Author: jat sapphire
Contact: [email protected]Obligatory Semi-Legal Disclaimer Thing: I don't own either Starsky or Hutch, I just write down what I think up and I don't make money for it. This is slash, and it depicts and implies sexual acts between two men. If this disturbs you or you're underage, please go away.
Let's Not Talk About That
It had been almost a month of just-friends. Well, two and half weeks at least, Starsky thought, though he hadn't exactly marked his calendar. Now, at last, the drought was over, and they were resting a while, about ready to start again. Hutch pulled himself up so that his shoulders were on the pillow and his fair hair ruffled against the headboard. Starsky had folded his hands behind his head. When Hutch looked over, Starsky didn't even try to hide the dreamy smirk he knew was on his face.
"OK, what?" asked Hutch with overacted patience. Hutch wasn't much for pillow-talk, but some time ago Starsky had found a kind that got under his skin.
"It was . . . " Starsky drew it out as if he couldn't quite remember. "Hmm, Friday night. Friday before last."
"Two weeks ago? How many of these stories d'you have backed up for me?"
"Deserve it, Mr. Not Tonight. You're like a woman: 'I've got a headache.'" Starsky doing falsetto should have amused Hutch, but apparently not, from his lack of reaction. "Anyway, nope, been practically a monk. Didn't want to blur the memory before I told you."
Hutch looked skeptical but prompted, "Friday."
"She reminded me of you," said Starsky. Hutch's lips pressed more tightly together but he said nothing. "Tall ... blonde ...," a sidelong glance at the fair profile, the blunt nose and chin, the eyes fixed forward, "kinda dopey looking. Used too many big words."
At this, inexplicably, Hutch smiled a little. He turned, slid down, so he was propped on one elbow and half turned toward his partner. "Like me," he said equably, but his eyes glinted with something edgy, something that made the pulse beat a few hard raps in Starsky's throat.
He swallowed. "Even told me she plays guitar."
"Mmm?" Hutch began to brush his hand slowly across the sheet, as if smoothing it, near Starsky's body but not touching him.
"Acou-" the word stuck in Starsky's throat as the backs of Hutch's fingers brushed his hip. He swallowed again. "Acoustic. She sings. She says."
"Even you say you sing." But Hutch was looking at the sheet and at his hand, and the words had little force.
Starsky paused a moment to admire the light in Hutch's lashes. Then went on. "Good pickup conversation, anyway, gave us something to chat about, not like I knew one way or the other." He looked at Hutch's hand too, trying not to turn his head or seem too tense, too eager for the intermittent touch. "Anyway, she --"
"Wait," said Hutch, voice low.
Starsky wouldn't. "She played me like a guitar," he said.
"Wait," Hutch repeated. "See? You waste it. Think about the guitar, Starsk." His voice sank even lower. Starsky listened, loving it that Hutch had been drawn in. "The way a guitar looks. The smoothness of the wood. The shape of it ..." and the tips of Hutch's fingers, the light edge of his clipped nails, moved around the curve of Starsky's ass, in to his waist, out to his upper ribs, back down the diagonal of that guitarlike curve, not as pronounced as a woman's, but there. Starsky shivered.
Hutch sat up and bent over Starsky's body. "And the strings," he said, his fingers strumming through the hair just below Starsky's navel.
"I -- I'm glad she didn't use a pick," Starsky said, trying to joke though he'd closed his eyes at the sensation.
Hutch kept on running his fingertips through Starsky's not-quite-pubic hair. "I bet she had great tits."
It was unusual for Hutch to get so involved in the story. "How'd you know?" asked Starsky, playing along.
"All the girls in your stories have great tits."
"I can pick 'em, that's why." Starsky took a quick breath as Hutch kissed where he had been tickling. "Huh! She didn't do that."
"No?" Hutch asked without lifting his head. His warm breath, his soft lips, his mustache, all moved against Starsky's skin. "Missed opportunity." Starsky shivered again, and again when Hutch's tongue swirled on the skin, in the wiry hair, and then Hutch nipped with his teeth and Starsky felt the jolt in his cock.
"Go on."
"I'll come on in a minute," Starsky said breathlessly.
"This," Hutch nipped his way up Starsky's body between the words, "story ... was ... your ... idea."
"Mmm, and you hate it, I can tell."
Hutch rubbed his cheek against the edge of Starsky's ribcage and his hair swept back and forth.
"She did that ... with her hair ... hers was long. She bent over ... she was on top."
"Wait," said Hutch again and this time Starsky did. Hutch moved until he knelt straddling Starsky's thighs.
"Not much like that," said Starsky.
"Really?" Hutch asked drily, moving up a little so his cock bumped Starsky's.
Starsky explained, knowing it was unnecessary. "I was inside her."
"Not now," Hutch said, a refusal.
It would certainly interrupt the story, what with lube and everything, but Starsky put on a smirk anyway. Mr. Not Tonight. Maybe later Hutch would talk. Or just get over it.
Then Hutch took both their erections in both his hands, bringing the whole length into contact, and rubbed them, and Starsky arched his neck, his head pressing into the pillow, and he didn't think about Hutch's past reluctance or the Friday girl.
Again Hutch was the one to pull him back to the story. "She have a name, this girl?" Man, the sound of his voice when he was holding back. Not like Hutch at any other time. Rich; constricted; deep ... music. "Or you only remember the guitar and the tits?"
"Carmen ... she said ... " Starsky swallowed and concentrated. "Might not've been her real name."
"WASPs get these notions," Hutch agreed. "The exotic. Latins. Sexy." Hutch rocked over Starsky, his own blond beauty gathering the light of the room, his face going dreamy.
"Am I?" asked Starsky, something coiling in his throat like fear.
Hutch came back to himself, fixed sarcastic eyes on Starsky. "Latin?"
"No, exotic. Am I exotic to you?"
Hutch's hands thudded into the mattress on either side, but it wasn't anger: they were holding him up as he hovered only a few inches away. Hutch looked deep into Starsky's eyes, his own bright as neon. Still open as his face lowered, as his lips brushed Starsky's, side to side, slow and tender. "Exciting." Another soft contact, not really a kiss. "Familiar." That mustache did tickle. "Risky and safe, both. No, not exotic."
Starsky lifted his head and kissed back. Yes, it was familiar, a mouth he'd seen in all its moods, and definitely this was exciting. Hutch was. And this game Starsky played, telling these stories, that was a deliberate risk, but he took it because he believed, deep as bone, that no jealousy could separate them for long. Safe. They were safe in each other.
"OK," he said when they stopped to breathe. "OK." It was almost a sigh.
Hutch raised his body but bent his head, letting his hair brush across Starsky's throat.
And that amused Starsky. He chuckled. "Yes, like that. And when she kissed me it was like a curtain all around my head."
"Can't do that," Hutch said. "Dobey says it's too long now."
"It is. Needs cutting." Starsky felt his own hair twisted between Hutch's fingers, tugged lightly. "Yeah, me too," he admitted.
"It feels good, though," Hutch relented, still playing with the hank in his hand.
Starsky touched Hutch's cheek, slid his fingers past the rougher sideburn into cornsilk. "Yours too. You ever wear it long? Really long?"
"College." Hutch pushed up and rolled onto his back. Starsky got up on one elbow and reached over, but something in the way Hutch looked at the ceiling kept Starsky from touching him.
After a while, when Hutch hadn't moved, Starsky asked, "What?"
"What are we doing? I thought it was sex, then it's True Confessions? Twenty Questions?"
Starsky paused. "I thought it was sex too," he said.
"Yeah? You do this with all of them? Carmen on Friday, did you say to her, when Hutch did me --"
"No!" Starsky tried again with less volume. "No." Hutch still wouldn't look at him. "Hutch, you're not jealous." He couldn't believe it. Not after the guitar thing, touching him and talking about guitars.
"Why do you tell me this stuff?"
"Cause, cause it's hot. Don't you think so? Like, I don't know, like watching an X-rated movie or telling our fantasies. You've never done that?"
"That," said Hutch flatly.
"What's the difference?" Hutch shook his head, mouth tight shut. Starsky insisted, "You were getting into it."
"Trying." Then, just before Hutch moved, Starsky felt the familiar change in the air, Hutch shifting gears, and it actually wasn't too surprising to be pushed flat again, the big hands punishingly tight on his shoulders. "No more."
Starsky hated giving in, especially when he didn't know the reason, but the expression on Hutch's face allowed no argument. Starsky unlocked his jaw, forced his mouth to say the words. "All right. But why?"
"We're not talking about fantasies! These are real girls. You really fuck them. Right? Carmen on Friday, she was real?"
"Sure. But, Hutch . . . " He wasn't sure he could get it into words. "They're . . . " girls, he had been going to say, foolishly. "You like girls too, they're good, they feel good. Screwing them. But they're just girls, Hutch, they're not you. They're not my partner. Don't you get it, Hutch? They don't matter. To me. To us."
Hutch let him go as if the touch disgusted him, sat up. "I think that's the crassest thing I've ever heard you say."
Starsky was irked himself by this time, and he worked up to a sitting position against the headboard so he didn't have to feel at a disadvantage that way. "Don't get all high and mighty with me. You've screwed your share of girls that didn't mean anything to you the next day. Smile, get breakfast, drive 'em home, forget 'em."
"I have never told you about anybody else I screwed while we were in bed. I've never compared you. 'She had curly brown hair, Starsk, just like you, but it felt better.'"
"That is not what I meant!" Starsky heard himself, heard them, bickering like ... it didn't matter what it was like, it mattered that it was all wrong. Not them. Yes, they argued but never over sex. Until now.
He tilted his head back, feeling the hard shelf of the headboard, closed his eyes, and told himself to get a grip. OK. This wasn't a fight. That would be stupid. They weren't stupid. He wasn't going to match Hutch's anger. He was going to figure it out.
He shook his head, or meant to; instead he rolled it back and forth uncomfortably, feeling the ledge press into his neck and his hair brush the books back there. Figure Hutch out? Hopeless.
"Don't ... " Hutch began, voice harsh, and then didn't go on.
Starsky opened his eyes but didn't raise his head. Something about the cutting edge against his neck was actually satisfying. Maybe he was punishing himself or something. Hutch would know, or he'd say he did.
Hutch was sitting on the side of the bed now, his hands lying, palms up, on his knees, and it looked as if he were searching for his future there, his head was bent so studiously over them.
"How did we get here?" asked Starsky softly. "Did I do it? How can I stop?"
Hutch looked around but said nothing, and his face was almost blank.
"Oh, c'm'ere, babe, won't ya?" Starsky reached out.
Hutch didn't, but he put out his hand, and when their fingers met they both closed them into a mutual fist. Hutch pulled and Starsky followed, sitting up, kneeling, and then Hutch did too. They met in the middle of the bed, pressed against each other from knees to shoulders, arms around each other.
"OK," said Hutch.
"OK," Starsky echoed. Pushed his forehead against Hutch's. "No more bedtime stories, I promise."
"Well ... " Hutch said, and Starsky pulled back to look at his face, astonished. "Only if they're not true." His mustache twitched as he tried to hold back the smile.
"Only if we trade," said Starsky, his own mouth widening, grinning, then capturing Hutch's. Drawing back. "Mmm, damn, you taste fine, babe." Then reaching with his tongue, capturing that furred upper lip, so wet and smooth inside. Hutch's teeth solid against the back of Starsky's tongue. Hutch licking the underside, into Starsky's mouth, and for a moment it felt so full that it wasn't easy to tell whose tongue was whose. The way their hands had locked together before. The way their lives did.
Another kiss. "Mmm," Starsky said again. "I want ... " but Hutch didn't let him get through it all at once, "to hear ... more ... about guitars."
"Lie down," said Hutch and Starsky did. Hutch put his hand below the navel, where he'd been teasing Starsky before, and this time brushed his fingers toward his cock, though he didn't touch it. Yet.
"A good guitarist has a unique touch, a style ... " Hutch began.
*End*