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Starsky is vaudeville; Hutch is Waiting for Godot. A car, some rain, not much else. Author’s Notes: This one is all my fault. If the rain would stop falling, it would be different. But the rain doesn’t stop falling, isn’t even falling. It’s pages turning, sheet after sheet passing over the Torino, not even drumming because there’s no spaces… -
Hutch goes under. Starsky holds on. “Christian!” Hutch pulled up at the door and turned around. Brandon was jogging down the hallway to catch up with him, his tie over his shoulder and a greasy sheen of sweat on his forehead. He’d run, what? Twenty feet? Hutch kept himself from rolling his eyes, but just barely. Give him another month… -
“The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.”–(Bruce Cockburn) “Curve” is a companion piece to this story. First published in 2006, in the zine Blood and Destiny, created by Kassidy Rae. Chapter One Hutch always looked first. Starsky wasn’t sure when this pattern got established. Early on, probably, when they were still green to each other, and habits… -
Eddie learned early in life that names can be dangerous. The Apostles Mission smelled like wet wool and beets and, over in the corner, piss and bleach, and each smell seemed to move through the low-ceilinged dining room in its own way, the wet-wool like a heavy-shouldered man with a dog, the others like pickpockets through a crowd, turned sideways… -
“It could’ve been you.” Gin, Ginny to his close friends, Skinny Gin to his enemies, and Jeremy to his mother, had been in the alley for forever, since the dawn of fucking time, maybe, or probably before, since he couldn’t remember when he got there, except that it was dark then and it was dark now, but he wasn’t sure… -
“Talk to me. Keep talking. Don’t stop.” “This,” Starsky says. Hutch leans low, bracing himself on the rail, because it’s hard to get close enough while he’s jogging along beside the gurney. “What’s that, partner?” The gurney hits the swinging doors, bullies through them into the noise of the ER, and there are nurses now, and down at the end…