition of his emotional bond to Starsky, not to feel like he was a means to an end, the way he did there on his stomach. But he would have to outsmart Starsky, not outmuscle him, in order to get turned over.

“I need to wash,” Hutch said. He recalled their earlier conversation about his need for clean hygiene and thought he’d use it to coax Starsky into untying him long enough to better prepare for the inevitable penetration.

Starsky didn’t buy it, though. “You’re as spotless as a newborn baby,” he said.

“I’m not.”

Starsky settled into the mattress while he mentally retraced their steps that day to figure out when and how Hutch may have soiled himself, but he couldn’t remember a time Hutch hadn’t been with him. In those minutes of uncertainty, Starsky continued to caress and gently massage Hutch’s rump and occasionally his testicles. He kept Hutch’s penis in view because he liked the look of it so much and he knew he could maintain it purely with a tease, if necessary. “You’re as clean as I am,” he said. “You emptied yourself before your shower this morning—before we even got here today.” It was a guess, but guessing was all he had in his arsenal.

Hutch briefly closed his eyes to let the crassness of Starsky’s remark pass him by. “I simply want to wash,” he finally said. “It’s been hours and I’d feel better if—”

Starsky exposed Hutch’s anus between his thumb and forefinger. The action interrupted Hutch mid-sentence and brought a strained silence to the room. Hutch was, no doubt—and again—embarrassed. Starsky couldn’t have wished for a better result. And he also got to see what he wanted to see, the puckered, amber-lit entrance into Hutch’s body that he’d only dreamt about until then. He examined it closely. It was as hairless as the rest of his lover and softly pink, but much smaller in diameter than he expected. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or an obstacle he’d have to overcome; its snug entry could be good for him; it might hurt Hutch, though, if it was too tight. “You look clean, too,” Starsky noted.

“C’mon,” Hutch said plaintively. “Don’t do this to me.” He’d never felt more exposed in his lifetime. But there he was, on his knees and helplessly tied to a bed, with Starsky’s fingers spreading his buttocks and holding him in that compromised position for some time. “Do you have to be so crass?”

“Crass?” Starsky asked, not abandoning his examination. “You’ve had your tongue, fingers, and dick all over and in my ass,” he reminded Hutch, “and you didn’t hear me complain.” He lightly blew on Hutch’s anus to give his lover an unexpected sensation, was pleased by its flinch, and then smiled when he heard the big sigh. “Besides,” he added, “this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re a sick man. Now let me up. I want to wash first.”

“You must think I’m stupid or something.”

“Or something.”

Starsky knew he was fully in charge. He wouldn’t fall for any more of Hutch’s escape tactics. Having Hutch on his knees and bringing him to them was the most fun he’d had in … forever. He rose onto his elbow without releasing the exposure of Hutch’s anus and tickled it with the middle finger of his other hand.

Hutch groaned. “C’mon, playboy. Let me wash before you go handling that. Don’t you want me to be the best I can be?”

Starsky then released the painful pressure his own penis felt while imprisoned in his jeans, rising slightly to adjust himself.

Hutch misread the break. “So just untie me and let me go out and clean up. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Starsky told him. He got off the bed. “And I’ll save you the trouble. Gonna get a sponge and give you a good bath myself.” He ignored Hutch’s new protests as he set off to retrieve the tools he’d need. “That way we’ll both know it was a thorough job,” he added, as he used the plastic salad bowl to get water from the cooler; it was ice cold, which he scooped out, ice and all.

Hutch was alone on the bed and took the opportunity to test the ropes, but they were as tight then as the minute they were drawn. So he shifted his hips in an effort to turn over or lie down more comfortably, only to discover that the pillows blocked any concerted success. The only position he could manage was to lift his hips higher so his penis bounced up against his belly again and then lie with his legs outstretched behind him, humped over the pillows. But he was still face down on the mattress and he was still at Starsky’s mercy.

“Starsk, please don’t do this,” he begged him. He turned his head to see into the room when he heard Starsky close the cooler and realized the bath would be a cold one. “What have I done that’s made you so mean?”

“You’re the mean one,” Starsky said with a laugh. He found a soap bar at the kitchen sink and added it to his collection.

“You’re embarrassing me.”

“I know,” Starsky replied with a chuckle. “Isn’t that great?” He liked that they both knew it. It made him only partly responsible for what he was about to put Hutch through. His own erection had subsided and he was anxious to get it back. A hand towel ended his search before he brought the items to the bed. That’s when he noticed Hutch had changed the look of his position because he was no longer fully exposed.

“Get back on your knees,” Starsky said. “I want to see your dick again.”

Hutch knew the resumption of their play would mean cold water somewhere on his previously private skin, but not obeying meant something worse, for all he knew, something that could further humiliate him. When he sensed Starsky was either about to slap his butt after he crawled onto the bed, or say something nasty to him, Hutch reluctantly and awkwardly rose to his knees again. The ropes mildly burned his already raw skin, so he didn’t fight them, but his penis dutifully lay against the pillows in the reposition, and was visible to Starsky again. “I would never do this to you,” he said.

“You’ll never have to,” came Starsky’s smug reply. “You want to tie me up after this and fuck me, feel free. It might be fun—and I’ll have had it coming.”

That was the difference between them, after all. Starsky was much more adventurous; the experience would never be the same for him as it was for Hutch. Starsky wouldn’t feel embarrassed. Even throughout the previous couple of months, despite all of Starsky’s complaining about morality and naturalness, despite his shame and confusion, embarrassment wasn’t one of his issues. Not with sex. Talking about it with Jade embarrassed him, but the behavior itself didn’t. All things sex excited him that much—which is what sometimes terrified Hutch.

“Open your legs,” Starsky instructed him. He nudged the inside of Hutch’s knee to encourage him and Hutch did as told. “Wider.” He nudged him again and was pleased when Hutch opened his legs as wide as possible, completely exposing his testicles between them and his semi-erect penis. It had re-sheathed itself, but it was still healthy and wanting. “Come back toward me,” Starsky said. He sat between Hutch’s calves and took off his own shirt. He felt the heat.

Hutch shifted higher on his knees and pushed his hips closer to Starsky. It kept his penis from touching the pillow, so the air around his genital and his exposed bottom made him feel helpless and vulnerable again. “Please don’t do this,” he said. “I feel like an idiot.”

“Learn to be still,” Starsky affectionately said. He unzipped his own jeans to give his growing penis more room, but he didn’t allow himself to remove them. There were hours to go and he wanted to enjoy every second of what remained of that special night. Instead, he gently massaged each of Hutch’s buttocks; they were oiled still and Starsky liked the slippery feel of Hutch’s skin. He slid both hands to Hutch’s sac and massaged it as gently. The feel was slick, fleshy, and erotic, and, oh, to have the man in his hands like that.

Hutch concentrated on the pleasure Starsky gave him; it made him forget what Starsky was about to do to him. Starsky’s fingers felt so good, their quiet touch, the slowness of the feel they took and gave.

Starsky continued to massage Hutch’s sac and noticed that Hutch’s erection had slowly revived. “Tell me you like this. I want to hear you say it.”

Hutch closed his eyes to feel the good between his legs. “I like this. A lot.”

“I like it, too.”

For several minutes, they both enjoyed the contact. Starsky looked past Hutch’s hip to his face and saw his closed eyes. “You like it a lot a lot,” he noted, and that’s when he saw the shy smile appear on Hutch’s mouth. “Yeah, you like it,” Starsky added, squeezing each testis gently, releasing it, squeezing it again. “And you like it when I suck you, too, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I like that,” Hutch said. He hoped that meant he’d get to feel Starsky’s mouth on him, but Starsky had simply set him up.

“I’ll suck you after I wash you,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to hear more complaints about how dirty you think your dick is.”

“You don’t have to wait,” Hutch encouraged him. “You can do it now. I won’t complain.”

“You’re the one who wanted a bath.”

Hutch knew there’d be no winning. He enjoyed the feel of Starsky’s fingers on each of his testicles instead, relished the fondling and caressing of each one by itself, the both of them together sometimes, while it lasted, and imagined how sexy they looked in Starsky’s hands, to avoid the pain he knew was about to come his way.

“You’ve got a nice sac,” Starsky told him, but he abruptly abandoned it to expose Hutch’s anus again between his thumb and forefinger. “And you’ve got a nice asshole, too,” he said, laying eyes on it. He looked at it for a while, mostly to embarrass Hutch, and then added, “Is there anything about you that isn’t beautiful?”

Hutch drew a deep breath to repress his bashfulness. He waited. Time passed. The nighttime creatures sang their songs. The candles burned. He kept his eyes closed and heard the silence in the room, save his own unsteady breathing and Starsky’s occasional subtle movement. Starsky sat behind him, between his opened legs, and continued to expose his anus, while Hutch was wrist-tied to the bed, unable to do a single thing about it.

After several minutes, he finally opened his eyes and stared at the wall. He couldn’t even see Starsky’s shadow. All he could do was feel. He had no other recourse but to endure. Starsky seemed determined to break him. Had he known this was the path to his liberation, Hutch would have avoided it. Candlelight lit the walls with a subtle flicker and reminded him of the timelessness of the night. The experience would end only when Starsky decided it would, so Hutch closed his eyes again and crawled back into the safety of their sightlessness.

“How long are you going to do that?” he finally asked. He thought Starsky would have ended one action to pursue his next one, but he hadn’t. Starsky was content, or so it seemed, to devour Hutch’s backside, the most private part of his body, with his eyes and with his fantasies.

“It’ll last as long as I want it to,” Starsky said, confirming what Hutch already suspected. “You’re the one who didn’t want a safe word.” He savored the view from the back of Hutch’s head to his knees buried in the blanket as they held his weight and his pelvis off the mattress. Starsky visually absorbed the image of Hutch’s scrotum, tight as it was between Hutch’s legs, of the hairless length of Hutch’s perineum and the way it segued into the yet longer length of Hutch’s penis, capped by foreskin that still blanketed its head. That overall picture pleased Starsky, his senses, and his emotions. That he got to view it for as long as he wished and against Hutch’s will made it sweeter. “I’m going to wash you and then I’m going to lick you and then I’m going to fuck you—first with my fingers and then with my—”

“Don’t hurt me,” Hutch begged him. He was alarmed when he’d heard those words. They conveyed a certain carelessness he feared from Starsky, one that could only prove painful—and extremely so.

“But for now,” Starsky said, ignoring the plea, “I’m going to look at your ass. God knows when I’ll ever get to see it again.”

“Anytime you want,” Hutch assured him, but he wasn’t convincing. He knew Starsky battled his own fear, that Hutch would experience anal intercourse with him and then never want to do it again. “You have my word,” Hutch said.

Pre-cum emerged from Starsky’s penis where it rubbed against the inside seam of his zipper. It was slippery and further aroused him. He remembered the wash, so he positioned the water bowl near Hutch’s knee. “Don’t move,” he said to Hutch as he dipped the edge of the kitchen towel into the ice cold water and saturated it. He exposed Hutch again between the thumb and forefinger of one hand and squeezed the water from the towel with his other; it dribbled between Hutch’s buttocks, over his anus, around his scrotum, down the shaft of his penis, and off its tip to where it soaked the blanket between his legs.

Hutch shot open his eyes. “Jesus,” he whispered. The unexpected ice cold sensation startled him, despite that he’d heard and felt Starsky prepare him. “Fuck you.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Starsky said, laughing. He squeezed another fist of water onto Hutch’s backside and watched it roll over Hutch’s butt and off the tip of his penis again—and then enjoyed the resulting cuss words that erupted from Hutch’s mouth. “You like that?” he jokingly asked.

“C’mon,” Hutch protested. “Don’t do this.”

Starsky repeated the actions: Dipped the towel again into the bowl and squeezed it another time.

Hutch endured; he didn’t say another word or make a sound. The cold was enough to make his erection lose momentum and the helplessness was enough to force his surrender.

Starsky next rubbed the soap bar along the shaft of Hutch’s penis. He didn’t really plan to lather the man; he just wanted Hutch to know that Hutch couldn’t use the excuse of needing a wash to escape Starsky’s sexual appetite. Using his hand and the bar of soap, Starsky stroked Hutch’s penis, up, down, and then up again, more than once, more than twice, mostly to bring back the hardness in it than to soap it. He eventually dropped the bar to the mattress, but continued to stroke Hutch’s glistening penis in the loose fist of his hand. The blend of soap and oil heightened the sensation and gave them both a pleasurable feel, but mostly for Hutch.

For him, the punishment had been worth the pleasure.

He tugged against the ropes to try to free one of his hands long enough to take himself to orgasm. Knowing Starsky sat behind him—and fully at Starsky’s grace with respect to all things private and sexual to him—he finally allowed himself the erotic pleasure in the touches at his anus. He wanted to masturbate to climax because Starsky neglected his penis, but the rope didn’t free him. He was still helpless. He moaned a deep sigh, more tightly closed his eyes, and gave himself over to the erotica that steadily brewed between his legs and at Starsky’s fingertips.

“You’re going to love having my dick in there,” Starsky said, “because my dick is hot.” He heard Hutch breathing—hard and rapidly. “Yep,” Starsky echoed. “You’re going to love my hot dick.” He resumed his caresses, satisfied that he’d interrupted Hutch’s race to orgasm, and then planned to rebuild it.

The sexual sensations Starsky created were both titillating and taboo. Or maybe they were titillating because they were taboo. Who knew and who cared? Starsky continued to gently caress Hutch’s anus, then to massage his scrotum, then to stroke his penis in a tighter fist, from its end to its other, and then he repeated the caresses in reverse. Anus. Testicles. Penis. Back again. And again. And again. Each loop increased Hutch’s arousal, each made him ache and long for release, each was tantalizing and deeply satisfying and painful in a fleeting way, as if the beloved pain couldn’t quite be realized. Some time passed before he was able to hear his own breathing—and Starsky’s, too.

Starsky didn’t rewet the towel; it was still rather cold and saturated. He carefully wiped Hutch with it, deliberately and thoroughly; he did want to make certain he removed whatever soap he’d used. He wiped Hutch’s sac and his shaft and then he flipped the towel over and retraced the trail. Cold water dripped off the end of Hutch’s penis; it made Hutch shudder with its feel, and it further soaked the blanket between his knees.

Hutch’s engorged organ trembled from the cooling rapture the towel gave him. He wanted to climax. He prayed for it. “Please let me come,” he begged. If Starsky would just give him a few more strokes, he might succeed. But it was the wrong thing to say because it gave Starsky the cue he needed to stop. The last thing Starsky wanted was for Hutch to climax right then; he wanted to save that ecstasy for the penetration.

Starsky tossed the towel aside and sat back on his heels to look closely at the view before him. He removed all physical contact from Hutch and instead purely enjoyed the visual. “Look at that,” he said proudly. “All clean and ready to go.” Hutch’s penis was enlarged again, veined and throbbing, his scrotum snug against his legs and ready to burst; Hutch’s skin was oiled, cleansed, smooth, glistening, and dark with blood. “But you hold on there, Hutchinson,” Starsky told him. “Don’t come until I fuck you.”

“Then fuck me,” Hutch fervently begged him. He couldn’t wait. He was willing to take whatever Starsky gave him, even if it hurt, even if it was the way Starsky wanted it, purely as a means to an end.

“Temper, temper,” Starsky replied. He got off the bed to return the bath items to the kitchen. “I’ve still got some dick-sucking to do first.” He returned to the bed and then stripped out of his clothes. He wasn’t sure he should suck Hutch; Hutch was most definitely close to a climax.

“I don’t care how you get me there,” Hutch said, opening his eyes as if he could make contact with Starsky to convince him. “Just get me there.”

“Ooh,” Starsky answered him. He crawled onto the bed, naked, and pressed his groin into Hutch’s backside. “I love it when you beg.” For the first time in his life, Starsky felt the sensation of the backs of Hutch’s thighs to the fronts of his own. He relished the contact he made with a slow rotation of his hips that rubbed his hardened penis against Hutch’s from behind him and pleased them both. He also stroked the division in Hutch’s rump with a downward slide of his own penis and realized Hutch’s skin was still oiled—and how beautiful was the unexpected feel—so good, it nearly finished him.

He sat back to his heels and laughed. “You almost got me,” he said.

“What are you waiting for?” Hutch asked. His wasn’t a kind tone; it was more frustrated than demanding. He closed his eyes to ease his disappointment and then opened them again to stare at the wall. “You want it as bad as I do.”

“I want it badder than you do.”

“So why are you waiting?”

Starsky pushed Hutch forward on his knees and lowered himself to his elbows to inhale the scent of Hutch’s penis from behind him. The aroma was of almond oil, and fresh—both at once. He then pulled Hutch’s penis further back between his legs and held it in his slick fingers while he gently nursed its tip with his lips and licked it with his tongue. The expected moans he heard made him empathize with Hutch’s deep pleasure; he could feel the same in his own erection. Hutch was hard and entirely coated in oil, warm beneath the skin, and yet cool from the ice water to the touch. Starsky further pushed away the foreskin from the penis’s crown using just his fingers and then sucked the exposed head with earnest, certain to tease Hutch’s frenulum—that sweet spot on the underside and at the tip of the engorged shaft—with added enthusiasm.

Hutch closed his eyes. Starsky gave him more than he asked for; he gave him a long and sensual sensation so deeply necessary he whimpered on an exhale. If Starsky would simply take him further into his mouth, he could complete the urge, but Starsky was too smart for that. He avoided the trigger, a tight stroke along that swollen shaft. Hutch wanted to cuss him, but he was so overwhelmed with urgency and unfulfilled want, he couldn’t utter a sound, save the masculine moans of his helpless pleasure.

Starsky released him then. “You stay there,” he said quickly. “I’ll be right back.” He got off the bed—that suddenly—and, slipping on his shoes without socks, walked out of the cabin, otherwise fully nude, closing the door behind him.

Hutch was startled. He didn’t like the abrupt interruption, but he liked Starsky’s disappearance even less. He was unable to follow him, to oversee where he’d gone, to supervise his absence, to defend him—if necessary. He struggled for a minute against the ropes that bound him, but they were as steadfast in their hold as they’d been from the beginning. “Starsky!” he yelled into the emptiness of the room. His heart pounded. He lost his sexual momentum. “Starsky!” He didn’t understand and felt confused. He was about to yell Starsky’s name again when Starsky returned, almost as quickly as he’d left.

“Miss me?” he asked. He kicked off his shoes.

“That’s not funny,” Hutch said, relieved to see him, silently panting off his adrenaline.

“Afraid I left you stranded like this?” Starsky wondered, but he didn’t care about the answer. He stopped at the headboard and tousled Hutch’s hair. “Hm?”

Hutch had been afraid, but it wasn’t for his own predicament or safety. He didn’t want to tell Starsky why, either, because, to do so, he’d have to remind the man of things he shouldn’t have to think about in the middle of his pure excitement. “Where did you go?” he asked instead.

“To get these,” Starsky said. He dangled a pair of handcuffs in front of Hutch’s face. “I forgot I had them in my glovebox,” he added. “But then I remembered.”

Hutch was perplexed, but he didn’t see the point. “Good for you.”

Starsky unlocked one of the bracelets and then fit it around Hutch’s right wrist, securing it again. The cuff was tighter than the rope. Starsky then locked the other bracelet to the bed post. “There,” he said proudly. “You aren’t going anywhere for a long time, so get used to it.”

Hutch didn’t appreciate the difference. “Did you think I could escape the knots you tied?”

“Maybe,” Starsky said. He tossed the handcuffs key to the floor away from the bed. “But there isn’t no maybe in these cuffs.”

“Suck me,” Hutch encouraged him. “C’mon, let’s get back to this. I’ll suck you.”

“Soon enough,” Starsky promised. He climbed onto the bed, pushed Hutch fully to the mattress, to his belly again, and then straddled him. In that new position, both of them nude, both of them with semi-hard erections, Starsky did the unexpected. He untied Hutch’s left wrist from the bed post.

That’s when Hutch realized why he’d been handcuffed. Had he been freed with just rope to restrain him, he may have been able to untie the other wrist before Starsky could stop him. But there was no escaping the handcuff, especially since the key was well out of reach.

“Turn over,” Starsky said. “I want to look in your eyes while we do this.”

Starsky wasn’t the most romantic lover Hutch had ever experienced, but he was the most sexual—and the most intuitive. It had been Hutch’s wish that he not be taken from behind—and Starsky knew it. Starsky honored it. Despite all the pain and punishment he’d put Hutch through that night, the humiliation and the embarrassment, the pleasure and the interruption of pleasure, Starsky still appreciated Hutch’s unspoken desire to face the man he loved when the man he loved entered him.

Hutch was relieved and grateful, more than he had words for, and words would have ruined the experience for Starsky, so Hutch left his personal thoughts behind and instead asked, “How’m I going to turn over while I’m handcuffed like this?”

Starsky realized his mistake and laughed at himself. Had the cuffs been looser, perhaps, Hutch could have twisted in them enough to roll onto his back, but as it were, he couldn’t. He was just as pinned to the mattress on his belly as he had been when tied to both posts. Starsky dismounted and sat beside him on the mattress while he contemplated a solution.

Hutch exhaled his apprehensions, even ones he didn’t realize he had until that moment, and finally lay on his side, one hand free, the other both cuffed and tied to the bed post, and examined the situation with Starsky. He didn’t say a word. He wouldn’t help him. To do so would dilute the power of the bonder over the bonded. That, and Starsky wouldn’t believe he didn’t have ulterior motives.

But Starsky figured it out on his own. “Aha!” he said excitedly. He tied the rope to Hutch’s left wrist to pull Hutch over as far onto his back as the position would allow. He then retied it to the same post Hutch’s other wrist was affixed to, the one that was also cuffed. Whistling while he worked, he got off the bed, snagged the handcuffs key, unlocked the cuffs from Hutch’s right wrist and cuffed his left one instead. Then he untied Hutch’s right wrist and pulled it to the opposite side of the headboard to retie it there. Hutch struggled to get fully turned over, but the solution did do its job. Starsky had Hutch where he wanted him and confirmed it when he looked at Hutch’s hips and belly and found what he also expected to see: Hutch’s penis in full frontal view.

He tossed the key again, crawled back onto the bed, and made eye contact with those blue eyes; they told him what he needed to know. Despite what he’d made Hutch experience, Hutch was still with him—and was grateful to face him, too. Starsky even got a shy smile out of Hutch when he refused to look away for a minute.

He ordered Hutch to lift his hips so he could bunch the pillows under them. “Open your legs,” he told Hutch, and Hutch followed that order, too. “Wider.” He nudged Hutch into a broader opening. Hutch’s penis was erect, though not fully, and snug against his hairless belly. His sac was still tight between his legs and Starsky couldn’t help but fondle it then for a minute. He really did like the full look and the fleshy feel of it. “I just love this shit,” he said. “You’re such a sport.”

Hutch smiled at him. He could say likewise, but he didn’t want to detract from Starsky’s enjoyment. He loved that ‘shit,’ too, but he also loved Starsky’s eyes, his expectant expression, his haired chest and arms and belly, his enthusiasm and his drive, his freeness and his curly dark brown hair. But all Hutch could do was smile and be pleased with the candlelit view he had of his excited lover. He was still bound to the bed, after all, at the complete charity of another man, one he implicitly trusted to take care of him, but one who was easily overcome that night by his own fantasy. Whatever made Starsky happy made Hutch happier.

Starsky found the oil bottle and squeezed drops of it onto Hutch’s belly. He trailed a few more along the shaft of Hutch’s penis and watched Hutch’s blue eyes widen when the cool sensation, and perhaps the anticipation of what lay ahead, hit him.

With enough lubricant to make the contact enormously stimulating, Starsky closed the bottle and tossed it beside them on the mattress. Then he coated his hand in the oil and spread it over Hutch’s belly, to his hips, and finally around and all over his penis and scrotum. He watched Hutch’s face while he greased him and then winked at him when they both felt Hutch’s erection grow. “That’s some badass dick you’ve got there,” Starsky said. “But wait until you feel mine. You’re not going to know what hit you.”

Hutch did know how utterly pleased he was to feel Starsky’s hand stroke his penis at length, up and then down, just to repeat the sensation. And he was further ecstatic when Starsky lowered himself between Hutch’s legs and used his mouth in tandem with his hand to fellate him again.

Hutch closed his eyes and melted into the mattress at his back and into the pillows at his hips. He felt Starsky’s hand and his lips and his tongue as it slowly devoured his stiffening penis and his testicles. He felt Starsky’s mouth leave him at times to kiss his hip and his belly while Starsky’s hand continued to stroke him, only to return those lips and that probing tongue to his penis again. The further Hutch drowned in his relaxation, the more aware he was of the ropes that tied him to the bed posts and of the handcuff on his left wrist that occasionally pinched him. They held him sprawled on the bed, pinned to it, his pelvis thrust upward and offering from the pillows beneath it, his legs dropped open to expose his privates from his anus to the tip of his swollen and aching organ.

All of it was a reminder that he could only be pardoned by Starsky; Starsky could and would do to him whatever Starsky wished. But Starsky’s skilled oral gifts made Hutch quickly forget whatever pain he felt or embarrassment he’d suffered and instead realize how helpless he was to alter what happened to him. He could only endure it and, during those lengthy minutes in the quiet of that small room, the pleasure he was given only mounted. Starsky sucked and licked him, nursed on and stroked him, and strove to take him to the edge all over again.

Starsky rebuilt his own titillation at the same time. He’d learned to deeply appreciate the feel of Hutch’s growing erection in his mouth and hand. He loved the good he gave and the rewarding semen he received in the end, whether it was down his throat or inside his body. Something about pleasing Hutch ultimately pleased himself. But there was no place for analysis in their sex-making that night. He savored the feel, the heat, the hardness of Hutch’s manhood, the sounds of the moans and the sighs and the deep breaths Hutch made, the hiss through his clenched teeth when the pleasure was that intense.

Starsky didn’t think he loved anything more than to bring Hutch to climax; not even his own—as satisfying as it always was. Nothing compared to the self-satisfaction he got from giving to Hutch.

He could tell Hutch was yet again close to ejaculation and he needed to stall him, so he released him, sat back on his heels between Hutch’s legs, and laid eyes on his face instead.

It took Hutch a minute to leave his ecstasy behind and finally open his own. He swallowed the choke on his throat and looked at Starsky, unable to speak.

“Lift your legs,” Starsky encouraged him, pushing Hutch’s knees toward the bed’s headboard.

Hutch lifted his knees to his chest and Starsky further pushed them with a hand on each of Hutch’s buttocks to open them wider still. He succeeded in exposing Hutch again, completely, and bunched the pillows to Hutch’s hips to keep his legs up and open. Then he gently sucked each of Hutch’s testicles until he heard the man moan with delight.

After several minutes, he exposed Hutch’s anus again, using his fingers, closed his eyes to isolate the feel when he probed Hutch’s pucker with the tip of his tongue, felt along its rim and then its center, kissed around it again, and then returned to giving it a gentle, oral bathing.

Hutch couldn’t believe the sensation. It wasn’t like anything he’d experienced before. It was taboo and liberating at once. It was sensual and sexy and made him harder still, though not a hand touched his already blood-filled penis. That Starsky would be that willing, perhaps, or that he was that skilled, or that he was so thorough in his oral exploration, or that Starsky loved him, or that he himself felt so out of control over what happened to him, all or none of those things heightened his unexpected desire to utterly enjoy the feel of Starsky’s tongue on him for as long as it would last.

Starsky licked him, a slow lick, and then repeated the stroke. Then again. And again. His were distinct licks, meticulous, each a genuine lap, one that began and ended and then began over again. Stroke after stroke, lubricated, oiled, a contact of flesh to flesh, then a short cessation before the next sensual stroke was delivered. He pushed Hutch’s legs away, further widening them, so he could more accessibly lick him. There was no taste, save the almond oil and his saliva, but there was definite erotica, and each slick lap allowed his stroke to go deeper and more determined than the last.

Quiet filled the room, quiet with the exception of their heavy breathing, of the repeated sound of Starsky’s flattened tongue licking Hutch’s anus, a sensual sound each of them heard and savored to hear, the occasional rub of fabric against the blanket when Starsky pushed Hutch’s legs wider, lifted his hips higher, got more access to him with his lips and tongue, and the moans those affections elicited from his captive lover.

Starsky couldn’t wait to penetrate him. He opened his eyes to gauge Hutch’s arousal and was amazed by how stiff Hutch’s penis had become when he thought it couldn’t have been more rigid. He saw it throb. He noticed how it glistened in the candlelight, how it seemed to rise out of Hutch’s sac and snugged up against his belly, veined and cross-veined, deeply darkened with its blood, fully free of its sheath from size alone. Starsky closed his eyes and continued to lick Hutch. The wetter he made it, the more slickly it would welcome him. He pushed his tongue into it to test its invite; Hutch didn’t flinch. In fact, Hutch moaned and whispered, “Yes” between his heavy pants.

Without missing a stroke, Starsky felt along the mattress until he found the oil bottle. He flipped the cap with his thumb, pushed his tongue as deeply into Hutch as he could, and then withdrew it. Before Hutch could realize the contact had ended, Starsky squeezed a generous dollop of oil onto Hutch’s sac and allowed it to trickle along the perineum to his anus, where Starsky quickly resumed the licks.

Hutch longed to ejaculate. He tried to lower his arms to take himself, but quickly discovered again that he couldn’t. He’d forgotten he was tied, that he was unable to do anything at all but experience what Starsky gave him. The handcuff pinched his wrist, slightly, and reminded him that he would never be released until Starsky let him go. He turned his head to the side, eyes tightly shut, and silently begged his lover to salvage him. “Fuck me,” he begged him. He knew the penetration would ejaculate him and he desperately wanted it.

Starsky sat up to stroke himself and to devour Hutch’s beauty with his eyes—Hutch’s face and his belly, his bondage and his hard-on, his invitingly opened legs and his urgently wanting expression, his sweat and his mussed hair, both on his head and under his arms—and Starsky couldn’t not deliver. He maneuvered snugly between Hutch’s thighs and guided his penis to that beautiful ‘glorious’ passage he’d so longed to penetrate—and then pushed gently into it. His motivation to make it painless was all over Hutch’s face; Starsky didn’t want to break that expression of pure ecstasy and want for anything in the world. He would be as careful with Hutch as Hutch had been with him; maybe even more mindful because it was Hutch’s first time.

The penetration was slow. That Hutch actually wanted it made it easier, but Starsky thought he might crest himself if he wasn’t careful. There would be only one premier and he wasn’t about to spoil it. He got closer to Hutch and pushed deeper still, realizing he’d only squeezed between those hairless cheeks and not actually entered the man. So, he dropped to one hand to change his angle and used the other to guide himself. He pushed again and that time made contact with his lover’s entrance.

Hutch couldn’t just take it. The human body wasn’t designed to simply accept an anal penetration, at least not the first time. He felt the pressure; the push to enter him was intense enough to make him open his eyes and look at Starsky—and to silently beg for his gentleness. He knew he was completely in Starsky’s hands—much more than he’d been all night—and he prayed for a painless experience. But he couldn’t convey his apprehension with words because he was so overcome by his pleasure that he was unable to utter a sound. Starsky would just have to read what he didn’t say, what he couldn’t say.

“Relax your face,” Starsky said softly, not playfully, not lightly, but sincerely, and with concern.

Hutch realized only then that he grimaced. He did as Starsky encouraged him and released the muscles in his face. They released the rest of him and returned him to that ultimate surrender he’d felt only minutes earlier when Starsky so lovingly and erotically licked him. It reminded Hutch that there was pleasure still to feel and that Starsky wouldn’t hurt him. Despite that Starsky had bound him to the bed and embarrassed him earlier, Starsky was there for him when he needed it that night.

Hutch also felt the release of tightness in his groin because he felt it in his heart, too. He gave himself up to the man who wanted him, to the man who would take him, and he gave it willingly, without protest.

Starsky pushed into him again when they both felt Hutch surrender—and that time he had success.

He entered an inch, waited, reminded Hutch with his eyes to honor the relaxation, and then pushed in another inch. It made Starsky dizzy. He broke eye contact with Hutch to look between their legs, to see himself inside his lover, even though it was only a couple of inches. It made him laugh, catch his breath, and look into Hutch’s eyes again as if he could share his surprise and his amazement with him purely from a look.

It turned out he could. Hutch laughed lightly with him, closed his eyes, nodded to say he heard him and understood; he’d been there once himself, that first time, that initial amazement and surprise all rolled under the delight and the erotic sensation of penetration.

Starsky eased in further; he got past that tight ring of muscle near its entrance and pushed deeper yet. He had to watch. He was nearly halfway in and he couldn’t but see it to believe it. That small opening had actually taken him. He finally looked at Hutch. “You okay?”

Hutch panted. He sweat. He tugged at his ropes. He laughed. He panted again. He was all right. Overtaken, overwhelmed, overcome, but all right. The shy smile answered Starsky’s question; that, and Hutch’s complete passiveness, the one that enabled him to focus on the feel of Starsky inside him; Starsky’s hardened penis opened him, snugly filled him, eased into him, with a sensation so deeply rewarding, Hutch could feel it in his own swollen penis—a wave of warmth, joy, and sexual ecstasy had overcome him.

Starsky pushed all the way in then. He disappeared inside Hutch. He pressed as tightly into him as he could manage and only then noticed Hutch’s tight scrotum and his tumescent penis as it throbbed with the pleasure Starsky’s penis gave him. He glanced only once at Hutch’s face to make certain the union was still painless and then he returned his sight to the action between their legs.

Hutch couldn’t see it, but he could certainly feel it, that head-spinning entry, but also the sweet, pacifying, emptying exit that never quite withdrew, replaced instead with a repeat of fulfillment, both serving to absolutely subdue him.

After Starsky almost withdrew, he slowly pushed in again, only to nearly vacate to that same point, to just the penis’s head, and then drive back in—stroke after long and slow stroke. He withdrew completely and reentered. Hutch had accepted him; Hutch had unreservedly surrendered.

“Does this embarrass you?” Starsky asked between his own breathless pants.

“No,” was the quiet reply, barely audible.

Starsky dropped his other hand to the mattress. He was on his hands and knees then and had to look down to see the action of his strokes inside Hutch. He lifted his head and looked into those blue eyes when they briefly opened to look into his and then he returned his focus to their joining when Hutch closed his again.

“Holy shit,” Starsky whispered as he watched. His thrusts had begun slowly, but they accelerated with each deeply delivered one. They were beautiful to behold, further lubricated with his own emergence of pre-cum. It didn’t matter how long they lasted. A dream had been fulfilled, brought on by a fantasy, and it was priceless no matter the duration. He, too, panted and moaned, laughed and then couldn’t, and he, too, was filled with an enormous pleasure he himself had never experienced. Was it love? Was it purely satisfaction? He didn’t know and he didn’t care. Not for then. For then, it was everything to feel it.

“Do you like this?” he asked Hutch as his thrusts grew more fervent and assertive. “Do you like how I feel in you?”

Hutch couldn’t speak then to save his life. He tugged at his handcuff so he could finish himself and show Starsky instead how much he loved the experience, but the cuff didn’t let him go.

“I’m going to fuck the cum out of you,” Starsky said as he more determinedly thrust into him, purposefully using words he thought would stall Hutch. He kept his eye on Hutch’s hardened penis and noticed it was so swollen it had actually lifted off his belly. Hutch’s helplessness, his bulging sac and his receptive legs, his nudity and his sweat, the angle of his hips held by the pillows beneath him, both his wrists secured to the bed posts, one by a handcuff, that blond mussed hair under his armpits and on his head, his tightly closed eyes and open mouth, his flat belly and erect nipples, that patch of hair at his groin, his stiffened penis and anticipating expression, all fueled Starsky’s boldness.

His pace sped beyond his own ability to control it. Each thrust was harder than the last, deeper than the last, more determined than the last, more pleasurable than the last. Each slapping thrust was more necessary than the last until Starsky could only nearly withdraw and penetrate again with a forceful rhythm.

Hutch was tighter than any woman Starsky had experienced and he could go much deeper than any woman he had entered, but there was also the permission of his aggression, too, a primal sort of dominance he’d never felt before—because Hutch was male and understood it—a wildness Starsky hadn’t planned or expected, and one that fueled the ecstasy he consciously felt. He moaned and he fought to keep his breath and he plunged repeatedly into Hutch in a way that made him fear would make them both explode. “Don’t you … come … just yet,” he said beneath several breaths. “I don’t ever want … this to … end.”

Hutch couldn’t help himself. None of that night—after he’d given Starsky the rope—was in his control, not even his own satisfaction. Starsky’s withdrawing and reentering penis, as hard and as long as it was inside him, filled Hutch with such a fullness and helplessness, he began to whimper. Starsky’s unyielding firmness, his nearly insatiable frenzy and his heavy, audible breathing, his glistening sweat and his crass words, intensified Hutch’s bliss.

“Does this embarrass you?” Starsky asked again, though he could only see pure and unadulterated euphoria on Hutch’s face, matched only by his own.

“Oh … oh … oh …” Hutch said with each deep delivery. “Oh … buddy … oh.” He too tried to catch his breath, but all he could manage was, “Oh, oh … beautiful boy.” He was held without the ability to start or stop himself. Hands tied, one cuffed, his legs pushed open, his penis slapping his own belly with each of Starsky’s fervent thrusts, and filled with a pleasurable fleshy fullness, a hardness, a thrusting stroke he never imagined he’d experience, all served to build an intense boiling urge deep inside him. Not a hand touched him, not even his own, but the climax he was gifted was so fierce, he thought it would never crest.

Starsky saw it coming. He could see it on Hutch’s face and hear it in Hutch’s voice, in his begging ‘Oh’s. Starsky knew that feeling, the one Hutch did, because he’d felt it every time Hutch had taken him. There was something inexplicably profound to devouring another man’s power, to surrendering to another man’s drive and determination. Starsky was overwhelmed by what he himself felt, but also by what he knew Hutch felt.

Though his experience was different in sensation, it wasn’t different in degree. Starsky’s penis felt the snugness and warmth of Hutch’s body; he felt his own orgasmic ache at its edge because of it. He immersed himself in the wetness, in the viscous lubrication of that tight, bottomless entry into his lover, into the reality of their union, but he didn’t want to ejaculate before Hutch did, so he shifted his weight to one hand and used the other to pinch one of Hutch’s nipples as Hutch’s testes finally emptied their content.

The sharp pain of Starsky’s pinch pushed Hutch’s orgasm over its crest. He ejaculated hard, almost painfully, and spilled semen from deep within him, through the slit at his penis’s tip, in creamy, unaimed spurts onto his belly, over his navel, and on Starsky’s hand, still squeezing his nipple.

The visual of Hutch’s climax finally pushed Starsky’s over the edge. He thrust one last time deeply into Hutch, stayed pressed tightly to him, savored the snugness, the wetness, the warmth, and the surge of his ejaculate for as long as his body would allow him, and then emptied himself far inside the man. Waves of ecstasy washed over him, powerful in their gift-giving. He moaned loudly, first alone, and then with Hutch as the two of them experienced their orgasms to the limit. They shuddered and shook. They panted. The only sound they could hear was their own; it drowned all else.

Starsky’s rapture momentarily ended, but a sudden urge of elation made him forcefully thrust back into Hutch and finish. He never took his eyes off the semen Hutch had pulsed onto his hairless stomach; it nourished the sexiness of their union for him. While they were still tightly joined, he smeared it over Hutch’s chest and across both his nipples, smiled into those blue eyes with his own, experienced the last wave of his own climax with a final, pleasurable, throbbing stroke inside the man, and then finally abandoned the effort.

Nothing but utter satisfaction shone in Hutch’s blue eyes. The delirium he saw there made Starsky laugh. He realized only then that he’d broken his own sweat, that his heart pounded heavily in his chest, and that he was as satisfied as Hutch appeared. He placed his palm firmly to Hutch’s chest and felt his heart’s powerful beat, too.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice heavy with his gratitude.

It was, unknowingly, what Hutch needed all along that night, to be recognized for the gift he gave, not just for the one he took.

* * *

They faced each other, content in the position in which they’d found themselves, not sure how they’d gotten there, but no desire to leave it any time soon, though Hutch wouldn’t have minded if Starsky released him from the handcuff; it had slightly rubbed his skin raw. He twisted his wrist to make it more comfortable, but the effort didn’t pay off.

Starsky noticed. “Does your ass hurt, too?” Hutch’s leg was bent and Starsky slouched against it, faced his partner with his head resting on Hutch’s knee, and affectionately badgered him further. “You sounded all good, but you look all pain.”

Hutch smiled at him, into those blue, bedroom eyes, pleased by how casual Starsky had become with him, by Starsky’s smugness for having finally lived his fantasies and desires of penetrating sex with him. More than anything, Hutch relished Starsky’s contentment. It’s where Starsky deserved to be—however he got there.

He concentrated on the question Starsky asked. “I’ll be sore,” he figured, dropping his shoulders further into the pillows at his back. “You nailed me hard.”

“I didn’t nail you all that hard,” Starsky said, “but I was hard when I nailed you.”

“You don’t think that was a hard fuck?”

“No. But I was making up for lost time, so maybe you just thought it was hard.”

Hutch admired the light in Starsky’s eyes, the way they reflected Starsky’s enjoyment of the memory. Starsky’s hips were beside Hutch’s head, so Hutch couldn’t see whether the talk about their intercourse aroused Starsky even then, but he didn’t act like it had; he didn’t move.

“I made you come,” Starsky said.

“I’m well aware of what you did,” Hutch replied. He could still feel the faint stickiness of his semen over his chest and belly.

“I meant, I did fuck you hard enough that you came.”

“I knew what you meant.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“It was intense. Couldn’t you tell?”

“Yeah, but I want to hear you say it.”

“I loved it,” Hutch reassured him. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”

Starsky recalled that unprecedented feeling of his own. He turned his head against Hutch’s thigh and looked across the room toward a candle for a second as he recalled the first time Hutch had penetrated him and forced him to climax. Then he glanced back. “So, who knew you could come just from getting fucked in the ass, hm?”

“Look, Ma, no hands,” Hutch laughed with him.

“Do you think it will last?” Starsky wondered.

“What?”

“Coming just from getting fucked in the ass. Do you think it’ll last?”

“Wouldn’t you know that better than me?”

“Well, so far, so good, but I’m just wondering what you think.”

“How the hell would I know if it’ll last?”

“I thought maybe you read something somewhere.”

Hutch laughed at him, with affection. “I haven’t read anything about ass-fucking.”

Starsky gave it thought. He assumed Hutch would have read about everything by then, given how voracious he was with books and newspapers and magazines. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to see then,” Starsky said. “We’ll just have to see if that kind of thing lasts.”

“I guess so,” Hutch replied. He admired Starsky’s look there as he lay against him, the light in Starsky’s eyes, the peacefulness of his face, the tone in his voice, one of sheer relaxation and connection. Hutch didn’t understand why everyone thought he was the better-looking of the two; Starsky had a much more masculine appearance; he exuded maleness more than Hutch did. Between them, Hutch thought Starsky more attractive.

Starsky noticed the attention. “What?”

“Suppose I had a hairy chest, too,” Hutch imagined. “Would that turn you off?”

“Are you looking to turn me off?”

“Hardly. I’m just asking. Suppose I had more male features, know what I mean?”

“Oh, right,” Starsky said with sarcasm, “like somehow I could forget that you have a humongous dick.”

“Okay,” Hutch surrendered. “Never mind.”

Starsky thought Hutch’s concern might be serious, so he tried a different answer. “Nothing about you could turn me off,” he said. “Nothing.”

Hutch watched Starsky for a minute and melted into those bedroom eyes again. He was about to thank him, but he was interrupted.

“But I like how you see me, too,” Starsky said.

The tables had just been turned. Or so Hutch thought. “How so?”

“You see me,” Starsky emphasized. He, too, watched the curious, welcoming look in his lover’s eyes. He caressed Hutch’s arm while he spoke, to bring intimacy to his words. “You see me,” he repeated, softly, and then explained himself. “Let me take you back ten years. I think about all that fighting we did in the beginning just like you sometimes think about it—and all that frustration and anger we had. All the respect we had, too. That kept us together. We worked it out. All that working out,” he said with a quiet laugh. He could see a similar fondness in Hutch’s blue eyes.

“But work it out, we did,” Starsky reminded him. “And then all those cases we solved. The clues we flushed. The leads we followed. The arrests we made. The shootouts we’ve had. The stake-outs and the fist-fights. The near-death experiences we’ve been through. All that time we spent together. The eating. The talking. The laughing. Damn, the laughing. There hasn’t been anything we haven’t done together. Gotten sick. Used the john. Hell, man, we even kind of had sex with the same woman together once.”

Hutch flinched. It was still a sore memory.

“I didn’t say that to hurt you,” Starsky said quickly. He squeezed Hutch’s arm to push the pain out of him. “It’s just a point I’m making. Up until this year, there wasn’t anything we hadn’t done together or anything we hadn’t been through together, don’t you think?”

Hutch let Starsky know he agreed by curbing his reaction to Starsky’s comment about “threesomes,” but then he thought of something. “Well … we haven’t seen each other dead yet.”

Starsky almost laughed, but didn’t want to validate Hutch’s comment. “I’m going to forget you said that,” he replied instead, “because that’s something I never want to see.”

“Me either,” Hutch echoed. “In fact, I think I’d rather be dead than see you dead.”

“Okay, so putting that aside,” Starsky continued, growling when he spoke to at least let Hutch know he hadn’t appreciated the interchange just then, “this thing happened to me six months ago …”

They both paused on that memory, gave it the respect it deserved by a moment of silence between them. Then Starsky pushed beyond it. “I went through it. You watched it. You saw me get beat up and raped. Over and over again.”

Hutch didn’t want to remember the details. He wouldn’t allow them into his mind. He was sure that’s not what Starsky wanted him to do. Starsky was on another mission: To make a point about something and Hutch was compelled to listen. He acknowledged with a slight nod what Starsky already knew.

“You stayed by me,” Starsky said. “You saw all that: The crap we did from ten years ago on up through what happened to me. You see me. Like nobody else sees me. You get that, right?”

Hutch nodded more noticeably. He was sorry to have been a witness to those rapes, but honored to be Starsky’s partner.

“And now,” Starsky concluded, “you see all this other stuff. You see me naked. Every part of me from my beautiful blue eyes to my sweet asshole. All of me. You see me get laid. You see me spew cum. You see me get fucked and now you see me fuck. You see me lay here afterward all drained and reminiscive.”

Hutch smiled. “Do you mean reflective?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.” He pinched Hutch’s belly to repay him for the correction, but not so hard that it hurt Hutch. “What’s left for you to know about me? or to see?” Starsky asked.

Hutch pretended to think. “Not much, for sure.”

“Nothing,” Starsky said for him. “And, yet, despite all that, all that fighting and fucking and everything in-between, here you stay—with me.”

The reason was obvious to Hutch. “That’s love, baby.”

“Yeah, I know. My point. I like how you see me.”

* * *

There was enough morning light to distinguish detail from blur and that was all he needed. Wearing just his shoes without socks, Starsky quietly left Hutch asleep on the bed and went outside to relieve himself behind the cabin after he ignited the water heater’s propane for the makeshift shower. He straightened, faced the woods, stretched his arms overhead, and then his back. The cool breeze tickled his skin, refreshed, and energized him. He couldn’t remember a time he felt as satisfied and as content with life as he did then.

After a couple of minutes of mindless gazing—and convincing himself that the utter silence of the woods meant no bears lurked in the underbrush—he carefully marched into the overgrown foliage, certain he would contact poison ivy instead, and found what he believed was the safest tree to urinate beside.

The woods slowly awakened with early morning bird songs and insects and they seemed magnified in the otherwise stillness. Perhaps it was the complete absence of other sound that made them so. Unlike Hutch, Starsky wasn’t a country boy, but he appreciated why Hutch was—and that was enough for him, to live some of his life by proxy through the person he loved most.

When Starsky returned to the shower at the back of the cabin, he kicked off his shoes and stood naked on the wooden pallet that served as the stall floor and, with a firm grip on the shower head, rinsed and soaped himself—from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. It was a thorough cleansing; he planned to have sex again upon his return to the cabin and he wanted to be freshly prepared for it.

He even sang while he bathed, but was startled by a noise at the door-side of the cabin that grabbed his abrupt attention and interrupted him mid-lyric. His heart pounded as adrenaline pulsed through his veins. Oh, god, had a bear arrived—to eat him alive, soap and all? A second later, a second that felt like forever, Hutch appeared at the cabin’s corner, dressed in sweat pants, sock-less shoes, and an unbuttoned, long-sleeved shirt, and he looked as unnerved as Starsky felt. He appeared to have bolted out of bed and rushed to the rear of the cabin. When they laid eyes on each other, they were both relieved.

“There you are,” Hutch finally said, rather quietly, but he was inwardly bursting with joy to have found his partner.

It was only after Starsky was able to relax that he realized why Hutch had been alarmed. Starsky had gone missing before—against his will—and Hutch was still highly sensitized to his whereabouts. Starsky apologized to him.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he explained. He resumed his shower. “You had a rough night last night,” he noted with a light laugh. “You needed all the beauty sleep you could get.”

“Fuck you,” Hutch playfully replied. He too then scanned the woods, stretched, and admired the early morning light and sounds. It was already a peaceful day.

“Fuck me?” Starsky joked. “Fuck you. And hard.”

Hutch shifted his eyes to Starsky’s. “And you say I’m the one with the mean streak.” He would never forget the unprecedented sexual helplessness he’d experienced the night before.

“Did I hurt you?” Starsky asked. He wasn’t quite serious. He felt the warm water wash over his face and lathered soap in it with both hands.

“Pain is a relative term,” Hutch said, “and it isn’t always physical.”

Starsky paused in his wash and, through the suds on his face, looked more closely at Hutch. The man sounded sincere, so Starsky repeated his question. “I hurt you?”

“My sensibilities,” Hutch explained.

Starsky finished his rinse and shut off the water. “Then it wasn’t physical hurt. It was a good kind of hurt, hm?”

“Not a good kind, no,” Hutch said, and then warned, “Don’t ever do that to me again.” He felt the weight of the cuff still attached to his wrist.

“Don’t ever do what again?” Starsky asked. He looked at Hutch, bewildered. “Which part?”

“You know which part,” Hutch growled. “The whole part.”

“That’s not what you said last night.”

“I’ve had time to think about it since.”

Starsky’s heart sank. “So, never fuck you again?”

Hutch hated how little Starsky appreciated words—or even inflection. He approached the shower stall to explain them, but then couldn’t help but notice how attractive Starsky appeared—covered in and dripping with water; it pasted the hair on his chest and belly to his skin. He stole a glance at Starsky’s flaccid penis, too, and couldn’t escape how it had been used on him, fully erect, the night before; the memory made him thoughtless for a moment, but when he noticed Starsky’s expectant expression, he clarified himself. “Fucking me wasn’t the part of my sensibilities you injured,” he said.

“So it was all the other stuff,” Starsky assumed, relieved to know Hutch hadn’t ruled out intercourse with him in the future. He shook the water off himself the way a dog would after a bath.

“Yeah, all the other stuff,” Hutch half-consciously confirmed while he watched Starsky brush the water off his arms and legs with his hands, and from his chest and his face—and the look of it aroused him as he stood there.

Starsky paused, straightened, and noticed that Hutch noticed him. “So no more bondage,” he said, seeking confirmation.

Hutch remembered how it felt to be held against his will under Starsky’s sexual propensities—and how intense his own orgasm had been because of it. “I didn’t say bondage offended my sensibilities,” he said.

“Okay, then,” Starsky replied, “so, you mean to say, don’t ever—what? don’t ever wash you again? talk dirty to ya? lick your ass? Which part?”

Hutch was perplexed with himself. Each one of those items Starsky listed further aroused him, so how could he not want to do them again—despite how they had embarrassed and disempowered him? He held intimate eye contact with his partner—who obviously wanted an honest answer and was surprisingly patient to wait for it. Hutch shrugged. “Just don’t make a habit out of those things,” he said on second thought, “okay? Surprise me sometime … but don’t do them as a matter of routine.”

Starsky winked at him. “You got it, Donny Juan.” He bent over, put on his shoes, and flashed Hutch his bared backside—which Hutch couldn’t help but admire and desire all at once. When Starsky straightened and faced Hutch, they made bonding eye contact again. Starsky warmly smiled at him, lightly amused. He’d weakened Hutch and deeply satisfied him at the same time—or maybe because of it. That pleased him. Hutch would just have to overcome his embarrassment. Starsky stepped off the pallet, slapped Hutch’s clothed butt as he passed him, and headed back to the cabin. “Come to bed when you’re done out here.”

“Hey,” Hutch called him. When Starsky stopped at the corner of the cabin and turned around, Hutch showed him the dangling handcuff still attached to his left wrist. “Would you mind removing this first?”

Starsky opened his arms to present his obvious nudity to Hutch as if it hadn’t been apparent, and asked, “Does it look like I have a key on me?”

* * *

“Give me your hand,” Starsky said. He put out his own and expected Hutch to give his in return, but Hutch didn’t budge. “C’mon,” Starsky coaxed him. “Let me help you with that thing.”

They sat on the top step of the porch, fully dressed, Starsky to Hutch’s left. Hutch had been there for some time after breakfast—a respite that followed another round of sex between them, one in which Hutch was free to reciprocate, and one that was more loving than it was sexual—to contemplate the woods and listen to the bird choruses while Starsky fussed around with his telescope inside the cabin. They planned to return to town for camping gear and another gadget for Starsky’s telescope because Starsky wanted to spend that night outside on the mountain to look at stars.

Though he had been focused on drafting a list of items he wanted to purchase, Starsky had also been concerned about Hutch’s aloofness, there on the porch that late morning after breakfast. Perhaps Starsky needed to make amends for the things he’d done. “C’mon,” he said again, nudging Hutch’s knee with his own, “the last thing I ever wanted was for you to be afraid of me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Hutch mumbled. He continued to stare into the woods and appreciate the stillness that magnified the bird songs on that little patch of wilderness.

“I have something for you,” Starsky encouraged him. He leaned into Hutch, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. The contact did what he wanted, softened Hutch, got Hutch’s attention then, so Starsky asked again for Hutch’s hand, the one with the handcuff attached to it.

“You planning to weld it to my wrist, are you?” Hutch joked. He surrendered it just the same, mostly to prove to Starsky that Starsky didn’t intimidate him.

Starsky unlocked the loose bracelet and carefully relocked it around Hutch’s wrist, so that Hutch wore both cuffs on the same wrist and not just the one. “That’ll keep you from hitting yourself in the face with that thing,” he explained.

“So that’s how you’re helping me? How about you just take it off?”

“You’re missing my point,” Starsky complained. “I’m showing you how I look after you.”

Hutch grunted and turned his line of sight back to the trees. He should have known Starsky hadn’t come to reprieve him. But his attention on the woods was cut short when Starsky rested Hutch’s arm over his knee. Hutch turned his head to watch what Starsky would do with him next.

He pushed both bracelets higher up on Hutch’s arm, as far as they would go without pinching him, revealing the raw skin the handcuff had already caused him; another hour of wearing it and it may have actually lacerated him. That bothered Starsky, a lot, but he’d found a reasonable solution, he thought. First he opened the oil bottle he’d previously tucked into his pants pocket, and then squeezed a few drops onto the back of Hutch’s hand. He carefully massaged it around Hutch’s reddened wrist. After it completely absorbed, he squeezed out more, massaged it until it was gone, and then again. He took his time and he was determined.

Hutch silently admitted to himself that the oil felt good and Starsky’s strong hand soothed him, too. He watched Starsky’s fingers and Starsky’s profile and Starsky’s eyes and Starsky’s expression as intently as Starsky thoroughly eased the soreness and rawness the cuff had caused him.

“Again, why don’t you just take it off me?” he finally suggested. “Spare yourself all this effort. That would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?”

Starsky ignored him—except to casually reply, “It would solve your problem.” He finished using the oil, recapped the bottle, and pushed it back into his pocket. “I’m thinking I might want to put this shackle to use again. Something about having you helpless…”

“It’s the power over power that turns you on.”

“Maybe,” Starsky mulled, picking up the short length of duct tape he’d also brought to the porch. “But who cares what my reason is for loving the hell out of you while you can’t stop me; I mean, who cares besides you?”

“Apparently, no one,” Hutch said when he realized what Starsky was about to do. “You’re going to duct tape me to this thing, huh? Isn’t that a little overboard? As if I can get out of it without a key …”

Shrugging off Hutch’s questions, Starsky wrapped the black strip of tape around Hutch’s wrist, not too snugly, but enough that it wouldn’t rub against him, either.

It was only then that Hutch realized Starsky had actually taped the inside of a strip of adhesive to the inside of another strip—which rendered both strips harmless against his skin. With the exception of a narrow sticky flap at the end, Starsky sealed the tape to itself. He then pulled the handcuff bracelets over the duct tape—and was proud of himself for having made the perfect cushion between them and Hutch’s freshly oiled skin.

Hutch examined the makeshift bandaid Starsky had made and silently nodded to himself. “Well played, my friend, but how long are you going to make me wear these irons?”

“Long enough,” Starsky said.

It wasn’t an answer as far as Hutch was concerned, but, given that there wasn’t anything he could do about it, he accepted Starsky’s reply and gazed into the peaceful woods.

“I think maybe it’s time to come up with a safe word,” Starsky imagined. He hugged Hutch’s shoulders and pulled him close. “I don’t plan to do anything to you that I haven’t already done, but I can see you’re gun shy now and that’s not what I wanted. So how about you give me a safe word and it’s as good as the key to those cuffs.”

Hutch lowered his eyes to stare past the graveled dirt at the bottom of the steps in search of a solitary word. He thought for several minutes, but nothing came to mind, nothing of any meaningfulness, anyway. Out of desperation to have something to give Starsky, he looked back into the woods and then said, “Trees.”

“Trees,” Starsky repeated. “Trees it is. Do you want to say it now? Say it now and I’ll take it off you.”

Hutch studied the handcuff—snug around the neatly wrapped duct tape—and gave genuine consideration to the thoughtful effort Starsky had given it. “Nah,” he said affectionately, enjoying Starsky’s closeness. “I think I can handle it a while longer. I’ll let you know when.”

They sat for a few minutes, each lost in their own musings, before Starsky shared what had come to his mind. “You amaze me.”

“I’m an amazing guy,” Hutch echoed with a light laugh. He had no idea where Starsky had gone, so he played along to solicit an explanation.

Starsky looked back at him. “You really do accept the way things are between us, this situation we’re in,” he said, “this relationship we’re in while I’m in one with someone else.”

“What’s the alternative?” Hutch asked. “Do I demand that you sacrifice who you are and what you want out of life so I can shape life into the mold I want it? Or do I leave you to her and give up the love and intimacy I have with you?” He didn’t have to think about the answer to the overall question. He knew his heart of hearts. “I’m going to have with you whatever this life allows. Don’t we believe in unconditional love?”

“I used to think that,” Starsky countered him, “but now I’m not so sure. We won’t share each other with other guys.”

“That’s not a test we have to endure,” Hutch reminded him. “Didn’t we already lay that one to rest? But, if you’re asking me: What would I really do if you wanted me and someone else with a dick at the same time, if those were the conditions? God, Starsk, I don’t know anymore. It would certainly change how I see this romance we’ve got, but give up what I have with you because I don’t like what you’ve got with some him?” He truly didn’t know how much he’d sacrifice to keep Starsky in his life that way. “It would break my heart,” he decided, “but I’d do anything in my power to keep from losing you.”

“Well, you’re not ever going to have to make that choice. That’s not the choice I was suggesting. You are, however, in a relationship with me and I have one going with a woman.”

“It’s different. I mean, could you share me with a woman of my own?”

Starsky thought about it; he sincerely gave it serious consideration, then said, “If you had a woman of your own, I’d think it’s because you needed from a woman something I couldn’t give you. Maybe it wouldn’t be sex. Maybe it wouldn’t be romance. Maybe you needed someone female to mother you or be softer with you or listen better to you, know what I mean? So I’d know, in my heart of hearts, I’d know you’d be in it with her to make up for something I could never give you simply because I’m a guy.”

“Well, isn’t that how it works in reverse, right now, today? Grace gives you what I can’t give you, what I’ll never be able to give you—‘simply because I’m a guy.’ And I accept that. Do us both a favor and accept that I accept that. Let’s be done with this conversation once and for all.”

They silently spoke to each other then, a silent dialogue that passed between their eyes to remind the other that love was and had always been their bond; love and trust and loyalty. And there’d be no breaking it—not by anyone or by any circumstance.

“Okay,” Starsky said, getting to his feet. “Then you accept something for me.” He stepped off the porch and stood directly in front of Hutch at the bottom of the steps, he there in his shirt and jeans and running shoes and Hutch in his sweats and tee-shirt. Starsky looked up at him while Hutch looked back. He then knelt on the lower step, set his forearms on Hutch’s opened knees, and made more intimate eye contact with him.

“There’s no place on your body now that I haven’t been,” he said. He saw the flicker in Hutch’s eyes that hinted at his embarrassment for having been reminded of such a thing, but Starsky wasn’t finished. “I love everything about you,” he added. He knew he was understood because the look that fired back to him from those sparkling blue eyes conveyed a similar sentiment. “I love your face, your big heart, your politics and your no religion, your huge dick, your blond hair, your sarcasm, your toes, your asshole, your strengths and your dreams, and everything in between and all around.”

It had been an impressive and interesting list, but Hutch got Starsky’s point. He parted with a shy smile to thank him for his words. “With few exceptions, ditto, buddy, but where are you going with this?”

“I put you through all that humiliating stuff last night,” Starsky explained, “because I wanted to push you over the edge into some rank sex, so you’d see you like getting down-and-dirty with it as much as I do—because you did—if you could get past all that fucked-up upbringing of yours. So, do us both a favor: Let go of your father’s prejudices and the man you think you need to be to make him proud, and play with me from this day forward as openly and as freely as I want to play with you. Do you think you can do that?”

Starsky had hit the nail on the head: Hutch loved his father; he just never felt his father really loved him. Oh, his father loved him if he did good, but not because of the good he was. His embarrassment had been a product of his own making, his unconscious perception that his father looked over his shoulder and didn’t like what he saw. Hutch bit his lip. “Yeah, I can do that. I can let go of my insecurities.”

“Good,” Starsky said, visibly satisfied. “Now we really are the Me and Thee team we profess to be.” He winked at Hutch. “Because me and the mountain and all them trees pay no mind to what anybody else thinks—not anybody, not anymore. As far as we’re concerned, what happens between you and me happens only between you and me. Not you and me and Grace. Not you and me and God. Just you and me. Got that, blue eyes?”

“Yeah. I got that, too,” Hutch replied. He was grateful and happy to hear what he’d heard. Starsky had just liberated him; Starsky’s expression, as perfect and as intent as it was, coupled with his wants and insightful words, warmed Hutch’s feelings for him all over again. His partner, his lover, had understood him better than he knew he did. Starsky wanted what was best for Hutch as much as Hutch wanted what he wanted for himself. “How’d you get to be so smart?” he asked.

“How?” Starsky pretended to wonder, and then answered, “Well … I had you for a teacher.”

* * *

Hutch pulled his sleeve over the handcuffs and buttoned it closed. Still, he kept his hand buried in his sweat pants pocket. Some things simply weren’t anybody’s business. He followed Starsky along each aisle of the outfitters store and hoped they’d get out of it with their secret intact.

“This is cool!” Starsky exclaimed, picking up a red-light lantern. “It’ll give us enough to see by without interfering with the scope.”

Hutch didn’t care. He simply stood close to Starsky and watched him enjoy himself like a toddler in a toy store.

Starsky added the lantern to his cart. “Hey, check this out!” He excitedly showed Hutch a laser pointer and flashed it momentarily at Hutch’s forehead. “We can pinpoint the star we’re looking at.”

“Or the galaxy.”

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed, “or the galaxy.”

“Or the emptiness in your head,” Hutch added.

Starsky playfully glared at him. “You don’t want to fuck with me as long as you’re wearing that jewelry,” he warned.

Hutch squeezed the cuff to his leg inside his pant and was reminded by its hardness how unyielding it was—and had been. Maybe that was the purpose of it, another reason Starsky left it attached to him—to give him that reminder and solicit the arousal he felt from it, a sort of added benefit to the play between them.

Starsky returned to his camping gear search. Around another aisle, he found what he looked for: Sleeping bags. While Hutch watched from a few feet away, Starsky rummaged through several shelves of the bags, a camper’s dream-come-true in an assortment of colors and sizes and prices. He discovered a double sleeping bag. “Sleeps two,” he read aloud—and raised his eyebrows to flash Hutch a knowing look. “That’s the one for us,” he said, and he dumped it into the shopping cart.

When he got to the end of the aisle, he realized Hutch hadn’t followed him, so he stopped and looked back. As expected, Hutch was where he’d left him, still watching him. Starsky shrugged at him to get him to explain himself.

“How’s that going to look?” Hutch answered the silent question in Starsky’s eyes.

Starsky realized what had concerned Hutch. He dropped his focus to the bag in his cart. A double sleeping bag. How would it look to the checkout clerk? Two men, one bag—a bag big enough for the two of them. Starsky cared only to a point, but he did care. “How’s it going to look?” he echoed Hutch, returning to the aisle to grab another double bag. “It’ll look like we’re going to lay each other on the mountain tonight—but we’ll be warm doing it.” He gave only one second’s thought to the threat, and then added, “If anyone comes near us while we’re out there, I’m going to blow their head off and ask questions later. I’m not fucking around with this shit anymore.”

Hutch chuckled. “You. Mr. Tough Guy.”

After their return to the property, they packed for their night on the mountain, outside that ring of trees to the west of the cabin, the area closest to the dirt road they’d use, under what would be a star-lit black sky. They packed food and clothing into the car, the telescope and its accessories, camping gear and Starsky’s pistol. The collection was a lot for one night on the mountain, but, like Hutch, Starsky wanted to be materially provided for, too, with all the comforts of home.

“Now we nap,” Starsky said, matter-of-factly as he stripped out of his clothes and crawled onto the bed. “That way we can stay up late tonight.”

They were both tired, not sleepy, but tired. It seemed a good idea.

“Won’t getting off help us sleep?” Hutch wondered, as he, too, undressed. “Want to chain me to the bed for half an hour first?”

“I do,” Starsky replied, eyeing his naked lover and feeling his resolve weaken, “but I also want to have it in us to do it under the stars—just for the fun of it.”

“We pulled off three times yesterday,” Hutch said factly, joining Starsky on the mattress.

“Well, yeah,” Starsky agreed, “but what if we’re running out of steam?” He laughed to imagine such a thing. “And, if we do it tonight, it’ll make me forget about the bears.”

“Or draw their attention.”

“Did you have to say that?”

Hutch smiled at him and studied his partner: Starsky’s haired chest and belly, his also flaccid penis cradled in the crevice of his groin, resting on his scrotum, Starsky’s perfectly proportioned build, that head of dark hair, those warm blue eyes. “Okay,” Hutch said, mocking disappointment because he assumed Starsky would eventually surrender, “never mind then.” Besides, sex under the stars sounded like a better idea anyway.

“Nope,” Starsky said, getting off the bed to find the handcuff key from the last place he hid it—under a floor lantern—when he realized Hutch had solicited him, “don’t never mind. We’re going to do it now and then we’ll do it later, too, even if we’re spent. But I’m never going to reject a pass from you. Promise made, promise be kept.”

* * *

When Hutch silently opened his eyes more than an hour later, he realized Starsky was on the bed beside him, facing him, and awake. He himself had since rolled over in his sleep and hadn’t expected to see the man. But Starsky didn’t see Hutch, either; he didn’t realize Hutch was awake. Instead, he studied Hutch’s bared chest, the shape of his shoulder, the color of his exposed nipple and its contrast with the white bed sheet, the faint pulse he could see beneath the skin in Hutch’s neck. But maybe he sensed a change in Hutch’s respiration, or he felt a movement Hutch didn’t even know he’d made or, from his peripheral vision, Starsky saw Hutch’s eyes open. Whatever it was, Starsky’s line of sight finally lifted to Hutch’s face and their eyes met.

Starsky was the first to smile, a quiet, affectionate, pleased smile. Sincere and warm; he was glad to discover Hutch had wakened and to see that light reflected in his blue eyes. But Starsky was more than glad for it, more than he had words for, because he had actually waited for Hutch to wake. “That was some badass nap, wasn’t it?” he said, sleepily. “Isn’t it great that we can go right to sleep after we empty ourselves?”

Hutch was entertained by the question, in a grateful, intimate, love-filled way, so much that he quietly grunted to thank Starsky for the cheerfully disguised greeting. He stroked Starsky’s whiskered cheek—as warm to the touch.

Starsky’s smile melted into a sincerely heard, but silent reply. Hutch’s tenderness moved him. Again.

“What time is it?” Hutch asked, hoarsely. He dropped his hand from Starsky’s face only to have Starsky catch it in his own.

Starsky pressed Hutch’s palm to his mouth and gently kissed it. He didn’t leave eye contact.

Maybe Starsky was needy for sex; Hutch couldn’t tell. It wasn’t his lover’s usual way of asking for a sexual encounter.

“It’s past time …” Starsky said.

“To what?” Hutch asked. Maybe Starsky had yet another sexual technique in his arsenal that Hutch couldn’t guess, or Hutch could guess, but hoped wasn’t the case; he wouldn’t say he’d hit his own limits because he’d since learned he didn’t have any when it came to Starsky. But he still didn’t want to cross over into anything abusive or to play with sex toys or to compete to see how far into a body he could go with any given appendage of his; ‘fisting’ came to mind again only because he’d seen it once in a pornographic advertisement and hoped to never see it again. “What?” he repeated. “It’s past time for what?”

Starsky didn’t break the eye contact between them; he held it firmly as he gently kissed Hutch’s finger between his moist lips. “I’ve been such an asshole these past six months,” he confessed. “I don’t suppose you noticed.”

“No more or less than I’ve been,” Hutch said. He’d already forgiven Starsky for everything, whether Starsky needed forgiveness or not.

“That’s not true,” Starsky said. “I’ve definitely been a bigger asshole than you.” Hutch was near enough, so he hugged Hutch’s hand and arm to his chest to hold Hutch closer while he said his peace. “You didn’t ask anything of me,” he explained. “I asked for everything—and more—from you. I asked for your love and respect, your trust and your friendship, your patience—when god knows I didn’t deserve it—but I also asked for your heart and your body.”

“It’s all about you,” Hutch reminded him, and he didn’t say it facetiously.

“My point exactly. It was all about me. It was about what I wanted, what I needed, where I wanted to go, and how we got there.”

“And look where we ended up,” Hutch said, noticeably aware of the handcuff still locked to his left wrist and its other bracelet to a bed post, “but who’s complaining?” He squeezed Starsky’s hand to let him know he appreciated that they were on the same bed after having had a head-spinning sexual experience he’d never forget for as long as he lived. “And you don’t always have to chain me to the headboard and force me into it, either.”

Starsky thought for a second—because he couldn’t remember the exact words he wanted to say. “Yeah, but what’s that phrase again? Ill-got gains or something?”

Hutch could see the earnest in Starsky’s blue eyes. “Where do you want to go with this?” he asked. “You want to apologize for bad behavior? Apology accepted. I hope you’ll do the same for me.”

“But your asshole ways were reactions to mine—”

“And that justifies abuse, does it?”

They both knew nothing did.

Starsky cupped Hutch’s mouth with his hand to silence him from saying another word. “Let me get this off my chest,” he said. When he got the nod in those blue eyes, he dropped his hand to the mattress and spoke more determinedly. “I’m not talking about the ‘he-said, he-said’ bullshit or the tit-for-tat crap. I’m not talking about the name-calling and the ‘fuck you’ cracks and the walkouts and shit like that. I’m talking about the underneath stuff, the stuff that matters, the things that make us who we are and what we stand for.”

Hutch didn’t understand what Starsky meant.

“I walked over you,” Starsky said, trying again because he could tell from Hutch’s frown that he hadn’t been understood. “I walked over you and I walked away from you. When you didn’t want to play, I played with someone else—thinking I was protecting you—but hell with how you really felt about that. Even if I had made the same decision, I could have at least given you that hour you wanted to explain why you changed your mind—but I didn’t. And hell with how Grace felt, too. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her was my thinkin’—and whatever I did to hurt you, ‘tough shit, cowboy, buck it up.’ That’s the crap I’m talking about, that’s the stuff that made me the bigger asshole. I had a real ‘fuck you’ attitude sometimes; not on purpose, but just the same.”

Hutch slowly drew a breath and exhaled as he fully relinquished whatever ill feeling he had from having felt abandoned and neglected and abused by Starsky for the past many months. He’d understood it and he’d even accepted it, rolled with it to the best of his ability, but it was still liberating to have Starsky acknowledge it. Hutch had just gotten back the essence of the man he loved.

“Forgiven,” he said. And he meant it.

Starsky lifted Hutch’s hand to his mouth again and tenderly kissed his fingers. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Somebody’d better or I’m going to be all alone.”

Starsky gave him a gentle smile. He really did believe he didn’t deserve Ken Hutchinson. “Everything you did you did for me.”

“The first time,” Hutch said. “Not the second time. Or the third time. Or the—”

“You held me. You fed me. You dressed me—”

“And undressed you.”

“You bathed me and bandaged my cuts and gashes. You pushed me out of my fear. You gave me back my dignity and sense of purpose. You cheated the legal system on my behalf and risked your freedom to deliver justice for me.”

Hutch realized Starsky had returned them to those first couple of months after the attacks, to when he took Starsky home with him to nurse him to health while Starsky physically recovered from his injuries and broken bones, and to the manhunt, to the punishment Hutch had been able to dole the ring leader, and to the coverup Hutch masterminded to keep it all from going public, despite that he hadn’t succeeded.

Starsky appreciated all Hutch had done for him, but there was more. “You bought me a brand new house and shoved a woman under my nose to remind me I still had the life spark, you know?”

“What are friends for?” Hutch asked. “I don’t mean that sarcastically. I mean, really, what are friends for if they’re not for those things?”

“But you went above-and-beyond the call of ‘buddy duty.’ You’d give me your heart if I needed a transplant.”

“So what’s a little matter like a dick?”

Starsky laughed, despite himself. “You know what I mean. You’d give your life for mine.”

“You’d do the same for me.”

“Yeah, and exactly what I’m trying to say here, if you’d let me finish, is that I was wrong to treat the person in my life—who’d trade his own for mine—the way I treated you these past six months.”

“I forgave you already—or didn’t you hear me?”

“And I’m saying I don’t deserve it.”

“If I can give you my heart, then surely you deserve forgiveness.”

“Now you’re not hearing me.”

“Wait,” Hutch said, mocking a second thought. “I already gave you my heart.” He flashed a smile. “And a few other body parts, I recall.”

“And I love some of them more than others,” Starsky replied, playfully.

“So what’s the problem?”

He shook Hutch’s shoulder to make himself heard better somehow. “The problem is I don’t deserve it. I was a shitty friend. There isn’t nobody you know who would think otherwise.”

Hutch tousled Starsky’s hair. “Nobody,’huh?”

“You thought of somebody?”

Hutch rolled onto his back and stretched. “I was commenting on your grammar.”

Starsky lightly punched Hutch’s arm. “Tell me how I’m supposed to live with the way I behaved.”

Hutch rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “There’s nothing to make up for, darling. It’s over. It’s done. Isn’t it? It’s all about having a good time with each other from here on out, don’t you agree? Isn’t that what we decided while we were on the porch this morning?”

Starsky didn’t think he should get off so easily. He hadn’t fully understood his sometimes indifference toward Hutch those many months in the first place. But he promised himself that he’d make it his life ambition to never walk over Hutch again.

Hutch read Starsky’s mind and rolled back to face him. “So I bandaged your cuts and gashes,” he echoed Starsky’s earlier words. And that was no small feat because Starsky’s wounds were visible on his face at the time, and not visible as well, from where the rapists penetrated and ruptured him. But Hutch cared for him, as he knew Starsky would have cared were the tables reversed. But they weren’t. “It was your door they knocked on,” Hutch reminded him.

Starsky would never forget it; that fateful mistake on that oh so terrible night.

“It was you they wrestled to the floor,” Hutch continued. He knew Starsky didn’t want to relive even a moment of that ordeal, but the ordeal was at the root of Starsky’s self-punishment. “You they blindfolded and bound and dragged out of his house kicking and screaming,” he said. “You they drove to some god-forsaken abandoned warehouse—where they already had their instruments of torture in place.”

Starsky didn’t actually know that fact. He didn’t know they’d planned it that well; he just assumed they took liberty with whatever they found in those warehouses.

“You they strung from the ceiling that first night and beat the shit out of.”

Starsky would never forget it; he was sorrier Hutch had to witness it. Embarrassed and sorry and sad. He’d had no idea what lay in wait for him.

“You they stripped nearly naked,” Hutch said. “You they forced to the cement floor. You they wrestled and raped. One and then another and then another—and all while they filmed it, so they could forever humiliate you.”

Starsky’s expression couldn’t have been more sober. Hutch had taken him back to that terrifying ordeal while they lay safe there on their bed under the clean sheet, two lovers, two friends, two victims.

Hutch had many times imagined Starsky’s fear, his pain and his shame, if for no other reason than to keep Starsky from being alone in it. But he had not lived it, not its reality. Everything done to David Starsky had been done to Ken Hutchinson, but only by proxy. “You they abandoned each night in a different, empty building,” Hutch said, “with a hood over your head, duct tape over your mouth, and just the shirt on your back, chained to a wall like an abused dog—without food, without water, without knowing the long-term outcome—with the rats and the stray cats and the cold, hard floor.”

Starsky didn’t leave Hutch’s eyes; he couldn’t. If he did, he feared he’d lose his grip. Hutch gave him the strength to relive those terrible nights, if only for the few minutes Hutch replayed them. He stayed locked with Hutch in the presence of those memories. Hutch wouldn’t lead him astray. He squeezed Hutch’s hand to let him know he appreciated that he wasn’t alone with the memories of that nightmare.

“And it was you they came back for the next night,” Hutch said, “to repeat their atrocities—and the night after that one, too—to beat you and to slap you around, to degrade and humiliate you, to break your bones, to further fuck you with all the hate they felt for you and for the sin they believed you committed.”

Tears shimmered in Starsky’s eyes. He’d never understood what he’d done to deserve their wrath. What had he done? Loved Ken Hutchinson? Who wouldn’t if they knew the man? Why had that been so punishable?

Hutch stroked Starsky’s cheek again, scratched his whiskers to comfort him, to make an effort to relieve Starsky’s pain as evidenced by the tears in his eyes. But Hutch needed to finish what Hutch needed to say. “And it was you they pissed all over that last night when they left you, broken and bleeding, hungry and cold, scared, sightless, alone—and filled with and covered in their cum—there on that cold cement floor, so badly broken in spirit that you wished they’d killed you.”

Starsky remembered. He’d told Hutch as much, too. A tear then spilled from his eye. Hutch knew what he’d been through: Hutch had seen it on the video, but he also understood the damage that couldn’t visibly be seen. Hutch was his brother, his savior, and his hero—one he’d walked over since then, despite Hutch’s empathy and compassion for him, regardless of Hutch’s feelings, of his loyalty and love.

“They didn’t do all that to you because of you,” Hutch finished. “They did all that to you because of Us. But you took the blows. You’re the one they physically broke. You’re the one they soiled. And I told you then as I’ll tell you now: I’d trade places with you in that instance in a heartbeat and never look back if it meant you never went through it. But, you did. And you came out the other side confused. Angry. Terrified. Ashamed. Guilty. And desperate to turn it around—so much that you would do anything to find your salvation.”

“One of those things I did was hurt you.”

“You hurt me because you did something you believed was in my best interest and I was too caught up in my own pettiness that I couldn’t see the struggle you fought on our behalf.”

“You got hurt just the same.”

“So I did. So what?”

“All the more reason I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” Starsky said.

“All the more reason that you do.”

“How do you mean? The kind of saving I needed I could only get from you—”

“And you got it,” Hutch sadly laughed. “Granted, it took some pushing and shoving on your part, and a lot of bitching and moaning on mine, but I’m moaning now, baby, because I’m loving it.”

Starsky wiped his eyes and laughed quietly with him. “I’m saying I hurt you badly with that Adam thing—when I should have known better.”

“Maybe the only way to get me here was to walk over me,” Hutch decided. “It didn’t mean I would abandon you. Or hold it against you. Or that I couldn’t endure it—because I could, and I did. Ill-gotten gains? No. It was the least I could do, to go through anything for what you went through for Us.”

Starsky was immeasurably relieved and grateful. “You’ve got a sick way of looking things,” he joked.

“Something you taught me. So how about this? We can blame me for your asshole behavior these past few months, if that would make you feel better.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, suppose I’d cut to the chase back then, back when you kissed me in the grass, where your house now stands, right? Suppose I hadn’t resisted? You went for my zipper and I helped you. I could have done that then if I hadn’t been so self-repressed in my own way. Saved us both a lot of grief. We could have fucked each other in the grass that morning and gotten it over with. My fault, see?”

Not seriously, Starsky said, “If it makes you feel better to look at it like that … then have at it.”

“Yeah,” Hutch decided, “let’s look at it like that and you can finally put the blame game to rest.”

They gazed at each other for a few minutes and, in their respective ways, reflected over the six months they’d just lived through. Then Starsky nudged Hutch. “Hey. I think we just made mush.”

Hutch smiled at him. “I think you’re right, lover boy. I think we just had an after-sex love fest. Sappy sons-of-bitches, aren’t we?”

They silently reflected on that point, too—so much that, one by one, they drifted into a light doze. Hutch’s mind was busy with unmemorable thoughts; Starsky’s wound its way to the farthest disconnected musings he’d ever had, until they circled back to the present moment—and to food. It was enough of a conscious nudge that he woke, opened his eyes, and studied Hutch again. How did that man’s body become such a turn on to him? He rose to his elbow beside Hutch, there on the mattress where they still lay naked. “Do you think you also have sex with me because it’s easy and guaranteed?” he asked.

He didn’t want a flippant answer, but he didn’t know how to ask the question any other way. Hutch didn’t open his eyes; they were closed in a blissful doze. Despite that Starsky hated to bring Hutch to a full consciousness, he wasn’t a patient man, either. “You asleep?” he finally asked, nudging Hutch with his entire body, “or are you ignoring me?”

Hutch still didn’t open his eyes, but a faint smile came to his lips. Starsky’s impatience always amused him, even after ten years together. “Neither,” he replied. “I was thinking about your question.”

“What’s taking you so long to come up with an answer?”

“I want to give you an honest one.”

Starsky grunted and sarcastically said, “You mean, unlike all the other answers you give me?” He wasn’t convinced Hutch stalled because of the sincerity of his reply, but because Hutch had a hard time admitting the truth. “You have sex with me because it’s easy and guaranteed,” Starsky decided aloud for him. “Right?”

Hutch felt Starsky’s length alongside his own, pressed tightly together there on the bed, their naked skin against the other’s, with just the sounds of their own movements and their quiet breathing to break the stillness in the room. It had been an unprecedented and lengthy birthday celebration for Hutch and he continued to bask in it. When Starsky nudged him a second time, Hutch realized he needed to fully wake from his tranquil drifting and answer the man; Starsky wouldn’t abandon the question until he got a reply. “I have sex with you,” Hutch said quietly, examining the far reaches of his heart and mind, “because I love you.”

Starsky hadn’t expected such a straightforward answer, especially given how long it took Hutch to come to it. He examined Hutch’s face—that flawless profile and outline of Hutch’s relaxed jaw, his fuller lips, blond-whiskered cheeks and chin, those innocently closed eyes, that translucent blond and mussed hair—in search of motive or sincerity or a disclaimer. Starsky would have hunted further—to Hutch’s neck and shoulders, to his overall body itself—but Hutch spoke and brought his attention back to the question.

“It just so happens,” Hutch said in a low voice, “that because you’re male, sex with you is easy and guaranteed.” He opened his eyes then and looked at Starsky so he could make a more lasting impression on him. “But I have sex with you because I love you—pure and simple and as corny as that sounds.”

It didn’t sound corny to Starsky. He had hoped for such an answer, but didn’t expect it. Those blue eyes hung with his for a minute, locked in their unspoken bond, one that could only be described in the simplest terms as ‘love.’ Their sex was unprecedented in their lives, both in its kind and by its intensity. It was easy to confuse its motivating factor, but Hutch brought it home.

“You know I don’t think love is corny,” Starsky admitted. He held Hutch’s hand where it lay on the mattress. “But maybe we can stop measuring what we feel by the rest of the world, you know? Maybe it’s time we gave it the weight we’d give it if we felt this way for a woman. I mean, god knows it’s much deeper for me—and probably for you, too—than anything we’ve felt for anybody else—ever. So … in that way … it isn’t you sharing life with me and Grace … it’s her who’s sharing it with us.”

Hutch smiled—a soft, small, warm, almost unnoticeable smile. He squeezed Starsky’s fingers in his and then turned his head, closed his eyes, and continued to smile.

“What’s so funny?” Starsky wondered. He gently shook Hutch’s hand to get those blue eyes to look at him again—and succeeded.

“Nothing’s funny,” Hutch told him. “It’s just a pleasant place to be, here with you when you’re having a moment of clarity, maturity, and liberation—all at once.”

* * *

EPILOGUE

“This is the life,” Hutch said. He lay on his back in the growing dusk, his hands locked behind his head, on the face of his patch of mountain, not far from the cabin in the woods, nor Starsky’s parked car on the road, under a star-lit sky. It was black and it was vast and it blanketed them with a peacefulness that Hutch had not yet experienced in his lifetime.

It was because of Starsky, he knew. He shifted his eyes to watch his partner—the same man who was also his long-lost lover now found—play with his brand new telescope in the twilight. Starsky was but a few feet from him, patiently peering through the viewfinder while he tracked the revolving sky.

It was quiet on the mountain early that night. Occasionally they heard a traveling car on the road some miles away, and sometimes a wilderness critter—the passing of some mysterious beastie made its presence known at the edge of their meadow.

“Deer,” Hutch would say to keep Starsky from overreacting and reaching for his pistol. Or he’d say, “Skunk.” “Raccoon.” “Bunny rabbit”—just to humiliate him.

“We have to have dinner sometime tonight, don’t we?” Starsky retaliated, staying on task. “Shall I just shoot blindly into the dark and see what I hit? Maybe we’ll nab us a bunny wabbit.”

They had brought cheese and crackers, peanut butter and bread, dried fruit and olives, potato chips and canteen water with them to the meadow. And they’d brought the sleeping bags, the double ones, and a couple of blankets for added warmth. And they’d brought wine and Starsky’s red-light lantern, flashlights, almond oil, and binoculars, and they planned to use every one of those items during their all-night stay. “Or I can just sleep in the car,” Starsky added, “and leave you to the bears.”

Hutch was immeasurably content on his back as he looked up at the stars, pausing now and again to watch Starsky, or to listen to Starsky’s occasional grunts of victory when he mastered the next step in his scope alignment. Hutch loved the simplicity of that time, nothing more. There was no other place he’d rather be—unless any other place was where Starsky was.

“Check this out,” Starsky finally said. With help from his star map, he’d found Saturn—and was immediately awestruck. He couldn’t not share with Hutch, for that was the point of that excursion. And the point of his life.

Hutch got to his feet and stepped up to peer through the telescope. “Wow,” he said under his breath. The planet was highly defined in the viewfinder, a heavenly body visible with the naked eye, but aglow with its rings through the telescope. When the impression softened, Hutch was aware that Starsky stood closely beside him. He straightened. There was enough light left in the night to see each other’s eyes.

Starsky waited for Hutch to say something; he knew Hutch would, and he could tell Hutch would, and he believed that Hutch was about to say something related to Saturn, though Hutch did appear sentimental. But when Hutch spoke, he said, “I worship the ground you walk on, you know that?”

“You worship Earth,” Starsky finally concluded, realizing he’d been set-up. “I can keep Saturn and you’ll keep the home planet, is that it, hm?”

“You took the words right out of my mouth, Galileo,” Hutch said, laughing, “but I was hoping to fuck with you. Wish you hadn’t disappointed me.”

“Yeah, well, you have to get up early to fuck with me like that anymore,” Starsky said. He pushed Hutch away from the telescope so he could capture the next prize on his nighttime sky list.

Hutch lay down on the cushioning, makeshift bed they’d created out of sleeping bags and blankets, crossed his ankles, and set his hands behind his head again. The night’s temperature couldn’t have been more perfect for their warm clothes, and not a single mosquito bothered them. Hutch sent his mind up to the sky. Never had he seen so many stars at once. It seemed impossible and it seemed surreal, but there they were. Billions of them.

The night would go utterly quiet for a minute. And then Starsky would shift his weight or he’d adjust the viewfinder or he’d leave the telescope to look for something with his naked eye or with the binoculars. Or a night bird would call out to another in the distance and eventually be answered. Or a truck would roll around a bend on the faraway road on its way into town. Those sounds would break the utter stillness with their isolated and unique noises, reminders that Hutch wasn’t alone, not there on the mountain, not there on Earth, and not inside his soul any longer.

He had Starsky—in ways he could never have dreamed before. And he had never been happier because of it. He was blessed to share his life with such a man as his partner—no matter how that life was defined.

Starsky kicked his foot and got his attention. “Check this out,” he said. “I found a star.”

“Already?” Hutch asked—as if stars could be missed in that sky.

“I meant a specific star,” Starsky said proudly.

Hutch stood, buried his hands in his sweat pants pockets, stepped up to the scope, bent over, closed one eye, and looked through the viewfinder with the other. There was an isolated bright light in the center of the window in sharp focus, suspended in the seemingly forever emptiness of the universe.

“Altair,” Starsky said, as if Hutch needed to know which one. “The twelfth brightest star in the sky—and one of the closest to Earth. Fucking amazing, isn’t it?”

They took turns looking at it with the naked eye and then through the scope while they wordlessly sent their minds out to the heavenly body.

Hutch finally stepped away. “Beautiful,” he said under his breath as he returned to their sleeping bag bed.

They looked at other stars, at the ones that comprised the most familiar constellations—the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Virgo—and at star clusters and nebulas, at galaxies and planets: Venus, Jupiter, and Mars. They spent a couple of hours gazing at the lights in the sky and being alone together to do it.

“Find me a supernova,” Hutch asked him.

“Yeah?”

“Find me the Big Bang.”

“I thought you had the Big Bang earlier today,” Starsky laughed.

He had laughed lightly, amused with himself, but Hutch was much more tickled by the play on words. His was a hearty, satisfied laugh. It made Starsky rethink what he’d said and they laughed again together. It was a precious sound to break the quiet of the night.

“I’ll find you something special,” Starsky promised. He returned to his star-finding while Hutch stared with him at the blackening sky, from his back, through binoculars.

It was all special to Starsky. He had a woman at home, the woman to be his wife someday soon, and there were children in his future, and a home he’d build with a family, not the least of whose closest member was his partner and lover, there on the ground near his feet, watching the heavens with him. “Hey,” Starsky said, but not with humor. He meant what he said. “Check it out. I just found God.”

“Did you?”

Starsky lifted his eyes from the telescope to the stars one final time after he straightened and before he joined Hutch on the sleeping bag. “Yeah,” he said with certainty, “I did just. Well, let me rephrase: I just re-found God.”

“Tell me about it,” Hutch said.

Starsky lay on his side beside him, along his length; propped on his elbow, he could still see a vast portion of the star-sprinkled sky above the treed horizon and he looked at it for a lengthy time before he voiced his thoughts.

They deeply breathed in the fresh air. They would eat there in the wildness and they would drink wine and maybe they’d even revisit another intimate engagement on top of or in the sleeping bag, but for then, they were content to just lie on the earthy ground on their cushioning blankets, beside each other under the dark sky, and, as the great artist once wrote, ‘set their minds to dreaming.’

After a while, Starsky decided to tell Hutch ‘about it.’

“I can see why you don’t see what you don’t see,” he finally said, breaking the silence with his soul-reflecting and very masculine voice.

It was the most precious sound of all the noises Hutch had heard that night. It was familiar and it was warm and it was sincere. “What don’t I see?” he asked him. He was intrigued by Starsky’s sudden introspection. Or reflection. Or both.

“I look up at them stars,” Starsky explained, not leaving their view, “and I realize all over again that there are a hundred billion galaxies out there and that, in each of those galaxies, there are billions of stars.” He was awestruck again by that fact and looked briefly at Hutch to see his awe, too, lit there on his perfect face by the nearby red-light lantern. But it didn’t deter what Starsky wanted to say—

A shooting star suddenly streaked across the sky, trailing a bright tail. It lasted long enough to make them catch their breaths.

“Did you see that?!” Starsky exclaimed, briefly sitting.

“I did,” Hutch said. He was impressed, but moved more by Starsky’s excitement.

“That’s an omen,” Starsky concluded as he settled beside Hutch on the blankets.

“An omen?” Hutch asked, affectionately glancing at him. “Or did you mean an affirmation?”

“That second one,” Starsky said with a light laugh. “Anyway … as I was saying …” He held Hutch’s forearm, reminding them both of the handcuff still attached there, but neither spoke of it. “Around some of those stars,” he explained, “there are habitable zones filled with planets that probably have life on them, too.”

“I believe so.”

“Yeah,” Starsky echoed. “So that’s what you believe, and I do, too, but I can see why you don’t see what you don’t see: That when you know all that and, like we were talking earlier about your father and his affect on your life, how understandable it is that you ended up not believing in God. You look up there and you don’t see God, not anywhere, not in any place in that entire universe. And I look up there and all I see is God. That’s a big difference between us,” he added sorrily. He looked back at Hutch just as Hutch looked at him.

Hutch was suddenly anxious. There he was, enjoying to the fullest his freedom in life, and in love with the man he’d give his life for, only to have that man remind him of the one enormous chasm between them. “Don’t break my heart,” Hutch said softly. He said it with a sort of plea in his voice, though he did his best to mask it.

“Well, I’m saying I understand why you don’t believe,” Starsky explained. “I can see how one can look out there and see all them galaxies and all them stars and all them planets and all that other life, you know? and end up believing that that’s all there is. There’s the Universe and everything in it, but there’s no God. What was that you once told me about science explaining all there is—”

“Science may not explain everything,” Hutch corrected him, still anxious about where the conversation would go, “but religion explains nothing.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Starsky said, confirming it with a nod. “Religion explains nothing. It just says ‘this is how it is.’ The universe was made for man. There’s no other life out there; we’re it. The animals are to do with as we please. You’re bad, so you go to hell. You’re good, so you go to Heaven. Marriage is a sacred thing between a man and a woman. Two men fornicating is a sin, but there’s no real explanation why that is—except, what? that a man shouldn’t ‘waste his seed’ or something?”

Hutch was aware that Starsky struggled to encapsulate his overall perception of religion into a single paragraph, but he couldn’t help but feel something else brewed beneath it, something much more profound that Starsky wanted to say. “Yeah,” Hutch said carefully. He crossed his arms over his chest to shield himself from wherever Starsky led them. “Two men fornicating is a waste of ‘seed,’” he said, “and from there, it’s just a downright nasty, unnatural, evil behavior, so shame on us?”

“Well, when we started out in this thing,” Starsky said, “I thought maybe there was something to all that. This part of my mind that didn’t believe man-sex was nasty was at war with this other part that said it was.” He noticed that Hutch seemed inexplicably anxious and he didn’t understand it. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Don’t break my heart,” Hutch told him again. He was on such a high that night; he’d give anything not to have it destroyed, but Starsky was bent on another self-discovery and there’d be no stopping him.

“I won’t hurt you,” Starsky said, promisingly. He was surprised that Hutch thought he might. “I’m just saying that I’ve been thinking about what you think and I’ve been looking up there for the past couple of hours and I see why you don’t believe in God—because there’s too much wrong with it all, with God and religion and all that.”

He tousled Hutch’s hair to break the worried look in his eyes, but realized he needed to finish his thought sooner to make that happen. “My point is: I think there’s too much wrong with all that, too. I don’t believe in any of that anymore, either. I don’t believe there’s a Hell or a Heaven, that it’s wrong to make love with someone you love—regardless of what they are—or that there’s some God in the sky keeping score.”

Hutch was enormously relieved, but he needed clarification. “But you still believe in God.”

“Yeah, I believe there’s a God, there’s a creator of all these billions of galaxies and billions of stars and however many life-giving planets there are out there, too. But God isn’t hate. That’s manmade bullshit. The God I believe in today is different than the one I believed in yesterday.”

Hutch was pleased, despite Starsky’s bad grammar, or maybe because of it; isn’t that one of the reasons he loved Starsky, for his purity of heart and mind? The sparkle came back to his eyes. He looked longingly into Starsky’s.

Starsky concluded, “God is love because love is the only worthy thing in all the universe. I believe in love and I believe love is as much out there in those other planets that have life on them as much as it’s alive right here on this one between men and men, and men and women and their children, and in animals, and for the universe itself—and right here between you and me.”

They looked at each other; Starsky sometimes certain, but sometimes still questioning, Hutch content again and fond of him.

“Am I wrong?” Starsky asked. “I mean, if there’s some point to all this, this life thing—and I believe there is, even if you don’t—then it’s got to be love, doesn’t it?”

“Yep, I suppose it does,” Hutch honestly agreed with him. “I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again: Love is everything.”

“Love is everything,” Starsky echoed. He looked back at the sky, to its light-filled dome, to beyond the science and history of it all, into its abyss. He thought long and he thought hard, and then he said, “Love is something, anyway—and that something is good enough for me.”

Next: Book Four From Dandelion Series 1: Losing Starsky