Warning: No lube.
Thanks to Nik and
Verlaine for excellent edits, and to Kat for reading the before and after, and
for her terrific insights and suggestions.
Point Value
by Rae 4/07
Eleven days into their new
relationship, Starsky blows a gasket over some
work thing that Hutch doesn't even know about. He
uses some swear words Hutch hasn't heard in a while.
He puts on a
show that's almost as good as some of the fireworks Hutch remembers from Fourth
of Julys in the park behind the high school football field. Which reminds Hutch
of a certain first kiss way back behind the field house with—what was her
name? Oh, Darlene something. She'd had brown wavy hair worn long, and pulled
back with a flimsy yellow bow. He'd pulled on the bow until her hair had
tumbled all over her shoulders and his . . .
"Are you even
listening to me?" Starsky shouts from less than a foot away.
"Of course,"
Hutch says. "Pigs will never fly, though."
That first kiss, his
first first kiss. He rests his butt against the edge of the sink and tries to
remember the rest of them, starting in chronological order, and then, as
Starsky's voice gets louder still, by location, and in alphabetical order.
Then, when Starsky begins pacing, he thinks of his old rating system, long
unused: how many points per attribute on a value scale of one to
five—eyes, ass, breasts, hair, leg length, stamina, words uttered in the
throes of orgasm . . .
"Fuck fuck
fuck," Starsky says.
"Good word
choice."
Starsky turns back
toward him so fast that his sneakers make a fingernails-on-the-blackboard sound
on the kitchen linoleum.
"What? What did you
just say?"
"Uh, good strong
voice, I said."
Starsky takes up his furious
pacing again. He's wearing the pattern off the floor. Hutch figures that his
stride, when perturbed, might be as much as three feet or more, and the kitchen
is really only maybe eight feet across by five at the most. Too bad the floor
isn't tiled—he'd be able to estimate more accurately if there were tiles.
Tiles, at twelve inches by twelve inches, and Starsky pounding on one and then
another, and all Hutch would have to do would be to count the number of squares
he didn't hit at each step, probably at least two, maybe even four, considering
. . .
"Well?"
Starsky's voice has skittered up into the octaves usually reserved for extreme
situations, and his fists are opening and closing, sort of the way they do when
he has Hutch's . . . "Huh? So?"
"Sure, Starsk. Good
plan."
When Starsky's incensed,
his speech always gets garbled, and his eyes go all flat and glittery. And he
seems taller and stronger, actually pretty damn scary if you're a bad guy,
which luckily Hutch isn't, because . . .
"You . . . you . .
. if I have to . . . I'm gonna . . ." He takes one long step and one short
one, and gets right inside Hutch's space, and begins to describe in lurid
detail exactly what he plans to do as soon as he gets his hands on that son of
a bitch of a fucking govahment jerkoff . . .
Hutch feels the warm
spray of Starsky's fury on his own nose and chin, on his lips.
"Want my
advice?" he asks. He's being reckless, but it doesn't matter anyway.
"No, I don't want
your advice, you—"
Hutch raises his hand
and pokes Starsky's shoulder with his finger.
"Okay." He
pokes him again for emphasis. "You know what your problem is?"
Starsky's eyes get hot
and dark, and the small lines around them grow deeper. He doesn't move back,
but that isn't Hutch's goal, anyway.
"I suppose you're about to tell me."
Hutch had planned to,
but instead finds that his hands have moved off on their own mission, and are
assessing the point value of the flatness of Starsky's chest, and of the curve
of his collar bone under the smooth cotton of his t-shirt, and how easy it
would be to push up under the shoulders of his jacket and slide it right off
the back of him. If Starsky would stop flailing his fists around, that would
make it a lot easier . . .
"Well, Starsk . .
."
"Don't you 'Starsk'
me, you—
"No? Why not, Starsk?"
He slides his forefinger up
under Starsky's gun, the heaviness of it hard on the back of his hand. The heat
from underneath Starsky's arm has made the straps and the metal warm.
"What the hell are
you doing?" Starsky latches onto Hutch's roving fingers with his left
hand.
"Sorry!" Hutch
withdraws his itchy fingers and instead shoves them at Starsky's shoulder
again. There isn't much room to maneuver, but he gets himself extricated from
between Starsky and the sink. "I'll leave you alone then. Work it out
amongst yourself."
Navigating the Straits
of Starsky used to be a simple matter of floating along in the same sturdy
cutter, or sliding around on rolling decks, or maybe just trailing along in
Starsky's wake in a small and tippy dinghy. Now, eleven days into this new . .
. cruise, the tether connecting them seems shorter and made of some mysterious
substance that Hutch has no idea how to grasp.
Behind him, Starsky's
gone silent. Playing the game Starsky's way takes some finesse, some patience,
so Hutch keeps walking.
"Where the hell do
you think you're going?" Starsky says from less than a foot behind him.
Hutch has an answer
ready for that, and for a few alternate questions he might have had to answer,
but before he can offer it up he finds himself shoved tight between the cold
door and the heat of Starsky's body. He just has time to turn his head to the
left before it gets smashed between the fancy window and Starsky's outraged
hand.
"Uh," is all he
can get out of his mouth. All he can think is, the hell with bows and long
straight hair and breasts.
"You got something
to say, Hutchinson, say it now." Starsky's left hand snakes around between
Hutch and the door, and finds enough space to push the leather of Hutch's belt
out of its buckle.
Something's happening to
the fronts of Hutch's thighs—like they've been attached to some kind of
electric current. The frames of the decorative panels on the door press
rivulets of pain into them, straight to his groin. It doesn't matter,
though—all he cares about are the hard bones of Starsky's fingers against
his scalp, of the ridges of his ribs pressed against his spine, and the feel of
Starsky's—
"Uh."
"That's what I
thought. You got nothin. Right?"
Hutch tries to shake his
head no, but there's no way to turn it. He blinks twice instead.
"Oh, so you do have
something after all." Starsky leans himself into Hutch's shoulders, lifts
himself up somehow an inch or two, and puts his ear right up near Hutch's mouth.
The nerve endings in Hutch's scalp respond, and so do the ones in his . . .
"Go ahead then. Say it."
Instead, Hutch twists
his head sideways another fraction, hurting his own neck, and grabs Starsky's
earlobe, teeth bared, any thought of caution lost under the haze of Starsky's
breath and his sweat. He bites down, not as hard as he wants to, but hard
enough. Starsky squawks, and shoves on his head, smashing it against the door.
It hurts, and Hutch tries to push himself backward. He can't get any leverage,
and instead finds himself pressed forward even more, his left arm now powerless
and digging in against his stomach, and with one of Starsky's knees shoved
against the back of his right leg.
"Son of a
bitch," Starsky says. "You—"
He takes his hand out of
Hutch's hair without letting go of it, and pulled back like that, Hutch has to
let go of the ear. He licks his lips, hoping for the taste of iron, of salt. He
tries to turn his head so he can see Starsky's face, but all that happens is
that Starsky pulls harder on his hair, and all he can see is the top half of
the door. There's dust on the ridge of the fancy window frame. He can smell it.
He can hear the blood in the large vessels of his neck just below his ear. His
scalp begins to protest Starsky's drag on it, and the front of his face feels
impossibly hot.
He tries to shove
himself back again, but Starsky's had way too much practice keeping bad guys
pinned against walls. It's like trying to shove himself out from between a rock
and a hard place.
Hard place . . . he makes a
sound in his throat that he hopes doesn't sound like the laugh it is. Maybe he is going insane, because what kind of a person gets
all hot and useless just because his partner has shoved him against the door
like he's any old sick bastard they run into every day on the street? The laugh
catches itself somewhere at the back of his tongue.
What's next? Handcuffs?
His mouth goes dry, and then
floods itself the way it does when he's hungry and his dinner is almost ready
and he can smell it and almost taste it . . .
"Think you're so
tough, don't ya, big guy?" Starsky's voice is tight, and against his back,
Hutch can feel the breaths he takes, hard short breaths, like he does when
they're . . . "Think you're so tough and strong, don't you?"
What the hell is this? What the hell is Starsky doing? Is he even
. . .
The release of pressure
on his skin when Starsky steps back is almost as painful as the pressure itself
had been. He can almost hear the veins in the back of his left arm sighing in
relief, can feel them fill back up as his arm drops. Can feel his pants tighten
as his . . .
"Starsk . . ."
He tries to turn around.
"Shut up. Just shut
up."
Hutch nearly drips down
the door when Starsky lets him go.
"What . . ."
"Turn around."
Hutch is sure he's never
moved faster. He turns, hands ready—for what he doesn't know, doesn't
care, ready for . . .
Maybe not that, though.
Not ready for that look on
Starsky's face. What is that? Surely not . . . fear?
Starsky drops his hands,
letting them hang at his sides. He looks down and away, and Hutch feels blind.
"I'm sorry,"
Starsky says, voice flat.
"Oh, God,
Starsk." He can't think of anything else to say. So he points down,
instead. "See that? That what you're so sorry for?"
Starsky doesn't look, so
Hutch stretches forward and takes his left hand, pulling on it until Starsky
yields. He puts it where he wants it, has wanted it every second of the past
eleven days.
"No," Starsky
says.
"'No'?" What
does that mean? Does he mean no, don't do that? Hutch's brain rushes backward,
checking for a reason. There isn't one. Couldn't be. He needs to see Starsky's
eyes. "'No' what?" He presses himself forward. Starsky doesn't budge.
"What does that mean, 'no'?"
"No, I'm not
sorry." Finally he looks up, and Hutch watches him try not to grin.
"Not if that's what it got me." He squeezes Hutch's cock twice, and
when Hutch pushes harder against him, Starsky shoves him back again, harder
than before, stronger than before.
Starsky's eyes have lost
that cold angry glare, and now they take hold of Hutch like they have hands of
their own. His mind begins to splinter, his thoughts floating off like little
toy boats in a stream, down and away and lost . . .
He brings his hands up
and takes hold of Starsky's face between them, pulling him in, turning him,
pressing him backward until the door now holds Starsky trapped and helpless. He
tries to say something, but since he can't think of anything coherent, nothing
coherent comes out.
Starsky makes a sound at
the back of his throat like he wants to say something, but he's lost the
ability, too. In some backwater of Hutch's brain, he understands that trying to
speak is, from now on, a nonissue, that neither of them has to concern himself
ever again with saying the right words, or with making sure of performing the
right actions in the right places, or for taking care to modulate the strength
of his grip, or even to distract—or maybe focus—himself with some
stupid point value system.
So he does what he's
wanted to do, has always wanted to do, always since that first first kiss, the
real first first, the one Starsky had launched at him like a grenade, the one
he'd thrown himself on willingly, the one that had torn them both apart,
startled and suddenly frozen like two deer in the headlights or maybe a couple
of too-evenly-matched and punchdrunk boxers or—he can't think of anything
but clichˇs to define what had happened—and then had drawn them together
like magnets or homing pigeons or black holes or universes expanding and then
contracting—hell, surely he could think of some better simile . . . if he
could still think . . . if he would just stop thinking . . .
He lets himself fall
away, out of his own head, into his own body, remembering the feel of that first
unexpected explosion, the way his mind had fragmented, and then his body. He's
never let himself go before, has never dared. But now . . .
Starsky holds him steady
with his hands, with his eyes.
"Do it,"
Starsky says.
Hutch wonders for a
second how he ended up on his knees, hands getting in the way of Starsky's,
trying to get the damn belt undone, get the zipper pulled down. It would be
easier if Starsky would just move his hands and let him get it done, but the
push and bump of Starsky's fingers is dragging him farther down into himself
and he can't think of a way to get at the zipper on his own. He ends up with
his hands on his own zipper—if he doesn't free himself first he'll never
be able to think of anything else—and by the time that's taken care of,
Starsky's gotten his own cock free and is poking it into Hutch's right eye.
"Shit," Hutch
says, though he hadn't meant to.
"Jesus, Hutch, just
do it," Starsky says. He grabs Hutch's hair again, both hands in hard
fists in his hair.
It hurts, and Hutch
tries not to groan, but he can't help it, he can't really help anything he does
anymore. So he opens his mouth meaning to complain, but with Starsky's cock in
it before he can make the sound, all he can do is gulp and gag a little.
"Oh, fuck," Starsky
says. "Oh, fuck."
He sags down against the
door, and Hutch has to follow him down, bending lower, until his back protests.
He puts his hands on Starsky's hips, right at the curve, right where they fit
perfectly against the curve at the top of his thighs, and lifts, pressing his
thumbs in hard, pushing up. Starsky stands a little straighter, and Hutch's
back shuts up.
He slides his hands
around to the front, still holding tight, still digging in, and hears the sound
he's waiting for, that gasping yelp that he's been hearing in his head day and
night for the past eleven days. He likes the sound of it, and so does his cock,
and so do his fingers, which on their own have found the skin underneath and
behind the balls, the good spot where he likes to put his tongue, but he can't
reach there right now. Fingers will have to do. Starsky pulls his head in and
Hutch moves with him, letting him do the work, make the moves, set the rhythm,
so he can just listen and feel, and smell and taste.
He pushes his fingers
back a little farther, hears that sound he wants, feels the ridge he wants, and
he begins to tap on it. He's thinking, let me in let me in let me in but he's having a hard time staying in himself,
and he doesn't want to lose it, doesn't want to bite, doesn't want to come, not
yet . . .
"Stop,"
Starsky says. Or that's what Hutch thinks he said, but his brain can't figure
out what it means, so he doesn't stop, can't stop.
"Wait,"
Starsky says. "Wait."
It sounds like the
strangled plea of man with a gun to his head, not of a man with his cock in
another guy's mouth. Hutch still has one working brain cell, the one with the
big Stop Button, so he freezes in place, tongue pressed tight against the end
of Starsky's cock, where it's round and salty and feels like . . .
Starsky, hands still
locked in his hair, pushes him back. Hutch lets him push, and starts listing in
his brain possible reasons why. Too hard, too soft. Too fast. Not fast enough.
I hurt him. I should have . . .
He's back in his head, where
he doesn't want to be. Hadn't ever wanted to be again. He feels his balls drop
as his cock lets the blood out of itself. He sits back. He doesn't want to look
up.
He wouldn't have had
time to, anyway. Starsky shoves him over, so he topples onto his still-aching
left arm, face down, legs sprawled and tangled behind him.
Now what? is all he has time to think. Then he's on his
back, so fast he doesn't remember feeling himself turn, shoulders bruising on
the floor. Starsky's trying to yank down Hutch's pants, grunting like those
muscle guys at the beach who bench press too much weight . . .
"I'm gonna come in
there," Starsky says without looking up. He can't get Hutch's pants off
over his sneakers. "Fuck," he says. "I want to come in
there."
Hutch's cock refills
itself, fast, and his legs try to move away from each other. They're hobbled by
the pants around his ankles and Hutch feels close to kicking like a mule to get
them off get them off, but Starsky says, "Wait."
So he puts his hands
down on the floor, and his head back down on the floor and he waits, thinking
about racehorses in gates, and starter pistols, while Starsky fumbles off the
offending pants, both pairs.
Hutch wonders if he's
going to take off the leather, too, and the gun, hopes he does, then hopes he
doesn't—
"Do it," is
all he says.
This time it's much
easier to shut off his brain, he just stops paying attention to it. Can't pay
attention to it. Other things are much more interesting. Like the way Starsky's
hoisted up his legs and shoved them back, the way he's trying to find the right
angle, the right position, the sounds he makes in frustration, the way he
looks—like he looks when he's furious, when he has only one thought, one
need . . . when he needs to save a life, save Hutch's life . . .
That unexpected burn
that feels like—Hutch almost laughs—like fire in the hole, a new
kind of grenade, and he's going to have to say stop and wait himself in another second but not for the same reason . . . Before
he has time to decide to say it, the burn is gone, and he's wondering who's
saying let me in let me in.
Is it still himself, or is it Starsky? He can't tell. It doesn't matter.
Let him in let him
let him in . . .
"Oh fuck oh
jeezus," he hears. He doesn't know who said it. Or if anyone even did.
There's an alien thing
like a buzz in his belly and he puts a hand over the place where it is. It
spreads itself out inside him, melts his muscles and then torches them, so they
feel like sweet liquid fire and he begins to move in some kind of ancient
rhythm in time with Starsky's beat. He lifts his head and looks down at
himself, himself with his knees in the air and Starsky's cock sliding in and
out of his ass and he says something, and knows it isn't a word, but Starsky
looks at him, straight into his eyes, like he knows what it means.
He puts a hand on top of
Starsky's head, into his hair, makes a fist, hears him groan. His other hand
has wrapped itself tight around his own cock, which feels different now, like
it's not really his anymore and Starsky's in his eyes and his belly and his ass
. . .
He shouts something, or
Starsky does, and then he's somewhere else, nowhere near his brain, where the
only thing his knows is Starsky's hair in his hand and Starsky's cock in his ass
and the hard floor under his shoulders disappearing and he floats into himself
and stays there where Starsky is, where he thinks he'll stay oh please let
me stay here let me stay . . .
Starsky makes a sound that
makes Hutch think indistinctly of that time in the canyon when the Torino had
no brakes, but he loses the image, loses everything but the sound Starsky makes
when he shoves hard once and holds himself still, frozen in time, or welded in
place, or like he plans to stay there let him stay there . . . and then collapses, heavy on Hutch's chest,
Hutch's left hand still in his hair and right hand still around his own . . .
"First and
ten," Hutch says, each word between its own two breaths.
Starsky's still blowing,
his chest moving like a ragged sail at half mast in full wind, and looks like
he wants to know what Hutch is talking about, but can't quite get in touch with
the part of his brain that cares enough to try.
"Football? You're
thinking about football?"
"No, idiot. First and ten."
Starsky drags in a
breath and moves himself down . . . and out, slow and careful. He flops over
onto his back and pulls Hutch's hand out of his hair, and holds it tight in his
own hand instead.
"First time doing .
. . uh . . . that." Hutch says, and waggles his fingers inside Starsky's
hand. "And ten on the scale of one to five." He looks sideways at
Starsky's face.
Starsky lifts the corner
of his mouth, and squints his right eye just a little.
"Want to go for
double or nothing?" But he doesn't move.
"Think you can take
me? Double or nothing."
"Twenty points.
I'll take the double."
Hutch waits until he
thinks he can move, until he can breathe, until Starsky has stopped gasping
like a beached fish.
"Not counting
anymore," he says. "Done with that."
He knows Starsky has no
idea what he's talking about. Maybe someday he'll tell him about the abandoned
point value system, but not right now.
Right now he's got some
points to score.
Feedback/comments/critiques
are welcome: racric@verizon.net
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