June 11th- Drawing the Right Conclusion by Dawnwind

Starsky slouched comfortably in his chair, spine curved, feet resting on the table, watching Hutch. Two a.m. at the Pits was quiet, almost mellow. He smiled, cradling his latest beer to his chest. This was his fourth, tipsiness slipping inevitably down the slope to happy drunk, drowning all memories of the shitty twelve hours he and Hutch had endured. Investigating not one but two shootings, young men dead who should have been going to the spring prom.

Starsky scowled, taking another long swallow. He really wanted a fifth beer—once there was nothing but foam left in his glass. For now, he was content to sit, gazing at his partner.

Hutch’s blond hair gleamed in the light from the small table lamp with a radiance that was almost ethereal. He was beautiful, some Nordic god, maybe Thor, stepped down from Asgard for the day—minus his hammer. In direct contrast to Starsky’s sprawl, Hutch was hunched over a pad of paper, sketching while staring intently at the objects clustered around the lamp: two empty beer steins, a bowl of peanuts, shells scattered halfway across the table like Hansel and Gretel had left a trail through the detritus, and a couple of crumbled dollar bills. Not enough to pay the bar tab Starsky and Hutch had racked up at Huggy’s place, but proof that they did pay a portion now and again.

Across the room, Anita was wiping down the bar one last time, her wet sponge leaving a slick path across the wooden grain. Huggy stacked chairs on top of the tables, glancing now and again at Starsky and Hutch as if resigned to the fact that they wouldn’t be leaving any time soon.

Starsky grinned, downing the rest of his beer, eyes on his partner. Hutch cocked his head, inspecting his drawing critically. He frowned, the line between his blond brows pinching inward for a moment before he erased some flaw and redrew a more satisfactory line with a slight nod. Starsky wanted to thread his fingers through the soft, fine hair on the crown of Hutch’s head, spread his palm across Hutch’s scalp, and hold him close. Just the thought made his heart thud and his groin ache.

“Whatcha gonna call it?” Starsky asked lazily, now that he could see the pencil sketch from around the bend of Hutch’s arm. It was rendered to near photographic realism. The glasses appeared transparent, a hint of peanut shell visible through one of them, although elongated and bowed as it would be when seen through a curved surface.

“Two a. m.,” Hutch said with a laugh. “This art class I’ve been taking is really paying off. I never could have gotten that…” He paused, gesturing at the picture. “Essence…”

“It’s beer glasses and peanuts,” Starsky teased, but he still liked it.

“I want to improve,” Hutch made half a dozen more lines, adding in the dollar bills. “So that I can—“

“C’mon, you two!” Huggy called, leaning on the last—except for the two chairs they sat in—of the chairs up on the table. “Police’ll raid me if I’m selling liquor after closing hours.”

“Police are already here,” Starsky corrected, waving a hand between him and Hutch. “We could close up for you.”

“Nah, the last time I did that, you two never left.” Huggy stomped off to put the broom away.

“Yeah, when Maurice opened up to prep for the lunch crowd, you two were sleeping in the booth!” Anita laughed. “I’m off, Huggy.”

“Bye,” Starsky called, setting his beer glass on the table. Apparently, he wasn’t getting another drink any time soon. There was always the six-pack in his fridge. Or Hutch’s for that matter. They had days off, and luckily, the shootings required no investigation. The boys had shot one another—leaving pain and heartbreak in their wake, the questions of why outweighed by how and when. Detectives had to shut off their own empathy to concentrate on the investigation. Exactly why Hutch channeled his compassion into alternate areas. Getting drunk and drawing was a heck of a lot less difficult than holding on to the grief of the world.

He knew that. Getting drunk and getting fucked. That’s what he wanted. Holding Hutch inside his body, merging their…what word Hutch had used? He really was drunk when he couldn’t think of words.

Essence, that was it.

Starsky didn’t resist the pull of Hutch’s allure, admiring his beauty like an art connoisseur. The way the light picked out the individual hairs on Hutch’s right arm, dancing and moving with the shadows each time his wrist shifted to control the fine movements of the fingers clutching the pencil. Hutch used the side of his thumb to smudge a line, softening the hard edge.

“A couple of slobs, that’s what,” Huggy muttered, advancing on Hutch’s still life with a whisk broom and dust pan.

“Hey!” Hutch protested.

He shoved out a hand to barricade against the onslaught, but Huggy swept around him and scooped up all the shells. The glasses were trundled away as well, in Huggy’s last ditch cleaning effort.

Starsky snorted, chuckles rising from his belly like waves on the sea. Hutch’s affronted expression was too funny.

“I was…creating here!” he groused, holding up the pad.

“I’ll hang it behind the bar,” Huggy said with a skeptical eyebrow.

“I haven’t finished it yet.” Hutch examined the drawing for a moment.

“Looks done to me.” He dunked the remaining dirty glasses in a pan of water. “You two need to skee-daddle now, closing time done passed already.” He waggled his fingers, palm up, for the glass Starsky held.

“You’ll lose business with this kind of attitude.” Starsky carefully pulled himself to a stand, very aware of his woozy state. Still wasn’t quite three sheets to the wind, who- cares-what-the-hell-he-did, and the half-way between sensation was slightly unnerving when he was fully erect. Erect in posture, and in the nether regions, he realized with a shock. Didn’t usually come over him like that without forewarning. With the jeans he had on, the bulge was quite evident.

Flipping his pad shut, Hutch looked down, unerringly centering in on Starsky’s target. “Guess it is time to leave,” he said in a husky voice that did nothing to deflate Starsky’s arousal.

Now not able to walk straight, for reasons completely unrelated to beer consumption, Starsky had to turn his back on Hutch—and Huggy—to stagger to the front door. He tried for his usual swagger, but missed that by a mile. He almost missed the door frame, too.

“Hey.” Hutch scooped an arm around Starsky’s shoulder, propping him up. “Guess I’m driving, huh?”

“We came in your car!” Starsky pressed back against his partner, evidence that Hutch was as turned on as he was hard against his butt crack.

“Stop it,” Hutch hissed into his ear, shoving Starsky out the door. “Or we’ll be arrested for indecent exposure.”

“Exten-u-ating circumstances, Oss-fer,” Starsky giggled. “Any judge’d understand just lookin’ at you.” He took the four steps to the squash unaided, and turned, leaning against the hood to watch Hutch walk.

“Me?” Hutch shook his head with a shrug, tucking the drawing pad under his arm. “D’you know why I want to improve my drawing?”

“Cause you’re never satisfied?” Starsky replied honestly and then regretted it instantly when he saw Hutch’s expression. The warm fuzziness of his drunk drained away as if it had never been. “Hutch, I didn’t—“

“No, you hit the nail on the head all right.” Hutch marched rapidly around the car and got in, starting the engine so fast Starsky had to scramble to open his door and drop into the seat.

“I am quite aware—“ Hutch inhaled fast and deep as if coming up for air. “That I never quite achieve what…that I keep seeking. But you—“

Starsky tensed, expecting one of Hutch’s nit-picky assessments. He squeezed his knees together in a vain hope of maintaining his erection, but it was softening. So much for getting some tonight from Hutch. He’d probably gripe for hours.

“You’re unique. One in a million.”

“That a dig or a left handed compliment?” Starsky sniped. “You’re the one with the classical looks, all that blond hair and chiseled nose.”

“Dime a dozen, Starsk,” Hutch dismissed with a wave of his right hand. “All my life, people commented on my looks—it’s all surface. There’s nothing underneath.”

“Hutch, that ain’t true!” Starsky turned in his seat, watching Hutch’s classic profile highlighted with every streetlight the car passed. He’d never realized that Hutch’s insecurities were dug in so deep. Beauty had always seemed its own reward when he was coming up as a kid on the street. No one had ever said he was good looking—a skinny, short kid with unruly curls and a hawkish nose. Unique? Yep, that about fit him.

Hutch on the other hand–

“When we were in the academy, you remember you used to sit right up front?” Starsky asked, picturing that bare neck in front of him, the fine blond hair cut so short that Hutch’s scalp was visible. Starsky’s head had itched for weeks until his hair grew beyond the crew-cut required of academy cadets. He’d never gotten it cut that short again, despite a couple of reprimands on his official report. Luckily, his prowess with a gun, strength on the obstacle course, and driving savvy had overcome other shortcomings. Hutch had kept that regulation style until they were out of uniform and Starsky’d convinced him that undercover detectives needed to blend in with the guys on the street.

“I’d stare at you in class,” Starsky said softly. “It was like I couldn’t take my eyes off you. And not cause you were sitting in front of me. I never felt anything…instant like that before.”

“I know.” Hutch slowed to take the turning to Venice. “I’ve always sat in the front of the class—that’s my habit. But I think I did it then, particularly in Sergeant Bowman’s lectures—“

“Blowhard Bowman!” Starsky groaned. “The man had it out for me from day one.”

“Then you shouldn’t have antagonized him,” Hutch chided, with a slight smile when he glanced over at Starsky.

“Me?” Starsky tapped his chest, playing up wounded pride. “I can’t help if his knowledge of current firearms was out of date.”

“You made me laugh,” Hutch went on, sounding nostalgic. “I couldn’t look away, either, so I sat in front. Your voice would roll over me…” He pulled up in front of his building, stopping the car. “And I was married.”

“Oh.” Starsky hadn’t known Hutch’s feelings had started so early. He’d battled his own attraction to Ken Hutchinson in the academy. Until then, he’d dated women—wanted women. Finding himself masturbating late at night while visualizing the curve of Hutch’s pale neck and the scent of his aftershave had been strange and unnerving. He’d been raised that only deviants did it with other men, and he was no deviant—was he? “We both sat there—“

“Wanting,” Hutch whispered.

“Took us long enough,” Starsky finished for him, wondering about the wasted time. Not that it had been entirely wasted. They’d spent nearly a decade as best friends, partners joined at the hip, kindling a bond that would never break. Would having sex earlier have changed any of that? “Friendship made us stronger.”

“Yeah.” Hutch climbed out of the car, beckoning Starsky. “Come up, I want to show you something.”

“You get me a present?” Starsky joked, following him up the steep stairs. The happy glow was back—and he still wanted that fifth beer. Maybe if he got Hutch schnockered, there would be a little wham-bam, thank you, ma’am as Huggy would say. Make that– thank you, sir.

“Not sure you’d call it that.” Hutch sounded very uncertain—almost nervous. He reached up to the lintel, palmed the key, and then dropped it on the mat.

“Always knew nimble fingers was your middle name.” Starsky rolled his eyes, getting an embarrassed grin from Hutch, and scooped up the key. “I’ll even spare you the lecture on home safety, Ossi-fer. Didn’t I get you a key chain for your last birthday?”

“You did.” Hutch nodded, brushing past him once the door was open. “The Mickey Mouse ears stretched the pockets of my cords.”

“Nice try,” Starsky said dryly, heading for the fridge. He knew there was a six-pack of Coors—or at least part of one—because he’d put it there himself the other day. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Hutch duck down to flip through the canvases stacked haphazardly against the far wall of the apartment.

Hutch was—as he’d said in the car—a seeker. Always looking for new horizons, new quests. He played guitar and sang well enough, in Starsky’s opinion, to perform in public, but his stage fright kept him out of the local nightclubs’ amateur hours. He had tried yoga, bio-feedback, even Buddhism and Kung Fu to center himself. Took up and put down the paint brush or charcoal drawing pencil every few years, never actually finishing a single piece. Something inside him was never quite satisfied with himself.

Flipping the ring off the can, Starsky took a long drink. Nothing like it—the beer slid down smooth, warming his belly.

“Starsky,” Hutch called tentatively.

“You want a beer…” Starsky walked around the kitchen table, stopping abruptly.

Hutch had propped six—no, make that eight—drawings against the baseboard and crouched nervously beside them.

“Would ya lookit this,” Starsky exclaimed, because in all honesty, he couldn’t quite think of anything else to say. Every drawing was of him. A close up of his face, lovingly rendered in near photographic realism: his hair soft and curly, the moles on his face like beauty marks. He felt the heat rise in his cheeks at the second sketch—his illustrated self reclined on a bed wearing only a wife-beater pushed up above his nipples. He stroked his chest with his right hand and grasped his cock with his left, perfect bliss on his face.

The third stirred something deeper and oddly familiar inside. He was curled inward on Hutch’s couch, asleep, with one leg hooked over the end of the couch. It was the glimpse of a book cradled in his arms and the red shawl-necked sweater he wore that sparked recognition. “That’s the night we played Monopoly after Terry died,” he whispered in shock. “How long have you been drawing these?” He shook his head, taking in the other sketches. Studies of him driving, grinning, laughing looked back at him. It was awe inspiring and humbling.

“I’ve always drawn you,” Hutch said, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back to the wall. “But it’s never right. There’s always something missing.”

“Hutch.” Starsky was at a loss. The totality of Hutch’s love, of his devotion poured over him in a rush. “These are terrific, and I’m not just sayin’ that ’cause they’re of me!”

“I don’t seem to capture your—“ Hutch gestured lamely at his works.

“Essence?” Starsky grinned, reaching down to Hutch. “You need another lesson?”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Hutch ignored Starsky’s hand, scrabbling over to a crate full of art supplies. “Let me get—“

“Nope.” Starsky grabbed him by the arm, pulling him up and around. “No drawing pads, no pencils.” He faced Hutch, tipping his head slightly to gaze right into those compelling blue eyes. “You obviously drew all of those from memory since I never saw any of ‘em before.”

“Yeah, so?” Hutch hitched a breath as if Starsky’s proximity was doing something fascinating to his libido.

Starsky chuckled, feeling the proof that Hutch was finally interested. His own body was once again very enthusiastic and ready for sex. Unbuttoning his shirt one handed, Starsky stepped in close to his lover until their chests touched, hearts beating against one another. “Close your eyes and picture my lips.” He pressed a kiss onto Hutch’s parted lips, savouring the flush of arousal that came when Hutch latched onto him. The kiss flowed back and forth, imbuing power, connection, love.

Starsky breathed in his partner’s air, joining with him. “See me, Hutch, see me like you do in all those drawings. They’re all me—what’s missing is you. Put part of yourself in there and they’ll be fucking perfect.”

Hutch spread a palm across Starsky’s belly, kneading softly as if cataloging the muscles just below the skin. He slid his left hand around to the small of Starsky’s back, under the edge of his shirt, stroking the curve of waist down to the butt.

Starsky inhaled, brushing his lips across Hutch’s cheek to gently scrape his teeth on the line of Hutch’s jaw. He could feel the bristles of unshaven whiskers but they were much finer and softer than his own. The sensation of soft skin and slight rasp of hair against his lips was such a turn-on, Starsky did it again.

Hutch moaned his appreciation, cupping Starsky’s ass in both hands as if to lift him up.

“Wait,” Starsky panted, suddenly so primed he couldn’t wait much longer. “Jeans.” His cock was jammed so tightly in the confining fabric he was sure it would rip right through in a moment.

Hutch chuckled, pushing him back just enough to fumble at Starsky’s waistband. “Nude drawing class,” he said with a nod, but somehow the complicated combination of button and zipper seemed beyond him.

“I’ll do mine, you do yours,” Starsky said through gritted teeth. Even so, he stopped to watch Hutch liberate his thick, pulsing cock. God, he loved that thing. Hutch’s penis was a sight to behold, and Starsky knew how magnificent it felt when nestled inside his anus. Today, he wasn’t sure either of them had the wherewithal to manage penetration. It was after three a.m. and neither of them had slept. Hand jobs were the way to go.

“You’re falling behind,” Hutch muttered, shucking off his cords. “First one to the bed?” He turned tail and dashed across the kitchen, flipping off his t-shirt as he ran.

“No fair!” Starsky yelled, legs tangled in his tight jeans. He finally managed to remove one pants leg without falling over and hopped the rest of the way to the bed, letting Hutch tug his jeans off completely.

“This is what I see in my head.” Hutch pushed him backwards onto the bed. He slipped Starsky’s black briefs down so that his cock sprang upwards, ready for action. “When I can’t sleep, I get up and draw. “

“You never told me,” Starsky said, savoring the sensation of Hutch caressing his thighs, moving ever closer to his cock. His whole body felt like an idling engine, the power building, but no foot on the ignition to send it racing forward. He quivered when Hutch palmed his balls.

“I meant to—when I got it right.” Hutch leaned down to lap his tongue along Starsky’s cock. “But—“

“Hutch, all of those drawings are right—“ Starsky promised, needing to rut, to drive himself into Hutch’s mouth. It was difficult to think. “You gotta have faith in yourself.”

“Pose for me, then,” Hutch said, scooting closer, his big cock flush against Starsky’s.

That was the foot on the gas—adrenaline coursed through Starsky’s veins.

“Now?” he squeaked, his balls tightening in preparation.

“No…” Hutch gasped, closing his hands around both penises. He inhaled raggedly, tipping his head back with a cry. “C’mon with me!”

Folding his hands over Hutch’s bigger ones, Starsky howled as they came together. Hutch pulled Starsky down onto his side so they faced one another, hearts racing in unison.

“You’re my inspiration, Starsk,” Hutch whispered in his ear. “I won’t draw myself, but you’re right, I never thought about putting my—“

“Essence?” Starsky snuggled into his arms. It wasn’t often he could use such a perfect word so frequently in one night.

Hutch held up his middle finger with a smirk and got off the bed.

“Hey!” Starsky groused, suddenly cold without any clothes on and damp with sweat. “Where you going?”

“Drawing pad and a pencil. You’re covered in my essence.” Hutch winked, holding up his pointer finger in warning. “Don’t move. Wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to draw you just like that.”

“Not what I meant, Hutch, and you know it!” Starsky slouched comfortably against the headboard, puling the blanket up just enough to provide warmth and a bit of provocative cover. He still wanted that beer. Where had he put it? “Hey, bring me a beer while you’re up?”

The end