Partners in Adversity

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Before reading Partners in Adversity, this intro might make some references clearer. For example, you might want to know just…

What Are “VenicePlace Stories”?

In the mid-1990’s, email discussion lists, like VenicePlace (the first S&H slash discussion list), were the primary online fannish venue. Fans treated VP like “…a large, rambling virtual apartment building with unlimited space where we all live next door to those two gorgeous cops, and where every window has a great view of the boys when they come after work!” (From the FAQ) (Thanks to Fanlore.)

“Neighbors” (list members) referred to having discussions from the “windows” of their apartments. One fan, as the self-proclaimed Head of Security, installed security cameras throughout Hutch’s apartment with Starsky’s complicity and Hutch’s ignorance, since Starsky believed every moment of their lives should be recorded. Tenants could then tune into a special cable channel (channel 69 naturally) and watch everything the boys were doing. A group created a band and installed a lobby to practice in. Unfortunately for Flamingo (the list mom), they only played tunes she hated. Any neighbor could join the band by announcing what their virtual instrument was. There were a lot of kazoo players. VP members wrote funny “VenicePlace stories” where “neighbors” interacted with S&H and one another.

The apartment building offered unlimited space. We had a European wing, a South American wing, and a New Zealand wing. Besides the lobby, we had an artist’s studio on the top floor with a two-way mirror in the floor located directly over the bed of a certain pair of cops who thought it was a mirror. We did have problems when it rained and the mirror leaked. We had an indoor pool and while some folks thought it was on the roof, we had to be practical and place it in the basement. Most of us didn’t like to talk about the basement. Strange things went on there, especially in the Rumpus Room. Pets were allowed, and besides fans’ dogs and cats, we ended up with otters, unicorns, tarantulas, dragons, panthers, wolves, and all sorts of extremely difficult animals.

The virtual building even had its own civic associations: ASSET (the Association for the Scrutinization of Starsky’s most Exquisite Tush), HAIL (Hutch’s Arse is Luscious), and GUSHER (Grad-Uate of Starsky & Hutch Erotic Research). (Thanks to Fanlore.)

With the advent of LJ and Facebook, email discussion lists have largely shut down. While S&H still has a few active lists, including VP, traffic has been greatly reduced.

Even so, the “VenicePlace stories” evolved into longer comical works written by Flamingo, Rosemary (CrowRow as she was known on the list), and others, published in zines produced for the S&H slash convention, SHareCon. These stories often focused on the tech trend of the day and its affect on fandom, and on the guys (who never grow older even as we do).

In 2004, the SHareCon zine featured Partners in Adversity by CrowRow (Rosemary’s VP name) and Flamingo that focused on the Starsky and Hutch movie with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson released that year. In the movie, after the “new” Starsky drops his Torino in the bay, the original Hutch (David Soul) sells a Torino to him over the protest of the original Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser). On VP, we decided that replacement Torino was only one of the original Starsky’s cars, since he had one for every day of the week. It became our new “fanon.” The story also treated the movie S&H (sometimes referred to by their first names, or as “the short one” or “the blond one”) as crude interlopers on the VP scene. Other issues in the story involved the emerging popularity of LJ and the difficulty some fans had (personified by Hutch) in making the switch to the new medium. We were still using disks back then to transfer files. Remember that?

Okay, that’s the Cliff Notes. Remember Cliff Notes?

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Partners in Adversity
or: What Fresh Hell Is This?

by

CrowRow and Flamingo
two people who should know better

Starsky stood in front of the pink brick building known as Venice Place, his shoulders leaning against the façade, hips canted slightly forward, left ankle crossed over the right. He was a vision of casual elegance: blue jeans soft and faded in all the right places and especially tight in all the right places; red t-shirt molded to the best six-pack the Budweiser ponies ever saw; dark brown worn leather jacket roughed up enough to look macho but short-waisted enough to be the epitome of cool–not to mention cut perfectly to show off the finest…assets…this neighborhood could boast.

Starsky stood in front of Venice Place, and for once was totally unaware of the subtly admiring glances of the many gay men who frequented the now trendy area around Hutch’s place and the more blatantly admiring glances of the many “neighbor-ladies” that filled the chaotic, quantum-physics madhouse that was Hutch’s home. Starsky stood in front of Venice Place, waiting. For Hutch. Who was late. Again.

He glanced at his newest watch. It was powered by a small atomic cell, or so Huggy insisted, and it coordinated its time with the Naval Observatory in Washington. So its time was always perfectly correct to the nanosecond. Which is how he knew Hutch was late. Again.

Fourth time this week. Late. Way late. More than an hour late.

You can rent hotel rooms by the hour…

He dismissed that thought, pushing away from the building and striding towards the gleaming red and white car waiting patiently to take him anywhere he wanted to go.

Sell my car, will you? Sure, it was only the car I used on Sundays, but still, it was cherry! Took me two years to restore it. Who knows what’s happening to it now. I swear, Hutchinson, if it ends up in the bay, so will your ass….

No. This was not the time to start thinking about Hutch’s ass. And where it might be. And what it might be doing.

Just before he could get to the car, two men walked in front of him, blocking his way.

Not them again….

Be patient, he told himself. They were coping as best as they could. He’d had almost 30 years to get used to all this, at least 10 years since Venice Place started morphing into something totally out of their control. These guys were new. They were a little freaked. And most of the “neighbor-ladies” weren’t as friendly to them.

Still….

They had his Sunday car….

“One question, David, huh, just one…?” the short one was saying.

Who told this guy he could use my first name? Or is he afraid he’ll just get too confused?

“Gee…uh…I dunno, Starsk, he looks kinda busy…” the blond one said.

That nasal whine could make your eardrums bleed. Good thing Hutch isn’t here….

“It’s just…it’s just…well, the rooms they put us in now–” the short one looked up at the pink facade. He seemed a little panicked.

He really needs to calm down. They’ve got medications for that now– “Didn’t they move you out of the place you were in yesterday?”

“Well, yeah, and this place is a little roomier, but…there’s a lot of stuff stored in it…”

“Hey, no problem, good buddy!” The blond one was backing into his chummy act, something that made Hutch crazy. “‘Sides, with all those instruments, maybe we can make a joyful noise!” His laugh reminded Starsky of Donkey from Shrek. He had to get out of here before he got too involved.

“Just ask Flamingo if there’s a problem. I told you. Nothing happens in VP without her being involved.”

“Uh…yeah…Flamingo. Right.” The short one got that little smirk on his face that Starsky always had the urge to straighten out. He’d heard rumors, rumors he wasn’t ready to accept. Like that Flamingo had seen the movie five–five!!!–times, that she even had a six-foot movie marquee standup in her apartment. No. Couldn’t be. Not Flamingo.

He glared down at the short one. He really ought to consider stuffing a sock in the front of his pants. It would help. “Car running okay?”

“Oh, sure. Great. Fine. Like a top. Love it. Really.”

Starsky pushed past them to get to his own car. One of only six now. Always wanted to have one for every day of the week. Damn Hutch.

Which only made him think again of how late Hutch was. More than an hour now. Fourth time this week. Over an hour.

You can rent hotel rooms by the hour.

With a tightly controlled grip, Starsky wrenched open the door, and got behind the wheel. This one was his best Torino. Tuned to perfection. Restored to a pristine glow. And Starsky made sure Hutch had no idea where the title to it was.

With a squeal of tires, he pulled away from Venice Place. Time to go on stakeout. For his partner.

Starsky headed for the library.

~~~

If things were bad for Hutch at Venice Place when it came to the ever-friendly “neighbor-ladies” fawning over him, they were far worse in public places where he didn’t have the option of slamming the door in the offending lunatic, er, neighbor’s face. First off, loud noises like slamming doors weren’t permitted in the library, and, secondly, it was a really bad idea to tick off the entire staff, even if they were the ones making your life miserable. Back home, there would have been baskets of clean laundry, chocolates, and cakes heaped on him in a desperate attempt to earn his smile or, that rarest blessing of all, a peek through the open door of his apartment. Here he was the recipient of the academic equivalent–books by the ton. The Internet for Dummies, The Internet for Those Too Dense for the Dummy Book, and The Internet for Those Who Should Never Be In the Same Room With a PC littered his secluded table today.

Addie, a slender grey-haired woman with a penchant for tortoise-shell glasses at least 20 years out of date, had brought him six books on the history of computers. Margie, a buxomy blonde with Dolly Parton…eyes had left a stack of no less than 15 books on Seymour Cray, the inventor of the computer, beside him 10 minutes ago.

But not one of them had left the instruction sheet on how to access a private email account on line from a public library computer, and he couldn’t accomplish his goal without knowing how to do that. There were certain Web sites that were password/member protected. He’d joined all the slash groups that Starsky was a member of at 3 AM this morning. He’d managed to do that from their home computer after Starsky had finally drifted off to sleep after six hours straight of playing Cabin Boy Fever. He’d barely been able to sit down at the computer chair, his diversion had been such a rollicking success.

He’d thought that joining the lists was all he’d have to do to accomplish his plan, but when he’d gotten to the library today–all fired up to finally show those two MTV-generation wannabes who’d had the audacity to move into Venice Place who the real Starsky & Hutch were and why the original series characters would always be the One True Pairing (OTP) either in fanzines or on-line–he’d been thwarted by the damned Internet.

First, he couldn’t access his blasted email account to find out the Kardasi site password, which was changed hourly, and then when he’d surreptitiously questioned Starsky on how their neighbors went about uploading their slash stories to the net archives…well…Starsky had said that those lists were old news anyway. That the place to be was LJ-land.

With that cheerful announcement, Hutch had seen three months of hard work go to waste. The list archives were old news now? Where in the hell was he going to upload his opus to be seen? If Starsky could publish a fanzine–he shuddered at the very memory of the astronomically priced Me and Hutch Get It On A Whole Lot—then, surely, his own fanzine would be a true success with the fans.

He’d racked his brain for months, trying to find a way to dispel the stain that imposter had put on his good name in that horrid piece of celluloid laughingly referred to as a movie. He shuddered at the very memory of the loser they’d cast as him, Detective Kenneth Hutchinson, rolling a corpse for the dead man’s cash! They’d trashed thirty years of his excellent police work in less than two hours of film. He was too ashamed to show his face anywhere these days. And now the fans were writing stories about these two counterfeit cops, calling them the One True Pairing! Well, that was going to stop as of today. His zine was finished. It wasn’t crude and crass like Starsky’s had been. His was a work of art, a stunning revelation of the souls of two people who loved each other, but just happened to be cops.

But how was he ever going to clear his reputation if he couldn’t reach the Internet?

When he’d asked what LJ-land was with feigned disinterest over breakfast this morning, Starsky had rhapsodized in an incomprehensible language about f-lists, icons, and memes for over twenty minutes.

So, he’d come here to the library for help again, but, as far as he could tell, there wasn’t a single book in this library on LJ-land. Overjoyed at finally being able to be of service to him, Addie, Margie, and Barbara had all given him blank looks when he’d sent them on their ecstasy of research this morning to find anything about LJ-land. They’d come back with books on the Lowlands, Lost Lands, and Never-neverland, but no LJ-land. Even Godfrey, the handsome, gay library manager, who normally found anything Hutch wanted with a minimum of salivating, impressive professionalism, and speed, had been unable to uncover any references to LJ-land. Godfrey kept asking Hutch if he didn’t mean ‘Live Journals’, but Starsky had been very clear that it was LJ-land he was looking for.

Hutch stared down in dismay at the list of the top ten results Godfrey had gotten when he’d shnoogled, no googled, LJ-land:

 

Half of them weren’t even in English. Staring at the one that was a quote, Hutch wondered in what context Thomas Jefferson could possibly have been defining buggery. But then he gave it up as a lost cause. Even the ones that were in English made no sense. What Fresh Hell is This? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

He looked at number eight. Lasseter & Jones Land Agency LLC in Alabama. Was it possible that LJ-land was an actual place? In…Alabama? Starsky thought that Alabama was the place to be?

No, none of this made any sense. Although, he supposed that someone who’d had a total scoundrel usurp his name, job, identity, and now had the temerity to invade the sanctity of his quantum-physics madhouse of an apartment building, probably had a lot of familiarity with things not making much sense.

He stared at the list again.

He wondered where you got a googler machine. Maybe if he got one of his own, he could get more coherent results. He could sort of work Starsky’s PC. Surely, this googler couldn’t be more complicated than that, could it?

This was so damn frustrating! He knew he was smarter than Starsky…well, maybe not smarter, but definitely more book learned. He should be the one helping Starsky with the technical aspects of computers, but…he honestly didn’t even know what that “IT” in the computer sections of stores stood for. All this other stuff they jabbered on about in the Venice Place hallways, at band practice, or in the basement Rumpus Room, this HTML, Java-script, Cobalt, band width, and pixies…PIXIES!…it was all like a different language to him. Just like his shnoogled list, he sighed.

Clearly, he was going to need some help.

Flamingo could probably tell him how to find this LJ-land, but…she was too tight with Starsky to be trusted. All his partner had to do to get anything out of the bird was drop his keys and turn around to pick them up. Flamingo’s eyes would glaze over, she’d get that goofy smile on her face, and become utterly malleable to Starsky’s wiles by the time his partner straightened back up. It was amazing how many times one man could drop a set of keys on his way to his second floor apartment, Hutch thought in disgust. No, Flamingo was definitely out. Hutch had no illusions. She’d sell him out in a minute.

He supposed he could ask Flamingo’s roommate. CrowRow accessed her email on line at work all the time and he’d heard her say last week that she was RPing a werewolf in LJ-land. It sounded…obscene. A werewolf! He wasn’t really sure he wanted to know what RPing a werewolf meant, but if she was doing it in LJ-land, he was probably going to have to talk to her. She’d forget anything she told him before she made it back to their apartment.

Putting the floppy disk with his masterpiece back into his jacket pocket, Hutch put down his shnoogle list, closed the Those Who Should Never Be In the Same Room With a PC book, and pushed back his chair. He was wasting his time here.

Surely, someone in Venice Place would be willing to help him in secret. He’d heard KimberlyFDR mention LJ-land, but at the time, he’d assumed LJ was a person–probably another prospective neighbor.

Now, all he had to do was get out of here unnoticed, and pray that no one recognized him on the street before he got home. The damage that had been done to his reputation this year once that…that…movie came out, was horrible. Until he cleared his name, Hutch didn’t feel comfortable sticking his head out their apartment door.

Well, that probably wasn’t due to the reputation problem, his honesty forced him to admit. He’d been scared to open his door for years now, ever since he’d caught SHaron, Lucy, and one of the Lindae pressing their ears to empty glasses against their door. That was the day the ‘security cameras’ were experiencing problems.

His allergies were tormenting him this time of year. Hutch covered his mouth as he felt another bout of sneezing coming on. He tried to hold them in, or barring that, to sneeze quietly, but it was useless. The muffled sound escaped. He braced himself. No sooner had he lowered his wet hand from his mouth than Barbara, the spry redhead, came scurrying over.

“Are you all right, Detective Hutchinson?” Barbara asked. “I heard you sneeze and thought you could use these.”

To his embarrassment, she thrust out a huge box of aloe-coated, extra soft tissues, a bag of Halls throat lozenges, a glass of water–not the usual little plastic Dixie cup that could be found by the water cooler, but a real tall glass of water filled with ice–and silver foil wrapped pills: Advil Cold & Sinus, Sudafed, Claritin D, and Dayquil.

“Ah, no thanks,” Hutch said, rising to his feet.

“You have to take care of yourself,” Barbara cautioned.

“I’m all right, really,” he assured her, but then of course, he sneezed again, and her face became as bright and zealous as a missionary’s.

“Really, you need to be careful. You could catch cold.”

Edging towards the door, Hutch said, “It’s okay, only an allergy. I promise.”

“Margie, Ad–” Barbara called for reinforcements as Hutch quickened his pace towards the door.

It was always hardest to get out of here. Like his Venice Place neighbors, the girls always wanted to chat him up before he left.

To his horror, Margie of the Dolly Parton…eyes, and bespectacled Addie appeared from behind the Book Return counter.

“Oh, Detective Hutchinson, you’re not leaving already, are you?” Margie wailed, her bosom jiggling in her enthusiastic rush towards him. The day he’d first visited this library, she’d been wearing a prudish turtleneck. Over the last three months, the bustline on her blouses had plunged until she was now wearing a top that had only slightly more coverage than a stripper’s nipple pasties.

Keeping his own eyes front and center–no, not center, up, he had to keep his eyes up, he reminded himself–he forced his gaze to remain on her…face as he stammered, “Er, yes, I, er…”

As all three women started to converge on him, he bolted for the door. To his horror, the blond, good-looking Godfrey chased him down the white marble library steps today into the bright California sunshine.

“Detective Hutchinson, Detective Hutchinson,” Godfrey called breathlessly, frantically waving a piece of paper in the air.

Realizing, he’d been spotted, Hutch stopped and allowed the shorter library manager to catch up with him. “Yes, Godfrey?”

“You forgot your Google list, Detective,” the panting man in the tight black trousers and tasteful pink shirt explained, holding out the paper that had driven Hutch to the brink of despair.

“Oh, ah, thanks,” Hutch said, taking the paper. He gave Godfrey a friendly pat on the arm as he pocketed the Google list, and hurried towards his car.

God, he was more than an hour late again. It always took him at least ten extra minutes to sneak, er, to make it from the front door of Venice Place to his apartment. Starsky was going to kill him.

~~~

It wasn’t possible for Starsky to hear the brief exchange between Hutch and the young blond Adonis who’d raced after him down the library steps, and he’d never gotten very good at reading lips. But he didn’t really need to. The expression on the boy’s face told him everything he needed to know. Starsky’s eyes narrowed as the young man called after Hutch, waving a piece of paper at him. He watched Hutch pause, look expectantly at the young man, then glance around surreptitiously.

Starsky had parked far enough away to make sure the Torino wouldn’t be easy to spot. But, then again, these days Hutch worried more that any Torino he did spot was the car he’d sold to the short one. He hated running into his blond nemesis on the street.

Hutch glanced over the paper the young man handed him. He nodded, smiling at the young man, then patted his arm. The blond boy beamed and threw a rod Starsky could see from two blocks away.

That ain’t no sock, he thought, his eyes narrowing even further. Really, Hutch…the library? And here I was wastin’ all that energy worryin’ about hotels. Gonna tell me again how you got lost in the stacks? That kid’s barely legal!

He had to make a concerted effort to stop grinding his teeth.

If Hutch kisses that kid on the library steps, I won’t be responsible for my actions.

Hutch glanced around nervously one more time, then started for his car. The kid moved quickly, falling into place right beside Hutch–where I’m supposed to be–like he belonged there, following Hutch step for step down the library staircase. The kid was yammering away, pointing to the paper as he kept running his mouth. Hutch kept glancing at the note and nodding.

Starsky waited expectantly for Hutch to miss a step, since the klutz could barely walk and chew gum at the same time, never mind read darling little love notes and focus on the never-ending spiel of his…his… UNDERAGED CLANDESTINE LOVER!

A red haze covered Starsky’s eyes for a moment, making him blink to clear his vision. His blood pressure had to be at a thousand. He realized he was gripping the Torino’s steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white.

Hutch finally reached his disreputable car without giving Starsky the satisfaction of falling down the library steps ass over end.

Of course not. You probably never make a misstep around your Junior Leaguer, do you? Not Mr. Swave and De-bone-yer Detective Hutchinson.

The kid followed Hutch as he slid into the driver’s seat. For one breath-stealing moment, Starsky thought the kid was actually going to lean into the driver’s side window and plant a wet one on Hutch right in front of him. But then Starsky realized the kid was still going on about something on the piece of paper, leaning in to point at it…unless–Starsky was too far away to be really sure–he could be leaning in to fondle Hutch…touch his face…maybe even give him a loving stroke to remember their time together in the stacks…

Starsky felt a wave of anger wash over him that was so intense it made him sway behind the wheel. This must be what the Incredible Hulk feels like just before he busts outta his clothes. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I gotta pull it together. I can’t afford to Hulk out here in front of the library. These are my hottest jeans.

Suddenly, Hutch reached out of the car and patted the kid’s arm again, giving it a little stroke as he did. The kid turned beet red and looked like he was about to come in his pants. Or maybe he already had.

As the kid stepped back away from the car, Hutch pulled sedately out of the parking place and turned right at the corner, probably headed back to Venice Place for his hour late date with Starsky. But Starsky had seen enough.

Hutch’s whole pattern of behavior had changed in the last few weeks. In fact, things hadn’t been the same between them since that stupid movie came out, and it had only deteriorated since the two new guys had moved into Venice Place.

It was all becoming too clear to Starsky. He wasn’t the best detective in Bay City for nothing. First, Hutch had grown distant and obsessed with his own reputation, which he believed had been irrevocably sullied in the movie. Trying to explain to him that whole point of parody was to insult everyone got Starsky nowhere. Hutch’s whole focus grew inward, his moods difficult and intractable. Starsky would wake at night to find Hutch hovering over Starsky’s laptop, typing furiously, and whenever Starsky would ask him what he was working on, Hutch would insist it was “notes for work” and then make frantic love to him again. That part was fine with Starsky, but now he feared it was all guilt reactions. He thought of Hutch asking him all those questions about email accounts and showing interest in Internet information he’d never cared about before. Of course. His underage lover would be into all that instant communication stuff and Hutch couldn’t even IM efficiently. He was trying to play catch up on the latest technology–and Starsky, like a jerk, had actually helped him.

The lump in his throat was nearly choking him. In anger and bitter sorrow, Starsky pulled away from the curb with a roar of exhaust and a squeal of rubber. Somewhere outside of Bay City, somewhere where he wasn’t known, in some hard-edged biker bar where Johnny Cash was singing Folsom Prison Blues, there was a bottle of scotch with his name on it.

~~~

“Huggy,” Starsky said quietly, “yer ma pal…” Then he hiccupped. Even he could tell his speech was slurred. His vision wasn’t quite up to par either, but he could see clearly enough to know this was hisHuggy, not some ersatz rap artist named after a Peanuts character (Note: Rapper Snoop Dog played Huggy Bear in the S&H movie).

Huggy was waving his hand in front of his face and backing away from Starsky’s close proximity, as if his breath was just a little too lethal to handle this morning. “I guess I am, bro’. ‘Cause it would have to be a damned good pal o’yours to come fetch your sorry ass out of a brawl at a biker bar you got no business bein’ at. You know I can’t hack treadin’ into territory that ain’t mine, and biker bars that are associated with that other cat, just ain’t a place where I should be at, no way, no how. You need to stay outta Big Earl’s, Starsky, that ain’t no place for you to be hangin’.” (Note: Big Earl’s was the biker bar featured in the movie.)

Starsky couldn’t suppress a giggle. “Yeah, but I still kicked every ass in the place, din’t I? All by myself.”

“You sure did, Starsky. I can’t wait ’til Hutch sees the bill. Which brings up another question. Why wasn’t Hutch with you?”

That brought it all crashing back into Starsky’s inebriated mind. He wasn’t that pickled. Couldn’t get that pickled even if he tried. “Hutch has better places to be these days, thas why.”

Huggy looked confused. “What better place could there be for Hutch than by your side, m’man?”

Starsky drew himself up to his full dignity. “The Lie-berry, thas where.” He nodded sagely, assuming Huggy, who always knew everything about anything going on in Bay City, would already know what he was talking about.

Huggy just sighed. “Followin’ your train of thought, m’friend, has always been a challenge, but lately, it’s been a trip and a half. Go on home now, and sleep it off. Hutch is probably sick with worry.”

“Only if he’s got a–” hiccup “–overdue notice on Lady Chatterley’s Lover!” With that Starsky exited his Torino–his Saturday Torino–trusting Huggy to take good care of it in his absence. Huggy would never drop his precious car in the bay. Or sell it, either.

With the extreme care of the overly inebriated, Starsky negotiated the sidewalk in front of Venice Place and headed up the stairs, one very careful step at a time. He almost made to the top, too, except something happened that made the very last step disappear just as he tried to put his foot on it. His leg flailed, looking for a step that wasn’t there and his entire balance took a leap into space. For a split second, Starsky couldn’t tell if he was falling forward or backward. The only thing he was sure of was that he was most definitely falling.

“Whoa, there, big fella! Take it easy there, boy!”

Strong hands gripped his leather jacket pulling him forward. Starsky went with his momentum and collapsed into a steady pair of arms. Now this was more like it. Starsky smiled and yielded to the masculine grip.

“Hussssh…you saved me…”

“That’s right, buddy. It’s your ol’ pal, Hutch.”

Alarms went off in Starsky’s intoxicated brain. Flashing red lights and bells went off, and big neon signs strobed the word, “WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” His brain was screaming at him to respond to this emergency, but all he could manage to do was peel open one eye and stare at the blond figure gripping him, the man who’d saved him from imminent danger. “Yer not Husssh.”

“Sure I am,” the blond man said, giving Starsky a friendly squeeze. “I’m not your Hutch, but we don’t need to stand on ceremony, do we? C’mon, man, I just saved your ass from a short trip down a long tall staircase.”

Starsky struggled to gain his legs, and the blond man helped him, steadying him on his feet, but he continued to hold onto Starsky’s arms, as if not trusting him to stay upright. Then Starsky realized something else alarming. “Yer…yer…nekkid!”

The blond man just giggled, his nasal whine even more pronounced. “I am not naked. I’m wearin’ a towel. You can plainly see that. I heard you makin’ a terrible racket coming up the stairs and just wanted to ask you about that anyhow. All we can find in this place are these little hand towels. Do you have any idea where they hide the bath towels here?”

Starsky narrowed his gaze and tried to look menacing. “We don’ have bath towels in Venice Place no more thanks to you guys. Ever since the movie, Flamingo pulled all the bath towels. All any of us have anymore are those stupid hand towels. You think Hutch can stuff alla himself behind that itty-bitty thing? You think I can? You guys could use wash cloths and still be decent enough for a church service. Me and Hutch, we got a lot more to cover up!”

“Okay, okay, easy now. No reason to be gettin’ all belligerent. I mean, the only reason we did the hand towel bit was because Hutch had stuffed his big ass behind one in the Pilot, so don’t be gettin’ all hostile about something you started, big fella.”

The Pilot? Had they worn towels in the Pilot? Starsky racked his brain trying to remember. He peered at the blond, trying to figure out if he was lying to him, and nearly toppled over onto him.

“Hey, you look like you had a pretty rough night there, partner,” the blond was saying. “Lemme help you get home. I don’t think your knees are workin’ quite right.” He slipped his arms around Starsky and pulled him into a full body hug, hoisting him a little. “Man, you’re one dense dude, y’know that?” He grunted, trying to support his weight.

“It’s all that ballast below the waist, doooood,” Starsky said, then burst into giggles.

Just then, he heard a lock snick, and a door with a familiar squeak open up. As Starsky turned to see which of the neighbor ladies was going to have the good fortune to see him become completely liquid in the arms of the wrong Hutch, he heard the wrong Hutch–that is, the right Hutch–gasp, “Starsky?”

Starsky’s last coherent thought was, Oh shit.

~~~

Hutch froze in the doorway, unable to believe the horror before his eyes.

Starsky had been missing all night. He’d called everywhere he could think of–Huggy’s at least three times. At one and three a.m. Huggy had sworn he hadn’t heard from Starsky, and at seven-thirty, there’d been no answer at Hug’s. Captain Dobey hadn’t known where his partner was. He’d searched all his lover’s usual haunts: Starsky wasn’t at the all night candy store, or the video arcade, or the Blockbuster’s, or the 24-hour CompuServe in Silicon Valley. In desperation, he’d asked Cyanne and Colleen when he’d seen them in the hall if they’d seen Starsk. They were both…normal and not too scary, even if they did live in Venice Place.

They’d said no, and then Taya had been hauled into the hunt and…well, as so often happened in this building, Hutch had lost control of things as soon as his neighbors became involved.

The neighbor ladies had sent out search parties. They’d combed the city and its environs. Two by two, teams of fan ladies with miner’s lights strapped to their foreheads, Diet Cokes for fortitude, and Snickers bars to lure their prey, were sent out into the night, but no luck.

They did, however, find: two Cascade detectives in a hot tub at the Bonaventure, a Royal Canadian Mountie with two guys named Ray and a white wolf camped out in a drainage ditch off Ventura who were trying out some moves that even Suzan hadn’t thought of, a couple of British guys at LA-Ex who were being hassled as spies because of a concealed Glock (the taller and stockier of that pair had stolen the search party’s Snickers bars), an older Russian and American pair who really were spies slumming at Sugar’s act in the Green Parrot, a guy who looked remarkably like an older, sexier McGyver with a buffed up James Spader ringer who’d been dropped off by a cabbie at the Hollywood Walk of Fame while looking for something called a missing Stargate, a couple of old men doing it on Venice Beach, one with oddly deformed ears and eyebrows, who looked like the actors in the Priceline.com commercials–the neighbors had said they’d gotten some great ideas from the beach couple–but…no Starsky.

His partner had remained missing.

Visions of Starsky trapped in some psycho like Simon Marcus’ clutches had filled Hutch’s mind all night. In desperation, he’d done what everyone on the right side of the law eventually did when their mate didn’t come home; he’d called the police. Mistake. The local precinct had reminded Hutch that a person had to be gone 24 hours before they could be declared legally missing, and then the guy on the other end of the phone had laughingly asked which Starsky he was looking for–the short one or the hung one.

And now, after one of the worst nights of his life, he opened his door to find his missing lover in flagrante delicto with that blond imposter! It was too much.

“STARSKY! WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM!” Hutch roared, barreling down the stairs.

The blond wannabe might not have even a passing acquaintance with either honor or police procedure, but like all vermin, he had an almost supernatural awareness of when his life was in imminent danger. The scrawny interloper tore free from his embrace with Starsky so fast that he left his hand towel behind. And even with that gone, the guy made a pitiful showing.

Dear God. Starsky had spent the night with this…this pin dick???

The fake Hutch was gone faster than a cockroach when the lights went on, scrambling to the cupboard under the stairs where the Venice Place band stored their instruments.

Deprived of his lover’s support, Starsky crumpled to the stairs.

Hutch could smell the booze on his partner from three steps away. Son of a bitch! Had that amoral bastard gotten Starsky drunk to the point where Starsk hadn’t known which Hutch he was with, and taken advantage of him? But…even dead drunk, Starsky had to have noticed a certain, um, insufficiency in the genitalia department.

He bounded down the last two steps, grabbed hold of the neck of Starsky’s jacket, and hauled his errant partner to his feet. The whisky on Starsky’s breath nearly knocked him out. His partner’s eyes were a Technicolor display of red, white, and blue that would have done a Lorraine oil color proud. Hutch’s only hope was that his inebriated partner had been too piss-eyed to perform, but…when had his Starsky ever been too incapacitated for sex?

“H-Hutsch?” Starsky questioned.

“Yeah. Hutch. The REAL Hutch. You remember me, don’t you?” he demanded, using the infamous Hutchinson finger to accentuate his point. “Guy you live with, partner for more than twenty years. The guy who sat up all night long worrying about you. Only to find you in the arms of that…that pissant pretender!”

Hutch took a deep calming breath, and put the finger away. This looked incriminating as all get out, but it still might not be what it seemed. Starsky had a way of getting into misadventures that made Candide seem fortunate. Toning it down a notch, he asked, “What the hell were you doing with that guy?”

His drunken lover shook free of his hold, and nearly toppled down the stairs before grabbing onto a banister. “What do you care?”

With that, Starsky turned on his heel in a move that was nearly a perfect pirouette as he wobbled over the edge of the stairs, and then stalked, well, staggered up the rest of the steps to the open apartment door.

Hutch snapped his open mouth closed and raced up the stairs after his retreating partner. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He followed Starsky through the living room to the bedroom. “I find you in the arms of another man and you’re giving me flack?”

“Thas great, comin’ from you!” Starsky shot back. “Itz like the goose callin’ the kettle black!” After voicing that sagacious mixed metaphor, Starsky fell face down into their bed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hutch demanded. “What were you doing with that guy? This is serious, Starsky. STARSKY…Starsk….”

Snores emerged from beneath the lush curls.

Hutch ran a hand over his weary eyes and tried to make sense of what he’d seen. His Starsky in the arms of that naked pretender. It was worse than he’d feared. First, that bastard had usurped his reputation, then his place in fanfic, then he’d tried to muscle his way into Venice Place here, but Hutch drew the line at that moral-less loser putting the make on his partner. If they were going to avoid blood on the band closet floor, something was going to have to be done about this. Right now.

He had to post his fanzine. That was all that was to it. Once he got it up there on line, the neighbor ladies would read it. Then they’d know once and for all who the REAL Hutch was, and which Starsky & Hutch were the One True Pairing. They’d run those imposters out of VP so fast that all they’d leave behind was smoke and rubber like the real Starsky, the one who knew how to corner a Torino without taking out three police cars, on one of his more enthusiastic car chases.

Yes, that would do it, without blood. The Bay City PD frowned on its detectives offing anyone, even needle-dicked imposters.

Though, if he pleaded his case to Captain Dobey he might get away with it as justifiable homicide or even self-defense, since he was, after all, protecting his stained reputation, but, no, Captain Dobey had liked the good looking, trim-waisted guy who’d pretended to be him in the movie. And the scriptwriters had at least had the decency to misspell the captain’s name, making a clear distinction between the real Captain Dobey, and the movie’s Captain Dobey, unlike him and Starsk who’d been saddled with these pathetic wannabes.

So, murder was out, which left only fan fiction, which put him back exactly where he was yesterday morning when he’d gone to the library desperate for directions to LJ-land.

He knew what he had to do. He had to go to the neighbors for help. For the second time in 24 hours. His blood ran cold at the debt he was going to owe them.

Hutch stared down at his unconscious lover for a moment, his heart quailing at the thought of facing his helpful housemates. But Starsky was worth it. He’d faced serial killers, poisoners, psycho cult leaders, and James Gunther on this man’s behalf. Surely, that had to be harder than speaking to a bunch of kind, helpful women who lived only to serve and help them?

There was No Easy Answer to that question.

This Last Charade was like a Total Eclipse of the Heart. The idea of Starsky cheating on him was a Goliath he’d never faced before. Telling himself that it was just One More Mountain, just One More River he had to cross, Hutch patted his jacket pocket to ensure that the floppy disk containing his fanzine was still safe there. Then he turned to Cross the Line, and Hopscotch his way to the neighbor ladies before his jealousy turned him into a Copkiller and he ended up Convicted at his Journey’s End. Telling himself that his Heroes Had Always Been Cowboys, and that he could face the neighbors as bravely as any of his fallen idols–even if he ended up Decorated for Death after the Scales of Justice came crashing down on him, or he ended up with an Addiction to the weird Fruit Cocktails his housemates were–Hutch turned from his lover without so much as a Nightlight to light his way and headed into the most terrifying territory he knew–the Venice Place hallway. Dreamers like him always had to put themselves at Risk.

Hutch left the bedroom and crossed the living room to his front door. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out into the hall. To his chagrin, there weren’t a dozen women in Zebra Con and Zed Con tee-shirts out there immediately asking if they could help him. In fact, the halls seemed eerily quiet, like they were the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, after everyone had left for Media West Con and it was only Starsky, him, and Flamingo left in VP.

Horrified, he realized that his neighbors were probably all still out searching the city for Starsky. Damn.

Well, when the last search party had left the building, Flamingo had been coordinating the search efforts. He climbed the stairs that hadn’t been there ten years ago and headed for her apartment. He relaxed as he realized that she was indeed at home. The sound of music emerged from behind the closed door, and as he lifted his hand to knock a deafening cacophony of border collie and Chihuahua yodeling joined the din. Telling himself that he’d been here before, that the lawn ornaments, no, that the dogs were all noise and no teeth, he started to lower his knuckles to the wood of the door to rap, and froze half-way as the words of the song playing penetrated his sleep deprived brain.

“Gonna find my baby,
“gonna hold her tight,
“gonna grab some afternoon delight…”

The song cut off and then repeated the same line. Again. And then again. Stopping in exactly the same place and starting over in the same place.

His blood turned to ice as he remembered where that particular piece of music had been used in the movie that had destroyed his life. He’d always loved the Starland Vocal Band’s only hit, but that damn film had ruined even that fine music for him. He couldn’t even listen to Barry Manilow anymore, and KC and the Sunshine Band had been spoiled forever.

As the significance of what that repeated line meant penetrated, Hutch nearly cried. There was only one reason anyone in this building played the line of a song over and over again. Flamingo was vidding the movie! It was sacrilege. Their last and staunchest supporter was promoting the imposters, using that most humiliating of scenes to….

Shaking at the sense of utter violation, Hutch stumbled away from Flamingo’s door, feeling dirty and used.

Where to go now? Not back to the library. That had been useless.

Like a sleepwalker, he drifted down the stairs of the empty building, searching for help from the hundreds of missing women who were usually here to satisfy his and Starsky’s every whim, before the new guys had moved in. He encountered no one in the lobby, or the art studio, or the pool, or the Rumpus Room, which he usually didn’t even dare approach. The entire building seemed to have been evacuated in the frantic search to find the missing Starsky.

It was down in the basement that he heard the steady hum, the sound of a tumble dryer working. Feeling very much like the brainless victim in a Freddy Kruger movie, he approached the laundry room with trepidation, and stopped dead as he spied KimberlyFDR sitting there on one of the laundry folding tables with her laptop open across her crossed legs.

“Ah, hello, Kimberly,” Hutch greeted her nervously.

First contact situations were always terrifying one-on-one. He never knew how the neighbor ladies would respond to actual interaction. Some would faint at his first word, which used to embarrass him no end, until he’d encountered the ones who couldn’t lift their gazes higher than his beltline. He’d begun to understand how women like Margie of the Dolly Parton…eyes felt when a man ogled them.

But Kimberly was of sterner and more decent stuff than either of those stereotypes. Turning a charming shade of pink, she smiled and answered in an almost normal tone, “Hi, Hutch.”

That was good. Her eyes were bright, but still focused, and the words she’d said made total sense.

“Um, I was wondering if maybe I could ask you a few questions?” Hutch asked nervously. “About computers?”

“Sure,” she replied in an equally nervous tone. “What did you want to know?”

“Do you know what LJ-land is?” he asked, terrified that she, too, would say no.

“Of course. I run a community there,” she answered, seeming to relax as she warmed to the non-threatening topic.

“You run a community there. So, it’s an actual place, like Alabama or Venice Place?” Hutch asked.

She blinked in surprise. “Ah, not like Alabama, but a little like VP, the virtual VP, that is. You are familiar with the VP email list, aren’t you?”

Hutch nodded, though he wasn’t really sure what the VP list was either. All he knew was that it had been one of the entries in Starsky’s email address book.

“LJ-land’s a little like having your own private email list. You friend the people whose journal entries you want to read, and then they appear on your own f-list. That’s your friends list, your F-list,” she explained patiently.

It almost made sense, almost. Hutch took a deep breath and said, “Starsky said LJ-land is the place to be these days.”

“Well, a lot of fans feel that way, but a lot of the older fans still prefer the email lists. They find that forum less divisive,” she said. “What did you need to know about LJs for, Hutch? Do you want to start one?”

“Well,” he paused, wondering how far he could trust, her, but…what other choice did he have? “I have a, um, fanzine that I need to upload, so I thought I’d send it to LJ-land.”

There, he’d said it.

Kimberly didn’t blink or look shocked or anything. With complete professionalism, she said, “Well, if you’re putting it on the net, it’s an E-zine, not a fanzine.”

“It is?” he asked, losing hope. Fanzines were one of the few fan concepts he’d thought he’d mastered, and now she was telling him he’d got it all wrong?

“Yes,” she replied. “And you probably don’t want to put it on LJ. We’ll need to archive it. Would you like some help?”

Was it possible? Was this all it was going to take to turn his life around?

“If it wouldn’t be an imposition,” he answered.

“Do you have the disk?” Kimberly asked.

“Right here.” He removed it from his pocket and offered it to her.

“Great. Let’s get to work. Pull up a table.” She laughed and patted the table space next to her.

Deciding that he could outrun her if it became necessary, Hutch cautiously climbed up on the folding table to sit beside her and stare at her laptop’s tiny screen. To his relief, her hands stayed on the keyboard and he was in no way pawed or molested as he settled down beside her.

“Now, this is how we look for the archive,” Kimberly said.

Bending his head close to hers to see the screen, Hutch got his first true lesson in Internet protocol.

~~~

Starsky woke up with agonizing slowness. Everything hurt. His skin hurt. His teeth hurt. Shit, even his hair hurt, and he had more hair all over him than the average bear.

With deliberate, careful moves, he rolled over. His head felt like it might actually separate from his body and look for someplace else to live, someplace where it was actually wanted.

Obviously, Starsky realized, he’d been captured by those damned Semen Marcos cultists and had the crap beat out of him again. This time without the bath. Clearly, there had been no bath because he smelled like the bottom of a cat box.

His brain cleared up just slightly, and he realized his memories of being kidnapped and beaten by the cultists had been many years ago. So, then he must’ve been mugged by surprise and beaten to a pulp by street gangs. Five guys, at least.

He eased carefully to a sitting position, and realized that the painful lump under his arm was his holstered gun. So, he hadn’t been mugged, or the gun would be the first to go. Maybe he’d fallen off a roof after chasing some desperately wanted felon…? No…that would’ve surely killed him. He’d be feeling lots better than this if he were dead.

The reality came washing over him as he lurched like one of George Romero’s zombies to the bathroom and heaved up his insides from his toes on up. Oh, yeah. He was hungover.

Because Hutch was getting it on with a baby Lie-berrian.

He threw up again.

Once he finished purging thoroughly, and he was relatively certain his eyeballs were still in their sockets, he began to wonder why Hutch wasn’t in the john with him, rubbing a cool cloth over his sweaty brow, hugging his shaking body tightly, and assuring him that everything was gonna be okay, buddy, because I’m here. Hutch was always with him, assuring him he was right here, buddy, whenever Starsky was sick as a dog. So where was he now?

Then he caught another whiff of himself. Hutch did have a weird fetish about bad body odor ever since he spent five days in Huggy’s upstairs apartment puking and pissing himself while going cold turkey. Hadn’t stopped Starsky from lying in bed with his stinky self and hugging him, wiping his brow with a cool cloth and telling him, “I’m here, buddy, I’m here.” Then again, Starsky wasn’t nearly so fussy about body odor.

As a concession to Hutch’s overly sensitive sense of smell, Starsky gave his teeth a quick brushing, and then regretted it. Nothing tasted worse than toothpaste on top of regurgitated scotch. Unless it was orange juice after toothpaste. Don’t think about that! he warned himself, clutching his delicate stomach.

“Hu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-tch!” he whined, putting his most pathetic tone into it. He needed a round of “poor sweet baby’s” in the worst way.

Nothing happened. Starsky remembered the baby-faced librarian. He started getting that Hulk feeling again…if with a lot less force.

Hutch had to be here somewhere. He had to be. He couldn’t be over at the library again. Not so soon. He was probably right here in Venice Place, maybe talking to one of the neighbor ladies, maybe chatting up Flamingo– His liquor besotted brain was moving slowly this morning, but even in its diminished capacity he realized how unlikely either of those scenarios was.

Laundry. That was it. Hutch was probably doing the laundry. He’d go down there and confront him. No one could resist Starsky’s fierce interrogation techniques, not even Hutch. Especially, if Starsky stood downwind.

He lurched for the staircase, one careful zombie-like step at a time.

Who the hell knew there were that many stairs down to the laundry room? Starsky marveled, as he finally got back on solid ground and moved to enter the laundry room. It seemed to take him forever to negotiate Venice Place’s incredibly steep stairs. But he was here now. And he could hear laundry rolling around the machines and the driers.

Did he know his Hutch or what? Starsky could think of very little he needed more right now than clean clothes, and a little Hutchie-comfort.

He rounded the corner and found himself staring at the backs of two people. They were sitting on top of the card tables the neighbor ladies sometimes used to fold their laundry and sometimes used to collate zines. The two people were sitting close together. Very close together. Their heads were nearly touching as they cuddled close together. In fact, if they were sitting any closer together, one of them would be sitting in the other one’s lap.

One of them was a young, shapely neighbor lady. And the other one was–

“H-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-TCH!!!”

Starsky’s blond partner nearly catapulted off the tiny table. The lady sitting next to him lurched and grabbed at something in her lap.

“Starsky!” Hutch gasped, clutching his chest. He was wide-eyed in surprise and glanced at the lady in a near panic. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What the hell am I doing here? WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?”

In a burst of instant sobriety, Starsky remembered what had driven him to drink earlier today. The red haze covered his eyes again, and that disturbing Hulk-like feeling washed over him. He was still in his hottest jeans, too. Though they desperately needed washing now.

“You were dead drunk asleep the last time I saw you–” Hutch sputtered.

“So, you figured the coast was clear, right? Starsky’s sleeping it off. I got all the time in the world–TO FOOL AROUND.”

“Fool around?” the lady said, seeming confused. “Hutch? Maybe you should tell him–”

“Yeah, that’s right, Hutch,” Starsky snapped, totally focusing his rage on the person who deserved it–his lover. “Maybe you should tell me all about the twelve-year-old at the library. What’s that about, huh? And that’s not bad enough, no, now you’re gonna start goin’ through the neighbor ladies right here in the building, huh? Playing both sides these days, huh? Yeah, why don’t you tell ol’ Starsky all about it.”

“Oh, no, Starsky,” the young lady protested, clearly dismayed by the turn of events. “You’ve got it all wrong. I would never–”

Starsky held up his hand to stop her. Pulling himself up in all his dignity, he stated clearly, “I. Have. Seen. Enough.” He spun on his heel, and marched out of the laundry room. He would go right upstairs and pack. They were done. Finished. Kaput. Over. Fini. The End.

As he headed for the stairs, he wondered where Hutch had hidden the titles of his other six Torinos.

~~~

How many damn flights of stairs are there from the laundry room to Hutch’s place? Starsky wondered as he collapsed on the top step of the latest staircase. He was exhausted, broken-hearted, depressed, and as hungover as he’d ever been in his life. And it was all Hutch’s fault, that bastard. Cheating on him with a baby bookbinder and cute little neighbor ladies. And Hutch thought the other Hutch had no morals. Hah!

Starsky sat on the top step of the staircase, buried his head in his hands and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Something was definitely wrong here. Usually it took less than five seconds of his pausing anywhere in the building before a bevy of neighbor ladies showed up with cookies, ice cream, cakes, or other goodies, or, if he was under the weather, hot toddies, peppermint tea, Advil, or other corrective medications. But he’d been sitting here for a good five minutes and so far, not a single neighbor lady had showed up. Not even CrowRow. He had learned over the years to be wary of anything CrowRow ever offered, though. There had been that one time she’d given him something she swore would help his sore throat, something she called slippery elm. Starsky didn’t think that there was anything that tasted worse than semen until he’d put that in his mouth. After that, he gave all CrowRow’s offerings to Hutch, who always thought that if something was good for you it had to taste like shit, anyway. What he wouldn’t give for a bottle of slippery elms right now that he’d cram down that bastard’s–

“Hey, uh, Starsky…uh, listen, can I ask you something?”

Not a neighbor lady. Starsky peered up through his fingers.

Things just kept going from bad to worse around here. It was the short one. And, as usual, he was dressed exactly like Starsky himself. Except, he didn’t smell bad. Five points for you, doood, Starsky thought, then wondered where that phrase had come from.

The short one settled on the step right next to Starsky sitting hip-to-hip with him.

It’s like having a miniature of your own self to talk to. If he weren’t so hungover, that would’ve struck him funny.

“It’s the Torino, Starsky,” the short one said.

That got Starsky’s attention. “Is it in the bay?”

“No! Oh, no! That was a one-time thing. We’d never do that again.”

“What a relief,” Starsky groaned. “He can learn.”

“It’s that whole shifting thing you were trying to tell me about. You know, about the overdrive. I can’t get it right with this car. Maybe because it’s older–”

Starsky shot him a warning glance, and he immediately changed his tactics.

“Or maybe it’s something I’m doing wrong.” He took hold of one of Starsky’s hands. “Lemme show ya. My knee here is the gear shift.” He put Starsky’s hand firmly over his knee and held it there. “It’s when I try that downshifting thing with the gas pedal and the overdrive gear–” He pushed Starsky’s hand against his knee and moved his knee like the gearshift. “Right about here, it starts to grind and hesitate–”

Starsky stared at his hand resting on the short one’s knee. His hungover brain was trying to warn him about something, trying to remind him about something that had happened just a little while ago, something about a towel, and Hutch, and the blond one–but he was too mesmerized trying to envision the short one’s knee as the Torino’s gear shift and trying to think of how to explain what this putz was doing wrong to his car, his Sunday car, his car that Hutch had sold¸ probably to finance another rendezvous with both of his new lovers.

In a flash of anger, Starsky gripped the short one’s knee painfully hard and lurched it to the side. “Like this, man, you gotta shift it like it you mean it. You gotta move that thing like you own it!”

~~~

“I. Have. Seen. Enough.”

The silence that followed those four furious words after Starsky stormed out of the laundry room was the loudest in the world. Hutch and Kimberly sat there on the laundry table in utter shock.

“He’s finally lost his mind,” Hutch said.

Looking very nervous, Kimberly asked, “What was he talking about? You’re not into Harry Potter are you, Hutch? That bit about the twelve–year-old at the library?”

Hutch shook his head. “I haven’t a clue–and who’s Harry Potter? Did he just move in? I didn’t think there were any male fans in the building. I go to the library in the mornings and early afternoon. There aren’t any kids there at all at that time. They’re still in school. That’s why I go so early.”

“He was making it sound like….” Her voice revealed her horror at what Starsky had accused him of.

“I know. I better go talk to him,” Hutch said, climbing carefully down from the table.

Starsky in a mood was bad enough. A hungover Starsky in a mood was terrifying.

Recalling her kindness, Hutch paused by the door. “Thanks for your help in getting my fanzine, er, e-zine up on the net, Kimberly. I’m sorry about…well, he didn’t mean it.”

“Good luck,” she said.

Nodding, he left the basement and started the long climb up to their apartment.

He was starting up the last set of steps on the winding, split stair well that used to be a straight flight of stairs, when he rounded the bend and stopped dead in his tracks at the vision before him.

Starsky was sitting there on the last set of steps to their apartment, and sitting right beside him dressed in the same exact tight, if cleaner and less packed, jeans, red shirt, and brown leather jacket was the short one. That was irritating enough in itself, but when Hutch saw where his Starsky’s–the real Starsky’s–hands were, his brain just melted into a haze of blood red jealousy. His lover had his hand on that short clone’s knee and was pulling the wannabe Starsky’s legs open, the same way Starsky would pull his own open before he’d drop his pants and enter him.

Hutch wondered if someone had slipped something into the slippery elm and white oak bark pick-me-up CrowRow had given him before heading out with the last search party. What he was seeing was worse than the horror he’d interrupted a few hours ago when he’d caught Starsky with the naked blond one. This was…well, it was worse than incest. It was self-cest. Hutch didn’t even know if there was a word for this kind of depravity. It exceeded narcissism. Was more than self-abuse. It was just dead wrong. And if Starsky didn’t get his hand off that interloper’s knee there was gonna be a lot more dead around here than just the word wrong.

“STARSKY! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”

~~~

David (the short one) lurched in shocked surprise at the unexpected roar coming from the bottom of the staircase. He would’ve catapulted off the step entirely and probably slid down the entire flight if Starsky (which, in private, David and his partner often referred to as “the senior Starsky”) hadn’t been gripping his knee so hard. Looking for the source of the sound, he was stunned to see the senior Hutchinson (which, in private, David often thought of as the really BIG Hutchinson) in full bore rage–mounting the stairs and heading straight for him. His self-preservation instincts were already screaming, MOVE, ASSHOLE, NOW!!!But Senior Starsky still had hold of his knee. He could cut off his own leg with his penknife, but he suspected there wasn’t enough time for that.

David realized he was about to die.

And then things got worse.

“Wha’s yer problem now, old man,” Senior Starsky said, a definite sneer in his voice. “Can’t compete?”

David stopped breathing. The grip on his knee was excruciating now, but the pain helped him focus.

“Old man?” Hutch roared, sputtering in rage. “Who the fuck are you calling old? I’m younger than YOU! Now, get your paws off that mini-me RIGHT THIS MINUTE.”

“Detective Hutchinson,” David began hesitantly. “Really, this is not what it looks like. Or what I think it looks like. Or what it might look like to you. Or to anyone passing by. Or to–my partner–” David just then realized his Ken was leaning on the banister over the stairwell, looking vastly amused. “But really, it was–it was–just a driving lesson!”

“Is that what you’re calling it these days, Starsky?” Hutch yelled.

David paused, trying to figure out which one of them Detective Hutchinson was actually speaking to. He doubted he could get this Hutchinson to refer to his own partner as “senior Starsky” which would be the only way David could ever keep things straight.

“Driving?” Detective Hutchinson continued, oblivious to David’s confusion. “And we all know how much you love driving, don’t we? Well, you’re headed for a crash now, my friend.” Detective Hutchinson continued his forward climb.

A small female voice could suddenly be heard at the bottom of the stairwell. “Hey…you guys okay up there? Any problems?”

No one paid her any mind.

“Well, someone in this partnership needs to know how to take command,” Senior Starsky said, blatantly trying to aggravate Detective Hutchinson further. “Clearly, that would have to be me. Is that what’s fueling your sudden interest in jail-bait Lie-berrians, and your most recent infatuation with underage laundry ladies.”

From the bottom of the stairwell, the female voice–which David finally recognized as belonging to neighbor lady KimberlyFDR–protested an indignant, “Hey!”

“Liberians?” Detective Hutchinson stammered, coming to a full halt on the stairs, just two feet away from arm’s reach of David’s throat. “I don’t even know any damned Liberians. I mean, you keep telling me not to answer that guy who keeps sending me those emails about depositing a million dollars in our bank account, so we’ve never officially met. I mean, there is that cousin of Huggy’s who fixed our plumbing last month when Flamingo got tired of dealing with our hair-clogging problem…but he was at least forty years old.”

David glanced back at his own partner, and the two of them thought of a conversation they’d had just recently about the kind of problems David’s body hair and Hutch’s ever-thinning blond locks were causing them. He wondered if Detective Hutchinson still had the number for that plumber–but he suspect this wouldn’t be the best time to ask.

“NOT LIBERIANS!” Senior Starsky roared, lurching to his feet in outrage. “LIE-BERRIANS!!!”

Unfortunately, Senior Starsky was still gripping David’s knee. In his fury, oblivious to the body part still clutched in his fist, he yanked David’s leg into the air, nearly propelling the helpless man down the stairs. David gasped as the world spun around him and he found himself dangling upside down by one leg like a plucked chicken.

“Hey, watch it!” David’s Ken yelled, and dived to brace his partner’s body before it was suspended, head first, down the stairs. That’s when the front doors burst open, and a flood of excited, chattering neighbor ladies poured into the hallway below them. From his upside down perspective, David saw the incoming crowd pause in shock as they absorbed the tableau before them.

“Don’t you dare pretend you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about!” Senior Starsky bellowed, looming over his equally furious partner, who stood several steps below him. “You! And that blond bimbette Lie-berian with the pink shirt. AT. THE. LIE-BERRY!!! YESTERDAY. I SAW YOU TWO TOGETHER PASSING LOVE NOTES ON THE FRONT STEPS. In broad daylight.” As though he suddenly realized he was gripping the leg of a 130-pound man and using it to emphasize every point, he stared at David, hanging nearly upside down from his hand, his head and shoulders barely supported by his own struggling partner. With a slow blinking understanding, he handed the offending knee over to the younger Hutchinson. “Here. This is yours. I don’ need it.” And he released the leg, nearly sending David and Ken down the stairs in a heap.

Senior Hutchinson grabbed both of them before they could roll the rest of the way down. The neighbor ladies had a moment of stark disappointment etched on their faces, but only for a moment. Senior Hutchinson’s save gave the women an excuse to cheer their stalwart heroes. The sound rattled the walls. For the millionth time, David wondered why they moved in here. Oh yeah. It was Ken’s idea.

After helping the two younger detectives untangle themselves on the stairs and regain their footing, Senior Hutchinson turned back to the argument at hand. But clearly he wasn’t about to allow his partner the height advantage. Probably not used to it, David thought, as Detective Hutchinson marched up the staircase past Senior Starsky and stood on the landing. Senior Starsky wasn’t about to allow him that much advantage and met him on the landing so they could have it out toe-to-toe.

David thought this might be a good moment for him and Ken to make their escape. Then he realized that their route was blocked by approximately 250 neighbor ladies crowding around the staircase, eager to see the outcome of the battle royal. He wondered why they were all wearing those funny little miner lights on their heads and nibbling on Snickers bars.

“Hey,” Ken murmured in his ear. “What d’ya think we’d have to do to get the Diet Coke concession in this building?”

David shot him a look. Didn’t he realize this was serious stuff happening here? The One True Partnership–or at least the senior version of same–were on the verge of a cataclysmic schism. He murmured back. “Forget it. Huggy’s already got it nailed.”

“Bummer,” Ken mumbled.

“You’re losing your mind,” Detective Hutchinson said, fighting to get control of his voice. “You’re certifiable. You’re too crazy for Cabrillo, anymore. I have no idea what you’re talking about! I never passed any love notes to–”

Senior Starsky lurched forward with far more speed and agility than David would have given him credit for considering his age and inebriated condition, and yanked a piece of paper out of Detective Hutchinson’s top jacket pocket. “Wha’d’ya call this, huh?” He waved it in Hutchinson’s face. “Me, I call this evidence!”

The gig was up. David was surprised to find himself shocked at Detective Hutchinson. The Senior Hutchinson was cheating on his hero?

Awareness seemed to come over Hutchinson’s countenance. Awareness and a surprising calm. “Okay. I yield. You caught me red-handed. That’s the evidence. Go ahead. Read it.”

David gasped. He heard his own shocked sound echoed in 250 female voices. Could it be true? And with a Liberian?

With a knowing swagger, Senior Starsky unfolded the offending paper, and gazed at it. For a long moment. Then another long moment. Then another. Time stretched. David and Ken exchanged a glance. Ken, of course, was clueless. He was always clueless. But cute with it.

Suddenly, Senior Starsky crowed loudly. “AH-HA!!!” His shout startled Detective Hutchinson so much he nearly stumbled. Senior Starsky pointed to the paper. “Right here! Right here! Looka that!”

Detective Hutchinson, clearly baffled, leaned over to see what Starsky was focused on.

“It says right there…something…about BUGGERY!” Then Starsky looked confused again. “And Thomas Jefferson…? Hutch, you should be ashamed!”

Confused beyond belief, David asked timidly, “Was Thomas Jefferson Liberian?”

Detective Hutchinson was clearly at the end of his tether. He grabbed the offending paper out of Senior Starsky’s hands. “You idiot! This is a schnoogle list! I was doing an Internet search!”

From the bottom of the stairs, David heard KimberlyFDR gasp, “Oh my god, Hutch is into Harry Potter!” Within seconds, the news spread throughout the throngs.

“Who’s Harry Potter?” Ken asked.

David shrugged. “Probably some wanted felon they’ve been after. You know, like Prudholm, maybe.”

“You expect me to believe you were doing an Internet search?” Senior Starsky said, narrowing his eyes. “Next you’ll be wanting me to believe you’re writing a fanzine. Give it up, Hutch. Admit it. You’ve been screwing that young guy over at the lie-berry. This–” he pointed to the incriminating schnoogle list still in Hutchinson’s hand– “is a cover up! You’ve got a new honey at the lie-berry, and now a lady all your own in the laundry room!”

An outraged cry rang out from the throngs at the bottom of the stairs. Unfortunately, KimberlyFDR was clutching her basket of laundry with her. All eyes turned to her accusingly.

“Hey!” she protested. “It isn’t me. I was just showing Hutch how to upload a story to the net archives. I swear!”

Two-hundred fifty pairs of eyes turned back to Hutch. A low murmur rang through the crowd. “Hutch wrote a story?”

At the top of the stairs, Hutch let out a painful moan.

“What does he need to write stories for?” Ken asked David. “Everything they do gets filmed–OOF!”

David drove his elbow into Ken’s gut, then glanced apologetically at his hero, Senior Starsky. He’d promised Senior Starsky that he’d never reveal the secret of the security cameras perched all over the building, especially in the OTP‘s bedroom. He wondered longingly if there’d ever be even one camera in the closet under the stairs that he and Ken shared.

“You think I’m having an affair?” Detective Hutchinson said in dismay. “I caught you practically in flagrante delicto with–with–HIM just a few hours ago–on the stairs!!!”

“Where were we?” asked a small voice from the bottom of the stairs.

“He sent us out on that wild goose chase,” someone else complained. “He always makes us miss the best stuff!”

“Hey, they don’t mix pairs in this fandom,” someone else reminded them.

“Why not? We never had pairs to mix before. But now–”

Angry murmurs swept through the crowd.

David started to sweat. If they were about to get into one of those fandom flame wars in the stairwell, none of them would get out of here alive.

“And then, not five minutes ago, I come up here to find out what you’re in a snit about now, and you’re fondling THAT ONE’S leg. And what is this new fetish you’ve got for the stairwell anyway?” Detective Hutchinson demanded.

“You wanna talk about fetishes,” Senior Starsky accused, “–what’s this thing you’ve got for the library. Every time you go there, you’re hours late. No one spends that much time in the library. Not even you! Don’t tell me this has nothing to do with buggery!”

“Okay, everybody, let’s hold on one minute here.”

David was startled when his own partner moved aside and dared to step up to the landing to stand between the battling partners. Boldly, Ken, took hold of each of the older man’s shoulders. Predictably, the two men glared at the shorter, more slender detective.

“Look, you two,” Ken said in a reasonable, calming voice. “You can’t be doing this. It’s not right. You guys are our heroes. We look up to you.”

“You’d have to,” Detective Hutchinson said, a definite sneer in his voice. “You’re considerably shorter.”

“Oh, hey, now,” Ken admonished. “Let’s not pull out the height card, shall we? Look. You two have been together…like…forever. You’re the truest of true pairings. Everyone in fandom knows that. Of course, they don’t mix pairs in this fandom. They can’t. Because there’s no force in this universe strong enough to come between you, and everyone knows it.”

David stood in awe at Ken’s words. It was the most amazing combination of sincerity and utter bullshit he had ever heard the boy come up with, and he’d heard him spin some yarns in their months together.

From below them in the stairwell, the neighbor ladies let out a collective “Awwwwwww.”

“Come on, Hutch,” Ken started, then seeing the glint of danger in the older man’s eye, backed up and said instead, “that is…Detective Hutchinson, explain to your partner what you were really doing at the library. He deserves to know.”

For once, Hutchinson looked completely nonplussed. “I…I don’t know if I can…”

Starsky’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Sure you can, Hutch,” KimberlyFDR called from the bottom of the stairs. “He’ll be proud of you. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Hutchinson’s face turned beet red. He stared at the floor and actually shuffled his feet a little. David was mesmerized. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen this man in anything but a burning rage.

“I…uh…well, that is…y’see Starsky…I…” He swallowed audibly, then said in a low voice. “I wrote a story…about us. I was trying to figure out how to post it online, so everyone could read it…and know that we’re the One True and Only Pairing.” Detective Hutchinson glanced at the two younger detectives guiltily.

David felt his eyes well up with tears. Dammit, not now!

“But…but that guy in the pink shirt…” Starsky stammered.

“Oh,” Hutchinson said as if finally realizing who Starsky had been referring to. “That’s Godfrey. He’s one of the librarians. He was helping me look up stuff…about LJ-land. Which is what I was discussing with Kimberly in the laundry room. We were working on her laptop. She was uploading my e-zine onto the slash archive when you showed up. That’s why we were sitting so close together. She’s got a really small laptop!” Then Detective Hutchinson seemed to think of something. “But it’s not as small as his towel!” He jerked his thumb in Ken’s direction and his anger seemed to flair again.

“Hey, easy big fella,” Ken said soothingly.

“What is with this towel thing?” Starsky asked. “You keep bringing that up. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!”

“That’s cause you were pretty well in your cups, m’man,” Ken told Senior Starsky. He turned back to Detective Hutchinson. “Look, Boss, Starsky here is innocent. I was just trying to find the bath towels. It takes about four of those silly hand towels for a guy to get dry in this place. I figured someone had to have some bath towels stashed somewhere and if anyone would know it would be Starsky here. I just came out to ask him about it, when I realized how blasted he was. You just showed up at the wrong moment. And I bet he doesn’t remember any of it anyway.”

“Okay,” Hutchinson conceded. “I’m willing to buy into that.” But then he turned a narrowing gaze onto David.

The younger detective wondered if he could vault over 250 tightly packed women in the stairwell. Nah. He’d never get out of there alive. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

“But you can’t deny,” Hutch insisted, waving his finger in Starsky’s face, “that I caught you red-handed, fondling your mini-me’s leg! You looked like you were getting ready to do your famous pole vaulting routine right on the stairwell!”

David blinked. He had no idea Senior Starsky was into such a strenuous sport! And at his age. What a man!

Senior Starsky looked exasperated, and rubbed a hand over his face. “You bozo. You’re so blind crazy with jealousy you can’t even think straight.”

“Oh! If that isn’t the goose calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is!” Hutch shouted.

Ken wedged himself between them again. “Boys. Boys. Easy now. Starsky. Tell Hutch what you were really doing while fondling, I mean, grabbing, I mean…what the hell were you doing with my partner anyway?”

David rolled his eyes. It was so hard to keep Ken focused. He wondered for the hundredth time if they should look into some of those adult ADD medications.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Senior Starsky said to Detective Hutchinson. “C’mon, Hutch. Me doing the dirty dance with him? That’d be worse than doin’ my own brother! I mean, granted, he’s cuter than my brother, but really–it’d be like incest…or worse…like…self-cest…or recess or somethin’.”

“Oh,” Detective Hutchinson said in that haughty voice that drove David crazy, “like you’re not capable of making love to yourself?”

From the bottom of the stairwell, every woman in the place began giggling and trading information about certain videotapes they all seemed to have.

Senior Starsky waved his hand as if dismissing everything Detective Hutchinson was saying. “That’s the real me, Hutch, not a version of me that ain’t me but’s supposed to be me sorta but not the same. Really.”

Total silence reigned in the stairwell. David was struck dumb by the brilliance of the man. No wonder he was his hero.

Everyone else looked like Senior Starsky had spouted Urdu.

“Okay,” Ken said, leaping into the momentary pause. “You see, Detective Hutchinson, that’s a perfectly plausible answer!”

That seemed to make Hutchinson snap. “WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU DOING WITH HIM?”

“TEACHING HIM TO DRIVE THE FUCKING TORINO YOU SOLD HIM! MY BEST TORINO! MY SUNDAY TORINO!”

The two of them were nearly nose-to-nose, with Ken crammed between them. “Wait a minute! Hold it! Time out!”

“He was trying to show me how to shift it into overdrive!” David called out. “Honest! I swear! Cross my heart!”

From the very bottom of the stairwell, a slight female voice read out, “‘And there we stood, alone on the beach, watching the waves devour what had once seemed so important to us–our gold detective badges were resigned to the watery depths. But I knew at that moment that the only thing really important to me was the man standing by my side, my partner, my lover, my very soulmate, my Starsky. Together, we returned to my Venice Place apartment, and heard the echoing of the waves in the incredible passion that we shared.'”

Two hundred and fifty voices sighed as one, “Awwwwwwwwwww.”

David’s eyes welled with tears.

Detective Hutchinson’s face turned beet red.

Senior Starsky seemed stunned. “You–you wrote that…about us?”

“That’s why I was at the lie-berr…library. I was trying to upload it. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

From where he stood, David could see Senior Starsky’s eyes well with tears. Or maybe he just needed to blink the tears out of his own eyes. He couldn’t be sure.

“Here,” Ken said, handing David a tissue.

“Thanks, partner,” David said, blowing his nose. What were partners for?

“Will you read the rest of it to me?” Senior Starsky asked his partner.

“Sure.” Detective Hutchinson said softly. His awareness of his audience seemed to vanish as he stared into his partner’s eyes. “Come on.”

The two men moved shoulder to shoulder and walked off to their apartment.

As they drew closer to their door, they could hear Senior Starsky ask, “Are there some decent sex scenes?”

Detective Hutchinson’s answer was muffled behind their closing door.

Two-hundred and fifty women strained to hear it, but couldn’t. As one, they turned to Kimberly for the desired information.

Sadly, she shook her head. “Hutch wrote it. Closes the door every time. Starsky’s gonna kill him.”

A collective sigh of disappointment swept through the crowd.

“Hey, they’ll be in there making up a long time,” someone said. “We need to turn on the TVs!”

In five seconds, the entire hallway emptied as 250 women made a dash for their own apartments. David didn’t think it was possible for that many people to clear a space that quickly.

Suddenly, Ken gripped his arm and towed him frantically down the stairs. “Come on, man, we gotta move!”

“Huh?” David said, confused.

Ken nearly dragged him down the staircase and into their tiny “apartment”–really the storage closet for the Venice Place band’s instruments.

Huggy Bear–their Huggy Bear–was right where they’d left him, sitting on their couch in front of the small TV he’d brought them to while away the time here.

“You get it hooked up, man?” Ken asked.

“You know it, bro,” Huggy said, tossing some popcorn into his mouth. He passed the enormous bowl to Ken as he plopped onto the couch besides him. “I made us a lot. I figure they’ll be at this a while.”

David was baffled as he joined his partner and Huggy Bear on the couch. “At what? What are we watching?”

“Huggy said he could tap us into the special cable station here at Venice Place,” Ken explained. “You know, the one Flamingo said we couldn’t receive because of the special shielding for the instruments?”

“Lame security,” Huggy mumbled around the popcorn. “Easier to bust into than a cable box.”

“This is gonna be good, babe,” Ken assured David.

David settled back, and watched the small, but vivid TV screen. Was that a plasma set?

He blinked, suddenly realizing what he was seeing. “Hey! That–that’s Detective Hutchinson’s bedroom!”

“That’s right,” Ken and Huggy said in unison, then slapped palms.

“Got a feeling our boy over there’s gonna learn some things ’bout his hero he might never have imagined before,” Huggy said with a laugh.

“Education’s good for everyone,” Ken said, grinning.

David sat, eyes wide, mesmerized at the scene unfolding before him. He felt Ken’s arm steal around him from behind.

After a moment or two of watching, Ken shifted closer to him and voiced an admiring, “Hot damn, look at that!”

Then Huggy Bear said, “I didn’t think that move was even humanly possible.”

David said smugly, “Looks like we can all learn something from my hero, huh?” and then mentioned the concern he’d had since first hearing of what Huggy had done. “Er, this isn’t exactly legal, is it? And even if it were legal, it isn’t right. We shouldn’t be…holy shit! Look at that!”

His morals died a silent and quick death when faced with such raw eroticism.

As Senior Starsky and Detective Hutchinson made up one floor above the cramped band storage room, viewers throughout Venice Place settled in for a long winter’s…nap, comfortable in the knowledge that this make up session would fuel dozens of new fannish sex scenes over the long winter months to come.

Somewhere on the other side of the Internet, in a reality far, far away, Hutch’s epic was being eagerly downloaded by soon-to-be-disappointed slash fans. Already in LJ-land, the rants were being posted to f-lists as the love affair of the century was torn apart. It was only a matter of time before Senior Starsky would have to avenge his partner’s reputation on the Internet with an even bigger and better epic than Hutch and Me Get It On A Whole Lot, but for now, both, well, all four of our heroes had other things on their minds.

That would be a story for another time.

And another SHareCon.