Archive of Our Own ^beta

It seemed like a nice place, white and calm, bathed in sunlight.

Parkland Place.

Hell, it even sounded nice. Ducking his head slightly to get a good view up the hill, Hutch saw no blaring signage, no bars visible, no men in white coats. What he saw was a Palladian, college-looking building, surrounded by lawn and shrubs, with the front door standing open. It occurred to him that maybe Starsky was watching out of one of the winking windows overhead, looking down as his beloved car came rolling up the driveway. If so, hopefully he was glad to see it.

To tell the truth, Hutch was looking forward to handing the keys back. He’d been giving the roaring red beast a run every so often, just sitting in it and driving around, because Huggy said Starsky would be mad as hell if he came out of the hospital and found the battery dead. There was no other reason to be hauling the damned parade float so far out of town.

So far out of town it almost had the feel of another country about it.

*

It was certainly not the place Hutch had been imagining since that night, all those weeks ago, when he’d had to just... let Starsky go.

All the way into Metro from the wreck of his partner’s home in Ridgeway things had seemed manageable, because he had a safe hold of him. Turned out Starsky hadn’t fired a bullet through his own brain in the end, and Hutch had believed him when he insisted he hadn’t fired one into Mitchell McCarthy’s brain either. Felt like the only way was up.

But then the rest of that night happened. Hutch could still feel the body blow when Marks from IA had showed them into one of their little rooms, turned smartly and said, “Thanks, Hutchinson, you can leave now.”

Leave?

“I’m sorry?” he’d croaked. The injustice of it had nearly turned his head.

And all night while Marks and the others were trying to work out what had happened, Hutch had sat numbly in the squad room opposite Starsky’s empty chair. In his office Dobey had been looking for the right place, somewhere that was going to be more than safe haven. A place for a drowning man.

Hutch had given Dobey strict instructions: no scary, faceless psych hospitals, no Loony Toon shrinks with the keys to a padded cell. He had tried maintaining that the best place for Starsky was with him, but Dobey wouldn’t go for that. Starsky had to be seen to be undergoing treatment, the Captain said, and woke up psych services, his own doctor, Rita Riley from the Marcus Cult Rehab program, and a whole bunch of other people to try and find a place.

And this is the place he’d found. Parkland Place. A private psychiatric clinic with an open front-door.

That night, Starsky had come tottering out of IA three hours after he went in, looking like the last survivor of a shipwreck who’d been washed ashore. They’d let Hutch come down to the waiting car with him, and they’d asked Starsky if he understood what was happening.

“Sure,” he’d said, “I’m going to a facility.” And then he’d smiled politely at the guy standing by the car.

There’d followed an unbelievable conversation about whether the patient needed to be restrained on the journey, and Hutch had said it wasn’t damned well necessary and that he’d sit with him. That was when they’d all looked at him and said he wasn’t going any further.

Starsky had come to life long enough to have a meltdown. Hutch could still see the look of abject panic in his eyes. It was enough to send a shudder down his spine, bring him out in goosebumps. Make his chest hurt in a crazy mix of guilt and defensiveness.

Come on, Starsk, I didn’t have any choice!

They’d ended up grappling Starsky into the car and Dobey had been saying, “Leave him, Hutch, they’ll take care of him, you have to leave him now.”

Hutch remembered yelling. Coming apart at the seams in the middle of the fucking night. And Dobey had made him come home to his place where he’d yelled some more and had this crying jag with Edith and then he’d gone to sleep in Cal’s room after the kid went to school.

And the next day Dobey told him he had to go on two weeks leave, out of town, and that he wouldn’t see Starsky for... oh, maybe a couple of months.

Like they knew best.

And perhaps they did. When Hutch had returned from the unwillingly-taken leave – which had been kind of OK, although he hadn’t slept – they sent Rita Riley to see him.

“Of course I’ve come,” she’d said when he’d been more than a tad lukewarm. “You’ve been going through the same things as David, on another side of the door. It’s all as deep in your head as it is in your partner’s.”

“Not sure about that,” Hutch had muttered, either to her or to himself. “I never wanted to blow my own brains out – only Simon Marcus’s.” He’d been shocked at how sick it made him feel, saying the man’s name.

But Hutch had decided he was doing all right, so long as he kept at a good distance what might be embedded in Starsky’s head. Just so long as he didn’t spent too much time wondering what they were doing to Starsky, who he was with, and if it was making him any better.

*

There were no white coats to be seen inside Parkland Place, either. Simply a few casually-dressed people in the reception area, who might have been patients and might have been staff. Behind the reception desk two women with their swivel-chairs pushed back from the desk were chatting. One of them raised her head as Hutch walked up and placed his hands on the counter-top.

“‘Lo,” he said to her, squeezing a smile out, “I’m here to visit a patient.”

“Hi there,” said the woman, reaching to pull herself towards a big black book. “Patient’s name?”

“Uh, Starsky. David Starsky.”

“OK.” She glanced into the book, across at his long-fingered hands holding on to her territory, and then up into his face, suddenly taking him in properly. He could see her making up her mind about him. “Uh-huh. David’s due to finish therapy any time. He’ll be back in his room shortly. It’s room number nine, on this floor. Go down that corridor there and take the first left.”

“And I can just go in?”

She took him in again. “Sure you can. There’s no locked doors in here.”

It felt weird. Strolling down the corridor of a hospital, clinic, whatever it was. Last time he’d laid eyes on him, Starsky had been entirely out of touch with reality, his head had been full of black, and since then Hutch had heard nothing, no progress reports, no news, no nothing.

Scared of this, Starsk.

Room number nine. Lucky number nine. A white-paneled door. A brass handle. Two locks, even though apparently ‘there’s no locked doors in here’.

A pleasant room, like a country hotel in an Agatha Christie murder mystery, with dark wood furniture, flower-sprigged drapes. A normal-looking bed. Definitely no bars on the windows. No radio, no TV. And no telephone. Hutch stepped over towards the bathroom door which stood open, and peered inside. A normal, pastel-tiled bathroom. Normal except for the red emergency button. In here, as out in the room, there were no particular signs of life. No signs of a particular life, more to the point. No clothes, no wash-gear, no books, no nothing.

So scared of this.

He walked around on the brown acrylic carpet and pressed a hand down on the bed. It was springy. He wondered if Starsky threw himself around in it, if he dreamed the way he had when he was with Hutch, if he woke up smelling the dead people, so sick with it that he thought he was going to choke.

Dragging his thoughts away from that, he was staring out the window at the view of hedges that were too high to see anything over, when he heard footsteps coming up the corridor. As he turned around, heart hammering, the door clicked open.

“This time I know what took you so long!”

It was Starsky’s voice.

The words cut cheerfully right through Hutch’s jumbled train of thought.

Starsky was there in the doorway dressed in a loose grey shirt and jeans.

All Hutch registered at first was that his hair was short, like it used to be, years ago. Then he thought his face looked a little thin. Mostly, though, he saw the blue-sky eyes, full of life and color.

He knew those eyes.

Clonking the door shut with the back of his shoe, Starsky moved over the room with long strides. While Hutch felt the roots growing down under his feet, the fear twining through his limbs, Starsky opened his arms. “Hey,” he said, “here I am! Half as funny and twice as crazy, would you just come here?” He had cocked his head slightly, none too confident all of a sudden.

The space between them yawned wider than it had ever been, just for a second or two.

Starsky seemed to conquer the fear first. His face showed that he had to take these steps across dangerous territory every single day. To hell with it, said his expression, here we go again, just do it. He got them into some kind of a clinch, gripping tight, his heart thumping at top speed against Hutch’s chest.

Hutch couldn’t bring himself to believe.

He’s here, he’s here. I got him!

“Don’t worry about it,” said that dear voice in Hutch’s ear. “Don’t worry, just be glad.”

It wasn’t until he felt Starsky pulling away, confused by the lack of his response, that he moved. To stop him getting away he slid his arms round Starsky’s back, drew him close again. He felt drunk, his limbs so heavy with some emotion that he could have sunk into the floor, dragging his partner down with him.

“OK,” he said. “OK.” And then, “Oh God, Starsk.”

“Good, huh?” Starsky said, pulling gently back and looking into his face. He was grinning fit to bust and they were still holding on to one another.

“You thought I’d be a zombie,” Starsky accused him.

“No, I thought... I... hell, I don’t know what I thought.”

“Man, I’m that glad to see you, Hutch, swear I could kiss you!”

“Well think about it,” Hutch said shakily. “I had a burrito for lunch.”

“You never did!”

“I did. I’m trying to lighten up.”

“You should try the food in here. It’s so healthy it’s killing me.”

A little pause.

“So, how is it here? How are you doing?” Hutch’s question felt awkward coming out of his mouth. It fell on slightly stony ground. He could sense Starsky considering the idea of shuttering up for a moment, see him battling that instinct to withdraw.

“I’m good. This place is – it’s OK.” Starsky gestured around the room. “How’d you like my pad?”

“It’s like my mother’s second best spare bedroom.”

Starsky’s eyes went wide. “She had a second best spare bedroom?”

“Yeah, you know, for second best spare guests.”

Starsky nodded thoughtfully. “You want the guided tour?”

“Well, I’ve seen the bathroom.”

“No, not in here, dummy. Out there.”

Hutch looked towards the closed door.

“It’s really all right,” Starsky said. “I’m allowed.” He frowned a little at Hutch’s hesitation, as if wondering what it was about.

They went out into the quiet corridor and Hutch’s head teemed with questions he didn’t seem able to ask.

Are there really other patients here? What in hell do you do in here all day? What was that therapy session you just had?

“You don’t need to look so freaked out,” Starsky said, putting a hand against his back and leaving it there. “I’ll look after you.”

Right at the beginning they’d put a pen in Starsky’s hand and an empty paper in front of him and told him, “Write your way out of it.”

No, wait, that was later.

The first thing they’d done after he arrived was to ask more questions. Starsky had thought he should just say the same things he’d been saying to IA but in the end he couldn’t remember what he’d said, or how it all fitted together.

Then he’d had to shower, hand over his clothes. He’d felt strangely unmoved by the sight of Mitchell McCarthy’s blood splatters winding down the drain. And strangely unbothered by the guard that stood by him as he showered. While he sat on the bed in his new quarters they’d given him a shot, at which point he hadn’t much cared if he never woke up.

The paper and pen thing had been the next day. Or maybe the next week? Time just came and went. He’d sat in his room or in the library. Strange, they called it the library and there was a load of books. Nothing to actually read, though.

There were no TVs in here. No games. At first Starsky had thought there were no other patients either, and found that idea rather amusing, but he’d met them eventually. They all seemed quite normal.

Yeah, and there was lots of talk. You couldn’t get away from it. No sitting on your own. There was always someone who wanted to talk, enough to drive you crazy. Doctors and therapists who all looked and sounded the same – and when they found that Starsky didn’t talk much about what they wanted him to talk about, they told him to write it.

So, he wrote his life story first.

They weren’t interested, they wanted Simon Marcus, chapter and verse, but Starsky found he couldn’t write any of that. He’d look at the empty page and couldn’t think what should come first and then it would all just fade away and he’d get mad and screw up the paper. It was worse than writing reports for Dobey.

It was a long time before he managed to give them something, just a couple of pages that they took away. Then they came back later and said he was messing them about.

After that they let him sleep a lot. They let him be in a fog and he almost liked it for a while. He had only one dream he remembered, and that was about eating fried chicken. When the fog cleared it was imperative to him to have the lights on. When he asked them why they stopped giving him the stuff that made sleeping so easy, so pleasant and uncomplicated, they said he had to start facing up to things.

So... then came the other dreams. Those dreams, the ones Hutch had glimpsed. And getting rid of those was why he was here, right?

But it had seemed they wanted him to keep having them. Took notes. Kept telling him it didn’t matter if the dreams just got worse because he was safe in here.

Starsky had gotten used to sitting up at three in the morning with this doctor, this guy Rosenberg. He thought Rosenberg must be writing a book about him he made so many notes. Yup, he scraped out the inside of Starsky’s head and stuck it all in his notebook.

Then when his head was all hollow and clean, he was given the paper again.

And this time Starsky had started straight in at the courthouse men’s room. Being jumped while Dobey and Hutch were twiddling their thumbs waiting for him. He had been asked to work out – exactly – how many times he thought he was going to die. First in the men’s room, then at the zoo, and then in the abandoned gym, eyes hurting from the flashlight. And why, afterwards, he couldn’t help needing that here it is feeling. That I’m going to do it, I’m the one who’s going to pull the trigger. Not you, Boyd Black. Not you.

They expected another whole page on why he couldn’t do it, even after McCarthy had showed him how fucking easy it was. A whole page. They’d forced him right back into the bathroom at Ridgeway, with McCarthy dead on the floor and Hutch’s gun in his hands and his head so clear and they wanted another page.

He wrote one word to answer their question about why he couldn’t.

‘Hutch’.

And he was feeling good today and here was Hutch himself, looking all gangly and helpless, the pain seeping from every pore. Starsky had held on to him, felt him warm and strong and solid.

For quite a while Starsky had suspected he might be in this place – or somewhere like this place – forever, because they seemed convinced he’d killed Mitchell McCarthy. It was as if they couldn’t be sure about him and what he might do next. Starsky had at least always known Hutch was sure about him. And he was sure about Hutch. Sure that he had to find a way to get that discharge paper signed.

Because, looking at him standing there in the chintzy holding-cell of Starsky’s room, all mussed up and scared to death...

Have to get the hell out of here, Hutchinson – looks like you need me.

“We’re a couple of weeks away from discharge, Detective Hutchinson,” said Dr. Rosenberg from the other side of his desk. After the guided tour Hutch had been asked in for a private meeting. “Will you cope?”

Hutch had seen the library, the gym, the garden and the dining-room. It had all passed before his eyes while he’d tried to imagine Starsky living some kind of existence in here, holding on to some little part of himself, while having to fight off all the demons at the same time. Now he sat in a leather armchair in a sumptuously carpeted room that, judging by the number of framed certificates on the wall, housed a much-qualified psychiatrist.

“Discharged where?”

Starsky’s Ridgeway apartment was back to some kind of normal, sure. Nothing broken anymore. Quite a few things were still missing, but it was clean and tidy and functional once again. Heavy with shadows, however, and still no replacement shower cubicle.

Dr. Rosenberg, in his fifties, fit and sporty and in a suit, looked at his notes.

“Well, to you, Detective Hutchinson. David’s pretty adamant about it. That’s why I ask you the question.”

“But is he safe from... is he going t... ?”

“There are no guarantees.”

“OK, fine. But what do you think? What have you been doing in here all this time? You must have some idea!”

Here you go, Doc. A great example of repressed rage, spurting out all over your nice, soft blue carpet.

Rosenberg was completely un-moved. It was his job, Hutch supposed, to be equally impervious to either psychotic interludes from his patients or uncomprehending outbursts from their family members. He wondered what Rosenberg made of him, sitting here gripping the arms of the chair as if afraid he was about to capsize. If he could tell that Hutch was not a man prone to explosions of anger, despite doing a job that provoked them on an almost comically frequent basis. A man whose fear and hope and rage was all bound up in one place right now. Who wanted to hear positives, because anything else would cut into him too deeply to bear.

“David has come a long way in a relatively short time.”

Hutch plopped his fists into his lap and dug his knuckles into his thigh.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that he has pulled back from what was, six weeks ago, a poor prognosis, a very negative psychological profile.”

Negative! Psychological! Profile!

“Dr. Rosenberg,” said Hutch, rather pitifully even to his own ears, “I need to know.”

“Well, Detective Hutchinson, I rather think David’s experiences are already well known to you. Perhaps more to you than anyone. Even after intensive care and therapy he is still unable to access some memories. I believe that when we discharge him he may still be unable to.”

“Unable?”

“Even use of selective triggers has failed.”

Hutch could not even repeat the phrase “selective triggers”. It would not form in his dry mouth, but Rosenberg knew all that.

“Yes, it is aggressive therapy,” he agreed coolly. “We know that specific triggers are planted by the Marcus cult. So symptoms recur when the triggers are recreated. In David’s case, intense darkness or blindness, damp, the close proximity of small firearms...”

Hutch’s mouthed lolled open, inadvertent. He kept his eyes fixed on Rosenberg.

“David’s come a long way, as I intimated. We have worked through a good deal of what happened and his reaction to it, run the full range of techniques. But he has locked down one key memory which will continue to inhibit full recovery.”

Rosenberg finally seemed a little disturbed by the laser sights leveled at him, and he got up out of his chair behind the desk.

“So there are still the physical manifestations of the lock-down... the nightmares and flashbacks, a partial, almost wilful amnesia. David describes it as a pressure in his head.”

“Headaches,” said Hutch.

“Indeed.”

“I uh ...” Mouth glued up. Not connected to brain. Just mush and glue. “Doctor Rosenberg, with respect. All this is fine, but is my partner any better? You’re telling me he’s still dreaming, getting the pain in his head, not talking about that one memory. Your plan is to discharge him in two weeks. You say you can’t guarantee that he won’t want to... look, will he have recovered by then?”

“No, of course not.”

Of course not. Simply mush and glue and porridge, creeping up from his mouth to his head.

“His individual psychology is a lot more robust now, than it was when he was admitted. He’s learned to release a lot of his own turmoil and we’ve seen him repeatedly draw back from moments of simulated self-destruction.”

Most of Rosenberg’s words were mulling about in the glue, but “simulated self-destruction” went straight into Hutch’s brain like an arrow.

Weeks of being dragged back from the brink. No wonder Starsky looked thin.

“We provide the sort of therapy that involves confrontation rather than escape. It’s quite intensive in here. Don’t be fooled by the nice curtains and free and easy lifestyle. David’s been through the wringer with us, but he’s getting stronger every day. He understands what’s happening to him.”

Hutch let go a laugh. “I’m glad he does because I sure as hell don’t.”

“I hope you have a free afternoon, Detective Hutchinson, because I need to take you all through it in detail.” Rosenberg nodded and then smiled. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

Another laugh. Hutch knew he was being slightly hysterical but he couldn’t help it. He watched the doctor pick up his telephone and press a button. Outside the window there was the vague, buzzing sound of an electric hedge-cutter.

You make Starsky suffer in the dark and then you want me to have tea on the lawn!

Hutch knew that if he didn’t get control of the laughing right now he was not going to be able to stop. He would sit here in this goddamned blue-carpeted room and laugh until he sobbed. Rita Riley had seen him do it. More than once.

“Tea,” Rosenberg said, rubbing his hands and sending a kind smile his way. “The universal panacea.”

As Hutch sat sipping hot, fragrant water from a white, porcelain cup nestled in a matching saucer he couldn’t get away from the peculiar sensation that any minute someone was going to come rushing in and announce that a body had been found in the library. And that he was going to have to pace up and down in front of the entire staff eliminating the suspects one by one.

The two weeks from Hutch’s visit to discharge went by at a crawl.

For Starsky it was a tick-tock of familiar routine interspersed with bouts of anticipation and disbelief. Not to mention impatience. He knew he was back in his head at last, that most of the dark stuff was manageable now – faced down and defeated. Sure, he knew it had been the fight of his life, but the worst of it was defeated so comprehensively that Dobey wasn’t even signing another set of discharge papers, the ones to finish his career. Starsky hoped not yet, anyhow.

Honorable discharge, medical discharge, unpleasant and irritating discharge – yeah, he and Hutch had been through all the jokes.

When he got back to it, real life was still there and boy was it sweet.

His apartment, his mother on the phone, his record collection, his car, his favorite watering-hole.

Starsky was more than happy the first time he called into the Pits. Although there was no reason why it wouldn’t be, he was nearly overcome with relief that Huggy’s place was exactly the same as usual in there.

The jukebox was the same, the booths were the same, the music and pool table were the same. And, more than anything, Huggy Bear was the same. They ordered beers and lounged against the bar. Hutch remained posted warningly at Starsky’s shoulder, daring any of the regulars to come over and say something smart. It was good of the Blintz, but Starsky felt a little twitchy all the same. Really it was time the whole White Knight thing was put out to grass.

“You know what I don’t like about being crazy?”

Starsky tossed the question out, rhetorical and casual, although it was also partly for the benefit of Huggy who was behind the bar hanging on their every exchange.

And when Huggy was a little blind-sided by it and didn’t say anything, Starsky answered for him.

“What I don’t like about being crazy is that everyone treats you as if... well, as if you’re crazy.”

“Starsky,” Huggy said in a tone of exaggerated calm, “You’re not crazy.”

“Well how come you’ve spent all these years telling me I am?”

Huggy flipped his gaze to Hutchinson, who, although he had one hand on the bar, was far from being relaxed. Hutch looked back at him and then sent his eyes upwards, lips tight. I can’t cope with this, his expression said. Huggy grinned as if he thought this looked and sounded nearly normal.

“Why don’t you have another beer?” he suggested.

Starsky smiled at him. He liked the fact that Huggy represented normal life. They could both sense Hutch shifting in unease, his mind probably cataloging all the reasons why he thought Starsky shouldn’t have another beer.

“No,” Hutch said eventually, firm. “I’m the one who’s crazy. He’s made me crazy,” and he jabbed a finger at Starsky, accusatory but trying to be light at the same time. His contribution to the banter sounded a little flat, but Starsky nudged him anyway.

“Uh-huh,” Huggy pursued. “Is that a no to more beer?”

“I think it’s a no,” Starsky said, taking pity. He slipped off his stool and slapped Hutch robustly between the shoulder-blades. His partner was so tense it was like he’d slammed his palm against a block of wood.

“Finish up,” Hutch said, “I have a job to do and you have people to see.”

Starsky’s eyebrows went up for Huggy’s benefit.

People.

“See you cats later,” Huggy said, probably knowing from the body language that Starsky was going to hang back for a minute to speak to him. They both watched Hutch going out of the door, his walk more tentative than was natural to him.

“Hug,” Starsky said, picking up his near-empty beer-bottle and looking into it. He put it back down without drinking. “You know, another thing I don’t like about being crazy is that it’s catching.”

“Your man,” Huggy said on a sigh.

“My man,” Starsky agreed, looking back at the door. “He’s a bunch of sticks held together with air. One puff of wind and he’s matchwood.”

Huggy considered the wayward image. “Well he’s had a lot on his mind, been through a rough time. Thought he’d lost you for good, thought they’d sign you off unfit for duty. And it’s hard to believe the Marcus thing is wrapped up.”

“I don’t think the Marcus thing will ever be wrapped up, Huggy, but maybe... out of sight, out of mind?” He grinned again suddenly. “Like, out of my mind.” Huggy’s lips pursed in reaction, but he was amused, Starsky could tell. There was no way in hell he could amuse Hutch with that kind of stuff yet.

Damn. Lots of work to do in that department.

“Who’s the people, Starsk?” Huggy asked with careful curiosity.

Starsky met his look very squarely. “Families of the girls,” he said, and then gave himself a mental kick up the pants to articulate their names, as he’d been advised by Rosenberg. “Lisa and Judith. Doc says, Hutch says, every damn know-it-all says I have to see the families of Lisa and Judith. You know. For all that closure rigmarole.”

Huggy’s face remained suspiciously neutral. “Heavy,” he said at last, and then, “well take it easy, the both of you.”

“What, am I a split personality now?”

Starsky’s eyes went to the door of the Pits once more and then back to Huggy. There was a moment when he felt reluctant to move, as if he suddenly remembered what was out there.

“Reckon you should go catch him up.” Huggy was encouraging.

Starsky felt a new energy flood his limbs. It cleared his head, gave him one of those lifts of hope and determination that were happening more and more now.

“Don’t worry, Hug,” he said on the turn. “There’s an emergency breathing plan. I’m not going to lose him.”

*

The IA investigation turned out to be a waste of time. It was almost, Starsky thought, as if he’d already paid his dues to their satisfaction by being banged up in Rosenberg’s clutches for what they thought a requisite amount of time. There would be a permanent file, of course. Dobey told him it would go in the Marcus case book, under ‘arrests’. With a carbon in his personal file as protocol dictated.

“Boyd Black’s lawyer will cite it,” the Captain told him, being very professional and brisk. “But the department is behind you. And Rita Riley is on record as saying it’s not on the same continuum as... what happened to McCarthy.”

Starsky rolled his eyes.

‘What happened to McCarthy.’

What happened to Mitchell McCarthy was that he went crazier than even Starsky had. The cult hadn’t so much chewed him up and spat him out, as swallowed him whole. And he probably wasn’t the first or last. Even Simon Marcus himself finally seemed to be losing the plot entirely. Dean and Del Rey, who’d manfully carried on keeping tabs on his doings, reported that Marcus had stopped writing poetry and riddles. He’d even stopped obsessing about the constellations.

“Just talking regular bullshit now,” Dean said.

“It means you’re one step closer to getting back to work, Dave,” Dobey added and Starsky thought he wouldn’t roll his eyes anymore or he’d give himself a headache.

“I really think you should drop the Dave now, Cap’n. Or we’ll never be back to normal.”

“I’ll drop the Dave,” Dobey growled. “After the trial.”

The Trial.

It had long loomed over everything. For what felt like the longest time Starsky hadn’t wanted to think about judicial process, even though he knew it was coming. He hadn’t wanted to contemplate the event actually taking place or having to be in the same space as Boyd Black, or any of his fellow survivors. Thought it might just kill him. He figured he really must have turned a corner now because it wasn’t like that anymore. There was a growing hunger in his belly to walk up the steps of that damned courthouse again and face the man, eyeball to eyeball.

Hutch was the one prowling around in the dead of night unable to sleep and unable to say why.

“You know,” Starsky said to him, “I really think I should go home now, back to Ridgeway. You need your space.” He didn’t really mean it about the space but it seemed like the mature and measured thing to say.

“You can go home,” Hutch growled. “After the trial.”

For crying out loud, the trial...

“OK, so maybe I shouldn’t go home,” Starsky said... after the trial.

They weren’t celebrating, not exactly. Huggy told them they had good reason when they loped in to the Pits late that same day, but he wasn’t going to push it. The main thing was that Jermaine Boyd Black had gone down, for the rest of his natural. What’s more, he’d stood there in the Bay City County courtroom as himself, the guilty defendant, a man who’d reached the sorry end of a long, crime-filled road. Not as John, the last swivel-eyed disciple of Simon Marcus still standing. He’d seemed all out of defiance, scared out of his wits to see and hear Detective Starsky alive and well and facing him from the witness box.

Starsky had met the relatives of the dead girls, the Rileys and the Hirschbaums, as he’d been counseled. In the end it had seemed less of an impossible mountain that he had to climb than the right thing to do. Despite Hutch’s fears he’d been stronger than them, wondered in the end if maybe – please God maybe – he might have helped these shattered families, even if only in some small way.

Rosenberg told him of course he’d damn well helped, as much as anything or anyone ever could. That final, locked-down piece of memory, like a shard of embedded shrapnel, had finally been gouged out. Hell it had hurt, and Starsky swore to God that it would never go any further than Parkland Place, but now there was nothing more. There was nothing unseen, nothing he didn’t know about.

“It will be a turning point,” Rosenberg said, pleased. He’d offered him tea when he’d come in for a follow-up session, and Starsky had made a rude noise. Rosenberg had smiled.

Of course, there’d been weeping in the courtroom, but Starsky surprised himself by getting through the whole trial without so much as a headache. He figured somebody had to, so why not him? It was mystifying to have his hand shaken so many times in the aftermath. That part became hard, because after it was all over, standing out on the steps in the bright sunshine with the camera flashes going off he just wanted to extract himself – go do something useful. Go help Hutch.

“I thought you wanted to go home.” Hutch sounded a little short, had drunk more beers in an hour at the Pits than he normally drank in a long evening with the ballgame and a living room full of off-duty cops. “You said you wanted to.”

“Yeah, but that was before.”

“What’s changed?”

It was a question for the ages.

“Oh I dunno. You look like you could use the company.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, bozo, with the bloodshot eyes. You who looks like he needs a good burger with all the fixings. Hey and I’ll even cook it – time I got my revenge for all that mulched up turnip juice you’ve been feeding me.”

“Nobody mulches up turnips, Starsky.”

Getting a rise out of him was good. Beyond that, though, Starsky wasn’t sure. All of a sudden he was afraid that Hutch was the one about to drown in it all. Only, of course, it wasn’t all of a sudden. Damned Blintz had been slowly sinking under the waterline for weeks while everyone else had been busy bailing out the good ship Starsky.

“Well, reckon I should stay a few more nights. Just over the weekend, whaddya say?”

“Seems like a plan,” Huggy put in, sailing past with an order for another customer.

“Whatever,” Hutch said, pinching the bridge of his nose tightly.

Starsky drove them both back to Venice Place. He didn’t make Hutch a good burger with all the fixings in the end – not because he hadn’t been sincere in the offer but because it turned out there weren’t any burgers, or even any fixings come to that. The meal ended up being Hutch’s own fall-back favorite – scrambled eggs, rye toast, juice from a carton, and coffee.

“Not dinner, breakfast,” Starsky said with a faint grin, dumping down a mug and plate on the table next to the couch.

Hutch didn’t seem to remember that old conversation, or at least he didn’t react. “Not sure I’m hungry, Starsk. Been a hell of a day.”

“Yeah.” Starsky sat opposite him, ignored the fact that Hutch wasn’t eating and began to fork up his own dinner-breakfast. He didn’t add that it had been a hell of a year, because that seemed to be a given. After a while he said through a full mouth. “’s getting cold.”

Distractedly Hutch glanced at the table. Starsky knew he was about to say he really, really wasn’t hungry but seemed cowed by the determination with which his partner was clearing his own plate. With a big sigh he slid the plate off the table, dug in a fork.

“You’ll sleep better,” Starsky said, watching Hutch swallow his first mouthful as if it was concrete. He knew it wasn’t his cooking. Hutch was in trouble. “Need to soak up that beer and fill your belly.”

Hutch shook his head, still chewing without enthusiasm. Starsky finished his own meal and then sat with his coffee mug cradled against his chest, overseeing. He didn’t let up on the hard stare until at least half Hutch’s eggs and toast were gone.

“I know what it feels like,” he said as Hutch abandoned the rest and reached a shaky hand for his coffee.

“What what feels like?”

“Sick and hungry and empty and twisted up all at the same time. Trying to eat when you feel like that.”

“I’m just tired, Starsk. Beats me that you aren’t.”

“Oh I am, believe me. But you know, I’m just regular tired. Not go to bed and not wake up again tired.”

Hutch flinched slightly at that and Starsky felt like a heel.

These little twitches and tics of Hutch’s were beginning to get him down. The guy looked wrecked, as if he didn’t sleep anymore, a mechanism hopelessly over-wound. Sometimes Starsky thought that if he was to say the wrong thing the mechanism might uncoil and smack him in the mouth.

In Dobey’s office, with Dean and Del Rey, sorting through all the Marcus case files, Hutch had a moment.

There was no tension in the room. Just the four of them under Dobey’s rather crabby watchful eye, doing the kind of routine end-of-case paperwork they’d done a hundred times before. It was another thing Rosenberg told Starsky he ought to do. Go for the little victories, he’d said. Dobey had been inclined to allow his officer to skip the files job, in the circumstances, but running away was not what you did on Rosenberg’s watch. You sat down in your captain’s office with a pile of paper and card on your lap and you went through it all. Each fat file of misery and devastation that you got to re-assign, each ‘status closed’ stamp you slapped on them, was a little victory.

But only if you were ready.

After half an hour, Hutch abruptly rose to his feet and dumped four files on to the edge of Dobey’s desk with a thump. They were badly positioned and immediately crashed to the floor, although Hutch didn’t seem to notice.

“Hey, you all ri-?” Dean began, but the door to Dobey’s office was already yawning open and Hutch was gone.

Starsky hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even looked at the other three. He’d merely laid his own pile of paper on the floor by the chair, calm and careful, and got up to follow.

Hutch wasn’t out in the squad room or by the water cooler. He wasn’t in the bathroom or locker-room. They guy on the desk waved a vague hand at the end of the corridor.

“Your partner left the building already,” he said.

Starsky raced the elevator down to the basement via the stairwell, an action that reminded him so forcefully of their partnership he nearly couldn’t stand it.

If Hutch wanted to get away fast – which it seemed like he did – he’d want wheels, and as far as Starsky could remember the miserable heap of rusted metal laughingly called his car was sitting down in the car lot.

He ran Hutch to ground yards from his assigned parking space, bawling at him across the shadowy lot.

“Hey, hold up!”

Hutch merely lifted a hand to repel him, carried on walking. Which made Starsky mad as well as worried.

“Hey,” he said, lengthening his stride to catch up. Still Hutch didn’t react. “Hey! You going to listen to me?”

“Like I have a choice,” Hutch eventually growled as he was forced to come to standstill.

“Sure you have a choice, Blondie, you always have a choice.” Starsky had gotten in front of him, barring the way to his vehicle.

Hutch sent a hunted look at it, then swung an unwilling one to his partner. Something about what he saw seem to break him down a little. He shrugged, uneven, losing the will to battle. “So talk,” he said thickly.

“OK,” Starsky said, swooping in a breath. He suddenly realized how fast he’d been moving, how vital it had been to catch up. “Jeez, make me run down four flights of stairs why don’t you?”

“I thought you wanted to talk, not bitch.”

“Beautiful,” Starsky said, dogged. He moved in closer, suddenly hesitant. “I’ve been down, Hutch,” he said eventually, voice catching a little. “So far down.”

Hutch’s nostrils flared in reaction but he didn’t respond.

“And I figure you’ve been all the way down right along with me, you big lug, and... before you say you weren’t the one stalked and scrambled, the one who saw... well OK. I can’t pretend you can really share all that, and like I said all along, I don’t want you to. But hell you’ve hung on tight, buddy. You haven’t let me go, not for one second, and if it wasn’t for you...”

“Don’t say it.” Hutch’s voice was brittle, his face sickly. “Don’t you dare say it.”

Starsky grasped his shoulders, almost worried Hutch was going to fold up. He seemed limp, hardly reacting to the grip Starsky had on him.

“We both know how close it was,” Starsky said. “They’d done a number on me and I was looking over the edge. That’s their M.O., right? I was ready to take a bow, and you know that, because you’re as much inside my head as any person ever could be. And all that shit has nearly killed you, too. For fuck’s sake!” He shook him a little, as if that would reanimate his responses. When it didn’t he moved his hands up to Hutch’s face, held it firm until the scarily dull eyes met his. “Look at me – I’m back on dry land, doing good. Have been since you came to visit me at Parkland.”

Hutch swallowed sluggishly, but he didn’t look away. Dropping one hand, Starsky cupped one cheek, kept eye contact. His voice was gentle like only someone as humane as Starsky could be gentle. “So do me a fat favor, Blintz. Reach out and get some help for yourself now. You need it.”

“Yes, but you...”

“Nuh uh uh,” Starsky said. “You don’t need to worry no more, Hutch. Look at me. I ain’t going down.”

Hutch stared at him, frowned a little. Then he reached out and grasped Starsky’s shirt tight, to anchor himself. There was a burning helplessness in his eyes.

“Oh God, Starsk,” he said, and his voice was scratchy, broken, quiet as a whisper. “Tell me how.”

*

There was no Parkland Place for Hutch.

Thank God.

None of Rosenberg’s confrontational therapies and requests for essays – just Rita Riley from the Rehab Program with all the time he needed, then a regular doctor with some regular pills, backed up by plenty of good rest. Oh yeah, plenty of that, probably more than he thought he could stand.

Of course, it being Hutch, there was also an alarming amount of fresh fruit and strange vegetables, peculiar powders scraped out of tins, and miles of pounding alone along the beach. The pounding part worried Starsky skinny because Hutch seemed so pulverized, so damned feeble. He took to meeting him at the end of his twice-weekly long run, taking the car to the beach and waiting patiently until he came into sight. Making sure he hadn’t disappeared along the way.

Starsky wasn’t back to work full-time work yet either, but he was getting there. It was a Holy Grail he could almost touch now. He’d moved back to his apartment on Ridgeway and found it bearable but not quite home. Perhaps not ever home anymore.

“When I’ve stopped being a meals and taxi service for my partner I’ll look for a new place,” he told Dobey after doing one of his first full-day shifts.

“That what you want?” The Captain was clearly cautious but aiming for casual.

“Yeah,” Starsky said. “That’s what I want.”

Dobey scratched his chin. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Hutch out running today?”

“Hell yeah. On my way to scrape up his scrawny ass right now.”

*

Starsky parked the car up on the road above the beach. He snagged one of Hutch’s gray zippered sweat tops from the passenger seat, slung it around his neck and climbed out.

It was a perfect California evening. Calm and clear, the sky reflecting the ocean and the ocean reflecting the sky. There was a faint breeze, the tang of salt on the air. A few dog walkers were at large, but the sand was mostly deserted. Except for the tiny dot of a figure in the distance.

Smirking to himself, Starsky stuck his car-keys in his back jeans pocket and began to follow a path down through the dunes. By the time he reached the flat the little dot was getting nearer and he could see it moving. A steady, smooth rhythm as Hutch struck out on the damp sand near the water’s edge. Closer and closer came the dot, morphing into a figure, then eventually veering away from the waves and setting a course directly towards him. The running gait remained the same, fluid and regular, until Hutch was about fifty yards away, and then he began to slow down. A breathtaking fondness flowed through Starsky as he heard the sound of Hutch’s panting. He tapped his watch.

“You’re slow tonight,” he said, sliding the sweat top from his shoulders and launching it at him. “Said you’d be this end of the beach ten minutes ago. Still out of shape, Hutchinson.”

“Ha!” was all Hutch managed as he made the catch. He came to a slightly staggering halt and stood planted, bent over, hands to knees, sucking in air, one sleeve of the sweat top trailing in the sand. The evening sunlight made his hair pale gold and heroic. Wrecked still, and probably overly sweaty from the exertion, but when he finally straightened there was color in his cheeks and his eyes had a brightness to them that Starsky wasn’t sure he’d seen in... oh, months maybe? When Hutch had puffed through his warm-down routine Starsky jerked his head towards the dunes and the car.

They fell into step beside one another.

It wasn’t until they’d reached the road and were walking towards the Torino that either of them spoke again. And then it was Starsky, leaning in and nudging Hutch with a hip, who asked, straight out,

“So how are we doing?”

Hutch nearly stopped dead, an automatic reaction as if he thought he had to fend off an attack of some kind. Then he realized he was actually pleased to be asked. For once he wasn’t immediately hamstrung by worry and defensiveness.

“We’re doing good, Starsk. I think, finally, we’re doing good.”

These days such optimistic outcomes sometimes seemed too good to be true. But perhaps not anymore.

“And you, Hutchinson?” Starsky was brisk although a real concern was evident in his voice. “You coming up for air? Because I can tell you, I’ve been worried.”

“You’ve been worried,” Hutch repeated. He was half perplexed, half amused, but not, he found, very surprised. “Well you don’t need to be, buddy.”

“Why’s that?”

“I figured something out, and it was simpler than I realized.”

“Simple’s good,” Starsky said. “’specially for you.”

Hutch jabbed him in the side with an elbow. Pretty hard, because he deserved it.

And then they were at the Torino and it felt like home and the evening sun was making the ocean look like silk.

“So go on then, tell me what you figured out.” Starsky had rounded the car to the driver door. He paused, hands leaning on the roof. There was something so typically open about his expectancy, so humblingly trusting.

Hutch turned to the ocean for a second, emotions surging and then leveling out. He turned back, face relaxing.

“I figured out that as long you’re all right – I’m all right.”

Starsky slipped on his dark glasses. “Oh that,” he said, face cracking in an easy smile of recognition. He turned the key in the lock. “Yeah. Neat, huh?”

Neat. Yes, it was neat all right.

Hutch suddenly felt like laughing. Not as he had in Dr. Rosenberg’s office, that painful, out-of-control urge that had bubbled in his throat and pricked his eyes. This was a sensation he’d almost forgotten, as natural and vital as the white clouds scooting through the blue sky over their heads.

There are so many things, he thought, so many things that are... neat. Beginning with the simple fact that Starsky would be sitting right next to him in the car all the way home, alive and whole.

Oxygen filled his chest, made his blood hum. Hutch took in a lungful of the deep, clean air and breathed.

-ends-