Quote of the day: "Now, tell me the first thing that comes into your mind when I say the word...'closet'." --Hutch, STARSKY AND HUTCH.

Sodium-bright flashbulb POP, freeze-frame, pixilated newsprint smear: Time ticking by, the Nite Owl and all antecedents left long, long gone, headline after tabloid headline.
     1957 sees former L.A. gangster king Meyer Cohen--the Mickster himself--back on the street after three to five for tax evasion, released to a clean new city with sin-tillating lack of fanfare; '58 sees Cohen bodyguard Johnny Stompanato shanked by (she *is*) Lana Turner's jailbait dyke daughter, leaving his ex-boss with no crown, no rep, not even the muscle to back up its memory. '59 sees Cohen joining instead of beating, making no-budget C-circuit monster movies nine to five, running drugs and porn and maybe snuff out the back-lot back door 24/7--ordering hits under the LAPD's nose, taking the shine off their TV-friendly Badge Of Honor image on the sly and breeding casual murder like blood breeds flies...
     And now--1960, a whole new decade, with PSYCHO playing down the street and fresh yellow Homicide tape better than any given *Do Not Disturb* sign for warding off intruders, interlopers, anybody who might be interested in seeing hot cop/ex-cop fruit action live and in close-up. Since the Victory got torched for insurance, its burnt husk turned shantytown squat-space, Ed Exley finds himself cruising crime-scenes mid-toss, then calling Bud White from the first available pay-phone: Sick, dirty, crazy, stupid impulse.
     Not to mention one that gets him hotter than smog over midsummer highway gridlock, every damn time he chooses--
     ("chooses")
     --to give in to it.
     Chief of Detectives at 37, well on his way to Captain, *almost* well shed and shy of dead Captain Dudley Smith's long and smothering shadow. Powerful enough to fix White's P.I. license problems, get him permanently booked on the Department's gravy train as unofficial consultant/confidential informant--to give and collect favors, wheel and deal with city councilmen, feds, D.A.s, offer free legal advice to whoever asks for it: Don't fuck with the LAPD, in any possible capacity. Don't bring your criminal mess to real citizens' houses. Don't run up a tab on MY clock, and expect to walk away without paying the piper...
     *Don't spit on my sidewalk, laaaad. Ever.*
     (Or I'll send Bud White to make you lick it up.)
     White, muscle for hire. Ed threw it in his face like a calculated insult, once upon a time; now, it's just accurate. Busting chops and taking names for the scratch these days, not for the Force, or some vengeance-dream of his mother's murdered face. Not unless he's doing it for--
     (love?)
     --Exley.
     But still getting simultaneously paid...trust-fund rich boy turned genuinely rich *man*-type paid...for his services, in the bargain.
     Six padlocks on this place's front door: Obsolete LAPD hardware, typical cop-wannabe idiocy. Ed's master keys got him in, quicker taking them down than the DOA dealer who used to live here probably was putting them up; perps forced their way through the back, anyways. Can't keep out what you don't see coming.
     (And isn't THAT the awful truth.)
     Ed's far too smart to be here, like this, yet one more time again--up against the wall with White's tastebuds grazing his soft palate, White's fierce teeth scraping his lips bright pink. Too *smart* by half to be courting a sodomy beef and liking it, clutching White to him with a manicured fist on either hard, wide bicep and squirming for better purchase, hunching his narrow hips up to help White pop belt and fly together--barely giving himself time to snatch a breath between kisses as White snags the back of his briefs so hard the elastic snaps, slacks plunging downward onto that brown sludge starburst at Ed's feet: The former George James Kostmi's former blood, shotgun-pancaked thick enough to feel through your socks, all over the off-center of Kostmi's former rug.
     Just like last week, like the week before.
     Just like the last eight years, since White came back to town. Since he picked up the gauntlet Lynn Bracken threw between them, and Ed--
     --let him.
     ("Let.")
     Stop it. Just STOP it. Just don't, don't--
     --*don't*. Stop. Now.
     A low growl through his jaw, just missing his ear: White's voice, going straight to the pit of Ed's--stomach, heart, crotch, whatever bodily lowest common denominator best fits the bill--and...squeezing...
     "You ever think about this, Ex? Before?"
     "W--huh?"
     "BeFORE. You. Me." A pause. "This."
     (*Squeeze*)
     Gasping into the scar on the side of White's neck. Feeling himself reel. Nipples sparking, puzzle-pieces locking fast; White's chest slicked to his, sweat like hot glue.
Then lying back, bare-assed and barefaced, through his own--straight, white--teeth:
     "...never, no. Never."
     Well...*hardly* ever.
     White takes a half-step back, gives a Neandertal brow-twist, an oddly--penetrating--blue squint. At stare so loud Ed can almost hear dead Dudley Smith's drawl mixed in with it, seeping up from that particular circle of Hell they reserve for drug-dealing, murdering, traitorous cop aristocracy father-figures. Reminding him, softly--
     *Always was smarter than you liked to think, that one. Am I right, Edmund, boyo?*
     (...you KNOW you are. Dead man.)
     *You're here because you want to be, laaad. No real way 'round it.*
     (Is there?)
     And smart, well...*smart*...
     ...has nothing to do with it.
    Ed shivers, as White--totally oblivious to this little internal seance--just cracks that unexpected, half-sneer grin. Then leans in again, even closer, to hiss--
     "*Liar*."
     Flushing: "Now wait just one uh, oh--"
     --and then he's twisting, suddenly up-ended across the arm of the corpse's couch, waist-down naked with his tie flapping in his face and Bud's burr-clipped head deep between his parted thighs: Big hands spreading him wide, rough tongue in him to the root. Thoughtful strokes, excruciatingly slow and exact; Ed wheelbarrowed onto the mess of Kostmi's cushions, elbows burning with strain, face bright with embarassed arousal. And that all-too-familiar *squeak*, that hinky, girly little squeal he hears himself give as he feels White's--
     (Bud, fuck, SAY it, idiot)
     --breath on his balls, feels his own (literally) tight-assed core go all slack and loose and juicy with damnable, automatic anticipation...
     "...*oh*, ahhh, jehEEEzus shit almighty..."
     A flesh-muffled laugh, into the stubble-burnt ridge of Ed's chode: "Fuck, I like it when you swear."
     "Put me DOWN, you ape."
     Bud gives one more lick, just to tease. And tells him--
     "Ask *nice*."
     A mere blink bringing Ed upright on the couch proper with Bud's groin instantly eye (and mouth-) -level, the item in question already free and shining in a burst of reflected neon street-light. And then he's opening wide, choking it down deep enough to drool, mouth too full to betray himself anymore--clipping his own gag-reflex on the down-swing, again and again; fastening in on that fat, red piece like it's smack-coated, like he's another two-dollar junkie Strip-whore with a pimp to pay off and a habit to feed. Snorting pre-come through his nose into Bud's sandy bush and not giving the first, least damn how it looks, even if there was anybody else here to see. Not even if Sid Hudgens himself (the resurrected version) were hiding in that closet over there, snapping roll after roll of centrespread material for the HUSH-HUSH early edition...
     Knowing he still can't quite believe what he's doing, even now. Knowing that one  day--soon, perhaps--he'll surely reach a saturation point beyond which even he won't be able to sink, an act that even this never-slaked hunger Bud lets loose in him won't be able to make somehow appealing, somehow *necessary*. Surely.
     But not tonight.
     He lets go, clears his throat--voice coming out hoarse and wet, an order pitched to sound more like a question: "Fuck me?"
     "Anytime, Chief. Anywhere."
     "Here, *now*, just get down here and DO it--"
     Bud flops beside him, slick cock upright and purple-dark, lust pumped so high it reads as anger--now, *there*'s a man with his blood up. Growling: "Could'a done it twice already, if you could ever stop runnin' that MOUTH of yours..."
     To which Ed just snarls, heaves himself up and slides onto Bud's lap, crushing him down--grabbing Bud's head with both hands and smearing Bud's open mouth across his throat, cold spit astringent on his burning skin. Shifting to centre the seam of his balls flush against Bud's shaft, neat and quick, before humping up to fit cockhead to muscle-ring, feeling himself twitch and gape in helpless welcome--
     Feeling Bud's hands on his hips, the downward stroke. That sliding lunge, meat on meat, everything parting straight up the middle, hot and sore and gorgeous and *right*. Feeling a tear leak from either squeezed-shut eye, his own cock jump and pulse and weep for conflicted, dreadful joy as Bud jabs up like a sucker-punch to the gut, and Ed jabs down to meet him. Controlling the depth of the strokes by pumping himself on top of Bud's body--quick and shallow at first, then slower, deeper. Wheeze-grunting with effort, with building desire. Impaling himself balls-deep, stuffed and split and perilously close to screaming; clasping himself HARD around Bud inside and out, 'till their limbs crack and the sweat starts to drip onto that upturned, open-mouthed, straining animal face...
     Must be what all those most recalcitrant suspects see, that one last thing, before Bud's fists separate them from consciousness and priciples alike. Before they come to, bruised and toothless, broken and bloody--ready to say anything, do *anything*, not to ever wake up feeling the same way again.
     Sick, dirty, crazy, stupid.
     Again, and again, and again.
     Because: You love this, he thinks, of Bud. And me--
     --*I* love it. Too.
     *Oh, Christ, YES.*
     That spot, that *spot*. Hands knitting, nails digging and tearing, coming white-hot ropes all over himself as Bud roars and flushes his balls with force enough to make Ed's rubbed-raw colon sting like aftershave, pumping him so full it soaks ass and groin alike with the backspill.
     They sit there in silence for a long moment, afterward--hunched over, slack, cheek to cheek and panting. The heat of the moment congealing, slowly, back into the shelter of their usual, far less permeable masks: Ed and Bud peeling away in favor of Exley and White, Chief and P.I. Stranger and--intimate--stranger.
     "How much evidence you think we just contaminated, that time?" Bud--*White*--asks, absently. And Ed just curls into him, a sigh his only reply.
     Telling himself, sternly: He saved my life. I saved his. We share secrets. I owe him, so I pay. And vice versa.
     Love IT, maybe. Love *him*?
     Please.
     I'm--
     (SMARTER)
     --than that.
     (...aren't I?)
     FlashPOP, freeze-frame. Time a-ticking.
     Somewhere, Dudley Smith gives a lazy Irish laugh, unutterably pleased with his success as a matchmaker. Then waits, patiently, for his eternal tormentors to notice--
     --and turn up the heat.
THE END