(There’s No Place Like) Home for The Holidays

Written for the 2012 Starsky & Hutch Advent Calendar. The boys discuss plans during a stakeout in the Torino in the days leading up to Christmas.

Thanks to Ro/Tira Nog for the beta on my first draft and Flamingo for editing the second. Any remaining errors are totally my own.

“You know Starsk, Christmas is supposed to be cold air and snow, not palm trees and…”

“… surfing Santas,” Starsky said along with Hutch. “I know, you’ve been complaining ever since Black Friday. It’s not going to change anything, you know.”

Starsky and Hutch were sitting in the Torino two blocks down from Huggy’s place, killing time waiting for their informant Chrissy to arrive. She had called Hutch yesterday saying she had some information on her drug dealing boss. Her pattern was that she was either five minutes early or she didn’t come at all. Odds were she wasn’t going to show, given that she was fifteen minutes late already.

“Whadya think, should we give it up?” Starsky asked.

“Give her a few more minutes. Chrissy’s usually early but I’ve got a feeling she still might show.” Hutch was leaning back against the passenger side door, the light from the streetlamp making his lover’s hair look even more golden. “Maybe she had some last minute Christmas shopping to do?”

“Unlike some people, who’ve been done for ages,” Starsky teased. Hutch might hate Christmas but he certainly was organized about it. Starsky had been trying to find out where his presents were hidden for weeks now.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Starsky said, after another few minutes of staring out at a deserted street. “Do you want to try to go home? We won’t get Christmas off again for another two or three years, but maybe we could go the first week of January or something.” Starsky had been at a loss at how to make the holiday better for his partner, even thinking about planning a ski trip for the New Year. But planned vacations, especially surprises, never seemed to go quite the way they wanted them too given the uncertainties of their jobs.

“I thought we were celebrating Christmas night at my place,” Hutch replied, without taking his eyes off the street.

“Yeah, we’re doing that, but I meant home, home. Duluth where it’s cold and Christmassy and there’s not a Santa with a surfboard in sight.”

“It’s weird but I haven’t thought about Minnesota as really being home for a long time now,” Hutch said, sounding thoughtful.

They sat there in a comfortable silence for a little while longer.

Eventually Hutch picked up the conversation where they had left off. “Do you still think of New York as home?”

“Like you said, it’s kinda weird. Yes and no. I’ve lived out here almost twice as long as I lived in Brooklyn. New York is back home, ya know, and it always will be, but here is really home.” Home is wherever you are, babe, Starsky thought. And if you wanted to pick up and move somewhere else, I’d be right there with you.

“Hey, is that Harry?” Starsky asked, pointing at the dark-haired Caucasian man turning the corner across the street from them.

“Yep, and he’s moving awfully fast for a guy with his arms full of suspicious looking brown bags,” Hutch agreed.

“He’s still got a warrant out for robbing Perry’s Pub last week,” Starsky said, as he pulled the keys from the ignition and opened his door. “He had a gun that time. Didn’t fire it, thankfully, but he waved it around a lot. One of these times it’s going to go off, even if it’s an accident.”

“Looks like a couple of bottles of liquor to me. What you want to bet he swiped them off the top shelf of the Pits when Huggy wasn’t looking? You know the place is jumping this time of year,” Hutch said, quietly opening his own door.

Harry looked over his shoulder, caught sight of the two detectives, and took off.

“Couldn’t have been a robbery this time, we would have heard the call,” Starsky agreed. “Up for a run?”

“Why not. Chrissy’s not going to show anyway. No point going back empty handed.”

They took off in pursuit, chasing Harry down a thankfully not too dark alley. Starsky saw him toss the package off to his right, the crash of the breaking bottles loud in the otherwise quiet night.

Still running, they crossed a street that was luckily devoid of traffic and headed into the next ally. Suddenly Harry hung a quick left and ran up a stairway past a small crowd of people. What they were doing hanging out in an alley on a cold December’s night was beyond Starsky, who lost track of their quarry as Harry ran through the open doorway at the top of the stairs.

“Don’t tell me you lost him?” Hutch asked, only a few steps behind Starsky and not even out of breath.

“Me? Never. Up there,” Starsky said, gesturing, quietly catching his own breath. They pushed past the grumpy people in line, taking the stairs two at a time and found themselves in a hallway with peeling green paint. Two of the three doors were open and faint voices were coming from behind the closed one.

“Police, open up.” Hutch pounded on the door but there was no answer.

At a nod from Hutch, Starsky pushed the door open and they quickly moved to both sides of the doorway, covering the room.

“I did it. I killed him, killed my partner. Ran away and left him for dead like the coward that I am,” came Harry’s voice from inside the room. He sounded defeated.

Starsky and Hutch looked at each other questioningly and peered around the door frame. What the hell was Harry up to? He was a small time robber, not a killer. There was no evidence that the gun he waved around was even loaded. And there had never been any sign he had a partner. Harry was too greedy to share any of his spoils.

Harry was sitting in a dingy room in front of a long table. There was a camera set up behind it and a man and a woman who looked like typical studio executive-types sitting on folding chairs taking notes.

And Harry was holding a script and apparently reading lines for an audition.

Starsky couldn’t resist. “Cut!” he yelled.

“You know this script real well already, Harry,” Starsky said as Hutch cuffed him. “You have the right to remain silent….”

“Awwww, man,” the guy running the camera whined. “He was perfect too.”

The woman who had been feeding him lines tried to plead with them. “We’ve only got three weeks ’til the show, and rehearsals start tomorrow. Can’t you just let him go until after Christmas? You can find him at the Harmony Theater on 10th.”

“Sorry, our Captain can been a real Grinch about these things. You can come watch the jailhouse talent show though,” Hutch told her as he and Starsky hustled Harry out of the room.

A resigned voice called out from the room, “Next.”

“What say we drop him off and go home?” Hutch asked as he bundled Harry into the back seat of the Torino and shut the door.

“Sounds like a plan,” Starsky replied, leaning on the roof of the car. “Which one? Yours or mine?

“Does it matter?”

“We really oughta do something about that.”

“About what?” Hutch asked, as he took up a position on the passenger side of the roof across from Starsky. Both men ignored the banging from inside the car. Harry could wait a few minutes.

“This two-homes thing. Seems kinda stupid to be paying rent in both places when we’re always together in one.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, too,” Hutch agreed, sounding pleased.

“Could be a Christmas present to ourselves, finding a new place,” Starsky replied, idly drumming his fingers on the roof of the car. The banging had stopped for the moment.

“Are you implying that I haven’t bought you a present yet?” Hutch asked, with an indulgent smile.

“Not implying anything, Hutch. I know all your hiding places and they’re all empty.”

“You only think you know all my hiding places. You’re not trying hard enough.”

Starsky thought for a minute. “You’ve got that look. That’s your devious I’ve-thought-of-something-really-clever look. Out with it.”

“New house means new hiding places.”

“I like the way you think. Does it mean more presents too?”

“Don’t push your luck, Starsk,” Hutch told him.

“I’ve been through my place, your place, our desk and lockers at work, your locker at the gym…”

The last clearly surprised Hutch. “How did you manage that?”

“Just because you don’t like Danish doesn’t mean Vinnie doesn’t,” Starsky told him with a smirk.

The banging from inside the car started up again, this time accompanied by unintelligible shouting.

Starsky opened the driver’s side door and leaned in. “Yeah, yeah we’re coming.”

He popped back up to grin at Hutch. “We’d better get going, the natives are getting restless. Drop him off, your place tonight, house hunting tomorrow night.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Hutch agreed, opening his door and ignoring Harry.

“And then maybe go surfing with the Santas.”

“Starsky!”

* audition scene blatantly stolen, I mean, lovingly borrowed from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang