Work Text:
Count the Ways
by jat sapphire
"D'y'know what you look like?"
"Didn' know y'could see me." Starsky snorted at his own joke.
They'd both had too many beers, after having played the shot game too long, and were just generally too wasted to sit up straight. Hutch was sprawled over Starsky's couch and Starsky had poured himself into the wicker chair. Considering how small that round seat was and how straight the back, it ought not to have been possible to lounge in the chair that way.
"'S magic," Hutch muttered.
"Huh?"
And Starsky was sort of right, it also ought not to have been possible for Hutch to see him this clearly, since the only lights on were in the kitchen and outside, a streetlight; Hutch's eyes wouldn't stay all the way open, either. "Why didn' we turn the light on?"
"Dunno. Ya wanna?"
Hutch bit his lip, bringing the whole of his drunken intellect to bear on the question. It would be nice to see Starsky better. Really he was guessing about the look in his eyes, the flare of his nostrils as he breathed almost as deeply as if he were sleeping, the shape his mouth must have taken. Hutch could see the outline of muscle under the black denim thighs and along the bare forearms, but he had to imagine the details of the forward-thrust hips, the heavy shape of genitals and zipper and belt-buckle. "D'you *know* what you look like?" he asked again.
"What?" Starsky asked, and yawned, head slipping sideways.
Hutch didn't say, didn't want to say, but didn't want to leave or sleep or even change the subject. Much. "You get the lights?"
Starsky good-naturedly pushed himself up, slid forward, and--
--landed on his ass on the floor. Hutch snickered, then snorted, then Starsky began to laugh too and soon they collapsed in guffaws and gasps and near-whimpers as they tried to speak and couldn't.
"A'most wet my pants," Starsky complained blearily, shifting to get one elbow underneath himself, without much success; he ended up just lying on his back, one arm bent around his head.
"Huh," Hutch said brilliantly. Now Starsky lay in the best light in the room, cast obliquely through the kitchen archway, and Hutch stared hard at the red shirt open to the button above the waist, the movement of Starsky's chest as he breathed, the line of his throat as he tilted his head back to rest on the floor, the dark curls, the hollow between the tendons of his wrist and the slightly cupped hand. He looked half-erect in those tight jeans, legs splayed carelessly apart. "How you look."
"How?"
"Like .... " This was why Hutch hadn't wanted to answer before: because he knew words would always fail him. The berry-red shirt drew his eyes. "Like ... delicious. Like sweet and salt and bitter. Like laughing and ... not laughing." He took a deep, swift breath, and blew it out. "God, Starsk."
Starsky moved a little on the floor, hips and shoulders.
"*God*, Starsk."
Starsky smiled very slowly, eyes shut or nearly so, and hitched his head up onto his arm. "Mmm," he said, "more."
"So good in red," Hutch said. "An' black. 'N' blue."
"How'd you know?"
"What?"
"'M wearing blue."
"You're not tonight. Goon. Don't you remember?"
"Am too. Underneath." He lifted an unsteady hand from the floor and rubbed below the belt, near his hip, illustrating; then he moved his hand over and rubbed his crotch, probably not illustrating any more.
"Tease."
Starsky smiled again. Then turned his head, opened the nearer eye. "Takes one," he said, "t'know one."
"Me?"
Starsky snorted, then nodded.
Hutch tried again, more campily. "*Moi*?"
"You, Miss Piggy."
"Oh-kay," Hutch drawled, wholly unconvinced. "Oh-oh-*kay*, buddy, you better have ev-" his breath caught, and he paused to see if it was a hiccup, but it didn't seem to be. So he swallowed and thought back to what he'd been saying. "*Ev*-idence. For that charge. To stick in court."
Starsky flung his hand out in Hutch's direction without even opening his eyes again. "Y'r Honor, exhibit one," he said.
"What?"
"Evidence. You said."
"No, I mean *what*?"
"Lyin' there," said Starsky, and his voice held a wistful note that caught Hutch's attention, made his throat tighten. "All pale, even the jacket tonight." Hutch had worn his tan leather one. He turned his head and saw where it was hooked on the end of the couch nearest the door. Then Starsky took a long breath and Hutch looked back, met the big dark smudges of his partner's eyes. "And that shirt." It was wheat-colored, silk, and lay around Hutch's body like warm air or water--and it was askew now, he noticed, half untucked, and the neck open farther than it had been at the beginning of the evening. Two
buttons down, not Starsky's five or six. "And those," there was a little gulping sound as Starsky swallowed, "cords." They were tan too, old and soft and snug. Hutch hadn't really thought about it, just grabbed things that matched and put them on.
The two men looked at one another in the dim room.
"And there isn't any light," Starsky's voice was very low, nearly whispering, "but your hair is all lit up anyway. And your moon and star."
Hutch thought of the Cat Stevens song, found himself singing it, out of tune and slurred. "... gardener's daughter stopped me'n my way'n the day I was t'wed--"
Starsky joined him, "It's you who I wish t'share my body with," and his voice broke off as suddenly as if he'd been choked, while Hutch continued, "she said," and then heard himself, didn't hear Starsky, stopped.
"Babe?" All Hutch could hear was a harsh indrawn breath, then another. "You sad?"
"No," but the voice was rough and Starsky turned his face away.
"Starsky."
The dark head didn't move.
"Staaarrrrrrssky."
As he waited for an answer, Hutch lifted one hand and felt the charms against his throat. Moon and star.
"I wish on this star, babe," he said. Then stopped, because this was about to get really soapy and Starsky didn't like that.
"Y'r bullshittin'," Starsky said after a silence.
"Not this time."
"Then," and Starsky hauled himself up on that elbow he hadn't been able to mobilize before, "--then--" he was indignant, irritated, pissed off, *angry*, and Hutch didn't know why. "Then why *now*? Jeezus. Why only now?" He was still, probably glaring, for a few moments and then flopped back onto the floor. "I'm so *wasted*," he
said.
"It's mutual," said Hutch.
"Yeah."
"I mean," Hutch said as clearly as he possibly could, "it is *mu-tu-al*. So. Don't be sad."
He watched as Starsky very gradually smiled, wider and wider until it was one of his specials, the smiles that made Hutch feel like something was going to give, in him if not in Starsky.
"C'n ya throw me a pillow?" Starsky asked eventually, as Hutch was beginning to drift off, and Hutch flailed his arm around, groping, found the afghan and bunched it up, threw that in Starsky's direction.
"Mph, hey, I said--"
But by that time Hutch had dug out the pillow wedged under his neck and upper back, and threw it too. "Okay now?"
"Oh yeah, fine. G'na feel like shit tomorrow though."
"Yeah," and Hutch smiled, rueful. It would be a long while before they got a chance to talk about--well, what they hadn't really talked about at all yet.
Starsky wriggled around, got on his side, then his stomach, then his side again. "Smells like you," he said sleepily, sweetly. "The pillow. Like your aftershave."
*I love you*, Hutch said in his mind, but what came out his mouth was, "Sleep tight, squirt."
"I'll show you squirt," Starsky mumbled as they both dropped off, "'morrow."
**End**
E-mail address for feedback: jat_sapphire@femail.org (at femail.org)
Author's website: http://www.geocities.com/jat_sapphire