June 8th- Fair Game: Part 1 Just Some Everyday Pillow Talk by Dandelion

This stand-alone slash story contains a reference to events from the author’s novel, Unbreakable. The reference is marked * for clarity.

“Hey, you wanna know the real reason we joined the Academy all them years ago?” From the droll eye contact Starsky triggered, he knew his partner would simply humor him.

“Go ahead,” Hutch replied dryly. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Well, shit,” Starsky debated him with a snicker, “that’d take years.”

“Just get to your point, willya?”

They lay on the bed in their cabin, far from the noise of city life and its responsibilities, facing each other, and held sleepy eye contact. It was mid-morning, soft light, and the sex had been as satisfying as it had ever been. They’d dozed timelessly afterward, lowering their heart rates, breathing in wordless relaxation, and drying the sweat that had coated their perspiring skin. Only then could their brains resume tasks beyond their primal needs, while the aroma of semen, mixed with cologne, was the only reminder of their previous exertions.

Starsky was then ready for playful banter. “Well, you see, cowboy, the reason we went to the Academy to become police officers wasn’t to help people.”

“Oh, here we go,” Hutch said with a roll of his eyes. “Enlighten me.”

“We went as cover.”

“As cover?”

“To cover our asses.”

“From what?”

Starsky tugged on the handcuffs that still bound Hutch from his wrist to the center post of the headboard. “What we really wanted was to play with these things, like this,” Starsky said matter-of-factly.

Hutch leveled a firm look at his partner. “Let me get this straight: we joined the Academy fourteen years ago just so we could, years later, handcuff me to a bed?”

“It took us a while to figure it out,” Starsky explained, frustrated that Hutch didn’t understand him or appreciate his awkward attempt at rewriting their history—and seemed to mock him, too; the look in those crystal blue eyes was borderline admonishing. “I’m sayin’ that we joined up, not realizing why,” Starsky tried again, “but it was so we would be partners and get handcuffs without ever having to tell anyone why we wanted them.”

“You’re saying we joined the Academy, graduated with honors, and became police officers—decorated detectives, mind you—because of some underlying attraction we had to each other, one that would eventually reveal itself and lead us into sex with handcuffs?”

“Well, don’t that make sense when you look at it like that?”

“Tell me this: how underlying was this attraction? I mean, it took us more than a decade to uncover it.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“It isn’t anybody’s fault,” Hutch playfully argued, “but you’re missing my point.”

“You’re missing my point. When we were at the Academy that first day and we made eye contact with each other, remember? Well, we were destined to use handcuffs the way we’re using them now.”

“I see,” Hutch said with an exhale. He’d apparently given up on the argument as if it had already been a waste of time.

“Well, don’t you think it’s interesting that we met on the same day and—”

“We met on the same day? Imagine that.”

“We met on that first day to be police officers and to use handcuffs—”

“Lay it to rest, Starsk.”

“—the way we’re using them now. Don’t you find that… incredible?”

“Yeah. I have determined that your conclusion isn’t credible.”

“You’re no fun this morning.”

“But I was earlier, right?”

Starsky laughed, abandoned his resolve to win the debate when he remembered how delicious their sex had been, and gave his partner a closer look: Hutch’s mussed blond hair, still plastered to parts of his forehead from his previous sweat, the smoothness of his nearly unblemished skin, the outline of his muscled arm, that perfect face, blue eyes, soft voice. Could Starsky have found a more attractive lover? Not in a billion lifetimes spread across a million universes. And, despite the tease, he knew Hutch understood the overall gist of his suppositions, and that Hutch appreciated them, entertained them, believed in them to some degree, and that he loved Starsky, too—with all his heart and might. 

“I can’t thank you enough for letting me take you like this,” Starsky said. It wasn’t often he got to indulge his bondage fantasies; the agreement was that he would ‘surprise’ Hutch now and again with his desires for that kind of play, and therefore bondage was an occasional treat. On this particular morning, he had bound Hutch to the bed using a handcuff to secure his left wrist, a rope to his right—and not for quick-release, but because he couldn’t find his own handcuffs in the frenzy of his unexpected excitement. He’d untied the rope from Hutch’s right arm that morning so Hutch could masturbate himself to orgasm—while Starsky got off watching him—and then delivered his own ejaculate deep inside the man. “You really are a pal, Hutch.”

“Your pleasure is mine,” Hutch sincerely said, “and whatever makes you happy makes me ecstatic.” He affectionately stroked Starsky’s hair while they gazed into each other’s eyes—and he was no longer dedicated to razzing Starsky. 

“But you get something out of it, too, right?”

“I get the pleasure of your pleasure out of it. You take the intensity up a notch when you have me at your whim.”

“But, I mean, you get more than that from it, doncha? You’re not doing it just for me, are ya?”

“I just explained it to you: I enjoy your enjoyment. That’s what I get out of it.”

“But that’s all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Well, you could get enjoyment from my enjoyment even if you weren’t tied up or handcuffed, so why do we bother then?”

“Because it turns you on that little bit extra.”

Starsky wasn’t happy with Hutch’s answers. He understood them, but he didn’t like them. They left him feeling selfish and greedy—because there was no way Hutch’s pleasure could match Starsky’s in those experiences, despite how much Hutch reveled in Starsky’s happiness. He tried for a different answer. “Do you get anything sexual out of it? I mean, do you feel like your sex is ratcheted up, besides just because it gets me hornier?”

Hutch broke eye contact to examine the questions Starsky had posed; he seemed to understand the specifics Starsky sought and he set out to explore their answers more thoroughly. “Yeah, okay,” he finally said, looking back into Starsky’s eyes, “I get more than just your pleasure out of this kind of play.”

“Like what?” Starsky excitedly asked, if as Hutch wouldn’t tell him without his prodding.

“For one,” Hutch said, “there’s this moment, right after you’ve locked the handcuffs to the bed, where I have this thought that anything could happen. You could get struck by a bolt of lightning and I might be left pinned to a headboard with no means of escape, and quite possibly left to die—with you on the bed, dead, beside me.”

Starsky frowned. “I thought you were gonna be serious.”

“I am serious.”

“How’s that a good thing from being cuffed then, hm?”

“I realize in that moment, as fleeting as it is, just how much I trust you, so much that I would let you put me in a situation in which anything could happen; okay, not a lightning bolt, but maybe a bear breaks in. I trust you that much, Starsk,” he emphasized, continuing to comb Starsky’s hair with his fingers. “I’m reminded, again, that I’ve got someone so special in my life that I’ve consciously allowed him, stark naked, no less, to completely put me off my guard and leave me as defenseless as a newborn kitten.”

Starsky was taken aback by the answer—and it made him momentarily emotional and speechless to realize how vulnerable Hutch felt during bondage, but that he overcame his anxieties and fears of helplessness because he trusted Starsky with those personal vulnerabilities, and with his life overall. Those feelings were mutual, although Starsky couldn’t, at least not then, remember when he’d ever said as much to Hutch.

“So, trusting me is an aphrodite?” Starsky asked, returning to his original quest while he savored the feel of Hutch’s warm fingers on his scalp.

“At least an aphrodisiac,” Hutch said, and obviously trying not to laugh. He stopped his stroke and playfully tousled Starsky’s hair. “But, yeah, trusting you turns me on.”

“I guess it turns us both on. I mean, the love and trust we have for each other is what got us here in the first place.”

“True.”

“Nobody turns me on more than you do, Hutch.”

“I can say the same about myself when it comes to you.”

“But I wish you got something direct out of the handcuffs.”

“Those are direct things. You want another one? There’s this: It’s not news to you that I have a hard time taking without giving.”

“Old news, right.”

“And I think I’ve made it clear that I get my pleasure from giving you pleasure.”

“Abundantly. Abundantly clear, I mean.”

“Well, when you lock me down,” Hutch said, taking Starsky’s hand in his and holding it to the mattress, “I’m no longer able to please you—not physically, not with my hands, anyway. And, unless you pointedly put your dick in my face, I can’t—”

“My dick isn’t pointed.”

Hutch laughed, despite himself. “I’m saying, unless you make your dick available to me when I’m tied up, I can’t do anything with it.”

“That would be the point.”

“Exactly my point.”

“Okay, so whatever. Go on.”

“Except with words,” Hutch explained, “I can’t pleasure you—unless you give me the opportunity. I’m left to just… take.”

“And you don’t like taking, by itself, I mean.”

“Right. But that doesn’t stop you from giving.”

“Also the point of tying you up.”

“And also right. So, at first, right after I’ve been hamstrung, I feel… helpless… defenseless… not in control of anything that’s happening around or to me… and, next, I get to a place where I realize all I can do is receive.”

“And you learn to like it.”

“I do,” Hutch admitted, sounding guilty even then, “but not until I’ve worked through this mental and emotional hurdle to realizing you’ve given me permission, maybe even without knowing it, to just enjoy myself—simply because you want me to—and especially when you’re the one doing all the work.”

“It ain’t work.”

“I’m saying that I get to benefit a hundred percent from what you do. The only time I get to return any favors is when you shove your dick in my mouth.”

Starsky flashed his eyebrows. “I do like that part.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Hutch said with a warm smile.

“So, in other words, once you get past feeling like a selfish prick, you like that you get to be one.”

Hutch laughed again. “Yeah, you can describe it in those words: that I get to indulge the selfish prick in me.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how much do you like that feeling?”

“A hundred.”

Starsky pretended to calculate. “That’s a lot of liking.”

“It is.”

“Does it make the sex better at all?”

Hutch silently pondered the answer for almost a minute before he spoke. “I would say, yes, it makes the sex better, too. I have to give up every compulsion I feel to pleasure you and what I ‘should’ be giving in return, and instead surrender to the situation. There is no other way for me to go through it except to give in to it.”

“You could hate it.”

“Hate it?” Hutch asked with a light laugh. “Hate you licking my asshole and my balls? Hate you sucking my dick into a raging hard on? Hate you fucking me in the ass while telling me you’re gonna fuck the cum out of me if it’s the last thing you’ll do? Hate listening to your moans of ecstasy and your dirty talk and your orgasm whimpers and giggles? And all of that without being able to do a damn thing to stop it? What’s to hate?”

“Well, when you put it like that.”

They broke up laughing at each other.

“That period of resistance I was talking about,” Hutch further explained, “doesn’t last long. Once I realize I can’t get loose, I’ve learned to get to the Promised Land sooner—especially when we use the handcuffs. I figure I might be able to outmuscle or untie a rope, but the handcuffs, that’s another thing. There’s no arguing with them. So, despite that they can sometimes hurt, they force me into accepting my fate.”

“I don’t want them to hurt you.”

“They’re made of steel, dummy,” Hutch said in a patronizing voice, “and you’re long gone into Never-Never Land yourself by the time they begin to grind me. At that point, I usually don’t care, either.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Starsky reiterated, not satisfied with Hutch’s answer. He would have taken the handcuffs off Hutch even then if they weren’t so relaxed and content with just lying on the bed as they were, talking about something they’d never really delved into before. Besides, Starsky liked the look of Hutch on the mattress there with him, holding hands, fully nude, and gazing into each other’s eyes, having sexually spent themselves, while Hutch was still secured to the bed post. Perhaps, if they lazed long enough, he’d get to take Hutch again under those circumstances without having to free the man first. “Maybe we can put that duct tape around your wrist like I did once to make sure you feel no pain,” Starsky suggested.

“But then I’d know what was coming,” Hutch countered him. “Getting nailed like this wouldn’t be a surprise.”

“It doesn’t always have to be a surprise, does it? Do you think you’d resist it if you knew it was coming?”

“I don’t know,” Hutch replied. “Maybe. Maybe not. We can try that sometime.”

“I like trying new things.”

“Obviously.”

“I like the old things, too, don’t get me wrong.”

“I read you right.”

“What do you think I get out of tying you up?”

“Abusing me for all the shit I give you on a daily basis.”

“Be serious.”

“Abusing me for all the times I’ve made you feel powerless in this relationship.”

“C’mon.”

“Abusing me for the shitty ways I can make you feel, especially those times you don’t deserve it.”

“I never deserve it,” Starsky said, submissively. “I mean, there’s no excuse for abuse. That rhymes,” he said on a lighter note.

“The poet in you.”

“But what I’m hearin’, numbnuts, is that you think I get ‘abusing’ you out of it.”

“Oh, is that what you heard? I meant to say you get ‘deserved payback.’”

“So you think I get revenge out of it.”

Hutch obviously didn’t want to be misread on such a delicate topic, so he clarified. “I think you do get some kind of self-satisfaction for the control it gives you over me.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No.”

“And I get off on controlling you because…?”

“It’s a power thing.”

“I get off on the power over you.”

“Don’t you?”

Starsky had to think. Was that it? Was he power-seeking in those experiences? Granted, he did have the power in such instances; he did get to dictate what they did and how they did it; he did control the narrative and the duration and the timing of their orgasms. But was it only that? “Am I the one, then, to be the selfish prick?”

“I’m sure you know you’re pleasuring me.”

“Your hard dick says so.”

“And you get pleasure from giving pleasure.”

“Just like you.”

“So, the power isn’t despotism, but—”

“Whatever that is.”

“I’m saying that’s what it isn’t. What I am saying is that you’re controlling me to make certain that you’re giving as much pleasure as you’re gettin’.”

“I like to tie you up just so I can give you the most pleasure I can?”

“I think so, but you tell me.”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m askin’.”

“Well, how would I really know, Starsk? I’ve never been the bond-er, only the bond-ee.”

“Okay. It’s true. I like making you take it. I like thinking you’re taking nothing but pleasure from it, that you’re enjoying yourself to the max because you have to. You’re obviously not hating it or you’d go all soft on me.”

“That makes sense.”

“Perfect sense?”

“Yeah, perfect sense,” Hutch agreed.

“You think I can tie you up and fuck the cum out of you because I get off on making you feel good as much as you possibly can?”

“Isn’t that what I just agreed to?”

“And nothing more, right? You don’t think I’m doing it to get over on you.”

“No.”

“I’m not trying to get even for anything.”

“Nothing.”

“I’m not on some kind of power trip.”

“Not the bully kind, no.”

“You can see that I make myself harder by knowing you’re surrendering to nothing but the good I’m making you feel.”

“Yeah, I can. Are we beating a dead horse here?”

“I wouldn’t beat a live one.”

Hutch rolled his eyes again. “You’re a very sexual animal,” he said in afterthought, warmly squeezing Starsky’s hand. “I mean, we’re all sexual animals, but some of us are more than others, and you’re one of those. It’s one of the things I absolutely adore about you. So I think you’re capable of power-tripping in this way purely for the sexual gratification you give as much as you get. And that, my friend, in turn, makes better sex for me, too. You eat me alive, and I love the devouring.”

Starsky hadn’t meant to take them where they ended up in that conversation, but once there, he felt compelled to rest his case. “I’m not trying to talk you into anything when I tell you this, Hutch,” he carefully said, “so don’t go gettin’ me wrong, okay? The truth is that maybe you can see now how things would be if we turned these tables.”

“If I tied you up, you mean?”

“Yeah—and not that I’m trying to talk you into anything,” Starsky quickly said, before Hutch could go off on a rant about why he’d never reciprocate the experience for them, “because, really, I’m not, Hutch. I’m just sayin’ that you might see how you could feel if you were the bond-er—and how I’d get to feel if I was the bond-ee.”

Hutch shut his mouth, leveled eye contact, softened his grip of Starsky’s hand.

“I’m not asking you to consider it,” Starsky said decisively, sensing Hutch’s defensive withdrawal. “I know your reasons for not wanting to: I got tied up and raped—*”

“Repeatedly.”

“—and you don’t ever want to put me in that memory place—”

“Not even for a second.”

“—so I get where you’re coming from, Hutch. All I’m saying today… if we ever did that, I mean… is that maybe where I’d be coming from as the bond-ee is someplace you haven’t even thought about before. I mean, maybe I’d like to know how it feels to give in completely to yougiving me pleasure—and to know, while you’re doing it, that you’re getting to feel that good just from the pleasure you’re making for me.”

Hutch didn’t commit.

“You say you trust me,” Starsky reminded him, hoping for some reaction—of any kind—besides silence.

But still no words, nor any readable expression, from Hutch.

“The only thing I’m gonna ask of ya is that you trust what I’m telling you here today,” Starsky concluded. “That’s all.”

Hutch finally nodded, subtly.

“And maybe it’ll help you to know that my feelings about all of this means I’m not having any bad memories when you’re tied up and I’m giving it to you, either.”

“Okay,” Hutch said quietly.

“Which means you can get more immersive in—”

“Immersed.”

“—in the good you get out of it.”

“So… a hundred and one on the scale for me?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“I’ll take it,” Hutch said lightly, exhaling, as if the conversation had been more difficult for him than it appeared on the surface and he was glad to be done with it. “In the meantime, do me a favor—and then I’ll make us some breakfast.”

“What’s that?”

“Let me out of these handcuffs.”

Starsky laughed when he caught on that Hutch wouldn’t be able to do much of anything while handcuffed to the bed post. He’d secretly hoped they’d lie together long enough to refuel and go another round without having to let Hutch loose in the interim, but Starsky also felt exhausted from their most recent sex and the subsequent conversation that followed it. He reached under Hutch’s pillow, inadvertently jostling his partner’s head more than he intended, and retrieved the handcuffs key. He held it up in front of Hutch’s face to show him why he’d disturbed the man just then. “Your wish is my command,” he said.

Only at that moment did they realize the context of Starsky’s actions. Hutch had said earlier that he trusted Starsky like no other, and in all ways possible, because Hutch was helpless, exposed, and defenseless while being held captive to handcuffs locked to a wooden headboard—and not knowing that the key to his freedom had been right there under his pillow all along. No lightning bolt nor intruding bear could have hampered his escape on that particular morning.

They busted up laughing.

“You’re an idiot,” Hutch eventually said when Starsky inserted the key into the cuff.

“You’re the idiot,” Starsky retaliated, unlocking the bracelet, and subsequently allowing Hutch to harmlessly slip from it. “I mean, didn’t you see me put the key under there in the first place?”

“Apparently, I didn’t.”

“How could you not have known that?”

“I guess I’d worked past my insecurities by then and was well on my way into the Pleasure Palace to take notice. You didn’t really expect me to be paying attention to every little thing you were doing while my dick was in your hands, did ya?”

Click here to read Part 2