Silver Lining

172

Hutch discovers clouds really can have silver linings when a disturbance in his neighborhood sends him to Starsky’s place looking for an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

 

Originally published in Venice Place Chronicles VIII.

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Arrrooooo

Hutch groaned and clutched the pillow tighter over his head while the symphony of yowl/growl/whine reverberated around inside his skull.

Bark Bark Bark Arrroooooo

The pillow didn’t muffle the excruciating noise at all. Hutch sat up, threw the useless thing on the floor, and yanked the earplugs out of his ears. They hadn’t helped a whole lot, either. They had done little to muzzle the mongrel glee club, while adding the aggravated thunder of his own heartbeat to the canine choms like some sort of out of synch percussion.

For the past five nights, Hutch had lain awake listening to the clamor. Five nights of little sleep. Five nights of enduring an aural torture as painful as nails on a blackboard. There was a pack of wild dogs running loose in Venice that roamed all night and disappeared when the sun rose. The ASPCA hadn’t been able to do anything—Hutch had called them so often that he was on a first name basis with the emergency operator. The police had been able to do even less. Hutch was coming to the conclusion that there were no dogs; that some completely demented psychopath was playing a recording from dusk to dawn for the express purpose of driving him insane.

Arrroooo roo roo roooooooo

That was a new voice, with a range and pitch a Metropolitan Opera soprano would have envied. It was the decibel that broke the back of Hutch’s resolve to stoically endure the torment.

Muttering dire threats under his breath, Hutch climbed out of bed, pulled jeans and shirt over his naked body, and stuffed his bare feet into his shoes. Outside the apartment the volume was even worse, encouraging him to break into a trot to reach his car sooner in the hopes of muffling the yowling a little. He put the key in the ignition, his foot on the gas, and peeled away from the curb, certain that his squealing tires were completely drowned out by the dogs.

When Hutch had told Starsky about the nightly serenade, his friend had, of course, laughed his fool head off, but he had also offered Hutch sanctuary. Hutch was about to take him up on the invitation. At the moment, Starsky’s lumpy couch sounded like heaven.

It didn’t take long to reach Starsky’s place, and Hutch wasn’t surprised to see the apartment was dark. Out of deference to his likely dead-to-the-world partner, Hutch climbed the stairs quietly and let himself in with his key. Inside, it was so wonderfully silent that Hutch paused just inside the doorway to savor it. No yipping, barking, or howling at the moon. Just wonderful silence and dark.

Hutch’s savoring was interrupted when he realized it wasn’t completely dark in the apartment, and he laughed softly when he saw that Starsky had left the light on in the bathroom that adjoined the bedroom. Again. Starsky was always bitching about his power bill, yet he could never seem to remember to turn off the bathroom light. Hutch was beginning to wonder if Starsky really needed a nightlight but wouldn’t admit it.

Hutch decided he might as well tum it off and grab a blanket while he was at it. He might even score a pillow if Starsky wasn’t using them both and Hutch could snag it without waking him. His best intentions were waylaid, however, when Hutch reached the bedroom door and saw his partner on the bed.

Starsky was sleeping sprawled on his back, legs a little spread, right arm flung out over the empty side of the bed and left arm crossed over his belly. And he was naked. No briefs, no blanket, not even a comer of the sheet artfully draped to conceal the heavy testicles or hide the length of his flaccid penis.

It was automatic to Hutch by now. To look away. To find a distraction for his hungry eyes when Starsky strolled casually nude around the locker room. Tonight, Hutch’s lids refused to fall, and the muscles of his neck seemed unwilling to turn his head away, perhaps sabotaged by his sense of smell. The locker room smelled of old sweat and cheap shampoo and Irish Spring. Starsky’s dimly-lit bedroom fed Hutch the powerful aromas of sleep-warmed Starsky and sex. The familiar scent of spilled semen went straight to his brain like triple-distilled whisky, letting loose the fantasies that Hutch had been trying to deny existed.

While his heart pounded in his chest, and his cock throbbed against the heated metal of his zipper, a new scenario played itself out before Hutch’s fascinated gaze. The long lashes lifted, revealing deep blue eyes that sparked the same invitation as the sensual smile.

“What took you so long?” the fantasy Starsky purred, holding out one hand to Hutch while the other swept down his body, then stroked the full length of his hard cock. “I had to get started without you.”

“Unnnnnnch.”

The protesting groan the real Starsky made as he rolled onto his side shattered the fantasy, bringing Hutch up on his toes, poised to bolt. To the living room, to Venice, or all the way back to Minnesota? Incongruously, that he didn’t know the answer to that question held Hutch in place long enough to realize that Starsky hadn’t awakened, that discovery of his deepest, darkest secret wasn’t at hand, and that, insignificantly, the bathroom light was still on.

Feeling like a thief in the night, Hutch tiptoed to the bathroom door, pushing it open a little more so he could reach the switch inside. He hesitated there, desperate to resist the temptation to look again. He had already stolen enough from Starsky, tucking away the unaware, naked images into pockets in his brain. However, like the thief who had already emptied the safe, but just couldn’t resist the cash register as well, Hutch slowly turned to rob this moment of just a few more treasures.

The still life was clearer now, the added light that shone from the bathroom gilding the curve of muscle, highlighting the jut of bone. Hutch’s own shadow, however, fell over Starsky’s groin, concealing what had been so tantalizingly revealed a moment before. Hutch shifted a little and the light spread, reflecting off something that lay on the bed under Starsky’s right hand.

Curiosity, combined with his greed, prompted Hutch to step closer to the bed, squinting until he was able to make out that the reflective triangle was a photograph. One more step and he saw that it was a familiar photograph of himself and Starsky, taken at the last department picnic. They had just won the three-legged race, and full of success and exuberance, Hutch had given Starsky a victory kiss on the cheek at the exact moment the photographer had snapped the picture.

An eight by ten enlargement had appeared on the bulletin board a few days later, and they had taken some good-natured ribbing for it. Hutch had laughed along with his colleagues, but it had taken only one look for him to see the love the photographer had actually caught on film. His love for Starsky, that until that moment, Hutch hadn’t known, had also become need and desire. The picture had stayed up on the board, tormenting him daily with the fear of discovery and fueling forbidden fantasies, and then had made an unexplained disappearance.

Hutch’s detective brain was gathering up the evidence. A picture of an unguarded moment between the two of them clutched—at least held—in Starsky’s hand. The aroma of freshly spilled semen heavy in the humid night air. For a giddy moment, the only possible conclusion was obvious: Starsky had been masturbating while gazing at that picture, the same yearnings that filled Hutch fueling his fantasies.

“Christ, Hutchinson. And you accuse him of leaps of illogic,” Hutch chided aloud, barely whispering the words, but needing to hear them to convince himself that his conclusion really was ridiculous.

“Are you gonna just stand there all night with your mouth hanging open?” Starsky’s voice, trembling a little with suppressed amusement, asked out of the darkness.

Hutch’s heart leapt into this throat and his eyes flew to his partner’s face, where he found a knowing blue gaze watching him. He couldn’t have uttered a word if he had known his immortal soul was at stake; there was just too much of his precious mortal life on the line to take the chance of opening his mouth and letting the wrong answer spill out.

Then Starsky smiled. A slow, smoldering smile that invited a host of hobgoblins to come live in Hutch’s belly. “Or are you gonna get in here with me?” he suggested in a husky purr, holding out his hand.

It was a fantasy miraculously transformed into a reality that Hutch had no will to resist. Two steps brought his knees tight to the mattress, and his hand rose to accept the promise of Starsky’s outstretched hand. The fingers only brushed his, however, as they reached past to tug at the cuff of his shirt.

“Take ’em off, Hutch,” Starsky commanded, that smile never wavering. “Don’t want nothin’ between me and thee tonight.”

Totally captivated by this living dream, Hutch obediently kicked off his shoes and pulled his shirt over his head, his heart revving up yet another rpm at the hungry expression in Starsky’s eyes as they caressed his exposed chest. That expression kept Hutch’s fingers steady as they worked snap and zipper and shoved his jeans down so he could step clear of them.

One knee on the bed, Hutch hesitated. An ice water splash of reality washed over him when his attention was caught by the picture of him and Starsky together. He picked it up, smoothing a wrinkle in the heavy paper while his eyes sought Starsky’s. “It can’t really be this easy,” he said, wishing he could put a question mark on the end of that sentence, a lift in his voice that might sound like a touch of confident irony.

“Sure it can, Hutch,” Starsky reassured him with cocky surety. “It always is for us. Best friends in five. Partners in three.”

The apparent flippancy made it all feel too easy, just as Hutch’s body felt suddenly, shockingly naked, his eager hard-on an embarrassment when Starsky’s cock remained flaccid against his thigh. “Maybe this wasn’t—” he began to backtrack, emotionally and physically, dropping his foot to the floor, ready to drop into full retreat if Starsky hadn’t surged forward and grabbed his hand.

“It’s the best idea you’ve had all year,” Starsky insisted, his head cocking to the side, his eyes narrowing in challenge. “You gonna chicken out on me now, Hutch?”

The challenge stiffened Hutch’s spine, put an immediate halt to his retreat, and prodded him to climb onto the bed. That same offended machismo let him take Starsky boldly into his arms and pull them together into an embrace that was, at one and the same time, comfortingly familiar and terrifyingly, tantalizingly new.

The false bravado left him, however, when Starsky tipped his chin, his lips parting in invitation. As much as he wanted this first kiss, Hutch couldn’t quite bring himself to take it.

Starsky slid his hand into Hutch’s hair. “Don’t stop now, Hutch,” he pleaded, his voice a low, husky invitation to Hutch to visit any forbidden fantasy he wanted on Starsky’s willing body. “You’re doin’ just fine,” he continued, putting just a little tug into the fingers entwined in Hutch’s hair. “Come on and kiss me, babe. We’ve both been waiting long enough for this.”

It was too much temptation for Hutch to resist. He pressed his mouth to Starsky’s, expecting to meet the same cocky confidence in lips that would conquer his. Instead, Starsky’s mouth was soft and sweet, yielding to the strength of Hutch’s lips. Even the hand that had brought them together was a gentle supplication now, fingers laced delicately into the strands of Hutch’s hair, and fingertips a tender massage to his scalp.

The kiss was Hutch’s to take where he would. To explore at his leisure the texture of lip and tongue, to compare the hard edges of teeth and the vulnerable membrane of cheek. To revel in the strength of the mouth under his, willingly leashed, submitted to his will.

Then, so subtly that Hutch didn’t realize what was happening until his back met the cool sheet, Starsky took control of the kiss. The lips and tongue that had succumbed to his only a moment before, now took their turn at feasting, introducing Hutch to the pleasure to be found in yielding.

“You okay?” Starsky asked when he had kissed Hutch into a breathless sprawl.

“Okay?” Hutch wondered, then read the real question in Starsky’s eyes—could they give and take on the sheets the way they did on the streets? Lead and then follow, follow and then lead?

Hutch stretched, reaching one hand up above his head and leaving it there, while the other arm he looped loosely around Starsky’s neck. “Okay?” he repeated, letting a creamy-whiskered cat smile curve his lips. “Babe, I’m well on my way to super fine,” he purred.

Starsky grinned at him, the grin coming closer and closer until it was finally pressed to Hutch’s lips, and Starsky was kissing him breathless again while that strong left hand of his traveled a meandering course down Hutch’s torso.

Closer. Closer. While Hutch’s nerves pulled tight with anticipation.

“Oh, Christ,” Hutch moaned as Starsky’s hand found his cock, warm fingers boldly encircling the length of him, the strength and rhythm of each stroke so perfect it felt as if Starsky had reached into his brain and ferreted out his dearest fantasies.

“There. Right there. Uh, uh.” Hutch panted, reduced to wordless grunts as Starsky’s fingers tightened beneath the head of his cock and stroked down the shaft, pulling the skin across the glans so tight it almost burned. The grip eased just as the incredible pressure would have ripened into breath-stealing pain, the fingers becoming unbelievably tender on the upstroke.

“Good?” Starsky asked, one fingertip gathering up the slick drop that oozed from the slit and spreading it over the tip of Hutch’s cock.

Hutch could only moan as Starsky stroked him again and then again, building the tension in Hutch’s balls to unbearably wonderful.

“Could I make you come like this, baby blue?” Starsky whispered directly into Hutch’s ear, the warm words followed by a wet tongue tip that circled the tender opening while his hand repeated that tight-down/tender-up combination a fourth time.

“Yes! Yes!” Hutch hissed, aching to cover Starsky’ s hand with his own and quicken the pace, yet wanting this exquisite anticipation to go on forever. If Starsky did it again, Hutch knew he’d be shooting for the moon.

‘”Better stop then,” Starsky decreed, and released Hutch so abruptly his cock slapped against his belly.

Hutch, however, had no chance to protest the abandonment before Starsky attacked him with his mouth. His neck was sucked by ruthless lips, his nipples assaulted with not-quite-gentle bites, and then a licking, nibbling path was traced over the skin of Hutch’s belly as Starsky worked his way downward.

Hutch wanted to thrust and thrash, but forced himself to stay utterly still, enthralled by the relish with which his hedonistic partner was dining on his body. He almost expected Starsky to take a bite out of him any moment, but instead, Starsky nudged his thighs apart and knelt between them, then bent over Hutch’s groin.

“Want me to, Hutch?” Starsky asked, his expression hidden from Hutch as he rubbed his lips into Hutch’s pubic hair, his cheek grazing Hutch’s aching cock.

The scratch and prickle of beard stubble was an unexpected matchless torture on the drawn-tight skin of his cock, robbing Hutch of speech. He sank his fingers into Starsky’s hair, not leading but only petting, the way Starsky had pet him during the kiss. He felt an uncompromising grip on his hips holding him to the bed and then the brush of moist lips on his cockhead.

Experimental, hesitant kisses worked their way down one side of his shaft, teasing Hutch with their promise, a promise fulfilled as much surer kisses worked their way back up the other side. When Starsky’s lips closed around the tip of his cock and the wet tongue probed into the tender slit, Hutch let go of Starsky’s head for fear of forcing that hungry mouth to take it all. And when Starsky’s head began to bob, Hutch grabbed the mattress under him and hung on, determined to let Starsky set the pace. But when Starsky’s hand closed over Hutch’s balls and squeezed so perfectly, impossibly right, Hutch shouted his surrender and came, pumping his need into the man who had inhabited his fantasies for so long.

Scattered wits began to re-gather, the shattered bits of coherence coming together like the shards of colored glass in a kaleidoscope, when Hutch felt his cock released, a farewell kiss rubbed into the tip that made him groan. Then Starsky was climbing up his body, stretching out to stroke his hard cock on Hutch’s belly. Hutch opened his eyes to find Starsky over him, the wet, swollen lips that had given him such pleasure an enthralling sight that drew his fingertip to trace them. He pulled Starsky down into a deep kiss, the taste of his own semen on Starsky’s tongue giving him a thirst for Starsky’s.

Starsky lifted, ending the kiss, the heavy-lidded smile he gave Hutch failing to ease the strain of unfulfilled need on his face. Hutch looked beyond that face to the mirror above them, watching the restless ballet of desire Starsky danced against his body. Muscles rippled, shoulders, back, ass and thighs working in concert as Starsky thrust against him. Frottage, Hutch’s mind supplied the technical term. Dry fucking was offered by a baser part of him. The part that hated the sham, that wanted Starsky inside him with an intensity that took his breath.

Starsky was moving faster, a steady panting/moaning proclaiming his pleasure. “So good. Feel so good, baby blue,” he whispered.

Good. Good enough. But Hutch wanted more. Wanted to take more, give more. “Stop,” he commanded, his hands settling on Starsky’s pistoning hips, but making no effort to prevent the steady push, push, push.

“Uh,” Starsky grunted a protest, but his body went immediately still, the struggle for restraint trembling the muscles under Hutch’s hands.

“S’okay,” Starsky slurred. “Sorry. Sorry,” he added as, uncoordinated and clumsy, he lifted from Hutch’s body and settled on the bed beside him.

Hurriedly, Hutch rolled to face his lover, brushing away the hand Starsky wrapped around his own cock and waiting impatiently for Starsky to regain some measure of control. It took a moment, but Starsky’s eyes eventually focused on him.

“Sorry,” Starsky apologized again, although it was clear he wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.

Hutch pushed the penitence back into Starsky’s mouth with gentle fingers. “Fuck me?” he asked simply, making sure that there was a question mark on the end. That Starsky understood, from tone and expression, that Hutch requested, he did not demand.

The two words cleared the last of passion’s fog from Starsky’s eyes, surprise narrowing them to blue lasers as they probed Hutch’s face. “Jesus, Hutch. Zero to sixty on the first lap?” he asked.

Hutch laughed a little at the typical Starsky analogy. “It’s a hell of a leap, I know,” he admitted, but couldn’t quite bring himself to voice the reason. Starsky in his arms tonight. Maybe only tonight. Maybe never again. Still perhaps a thief in the dark, Hutch wanted everything he could wring from this single night. He couldn’t say it, but he saw understanding come into Starsky’s face, nevertheless, felt the subtle shift that forewarned retreat.

“Please, Starsk,” Hutch whispered, and be it unconscionable coercion or not, he reached down and squeezed the heavy sack of Starsky’s balls, then wrapped his hand around the hard length of Starsky’s cock, to the accompaniment of a deep throated moan.

Hutch stroked twice, watching the pleasure of his touch on Starsky’s face. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Zero to sixty. Want you, Starsk,” he was pleading, what had started as a whim now a desperate hunger. “Wanna feel you inside me. Wanna feel this hot, hard rod pushing into my—”

His litany of need was silenced by Starsky’s lips pressing demanding kisses into his mouth, the strength of them crushing his lips against his teeth. When the kiss ended, Hutch opened his eyes to find himself caught by Starsky’s eyes, the blue digging for nuggets of truth in his brain.

“Hutch?” Starsky said, a hundred questions and hesitations packed into that single syllable.

“I really want it, babe,” Hutch promised, trying to rub some of the tension from Starsky’s clenched jaw with his thumb. “At least, I think I do,” he added a rueful admission of virgin uncertainty.

Starsky stared into his eyes a moment longer, the way he would on the streets when every instinct clamored left while Hutch insisted right. Hutch held himself open to the scrutiny and saw acceptance before Starsky pulled abruptly away and rolled to fumble through the bedside drawer. When he rolled back to face Hutch, he held a blue and white tube in his hand.

A little disconcerted by the sight of the lubricant, Hutch nevertheless spread his thighs wider to let Starsky kneel between them. He lifted his legs, to give his new lover better access, but his bravado was revealed as a sham when Starsky ran both hands gently from knee to groin.

“Easy. Easy,” Starsky crooned, pushing gently at Hutch’s thighs until his knees splayed and his trembling legs could rest against the bed.

Hutch took a deep breath and smiled, his false bravado once again slipping when Starsky boldly lifted his balls and the cold lube was smeared on his anus. He jumped, instinctively trying to close his legs against the intrusion.

“One word, Hutch,” Starsky offered, though his fingers continued to spread the quickly warming lubricant. “That’s all it’ll take. One word and I stop.”

The lube was heating fast, no longer a cold intrusion, but a slick, sensual slide. Hutch wanted to squirm at the incredible intimacy of having Starsky touch him this way, feeling a miraculous vulnerability that both aroused and terrified him. “One word,” he echoed Starsky’s promise, needing a little of their irreverent humor to temper the awe possessing him. “How about super—” He lost his voice a moment when Starsky pressed the tip of his finger through the clenched ring of his anus.

“Cala—” Hutch began again when the initial shock had eased, the attempted humor waylaid a second time when Starsky pushed that finger all the way in.

“Frag—” Hutch managed two more nonsense syllables, then had to abandon the attempt completely, capable of nothing more than a panting “Ah, ah, ah,” in rhythm with the finger that slid in and out, in and out until, impossible though he knew it to be, Hutch’s cock was once again a hard, aching demand for release.

When Hutch was certain he could stand little more, that Starsky was going to finger fuck him into another draining climax, the intruder was withdrawn, and he felt the sway of the mattress as Starsky shifted his weight.

“Hutch,” Starsky said, a husky, urgent command for attention in his voice that snapped Hutch’s eyes open. “Get me ready,” he demanded, pushing the tube into Hutch’s hand.

If submitting to the necessary preparation of his own body had aroused Hutch, then preparing Starsky almost took him over the edge. The solid weight of the hard, hot cock in his hands and the feel of its throbbing, eager impatience to be in him, to claim him, silenced any feeble virgin doubts that lingered.

“‘Nuf,” Starsky commanded, pulling away abruptly, every movement tightly controlled as he climbed from between Hutch’s thighs. “On your side, Hutch,” he instructed, tugging until Hutch obediently rolled onto his right side. “Be easier for you like this, sweetheart,” he promised, and then Hutch felt a push at the back of his knees. “That’s it, bend your knees. No, no, not so high,” he insisted when Hutch pulled his knees to his chest. “Wanna be able to get at you, too.”

Expertly manipulated, confidently maneuvered, Hutch wondered at the apparent expertise. He couldn’t hold onto the thought, however, as Starsky lay down behind him and tucked his cock into the slippery crevice, while his left hand stroked firmly over Hutch’s chest and belly and then encircled his cock in a firm grip.

“Can do it this way, Hutch,” Starsky offered, his cock a hard, throbbing presence between the cheeks of Hutch’s ass.

Hutch was tempted, just for a moment, to agree, to keep his virginity a few more hours or days. Starsky shifted restlessly, the head of his cock briefly probing at Hutch’s anus. Or remain a virgin forever, give up perhaps his only opportunity. “Fuck me,” he demanded, and this time it was a demand as he curled around the fist that stroked his cock, pushing his ass harder into Starsky’s groin.

For a moment, that talented left hand deserted him as Starsky eased back, then Hutch felt the blunt probe of the wide tip of Starsky’ s cock. It suddenly felt enormous. Surely it would never fit.

“One word,” Starsky promised again as his hand encircled Hutch’s cock.

Hutch barely heard the pledge, the pounding of his own blood a rush in his ears as Starsky began to push. The strain in his ass was incredible, riveting Hutch’s attention, narrowing his entire focus as the pain grew and grew, exploding in his brain as his body suddenly yielded and Starsky’s cock slid abruptly into him. Pain. Pain. In his ass and his gut that took his breath and his need.

“Love you. Love you. Oh, Hutch, love you so fucking much.”

The litany beat at the walls of pain surrounding him, the wonder in Starsky’s voice penetrating more deeply into Hutch’s soul than the hungry cock that penetrated his body. The pain was a brief, faded memory now as Hutch’s body relaxed. Pleasure now, all of it. In his ass and his gut and his heart that felt like it might leap from his chest.

Hutch could feel Starsky’s cock moving in and out, drawing all the strands of pleasure and joy together, threading them through his cock and balls where Starsky also commanded. The fist on his cock set the pace, the thrust and withdrawal demand of the cock in his ass matched it, leaving Hutch hanging helpless between them, unable to prevent a second shattering climax from being milked from his balls just as Starsky went abruptly still, echoing the beat of release deep inside him.

The pleasure was still singing through Hutch’s body, short circuiting his grasp on reality as he panted, his chest heaving, heart pounding a staccato tattoo under the sticky hand Starsky pressed over it.

“Okay?”

The anxious demand for reassurance was gasped into Hutch’s ear, shivering its way into his brain, demanding response. Still too breathless to speak, Hutch offered the only comfort he could, covering Starsky’s hand with his, entwining their fingers over the slowly calming beat of his heart.

“Okay,” Starsky repeated without the question mark, relief and satisfaction in equal portions in the husky purr.

Okay forever, if they could just stay like this. Attuned. Of one mind, and one conjoined and sated body. They couldn’t, of course. Far too soon for Hutch, the cock within him became a soft presence, then slipped away, leaving him empty, mourning the loss and aching for its return. A whimper of grief swelled in his throat as Starsky’s warmth eased away from his back, escaping from him as a sigh when the hands that had given him such pleasure began to tug at him.

“Get around here, ya big lug,” Starsky insisted, the gruff veneer of querulous demand unable to hide the tenderness in his voice or disguise the love that glowed in his eyes when Hutch obediently turned to face him. “Oh, yeah. We got it bad,” he observed with satisfaction, his arms sliding around Hutch.

Safe and secure in Starsky’s arms, Hutch let himself drift toward sleep, thinking of how he had come here tonight seeking a temporary refuge from a pack of hounds and had found, instead, a refuge to last his whole life long. “Thank God Brantford took that picture,” he murmured, carding his fingers through Starsky’s curls, the warmth and safety inviting vulnerable, whispered confessions. “I didn’t even know how much I loved you until I saw it.”

“Yeah? Me, too,” Starsky agreed, propping himself up, removing his hair from Hutch’s fingers.

“You saw it, too?” Hutch asked, wondering if there was going to be any end to the surprises tonight. “Why didn’t you say something?” he added, then tacked on a rueful, “Why didn’t I, huh?”

“Don’t know why you didn’t, but I know why I kept my big mouth shut for a change,” Starsky said, his index finger tracing Hutch’s eyebrow to its outer tip, then skating delicately over cheek and jaw. “I could see by the look on your face in the picture that you loved me, but I didn’t know if you knew it,” he explained his months of silence. “So, I started watching, saw you did, and figured we’d get there eventually.”

“But you weren’t in any hurry, huh?” Hutch said, unable to keep the hurt accusation out of his voice, stung by Starsky’s unusual patience.

“How many years have I known you, Hutch?” Starsky asked rhetorically. “I’ve figured nothin’ else out about you, I know you can’t be rushed. You had to be ready. Meantime,” Starsky confessed, an unexpected color tinting his cheeks. “I’ve been jerkin’ off every night lookin’ at your face in that picture so I wouldn’t drag you into the back seat of the Torino and have my wicked way with you,” he teased, wriggling his eyebrows, camping it up a moment before becoming serious again. “Glad you finally got here, babe, but you sure picked a strange time.”

Sneaking in like a thief in the night. Strange indeed. Stranger still that Hutch had intended to keep his secret forever, never once expecting that its revelation would be welcomed. “That wasn’t why I came over here tonight,” he admitted, wanting to begin this new, precious relationship with complete honesty between them. “Originally, I mean. You remember that howling I told you about?” he asked and waited for Starsky’s agreeing nod. “Well, tonight, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was just…” he abandoned further explanation when he saw that Starsky understood, shrugging as he apologized ruefully, “Uhm, sorry about that.”

“That’s okay,” Starsky forgave him, the sudden twinkle in his eyes and puckered lips warning Hutch that Starsky was about to launch a real stinker. “You know what they say, sweetheart. Every yowl has its silver lining.”

Groaning, Hutch tackled his grinning lover and kissed any other truly terrible puns off his lips.