December 17th- Why Couldn’t This Have Just Been a Booty Call? by ohlookanothercat

June 8, 1981, 1:29 AM

Starsky answered the phone on the first ring.

“Hey, sexy. May I come over and love you up?”

“Sure thing, sugar. Just give me a minute to slip into something more comfortable.”

“Make sure to put out all my favorite toys,” rang the shrill voice on the other end.

“Oh, I will. How about you? What are you wearing?”

“Oh, just that sexy little thing you gave me last month….”

It was getting really hard to hear what the other person was saying over the sound of the phone ringing, so he reached over and fumbled it to his ear in the darkness. “Hello?”

“Hey, Starsky. May I come over and borrow your blender?”

Starsky didn’t say anything.

“Starsk? Are you awake?”

“I am now,” Starsky growled ill-naturedly into the phone. “Whaddya want?” He looked at the clock. “It’s one-thirty in the morning.”

“I need to borrow your blender. Please? It’s important.”

Blender. One-thirty in the morning. Important. Why did he love this guy so much? “Okay,” he found himself saying. “Hurry. It’s a school night.”

Starsky staggered out of bed and into some jeans and went to turn on the porch light so Hutch wouldn’t trip on the stairs in the dark. What did Hutch want with his blender anyway? He had one. And a juicer. And a food processor. Had he had a power outage? Had he broken all three? Was he trying to grind up something so disgusting he didn’t want to use his own blender? Starsky dreaded to think what that could be.

Starsky dug the blender out of the cabinet, and since he hadn’t used it in a while he rinsed the dust out and dried it with a towel. He didn’t know if he wanted Hutch to just borrow his blender and leave as quickly as possible or if he wanted to try to talk Hutch into having a little fun first. On the one hand, it was one-thirty in the morning. On the other, if someone was going to wake him up in the middle of the night, in the middle of a horny dream, no less, he’d damn well better get something out of it. Especially if that someone was his lover.

The word made him smile to himself, and awoke something that could potentially turn into excitement as he became less groggy. That said, this was not one of their nights. They had just had their night the previous night, and now Starsky needed to rest up for the next one. Red-blooded man though he was, he just couldn’t do the kind of things they did together every night.

But maybe two in a row wouldn’t hurt.

When Hutch knocked on the door, it was one-fifty in the morning. He answered to find Hutch standing there with a cardboard box under one arm and a paper bag in the other hand, blond hair gleaming and blue eyes glistening under the porch light. He looked far too bright and alert for such an unholy hour of the night. He looked angelic.

At the sight of him, all of Starsky’s sleepiness evaporated along with whatever testy greeting had been on the tip of his tongue. Grabbing Hutch by a fistful of his blue sweater (the one that brought out his eyes), Starsky hauled him in the door and kissed him, blindly shoving the door closed with one hand while he reached up and wrapped the fingers of the other around the back of Hutch’s neck.

They kissed until Hutch made a little mewling noise, and Starsky, forgetting about the things Hutch had in his arms, reached for the hem of Hutch’s shirt, meaning to pull it off over his head. Hutch broke away and twisted out of his grasp.

Surprised at being left hanging after he thought things were just heating up, Starsky trailed after Hutch with his mouth open while Hutch went into the kitchen and set his stuff down. When he deposited the box on the counter, the mewling noise repeated itself, and figuring at this point it probably wasn’t his partner after all, Starsky asked, “What’s that noise?”

The box had been closed by overlapping the flaps, leaving a hole in the middle about one inch square. Starsky thought he saw movement flash inside. Again the noise repeated itself.

“Hutch…is there an animal in there?”

“Yeah. That’s why I need the blender,” said Hutch.

For one insane moment, Starsky had a horrifying vision, the kind that sometimes happened at two in the morning, that the animal might be something really hideous like a huge alligator lizard, snapping its teeth in the air as Hutch picked it up and…and did what? What did Hutch want with his blender?!

Hutch hooked one of his fingers in the hole and pulled it open with a schlunk! that had Starsky’s mind popping back into the present moment just as a fluffy orange kitten was popping out of the box. Its fur was going in every direction and it looked like a wad of orange dryer lint. Hutch scooped it up and handed it to Starsky. It let out a sharp squeal and scrabbled at his wrists with its tiny arms. Starsky felt himself beginning to grin.

“Hutch. Where’d you find this thing?” he asked.

“On the ground under my bedroom window,” Hutch answered, pulling a can of chicken noodle soup out of the bag and brushing past Starsky to open the refrigerator. He grabbed the leftover steak from the night before last and went over to get the can opener out of a drawer.

“No, we’re not keeping him,” said Hutch, preempting Starsky’s next question. “I’m going to call Mrs. Ramos tomorrow and see if her kids want a kitten. Failing that, I’ll ask Dobey if his do, but Rosie’s been wanting a bird and I doubt they’ll want to get – ”

“Hey, what are you doing with that?” Starsky complained. Hutch had opened the soup and poured some into the blender and now he was tearing the steak up into chunks and dumping it in, too. “That’s my dinner tomorrow!”

“Sorry, Starsk,” he said, not sounding it at all. “But you know I don’t keep meat at my house these days.”

“Yeah, and I know it’s just so I’ll keep paying for all our steaks.” Well, that wasn’t exactly fair. Hutch had made them some wonderful vegetarian meals over the last couple of years, since he had started taking real cooking lessons. But dammit, it was two in the morning, an hour that would test anybody’s generosity, and Hutch was over here about to feed the tastiest thing in Starsky’s refrigerator to an animal. “And what’s that chicken noodle soup anyway?”

Hutch looked at him like he was an idiot. “That isn’t meat, Starsky. It’s chicken noodle soup.” Then he ended the conversation by turning on the blender. Starsky rolled his eyes.

It took a little while for the stuff to blend, and when it was done it looked like calamine lotion and smelled like the fanciest wet cat food ever made. Hutch poured about half of it into a ramekin and took back the kitten, who began ravenously scarfing it right there on the kitchen counter. When Starsky made to pick up both kitten and bowl and to put them on the floor, the kitten snarled viciously and slapped the counter next to Starsky’s hand. Starsky backed off. Hutch laughed.

Starsky briefly considered starting something with Hutch while the kitten was eating, but he kind of wanted Hutch to wash his hands after touching all that stuff. Come to think of it, who knew where that kitten had been. Maybe he should wash his own hands as well. It was eating awfully quickly, too, scooting the ramekin around on the counter and making little grumbling and smacking noises. Starsky cautiously put his hand out so that nothing fell off the edge of the counter.

After a few minutes, the bowl was obviously empty, but the kitten didn’t seem to notice, and since Starsky wasn’t brave enough to take the bowl away after the way the little beast had reacted to his hand the first time, he left it up to Hutch to reach in and snatch it. The kitten snuffled around on the counter looking for more to eat until Hutch wet a cloth and wiped its face free of food. It tried to squirm away from the bath, giving a series of muffled protests against the towel and shrinking back into Hutch’s hand. Hutch let it go on the floor, where it resumed its hunt for more food.

“Do you have a sandbox for that thing?” Starsky asked, watching it sniff along the baseboard.

“Yeah,” said Hutch, “at home, made out of a pan and some dirt. He already went.”

“Yeah, but was it number one or number two? And how long does it take a kitten to recharge, anyway?”

“Recharge? Starsky. It’s a kitten, not a ray gun.” He opened up a cabinet and started moving things around, presumably digging for the small Tupperware they both knew was there somewhere but hadn’t seen in ages.

“Yeah, well, I bet it can do just as much damage as a ray gun. I’m putting it in the bathroom.”

“What for? As soon as I pack up the rest of this pink slop and wash my hands, I’m taking him home.” Hutch had his arm all the way at the back of the cabinet.

“Not if I have any say in it,” Starsky leered under his breath. “Put everything back where you found it,” he said aloud, watching Hutch scoot things around.

He scooped up the kitten from where it was checking out a chair leg. “Besides, you can’t leave yet,” he cooed into its tiny tufted ear. “You don’t even have a name.”

When he got back from putting the kitten into the bathroom (and petting it, and playing with it, and pouring it a paper cup full of water), Hutch had put everything away and rinsed the blender and was washing his hands. Starsky joined him.

He knew Hutch hadn’t given the kitten a name because he knew Hutch, but he decided to bait him a little to pass the time while they stood there lathering. “So, what are you calling him?”

“I’m not,” said Hutch predictably. “I’m letting whoever I give him to name him.”

“But that’s tomorrow. He can’t go all night without a name.”

“Why not? His mother never named him.” Hutch rinsed his hands and dried them. “Where is he?”

“In the bathroom where he can’t crap on my floor.” Starsky dried his own hands and tossed the towel down on the counter. “Hey – Hutch!”

Hutch had taken a step in the direction of the bathroom, but Starsky reached out and grabbed him by the arm to turn him around and take his mouth in a continuation of their kiss at the door, pulling their bodies together at the hips in hopes of getting both of them excited.

Hutch kissed him back with apparent enthusiasm, and Starsky could feel his crotch firming up next to his own, and at about the same pace, but when they separated for air Hutch chuckled awkwardly. “Starsky – it’s after two in the morning. And there are children in the house!”

Starsky had to laugh. “He’ll be fine. When I left him he was playing with invisible spots on the floor.”

Starsky could see Hutch’s indecision, but he could also feel his arousal and thought he might be able to tip the scales. He backed Hutch into the living room and knocked him down onto the sofa, standing over him with a flirtatious smile that he knew Hutch secretly found charming. Hutch looked up at him helplessly, and Starsky knew he had won.

Starsky bumped Hutch’s legs apart and got onto his knees between them, running his hands slowly up the legs of Hutch’s pants. Hutch shivered and slipped his fingers into Starsky’s hair, leaning forward to kiss him hard on the mouth.

“OK, you got me,” he said adoringly. “But we have to be quick, all right? I still have to get him settled in at home. Come on.” He leaned back on the couch, giving Starsky’s hair a loving stroke before he put his head back and his arms out to the sides, watching his partner through half-lidded eyes.

Starsky opened Hutch’s pants with swift fingers and found to his delight that he wasn’t wearing anything under them. He must have thrown them on in a hurry when he heard the kitten crying outside. He pressed his nose into Hutch’s groin to inhale the scent of him and delight in the contrast between the delicacy of the softest skin on his body and the hardness of hipbone and growing erection. With his hand he drew Hutch out, and turning his head, gave a slow lick up the length of him. Hutch’s breath stuttered and his cock jumped. So did Starsky’s.

Every time Starsky did this for Hutch, he was surprised all over again at how much he found it did for him too. It wasn’t just pride that he could take another person apart with no tools other than himself. He had experienced that with women and it was great, but it wasn’t everything. It wasn’t even just that Hutch wanted him to do it, trusted him to do it. It was also that it was Hutch, composed, tough, rock-steady Hutch that he was making fall completely to pieces with just his own body and his skill with it, that made this particular act so much more than the sum of its parts.

Hearing Hutch’s nails scratching on the back of the sofa and the little vocalizations he was making as Starsky worked him up to full hardness and established a satisfactory rhythm was driving him crazy. Hutch was making helpless little twitching thrusts, and his legs were starting to quiver when suddenly the scrabbling sound became a series of loud thumps and the little vocalizations changed into ear-piercing squeals that had Starsky scrambling backward off of his partner until his back crashed into the coffee table.

“Ow.” He would have a mark there tomorrow.

It took Hutch a second to get with the program and stop thrusting his hips into thin air, but then he stared down at Starsky with a dazed expression until they both shouted in unison, “Kitten!”

Starsky took stock of the situation. Hutch looked about two seconds away from orgasm, but Starsky knew better. He had a ways to go yet. Meanwhile, his own erection was rubbing deliciously against his jeans with every movement, and he had an urge to grind his hand into it, but then the kitten gave another unholy screech so instead he sighed and rose to his feet to go and get the poor thing.

When he opened the bathroom door, the kitten was on its back playing with the doorstop on the wall, giving no sign of any agitation at all. Starsky watched it play for a moment, wondering if they had just had a shared hallucination, and then shut the door and headed back toward Hutch while finally giving in to the urge to palm his crotch.

He wasn’t even halfway there when once again the kitten let out a hysterical caterwaul. Starsky and Hutch both jumped, and Starsky turned around and marched back to the bathroom door, opened it and scooped the kitten off the floor before it could damage his ears any more.

He looked at the little creature in wonder. It seemed to have more fur than body, and his hand swallowed it, its head, legs, and bits of orange fur poking out from between his fingers. Bright blue eyes dominated its tiny face, and its ears were out of this world. How could so much noise come out of something this small?

The kitten looked back at him, curled one of its paws, and peeped. Starsky’s heart, already open and vulnerable from being intimate with his partner, melted completely. He smiled at the kitten and held it to his chest on his walk back to the sofa.

Returning to find Hutch just as he’d left him, not seeming to have touched himself at all but to have stayed there with his head back and his arms out to the sides while his boner sat there red, glistening, and desperate pitched Starsky right back into sex mode so quickly that his cock forgot he was holding a kitten and throbbed. He moaned out loud, and the kitten looked up at him curiously.

What the hell, he thought. If it pees on something, oh well. That’s life. He set the little baby down on the floor and it scampered off to parts unknown. Starsky dropped back down to his knees and sucked Hutch’s cock into his mouth. They were back in business.

Resuming his rhythm from before, Starsky soon had Hutch tossing his head and clenching his fists in the blanket on the back of the sofa, making soft noises every time Starsky sucked particularly hard. At least now he knew they were really Hutch’s noises.

When he felt the pattering of tiny feet across his arm where it lay along Hutch’s leg, he elected to ignore it and keep going. That became more challenging when it burrowed its way down into the space under his chin and started nuzzling his neck. The tickling of its wet nose was so unsettlingly similar to some of the sensations involved in sex that it made Starsky feel like a dirty old man, and he just couldn’t stay aroused when he felt like a dirty old man.

Despite the fact that Starsky was getting less turned on with each passing second, Hutch didn’t seem to be experiencing the same struggle and Starsky just couldn’t bear the guilt of leaving him in the lurch, so he ignored the kitten as best he could and focused on getting Hutch off.

The kitten, it seemed, had other plans. Between one second and the next, Hutch was suddenly bellowing like a walrus and shoving Starsky away as fast as he could. Starsky landed on the floor once more, adding another coffee table bruise to his back and staring up at Hutch in shock. Hutch’s feet were still on the floor, but his butt had left the sofa and he was clutching himself with one hand. His face expressed astonishment, pain, and betrayal. The kitten was on the floor between them, lifting one of its arms to paw at Starsky’s ankle. Hutch took his hand off his wilting boner to point at the kitten. “He – he bit me!”

Starsky shifted his eyes between the kitten and Hutch. The kitten looked innocent and curious and adorable. Hutch looked ready to kill it. He looked at the kitten again. It couldn’t possibly have done it. But something had done it, and it sure as hell wasn’t Starsky.

The kitten crept closer to Starsky’s crotch in its exploration of the floor. Starsky tried to shuffle backwards, but the coffee table was in his way, so he stood up instead. The kitten padded away under the table and Hutch stood up and fastened his pants. He looked a little distant, like someone had just taken his picture. Starsky reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. Are you okay? Are you bleeding?”

Hutch blinked. “Oh. I, uh, didn’t check.” He went into the kitchen where the light was brighter and took his pants down and said, “Yeah, I’m bleeding. Take care of the bloodstain, would you?” He took his pants all the way off and handed them to Starsky, then grabbed a paper towel and pressed it onto his wound. Starsky looked down at the pants in his hand. The bloodstain was surprisingly large. How deeply had the kitten bitten him? Or maybe ballsacks were like heads, and they bled a lot even if they weren’t that badly injured. Starsky wouldn’t know. He’d never even tried to shave his.

He put Hutch’s pants in the sink, added some soap to the bloodstain, and started scrubbing at it. Hutch hopped up onto one of Starsky’s kitchen chairs and Starsky looked over at him. He was sitting stiff and silent as the grave, and a storm was brewing on his face. He was also naked from the waist down, with the corners of the paper towel he was holding bristling from the space between his legs. There was something about him that looked like a grumpy child, and Starsky would have been laughing if it wasn’t making him so nervous.

The silence built until Starsky decided he had to say something. So in his infinite wisdom of knowing just what to say to Hutch, he said, “So, have you thought of a name yet?”

Hutch, if it was possible, got even quieter. Starsky paused in his scrubbing and looked at him, expecting to see him maybe fainting, gone green around the gills or as white as a sheet. What he didn’t expect was apoplexy. Hutch was red as a beet, eyes shining out of his head like twin laser beams. If looks could kill, Starsky would have a gaping hole through his body right now.

“I don’t know,” Hutch ground out. “How about Jaws?”

Starsky was pretty sure Hutch wasn’t going to move because then he’d start bleeding again, so he felt confident in pretending nothing was amiss. He casually rinsed and resoaped the pants while he dug around in his head for an idea. “How about Ginger? He’s the right color.”

“Isn’t that usually a girl’s name, Starsky? I’m pretty sure this kitten is a boy.” Ooh. The laser beams shone through Hutch’s voice as well.

“OK, then.” Starsky diplomatically refrained from mentioning Ginger Baker. A rock star this kitten was not. “How about Orange? He’s the right color and he’s about the size of one.”

“That’s great. Got any more hookers you want to name him after? Third try’s the charm.”

Oh yeah. Orange was the name of a hooker. It had been a couple of years since he’d been running in those circles. She had a dog, didn’t she? Named…Dale. Yeah. Short for Airedale. Eh, the kitten didn’t look like a Dale or an Airedale. Those were names with dignity. He was much too dorky. But Dale had had aliases, hadn’t he? One pretty memorable one was – “Sandy. How about Sandy?”

“Starsky, you’re not even trying. Have a little creativity if you’re going to insist on depriving some child of the right to name their own pet. Oh wait, I forgot. You are a child, aren’t you? Do you want the ball-biting kitten? He’s yours.”

Starsky ignored the crack about his maturity since Hutch made them all the time. He rinsed the pants again and inspected the stain. “I’m not depriving anybody of anything and you know it. It’s just for tonight. One more soaping should do it,” he said, and grabbed a vegetable brush out of a drawer to work out the last bit of blood.

As Starsky scrubbed around the stubborn edges of the patch of blood, he mused, “You know, Hutch, Huggy Bear just got a new video game at his place. The little guy in it is yellow, and he wins the game by biting everything else: his enemies, these little white dots on the screen, bits of fruit. His name’s Pac-Man. What do you think? Does he look like a Pac-Man?”

“Absolutely not. We are not naming the kitten after anything from an arcade game.”

Starsky was finally losing his patience. Normally by now he would have been able to distract Hutch from his problems by getting him engaged in the conversation. It was exactly the same thing that Hutch always did for him, and the times that it didn’t work were few and far between. Usually those were the times when somebody had died or something similarly traumatic had happened, so for Hutch to be acting this way when he hadn’t asked to go to the hospital and didn’t seem to be in severe pain was frustrating.

“You know, Hutch, you’re not making this easy. Tell you what: I’m going to call the kitten Hutch. It has your eyes and your hair and your teeth.”

The silence from the chair was deafening. Starsky risked a glance over to find Hutch’s eyes downcast in what Starsky assumed to be a petulant sulk until Hutch hissed and he realized that his partner was slowly attempting to peel off the paper towel.

Starsky left the pants in the sink and crept closer, waiting with bated breath until the paper towel was all the way off. They both breathed a sigh of relief when the wound was revealed to no longer be bleeding.

He went back to the sink and gave the pants a final rinse. The blood was gone. “The blood is gone,” Starsky announced. “I’ll go get you a clean pair of pants. You want some mercurochrome or something?” He thought he should offer, even though the idea made his own private parts want to shrivel up and die.

Hutch winced. Apparently he felt the same way. “No thanks. I have betadine at home.”

“OK.” Starsky went into his bedroom, left the wet pants over the side of his hamper, and got a new pair of pants and some underwear out of the bottom left drawer of his dresser, the drawer that even years before they ever jumped into bed together had been dedicated as Hutch’s drawer just as Starsky had always had one at Hutch’s house. That way they could always have fresh pants if they spilled something on them, or an emergency shirt in the morning if they had been too busy to do laundry. Starsky’s pants didn’t fit Hutch, but they shared shirts on the regular.

Talking about naming the kitten after Hutch had given Starsky an idea. And if Hutch’s mood was in any way salvageable, which Starsky figured it was or Hutch probably wouldn’t have said “no thank you” to the mercurochrome, he would more than approve of it. He would love it. Starsky headed back out with a smile on his face and a spring in his step.

“Hey, Hutch. What do you think of calling him Larry?”

Hutch took the clothes and looked at him like he had beamed down from outer space. But he didn’t seem bitchy, just…confused. “Larry?”

“Yeah. You remember who Larry was, right?”

“Uh, no. I don’t.” Hutch put the underwear on.

“Aw, you know, the deaf guy who was keeping the kittens in the basement of the halfway house.”

Hutch stepped into the pants and zipped them up. “Oh, yeah. I remember him. What about him?”

“Well, do you remember what he named the kittens?”

“No.”

Starsky sighed dramatically. How could Hutch have possibly forgotten? It wasn’t every day somebody named someone after you. Or that two overworked cops got such clear affirmation that they were doing their jobs well. “He named them after us, Hutch. Because he was happy that we had helped him.”

He thought he saw Hutch’s lips twitch in the hint of a smile. “Oh. And you thought it would be nice to…”

“To commiserate Larry in return.”

“Commemorate.”

“Whatever. So, whaddya think? He looks like a Larry, doesn’t he? Dorky little ball of fluff. Not that Larry the human was a dorky ball of fluff, but it seems like a good name for one anyway. Maybe if he grows up into a beautiful cat he can be Lawrence.”

“Maybe,” said Hutch sternly, “Except that we’re not keeping him. Where is he, anyway?”

Hutch went off in search of Larry the kitten, turning on all the lights and calling Larry’s new name over and over. He seemed to be in much higher spirits now in spite of how gingerly he bent down to look under the furniture.

Starsky got distracted watching him for a minute. He was so much cuter when he wasn’t grumpy, which was really saying something, and it gave Starsky pleasure and pride to see Hutch caring for any kind of child.

He was about to turn around to go look for Larry down the hall when Hutch found him between the sofa and the armchair. “Hey, Larry. What’re you doing down there, little buddy?” he cooed, and slowly scooted the chair aside so he could get at him. Then his tone turned uneasy. “Uhhh…”

Starsky came over to see what was the matter, wondering if Larry had hurt himself or gotten stuck, or maybe Hutch had started bleeding again.

Larry was fine, it turned out. So fine, in fact, that he had gotten busy fulfilling his biological urges and was now scratching at a puddle he had left on Starsky’s rug. A puddle not much larger, Starsky noted with disbelief, than the one he’d made out of Hutch’s blood.

Hutch was crouching on the floor with Starsky standing over him, so when Hutch turned around to aim a nervous whale eye at him, like he was afraid of how Starsky was going to react, Starsky took a step back and offered his hand. Hutch took it and stood up slowly, facing Starsky with an almost childlike expression of shame. It was clear that Hutch thought he was going to get yelled at.

Larry came crawling out from under the armchair, lifting his paws to play with the air and staggering on the way down. He fell onto its side and rolled, exposing a spotty belly before he righted himself and kept going. They watched him in silence until he disappeared under the coffee table.

Starsky turned back around to face Hutch. A scoff burst out of him at the absurdity of this whole experience, from the beginning of one of the strangest middle-of-the-night phone calls he’d ever had to this moment, and before he knew it he was laughing, and Hutch was also laughing, and neither of them could stop.

After Hutch apologized for the umpteenth time and took Larry home, Starsky cleaned the pee up with some vinegar and a towel. It didn’t have that strong cat pee smell that he was always smelling in alleys and criminals’ houses, so he was grateful for that at least. He had to admit, Larry was a cute little brat. He could just see the kids’ faces when they saw him. If the Dobeys or Mrs. Ramos wanted to say no, they would have their work cut out for them. Maybe Hutch will fall in love with it and want to keep it, Starsky thought as he drifted off to sleep at nearly three-thirty in the morning. His dreams were full of custody arrangements, and figuring out where to put the litter box. It couldn’t go between the chair and the couch, not if he ever wanted to have guests.

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