June 12th- Fair Game: Part 2 The Wall Mount by Dandelion

Click here to read Part 1

“What are you doin’?” Starsky wondered when he entered the master bathroom some days later and found Hutch unusually busy in it—and then asked a stupid question that had an obvious answer.

“Baking a cake,” Hutch replied without emotion. He drilled a small hole into the drywall, momentarily filled the room with the sound of a power tool before he stopped it, and shot back, “What does it look like I’m doin’, dimwit?”

“It looks like you’re hanging a towel rack too high up on the wall.”

“It’s not too high up,” Hutch debated him, “and it’s not a towel rack.” He wished Starsky had complimented him on finally tackling a house chore he’d planned for months, and not razzed him about it instead. But before his partner could reply or defend his dumb comments, Hutch drilled another hole in the wall, about an inch to the left of the previous one, and drowned any opportunity to have a conversation between them for at least a quarter minute.

It hadn’t been a lazy weekend morning, despite its late start; they’d risen from bed after a long discussion—some of which was nonsensical, some of it quite profound—showered and dressed together, and then made breakfast: toast and coffee, fruit and potatoes. They followed their satiating meal for nearly an hour at the kitchen counter to drink the rest of the coffee in the pot and to discuss the details of a case to which they’d recently been assigned. But, eventually, as they did every weekend morning, they went their separate ways to respective house chores; that’s when Hutch decided, after realizing he’d long had all the parts for his specific task, to install a towel ring on the narrow wall between the sink counter and the shower stall in their shared bathroom.

“So, if it ain’t a towel rack,” Starsky asked, sitting on the closed toilet lid to either watch or spend his two cents, “what is it? A towel hook? I mean, it’s gotta be a towel something, right? or why would you be drillin’ ugly holes into our beautiful walls?”

“A towel ring,” Hutch corrected him while he hammered an anchor into the first hole he’d drilled.

“Ring. Rack. What’s the difference?”

“You mean, other than the obvious one?”

“Well, yeah, numbnuts. I get the difference between a hook and a rack, but—”

Hutch looked over at Starsky as if to tell him he was still being an idiot, and condescendingly said, “A ring, partner, is round and looks like that piece of hardware on the counter there—”

“I’m not the moron you think I am.”

“And yet you act like it.”

“What got under your skin since the last time I looked, hm?”

“I thought you’d be proud of me for finally hanging these rings outside our shower door. Instead, you accuse me of destroying a perfectly good wall—and not doing it efficiently.”

“Okay, Mr. Sensitive. Let me start over: so you’re hanging a towel ring, I see. What made you decide to do it that high on the wall?”

The ring would be less than a foot above Hutch’s shoulder, so he ignored Starsky’s question while he hammered the second anchor into the hole he’d previously drilled. “Do you want to be of some use?”

“Yeah, sure,” Starsky said without enthusiasm. “Keep my mouth shut?”

“Replace that plate with a new one.” Hutch pointed to the electric outlet near the door. “You’ll find a pack of plates in that first sink.”

Starsky reluctantly got to his feet and walked to the bathroom counter. When he found the bag of plates, he must have also seen the second towel ring. “Oh, I get it,” he said, when the realization finally struck him. “You’re gonna hang two towel rings, one above the other—with room for a towel to hang down on each.”

“Your detective skills are as sharp as razor blades today.”

“Well, I didn’t understand, that’s all. But now I do. Cut me some slack.”

“Gotta keep you on your toes, buddy boy.”

Starsky walked to the doorway and sat on the tile floor, presumably with the new plate and the tool he needed to replace the one on the wall. “How’d this thing break anyway?”

“It was cracked when I bought the place. That’s how long it’s been in need of repair.”

“And how long neither one of us has noticed or cared.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Okay, I will,” Starsky replied, mocking a young boy. He then sang repetitive lines of “speaking for myself, myself, myself,” as if he had a song in him, and then abandoned it for a return to the previous conversation. “How come you decided to hang rings instead of racks?”

“I couldn’t find racks narrow enough.”

“How come you didn’t just use hooks then?”

“Rings look nicer. Do me a favor?”

“Shut up?”

“Don’t distract yourself so much that you stick the screwdriver in the outlet, okay?”

Starsky chuckled, more pleased, it seemed, to have had the banter with his buddy that late morning. “Hey,” he asked, completely ignoring Hutch’s dig, “how about you and me play in the tent after this; what says you?”

Hutch stopped to watch Starsky position the new plate over the outlet and insert the small screw into its center, eventually deciding that Starsky wouldn’t hurt himself, and that he could then open the towel ring package without giving Starsky’s safety another thought. “You mean, let’s go fuck outside after we’re done here?” Hutch asked, pretending to need clarification while he was somewhat distracted by the ring’s bronze beauty shining in the bathroom light.

“Yeah,” Starsky said, taking the bait of Hutch’s echoing question, and growling in his reply to let Hutch know he was on to him. “Let’s fuck outside … in our tent.”

“So soon after this morning’s meal?” Admittedly, Starsky did look good enough to eat again, his profile on full display, and dressed as he was in washed jeans and a clean, tucked shirt, neatly groomed, though unshaven, and seemingly energized. His wasn’t a bad idea.

“That was hours ago,” Starsky pointed out. “We had sex before the sun came up, remember? and it’s almost noon now.”

“Then we have lunch and play in the tent?” Hutch teased, deciding to not let Starsky’s attractiveness derail his own plans. “Or have lunch in the tent and then play? Or—”

“No, you asshole, I mean, right after this—after we finish this home improvement stuff—we go outside to the tent.”

Hutch returned to the wall once he figured out which end the towel bracket needed to face, and then power-screwed the hardware to the anchors, tightening them more than he probably needed to. He had consumed the room in a buzzing sound for that minute, so when he ended the noise, he set the tool on the counter, and faced Starsky. “You want to fuck again this morning,” he noted, playing along. “That’s what I’m hearing.”

Starsky looked up at him from where he sat on the floor, showed off an innocent grin, presented Hutch with his finished task, and whimsically said, “I lived through this, so I wanna celebrate life now.”

“And you think you can get it up again so soon?”

“I want to try, anyway. Don’t you?”

“Well, I’m halfway through my chore,” Hutch explained. He turned away to slide the back of the ring onto its bracket, and then pulled down hard to permanently secure it in place. “I’m gonna be another twenty minutes.”

Starsky rose from his seat, set the screwdriver on the counter, and stepped near Hutch. “Can’t you do the second ring later?”

“It took me four months to get to this first one.”

“Yeah, but if you leave the tools here, you won’t forget.”

Hutch ignored him and got a towel from the bathroom linen cabinet. He folded it in half and then draped it through the ring, making certain it met itself evenly at the bottom. He would use that visual to determine where the other ring should be bolted to the wall.

“Doesn’t talk of fucking at least get you hard enough to follow me out?” Starsky asked, a plea in his voice. “I mean, you look eatable to me right now—you with your power tools and measuring tape, you know? I’ll make the effort worth your while. I promise.”

Hutch laughed, pulled the towel off the ring, tossed it on the counter, and faced Starsky again. “You’re so easy to turn on, it should be criminal. And you meant ‘edible,’ not ‘eatable.’”

Starsky gave him a smile. “Well, anyway, I’m gonna set up the tent—with or without you—so when you’re done here, you know where to find me.”

As Starsky began to leave the bathroom, Hutch grabbed him by his elbow. “You’re not going anywhere, partner,” he said, turning Starsky to face him. “I’m placing you under arrest.”

“What for?”

One of the things Hutch absolutely loved about Starsky was his pure-hearted naivety and innocence. Starsky really did believe he’d been arrested, but didn’t know why.

“For soliciting a police officer,” Hutch said. He removed the pair of handcuffs from the front of his waistband and quickly slipped an open bracelet around Starsky’s wrist before his partner could realize what happened to him. The sound of the locking mechanism momentarily paused the room in otherwise silence.

“I am a police officer,” Starsky defended himself, staring at his cuffed wrist, and genuinely concerned about the situation, inevitably giving Hutch an incredulous look of confusion, and speaking just above the sound of his breath—all while under an unconscious submissiveness.

“During the commission of a crime,” Hutch explained, pulling Starsky closer to the wall he’d been working on, “you being a police officer is irrelevant.” He forced Starsky into facing the wall—without resistance—lifted his cuffed hand to the towel ring’s height, and slipped the other bracelet through the opening. “Assume the position,” he said, leaning into Starsky’s hip with his own while he raised Starsky’s other hand—and cuffed it, too.

“What’s the matter with you?” Starsky asked, but he barely got the words out when it obviously dawned on him—and probably because the inescapable fact that he’d just been handcuffed to the bathroom wall gave him his first clue. “Well, aren’t you the clever one, smart ass,” he giggled.

“Call me Sherlock, shithead.”

Click here to read Part 3