Coping

Joe Collandra tries to cope.

Originally posted for Prompt fic week 29 on the LJ Starsky and Hutch Community.

Author’s Note: I really love Collandra. His character is fascinating. I’ve always wondered why, if he found Joanna, Hutch didn’t use him to find Starsky just a few weeks later. This is probably why….

Joe Collandra hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in over a week. He put the aspirin bottle back on the shelf and closed the medicine cabinet door. He stared at himself in the mirror a moment before popping the aspirin in his mouth. He swallowed without water, grimacing as they went down, but recovering with the ease of a person used to taking pills that way.

He turned on the tap and leaned over to splash a bit of cold water on his face, picked his head up and looked back into the mirror. He fingered the dark baggy circles under his eyes, pulled the bottom lids down, and stared in the mirror at the redness revealed.

Muttering to himself, he pulled open the cabinet again, yanked out several bottles, a razor, and a toothbrush. “Damn it, damn it!” He said as he threw it all on the bed in the next room. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t stay here.”

He began frantically opening and closing dresser drawers, grabbing clothing and tossing it on the bed. “Why? Why do they keep coming? Why won’t they stay out of my place, out of my head? I told them. I told them I tripped on the Julio kid cuz he came in for coffee. Don’t they understand? They come in regular, eventually I’ll trip on them, too. I can’t have regulars. I can’t have friends. I can’t know anyone!” He was building in volume as the tirade continued. He lowered his suitcases off the closet shelf and began filling them with the pile on the bed.

“Oh God, fear! I can feel it. I can see it.” He put his hands on his head as if that would stop the visions that were starting up again. Images raced in his mind: he saw Hutch, alone. He saw letters, a word maybe, in blood. He saw black. He was beginning to sweat and shake. The suitcases forgotten he paced the small apartment, sadly talking to himself as he circled the few rooms repeatedly. “I can’t tell them, I can’t tell them. They’ll want to know who and when and where and why and I don’t know, I don’t know. They’ll want me to try to find out. I told them I can’t control it, I can’t control what I see. I can’t focus on a single thing.”

Having no one else to confide in, he went back to the mirror. “What am I going to do, huh? I can’t stay here. I have to leave, I have to find a new place, a new town. Everywhere I go it’s the same thing. They want answers I can’t give. But it won’t stop.” He began silently crying, watching himself, continuing to talk to himself in the mirror. “Something’s gonna happen. Bars… or maybe a cage. He can’t find his partner. An explosion. He’s out of breath. He’s desperate… he’s running out of time.”

Feeling utterly helpless and without choice in the matter, Collandra walked back into the bedroom and resumed packing up his belongings. The next time Starsky and Hutch stopped by for coffee he wouldn’t be there. He just couldn’t be.