Plain Brown Wrapper

Temptation takes many forms. Sometimes, it’s a jelly doughnut.

Originally written for the “What’s Your Filling?” multi fandom challenge on LiveJournal.
This is mostly humor, but it’s got just a touch of romantic angst to it. Just enough to keep you from getting sick from all that sugar.

How appropriate that it was wrapped in plain brown paper, thought Hutch, looking at the bag resting on the seat between them.

He would resist. He was stronger than mere pastry. Starsky was seemingly oblivious to his hungry stare, watching the early morning traffic of Bay City’s commuters.

He tried to focus his mind on pretty blonde schoolteachers who encouraged him to eat banana chips and impregnated wheat germ and cared about his vitamin E intake. Doughnuts were bad for you. Raspberry filled doughnuts with that little bit of powdered sugar dusting the fine golden brown surface, with just a tiny bit of sinfully delicious red goo leaking back out of the fill hole on the side…

Hutch bit the inside of his lip. He thought about doubling up on the lecithin and B vitamins in his morning goat’s milk shake. That ought to take care of these ridiculous sugar cravings.

“Somethin’ wrong?” his partner inquired, stealing a glance at him through heavy lidded eyes, still looking half-asleep. Starsky’s cooling morning coffee was carefully balanced in a styrofoam cup between his legs…Hutch winced inwardly at the thought of a sudden stop.

“If you’re tired of being so goddammed healthy, you can have one of my doughnuts,” Starsky offered generously, with a wry twist of a smile. He offered nearly every morning. Most mornings, he was refused.

The corners of Hutch’s mouth went down. He should have known. Starsky never missed anything.

“Abby and I are still doing macrobiotics,” he said, sounding so self-righteous that he inwardly cringed as soon as he said it. God, I’m such a hypocrite; he thought sitting here lusting after Starsky’s doughnuts….after Starsky. Abby was a nice girl. Beautiful girl, blonde, long legs and trim figure, oozing health and vitality from every pore and kind and sweet and normal…boring as hell. He couldn’t have found someone more opposite from his dark, masculine, muscular and hirsute partner if he’d tried. Starsky was never boring.

“They smell good, don’t they?” Starsky asked, dropping his voice seductively. “Sometimes, you just gotta have something a little bad for you, or life ain’t worth living, ya know?” He fumbled for the bag and opened it with one hand, and drew out a doughnut and inhaled it’s fragrance in a pointed, “Look what you’re missing, you poor dumb sucker” kind of way.

“Starsk,” Hutch began to protest. “I’m not going to eat that, and I don’t want to watch you eat it. Put it back.”

“Oh, your lips are saying ‘No, no, no” but your eyes are telling me “Yes, yes, yes,” Starsky said, waving the doughnut under his nose.

“Watch the road, moron.” Hutch retorted gruffly and swatted both the hand and the doughnut away. “You’re going to miss a light and burn your dick again.”

Starsky chuckled, undiscouraged. “I need asbestos underwear.”

Hutch promptly responded. “Wouldn’t make any difference if they made them, you don’t wear any. Why don’t you just get a cup holder?”

“And ruin the beautiful sleek interior of my car with a tacky plastic thingamabob?” Starsky asked. He chuckled again as Hutch shook his head.

The light turned red and they stopped. Starsky rescued and quickly downed half of his coffee, opened his window and poured out the other half, setting the now empty cup on the floorboards. “Dick hazard free, sir,” he said, giving a mock salute. “Would you care to inspect?”

Hutch rolled his eyes. “You’re three of the most perverted people I know, you know that?”

“What, Miss Crabtree making you give up everything else too, because you’re way too grumpy to just be missing fried foods.”

“Miss Crabtree is…acceptable.” Hutch said quietly.

“Oh…” Starsky echoed. “Acceptable.”

“Nothing wrong with acceptable.”

“No, nothing wrong with acceptable.”

“I just said that.”

“I was agreein’ with you.”

“Fine, drop it.”

“Okay, it’s dropped…Acceptable, huh?”

“Starsk?”

“What?”

Hutch sighed heavily. “Hand me a doughnut.”

“Anything your little blond heart desires.” Starsky produced a doughnut. “Seems to be the last one, we’ll have to share it.” The light changed and the morning traffic sluggishly moved along.

“Nothing new about that.” Hutch held out his hand, into which the doughnut was deposited with mock ceremony.

He broke it in two, the gooey filling squeezing out over his hand. He went to lick it off when he caught Starsky staring at him.

“It kinda oozed all over my hand,” Hutch explained unnecessarily. He held out the other half.

“Yeah,” Starsky was still staring. They were at another red light.

“You go ahead, have it. After all, you’ve been deprived,” Starsky said, licking his lips and swallowing.

“Deprived?” moaned-mumbled Hutch around half of the doughnut. He swallowed, the warm glow of a long overdue sugar rush flooding his system. Even his cock twitched. He sighed. A cigarette would have been nice.

“Deprived. A man should not have to depend on doughnuts to get his rocks off.” Starsky glanced over at his partner who looked so sated that Starsky thought about offering him a cigarette.

Hutch searched in vain for a napkin, inwardly shrugged and settled for wiping off his mouth with the back of his hand.

“See, your disposition has improved about a thousand percent with one doughnut. If you had a doughnut or two every morning, I might be able to stand your grumpy ass.”

“If I had a doughnut or two every morning, you’d have to rent a U-Haul to tow my grumpy ass around. We don’t all have a metabolism like a shrew, Starsk.”

“You look fine to me. Enjoying life a little is not a sin, buddy. You gotta go for the gusto and all that shit.”

“My gusto is just fine, thanks,” Hutch replied in a sour tone. “I’m thinking of 30, 40 years from now. When you look like Sidney Greenstreet* and are gumming strained peas, you’ll wish you’d taken better care of yourself.”

He still tasted the faint traces of delicious, artificial, sugar-laden raspberry filling inside of his mouth. He hadn’t felt this guilty since he’d been caught jerking off in the boy’s room in high school. Okay, maybe not quite that guilty. He wondered if Abby had cheated, too. Probably not. Abby never cheated. Abby was a schoolteacher. Schoolteachers didn’t cheat. They probably took an oath to never cheat at anything.

“Hutch, I could walk out in front of bus tomorrow, take a slug in the head from some hyped up fuckhead. I’m not going to sit around worrying about everything I put in my mouth. You eat, you get full, you take a dump, repeat every day until you die, that’s it.”

“Don’t say that.” What was it about sugar that always made you so thirsty? Hutch desperately wished for a glass of water. He was feeling a little sleepy. The sugar high was dissipating as quickly as it had come. He felt a little bereft. A glass of water and a ten-minute nap. That’d be great.

“What?” They were waiting out another red light. “I said you eat…”

Hutch interrupted him, finger jabbing Starsky’s nearest shoulder, then squeezing it. “No, no, the first part. Don’t say that. No one here is walking in front of a bus. Nobody’s going to die.”

“Hutch, everyone dies. Did someone not tell you this? I’m beginning to suspect your parents were very weird.” Starsky downshifted the Torino and turned into the precinct parking lot, parked and killed the engine. Starsky consulted his watch. They were 20 minutes late because of the traffic. Hutch was still squeezing Starsky’s right bicep. It was beginning to hurt a little. They were alone in the parking lot.

“Okay, maybe it’s not your parents who are weird.” Starsky looked pointedly at Hutch’s large hand encircling his upper arm.

“Sorry.” Hutch mumbled as he loosened his grip. They sat quietly for a moment, Hutch’s hand still on his partner’s arm.

“So, that’s what the butterfly bones and the wheat germ pie are all about.” Starsky finally said, placing his hand over Hutch’s and giving a little squeeze. He coughed out a little laugh. “Well, thank god you’re not eating that crap because you like it. A guy’d like to think he had a partner with some taste.”

“And Abby.” Hutch murmured under his breath, suddenly feeling like he’d just had another doughnut…only he hadn’t. A warm rush filled his limbs.

“Yeah, Miss Acceptable.” Starsky nodded. “I figured that part out when you tricked me outta meetin’ her first. I ain’t stupid, you know.”

Hutch exhaled noisily. “No, you’re not stupid. But, I sure treat you like you are, sometimes, don’t I?”

Starsky nodded, “Yep. You big dummy.”

“Sorry.”

“Haven’t you heard?” Starsky said, reaching over and wiping the last bit of sugar off of Hutch’s upper lip with his thumb, popping it into his mouth to suck it off. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

“That’s really corny.” Hutch began to chuckle, catching Starsky’s hand and kissing the palm, then holding it. Better than doughnuts. Better than raspberry filled doughnuts. Better than sugar. Better than heroin.

“Well, I’m a corny kinda guy. I think you ought to know that about me before this partnership goes any further.” Starsky’s eyes were twinkling madly.

“You tempted me with that doughnut, admit it.”

“I admit it. You should be tempted and often, by someone who knows how.”

Hutch snorted. “Was that Rhett Butler?”

Starsky looked delighted. “Yeah!”

“Keep practicing, you almost got it.”

The End

*P.S. If you don’t know who Sidney Greenstreet is, he was the bad guy in “The Maltese Falcon.”