The Deposition

Survival tag: If Hutch has to be deposed about the crash, Starsky’s going to be the one to do it.

Written in 2005. Unpublished.

K. Hanna Korossy is a prolific fanfiction writer who has written stories in multiple fandoms, including Starsky & Hutch. You can find more of her fan fiction at Archive of Our Own at this link and at fanfiction.net at this link.

Starsky opened the hospital door as softly as the knob and hinges would allow, and turned sideways to slip in through the smallest crack possible. The hallway sounds muted again as he nudged the door shut behind him. And smiled.

Hutch was sleeping in relaxed abandonment, jaw slack, the furrow of pain that had settled between his brows nearly smooth. His face was sunburned and peeling from two days of exposure, and his one hand that had strayed out from under the covers was scratched and bruised, but he was found, safe, sleeping comfortably. It was all Starsky had prayed for.

He walked over to the bed with silent steps, pausing for a moment to slip his fingers into the curled ones on the cover, judging their warmth. Almost back to normal, thank God. Hutch had burned for nearly forty-eight hours with a high fever and hallucinations, then slept fitfully through several more days of an energy-sapping low-grade temperature, while Starsky sat next to him worrying and praying and talking. Only the day before had Hutch finally stabilized, dropping into a dead sleep, and Starsky had gone home and likewise crashed. A few more days and maybe they’d both start feeling human again.

Not that Starsky was complaining. He pressed the lax fingers lightly before withdrawing his hand, and pulled his chair back up to the side of the bed. Being there, with Hutch looking like that, Starsky felt just fine.

He flipped the chair around, straddled it, then settled his chin on his arms to keep watch.

Sometimes it seemed like the awareness of your partner’s presence was a physical instinct, bypassing conscious thought. Although the nurse had said Hutch had slept through the night with barely a stir, within minutes Starsky could see his nose, then his forehead wrinkle. The brain underneath all that blond hair never stopped working, even when it was doped up and supposed to be resting, and Starsky shook his head fondly.

“Hey,” he whispered.

Hutch’s face turned toward him, eyes still closed, frown deepening. “Starsss?”

“Close enough.” Starsky reached out, carefully patting the covered stomach. It was one of the few places that wasn’t bruised beyond belief. “Just lie still, you’re kinda banged up right now. You’re gonna be fine, though. You thirsty?” He stood and poured some water.

Hutch took a careful breath and grimaced. “Hospital,” he murmured.

“‘Fraid so. Here, take a sip.” He offered the straw, and didn’t miss the thirst that flashed across the scorched face at the first swallow. The mind remembered dehydration long after the body had recovered from it. Starsky eased the straw back after a few swallows. “I’ll give you some more in a little bit, huh?”

“Thanks.” At least Hutch’s voice didn’t sound as rough anymore.

Starsky sat down again. “Do you remember what happened?”

A pause. Hutch’s eyes moved under the closed lids. “The car. Had an…accident. Sonny…”

“It was more than an accident, partner. You were pushed.”

Hutch finally squinted at him, more clear-eyed than Starsky had expected. “Trask?”

Starsky shook his head. “Trask was just the bait. Humphries took out a hit on ya, to keep you from testifying.”

Hutch’s eyes wandered up to the ceiling as he absorbed that. It was more than Starsky had planned to tell him so soon, but the man had a right to know why he’d almost died.

“You still got your leg,” he added gently.

He could see Hutch’s hand move under the covers to the limb in question, coated in plaster and suspended above the bed. Even out of his head with fever, he’d worried constantly about losing the leg. Now he just made a weary face. “I know, I can feel it.”

“You want me to get that pretty nurse? They’re probably gonna want to know you’re up.” Starsky made a move to rise.

Hutch grabbed for his hand, resting on the covers. “Not yet.”

Oh, yeah, no fear there. Starsky sat back down and eyed his partner, who looked away and closed his eyes again. As if that had ever worked with Starsky.

He thought for a minute, considering how he would have felt alone and injured and trapped under a ton of steel for two days. It wasn’t something he could bear to imagine very long. His imagination didn’t stretch far enough to know how Hutch had been able to stand it.

Starsky propped his chin on his arm once more. “Now that you’re awake, you know they’re gonna need a deposition.”

Hutch took a deep breath. That made him wince, too. “You already know what happened.”

“We’ve got most of the facts. Still haven’t heard your side of it, though — what it was like, what you heard, saw, felt. You know the DA’s gonna want the full story.”

He felt more than saw Hutch’s struggle. The eyes that finally peered at him were still bloodshot, probably only seeing him fuzzily. Lying face-up in the sun for two days played havoc with your vision. “It was…” Hutch’s jaw worked. “I don’t… Starsky, I’m really tired.”

Starsky paused a moment, nodded. “Why don’t you get some more sleep?” he said softly. “This can wait.”

That furrowed brow was back. “I’m sorry, I’m just…”

“Wiped out. Don’t apologize — you’re entitled. We’ll talk later.” He laid his hand on his partner’s middle again, feeling the stomach muscles flexing. Hutch was working hard underneath to keep the pain in check. Typical. “Take it easy,” Starsky soothed. “I’m gonna get the nurse to give you something, but I’ll be right back.”

Amazingly, Hutch almost smiled at him. “…lousy company,” he said, voice fading.

“You better be talking about you,” Starsky muttered back. His hand moved up to the blond hair, feeling the dampness of sweat under the fine strands. “I got nowhere else to be today, and you’re actually better company asleep than awake.”

“Ha, ha.”

It was breathless but it made him smile. “I’ll be right back,” Starsky promised again.

A terse nod. Starsky hurried.

But Hutch was sleeping when he returned with the nurse. She added the painkiller to the IV drip anyway and left, and Starsky slowly sank back into the chair and leaned against the back. The medicine took effect even in sleep, melting the lines of tension in Hutch’s face until he seemed to be resting with the same ease as when Starsky had first arrived.

He sighed. Small steps. The moments of normalcy almost made him forget how close Hutch had come to dying. He would need time, care, and a lot of patience. Lucky thing Starsky had an abundance of all three.

He would wait.

“You know, you really oughta live someplace with less stairs.”

Hutch just grunted, focused on balancing on one foot and two crutches.

Starsky cinched his arm a little tighter around his partner’s waist. “Ready for the next one?”

“Uh-huh.”

He pulled while Hutch hopped, and they gained another step. They were probably a sight, going up backwards with Hutch’s cast sticking out in front of them, but after several attempts, this was what had worked best. “Okay, we’ve only got, uh…” Starsky glanced behind him. “Five stairs left. You gonna make it?”

“I think I’ll camp out here.” The words were interspersed with gasps of air.

Starsky grinned. “You’d probably end up at the bottom with both legs broken.”

“Optimist.”

“Okay, you ready?”

They heaved again.

Sweat was rolling down Hutch’s face by the time they gained the landing, and Starsky wasn’t doing much better. He hung on to his partner with one arm, feeling him sway on weak and out-of-practice muscles, while Starsky felt for the key with his other hand. One twist of the lock, and he was leading Hutch inside the apartment, more dragging than supporting now.

“Bed or couch?”

“Couch.”

Starsky changed their direction. “You sure? Bed’s all set — I even changed the sheets for ya.”

“Enough beds. I want…sit up for a while.” His wheezing drowned out some of his words.

Starsky didn’t comment on that, or the fact Hutch had been sitting up the whole way over and could keep sitting up just as easily in bed. The man had earned a little indulgence.

Hutch let out a long breath as he sank onto the couch, as if he’d been holding it the whole way up. Starsky sympathized. He gently lifted the plastered leg up onto the couch, moving slowly so Hutch could swivel into a more comfortable position, then wiped the perspiration out of his own eyes with the back of his arm as he stood. “There, that wasn’t so bad, huh?”

“Speak for yourself.” Hutch’s sunburn had faded into an impressive tan, but he still managed to look washed out.

Starsky patted his partner’s shoulder before heading into the kitchen. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink. What’ll it be? I picked up some Coke, orange juice, and grape Nehi.”

“Grape Nehi?” Hutch squinted at him from the couch.

“It was on sale.”

“Oh. Doesn’t matter.”

Starsky fished out two Nehis and a bottle opener, and paused on the way out to disgorge a plastic bag full of medicine bottles from his jacket pocket onto the kitchen table. He rejoined Hutch in the living room and opened one of the bottles, reaching it out to the him before flopping into the easy chair next to the couch. He had the other bottle open and half gone before Hutch had even gotten to tasting his. Starsky laughed at the face he made. “Good stuff, huh? Put hair on your chest.”

“That would explain a lot,” Hutch muttered.

“What?”

“Uh, I just said it’s hot.”

“We’ve been keeping the windows open — you charbroiled something pretty bad while you were gone. It’s lucky you didn’t burn the place down.” Starsky watched his partner over the edge of the bottle as he took another swallow.

Puzzlement gave way to surprise, then chagrin. “I was cooking dinner.”

“Didn’t think you’d be gone that long, huh?” Starsky said quietly.

“Not two weeks, no.” Hutch fell silent, the soda clasped loosely in one hand. Starsky doubted he even realized he was rubbing at his hip with the other one.

Starsky leaned forward. “You ready to tell me what happened out there?”

Hutch’s gaze, fixed on something across the room, broke, and he gave Starsky a narrow look. “Why is that so important?”

“I told you,” Starsky said patiently. “The DA needs a deposition for the case. Dobey’s already breathing down my neck for taking this long.”

Hutch’s glare didn’t ease. “Maybe they changed the law while I was laid up, but last I heard, you needed both lawyers present for a deposition.”

Starsky shrugged one-shouldered. “There might be an official one later — all the DA wants for now is your side of the story. But I can get the lawyers out here if you want.”

“No, I…okay, fine. I was going out to meet Trask after he called and said he had some information.”

Without calling it in first, Starsky thought with a frown, but there would be time for that later. He just listened now, full attention on his partner.

“Uh, there was this truck on the road. I didn’t think anything about it until it rammed me. I tried to pull away, but it kept…” Hutch’s breathing was fast, a fresh sheen of sweat on his face, and he hadn’t even reached the accident yet. Starsky was considering intervening when Hutch suddenly shook his head. “Starsky, I don’t…I know it’s important, but I don’t want to go back there again.”

He was going to rub his hip raw soon, and Starsky set aside his bottle and took the restless hand instead and turned it gently over. The scabs on the fingertips from Hutch having tried to claw his way free, were healing nicely, but they still gave his hand a red, raw appearance. “I know it was bad,” Starsky said quietly. “And you probably don’t wanna ever think about it again. But it doesn’t work that way, you know that. It’s not just gonna go away. We still have to do our job and put Humphries behind bars for good, and for that we need you to go over it one more time.”

“I already do. Every night when I close my eyes, I’m back under that car again.” Hutch shook his head. “Except this time,” his voice turned ragged, “you don’t show up.”

So much for never going back there; distress had turned to horror in Hutch’s eyes, his tone. His hand had balled into a fist, and Starsky silently cursed himself for having overestimated his partner’s readiness, pushing him too hard. Starsky quickly slid over onto the edge of the couch. “Hey,” he said, then grabbed Hutch’s chin and turned it toward him when he didn’t respond. “Hey!”

Hutch blinked.

“I did show up. We’re partners, right? I’ll always show up.” Hutch was struggling back to the present, and Starsky’s grasp turned into a gentle rub of his jaw. “Nobody said you had to go back there alone, Hutch.”

The blue eyes wrenched shut, and slowly, slowly his breathing went back down to normal. “I can’t do this right now, Starsky,” Hutch finally said, weak-voiced.

“I know.” Starsky ruffled the blond hair, uncurled those tight fingers. “I know. I’ll just tell ’em they have to wait.”

“They’ll want to know why,” Hutch mumbled.

“You’re not embarrassed about this, are ya?” Starsky asked, frowning when Hutch winced away from him. “Hey, how long did it take for me to talk about what Simon Marcus’s goons did to me, huh? You ask me, you’re doin’ a great job.”

Hutch snorted softly. “You’re a little biased, Starsk.”

“So, what is that, cheating?” He nudged the hand that had managed to hold on to the bottle of soda. “Drink your Nehi.”

Hutch did, draining half the bottle before stopping. No grimace this time.

Starsky nodded his approval. “I’m gonna get you a blanket and some pillows, then we’ll see what’s on TV, okay?” A small nod. He stood, was nearly to the bedroom door before his partner’s call pulled him back. “Yeah?”

Hutch looked up at him with a small smile. “Thanks for the car.” The currents of the unspoken ran deep under the words.

Starsky smiled back. “Anytime.” He meant it.

They’d waited this long; they could wait a little longer.

“Starsky, do you have the robbery stats file?” Dobey didn’t even look up from whatever it was he was engrossed in.

“Uh, yeah, right here.” Starsky extracted a folder from the stack beside him and handed it across the desk to his boss. Then he glanced over at the third occupant of Dobey’s office, sitting next to him with his leg propped up on another chair. “How’re you doin’?”

“Mmm.” Engrossed in reading, Hutch was all eloquence.

Starsky and Dobey exchanged an amused look. “Let me know if you start getting tired, okay?” Starsky said.

“Yes, Mom.”

Starsky threw him a withering glance, and Hutch smiled into his file without looking up to see Starsky’s expression. Starsky was grinning inside, too. He’d been a little leery of this plan to work on the annual departmental report with Dobey when Hutch was only a few days out of the hospital, but it seemed to be just what the doctor had ordered. Hutch had dived in without hesitation, seeming to enjoy being busy and useful again.

“Captain?”

“Hutchinson,” Dobey answered distractedly.

“I think this one’s yours.” Hutch reached out a file but couldn’t stretch far enough. Starsky took it from him and completed the pass, glancing at the tab on it as he did: Food Budget. He looked at his partner, trying hard not to laugh, and saw Hutch’s eyes dance, too.

Dobey took the file without looking at it, setting it beside him. It was a few minutes later before he shuffled some papers, and then came the growl Starsky had been waiting for. “Hutchinson!”

“Uh, Cap’n,” Starsky was quick to play distraction. “What about these auxiliary department figures?” Protecting his partners, as always.

“What figures?” Dobey reluctantly tore his eyes away from Hutch, who seemed to have found something utterly fascinating to read.

“Do R&I and Requisitions go under Auxiliary?”

“No.” The captain’s ruffled feathers were slowly smoothing again. “R&I has its own budget. Requisitions and Dispatch go under Auxiliary.”

“Oh. Huh. Learn somethin’ new every day. Guess Bigelow and Mildred are gonna be glad they’re in the black for another year.” Starsky set the file aside into the appropriate stack and reached for another.

“Mildred.”

It was the distant tone that caught his attention, and Starsky froze in mid-motion, head swiveling toward his partner.

Hutch wasn’t looking at the file anymore, his head still bent but his eyes lifted to stare at the side of Dobey’s desk. Even from a bad angle, Starsky could see how unfocused they were. “I could hear Mildred on the radio,” Hutch murmured.

“Hutch, what — ”

Starsky’s hand shot up to silence Dobey, but his eyes never left Hutch. “What else did you hear?” he asked softly.

Hutch’s gaze rose to meet his. “You. I tried to answer but the radio was broken. You sounded mad.” A ghost of a smile twitched his lips.

Starsky didn’t feel like smiling. He leaned closer to Hutch. “I was mad. And scared. Nobody knew where you were, and the word on the street was, you were dead.”

“I was close,” Hutch whispered. “By the time you got there…”

“You ready to tell me what happened?” Starsky asked gently. At Hutch’s hesitation, he added, “We still got that deposition to do, remember?”

The blue eyes really saw him now. “I was scared, too.”

“Tell me about it.”

Starsky could hear Dobey’s chair creak as the captain rose, and the door behind Starsky quietly clicking shut a few seconds later, and was grateful to their boss for the privacy. And then his attention was fully absorbed by the person sitting in front of him, his good knee inches from Starsky’s. He rested a hand on it to keep Hutch grounded; his partner’s eyes had already turned inward again.

“I blacked out during the crash. I-I don’t know how long.” Hutch swallowed hard. “When I came to…”

Starsky opened the door to the hallway and stepped out. He shut the door and then paused, his hand on the knob, facing the door. And bowed his head.

“Starsky?”

He jumped and turned, surprised to see Dobey standing up from the bench by the door, the handful of papers he’d been reading now clenched forgotten in the captain’s hand. Starsky cleared his throat. “Sorry, sir, we didn’t mean t’kick you out of — ”

It was Dobey’s turn to shut him up with a single motion. “How’s Hutch?”

Starsky glanced at the door. “He’s beat. How long were we in there?”

“Nearly an hour.”

“That’s it?” Starsky whispered, then rubbed his face with a hand. “Look, I’m gonna get him some juice and the sunglasses I got in the car, and then I’m takin’ him home.”

Dobey nodded. “Sure. Tell him he’s welcome back whenever he feels ready.”

“Thank you, sir.” Starsky shook his head, still marveling. “What he went through out there… I got a heckuva partner, Cap’n.”

“I seem to recall your partner saying the same thing about you once or twice,” Dobey said knowingly, then frowned. “But what’s this about a deposition? I thought the DA said he had enough to take to trial without Hutch’s testimony.”

“He did.” Starsky looked at the office door again, smiled slightly. His eyes came up to meet Dobey’s. “There isn’t any deposition, Cap’n.”

It took a second, then Dobey’s expression cleared in understanding.

Starsky nodded a respectful parting, sidled past him, and hurried down the hall.

His partner was waiting for him.