Author's note: This story was inspired by the songvid of the same name (Here Without You, performed by 3 Doors Down), created by CindyR. With her permission, I followed her storyline closely, and also relied heavily on the song lyrics, but I also answered questions that I always wondered about in the many times I watched the vid: Why did Starsky and Hutch split up? What were they doing now, and where? What was keeping them apart when they were obviously so miserable?

I don't think you have to see the vid to follow the story, but I most strongly encourage you to see it, either before or after you read it. It's here:

http://www.shahrazad.net/~shvids/ (scroll down to find Here Without You)

Thanks go to KAM for helping me brainstorm for a direction to take, to Amberle for saving my butt, and to Nik for her always honest-and-true editing.

I most humbly thank CindyR for her support, and I dedicate the story to her. I hope I've done justice to her compelling vid.

Here Without You

by Rae (2008)

Starsky was late for work. That was one of the benefits of being in private practice. No one to bellow at him while tapping impatiently at their wristwatch. No need to invent excuses about all-nighters with nonexistent stewardesses. Flight attendants. Whatever he was supposed to call them now. He finished his coffee without tasting it, set the mug down, and went to stare out his window. That's what he did most mornings.

He rested an elbow on the bookshelf and looked down onto the street. If his clients knew their therapist was in worse shape than any of them were themselves, he'd probably lose his brand new shiny license. But all those years of going under cover still came in handy sometimes. What had he been thinking, trying to cram eight years of education into six, and all that time under cover. If anyone ever imagined what he and Hutch really meant to each other in those stolen moments between Starsky's classes and exams and dissertation research . . .

Had meant.

All those insane years of physical therapy and university, and learning how to live some kind of normal life with some kind of new identity. I was a cop. It was still hard to say it in the past tense.

I'm Dr. Starsky, how do you do? It sounded like he was introducing someone else, or like it was an affectation, a pickup line. He wasn't used to it yet; it was still too new. At his office it was easy: he just had to step into his Dr. Dave Starsky, Ph.D. (Detective third class, ret.) role, and act like a psychologist was supposed to act, and day after day, hour after hour, his clients bought it. The rest of the time, though, that didn't work so well.

He was clinically depressed. He knew it. He also knew how to hide it. He just didn't know how to live with it.

Psychologist, heal thyself.

A hundred days since the last time he'd seen Hutch's face. He felt old beyond time. Tired beyond exhaustion.

He thought about Hutch's face with that goofy grin, on that night when they first knew. Or at least the first night they admitted what they both already knew. Hutch had reached out to touch Starsky's cheek, and Starsky had reached out at the same moment to touch Hutch's, and that was all they'd needed to say. That night: the firelight on Hutch's hair, the shadows it made on their bodies, the warmth of it. Hutch's face under his fingertips. The taste of his skin, the weight of his body, the heat of his mouth.

He rubbed at his eyes.

Hutch, why did you do this? How could you do this? How many lies did you tell me? Tell yourself?

He had a client scheduled in less than an hour. He turned away from the window.

Damn it, Hutch. That wasn't strong enough. Okay, then, fuck you, Hutch. You walked away like I meant nothing more to you than—

Than what? Than who?

He found his coat on the back of the sofa where'd he flung it the night before and went to work.

••••••••••••••••••••

As soon as Starsky stepped through the doors of his office building, his cover persona kicked in. It was an almost physical sensation, like he had multiple personalities and the right one showed up when needed, and withdrew when the job was done. If he looked in a mirror, he wouldn't see anyone he knew. He'd see some guy with a good haircut in an pressed shirt and a striped tie—a fucking tie for godsakes—and a sport jacket and slacks. Slacks and loafers. He wouldn't recognize the guy. Nobody would. And who the hell could sprint after a perp down an alley in fucking slacks and loafers?

You couldn't sprint after anyone anywhere even if you were wearing blue adidas, Doc. When are you gonna accept that?

He took the stairs for the exercise, stopping as always on the second floor landing to get his breath, to wait out the stabbing pains in his left side. When no one else was in the stairwell, he sometimes pulled himself up the last flight by the handrail. He never took the elevator, though. It was his last stand against his limitations.

He took a moment to catch his breath and take off his too-heavy shearling jacket, then stepped out of the stairwell into the hall just outside his small suite. His first client was already sitting in the waiting area reading a magazine. She looked up at him blankfaced, then smiled and stood up. He would have liked a few moments to put his coat down, call his answering service, collect his thoughts, get into character, but he was the one who was late. So he smiled back, apologized, unlocked his door and pushed it open for her. He gestured to her to sit, put his briefcase down, hung up his coat, all the while making small talk about the February cold snap, and not listening to her replies. He pulled her chart out of the still-nearly-empty file cabinet, and found a pen in his desk drawer.

She settled into her usual spot on the far end of the couch, and as always, she took one of the green pillows and held it in front of herself like a barrier. It took her half of every session to feel safe enough to set it back down beside her. Starsky took his usual place in the dark leather chair opposite her end of the couch, and, opening her chart, noted the date and time.

"Well, Kim," he said, "how was your week?"

He listened to her talk, waited through her silences, nodded his encouragement, offered interpretations, suggested some things to focus on until their next session, showed her out the door, made his notes, stepped out to the hall for his next client, did it all over again. And then again for the one after that.

At lunchtime he called his service, learned he had an extra hour free thanks to a cancellation, thought of all the paperwork he could get done in two hours, and when the two hours were up, found he'd spent them staring out the window at the street below.

Why am I here without you, Hutch? How the hell did we let this happen? He wondered where Hutch was at that moment, what he was doing. Are you thinking of me now? Did he ever think about all the miles between them? Did he ever dream of Starsky's face? Oh, God, Hutch. At least you're still with me when I dream.

The trouble was, he dreamed all the time. Except when he was with a client. It was the only time he could climb out of his own lonely mind.

His last client of the day—of the week—was a new referral from Dobey. A detective from Homicide, no one he knew. He drank some water, opened up a new blank chart, went to the door, looked out into the hall. At first he thought no one was there, that the new guy hadn't shown up after all, or had shown up and then lost his nerve and split. But then he saw someone standing by the window near the stairs, staring out into the street. A tall man, broad-shouldered. Blond. Starsky felt a surge in his gut.

"Hutch?" He took a step forward, then faltered and stopped. His throat closed.

The man turned away from the window, out of the light.

"Are you Dr. Starsky?" the man said. "I'm Detective Sullivan. Daniel." He approached, his hand out. He had brown eyes. "Dan."

Starsky shook his hand. "Call me Dave. Come on in, Dan." He swallowed, took a couple of breaths, and followed Dan into the office.

Dan stood in the middle of the room for a moment, looking around. "Nice." He examined Starsky's retirement ceremony photo, his framed watercolors. His diplomas. "I thought it would look like an interrogation room or something." He went to the bookshelf, touched a leaf on one of the plants. "It's like a living room." He turned around, looked at his feet. "I didn't want to come. I almost left."

Starsky nodded. "That's exactly what I said the first time I went to the see the department shrink. I'm not as pretty as she was, but why not give me a chance anyway? I'd like to try to help."

"Help." Dan made a sound in his throat. "You can't help me."

"Have a seat anyway. I'll give you my spiel, and then you can decide what you want to do."

"Like I got a choice. Dobey said I had to see you, or get my ass parked behind a desk for the next twenty years."

Starsky could practically hear Dobey's voice.

Dan slumped into the chair Starsky usually sat in, so he took the matching one opposite. He didn't often look at the room from that angle. It seemed strange, out of balance. From there he could see the back of the photo on his desk, the one Huggy had taken of Hutch proving he could still pick Starsky up. He looked back at Dan and blinked away the memory of that day. Why did he keep the picture? Maybe he should put it in a drawer.

He waited a few moments to give Dan a chance to talk if he wanted to, and when he didn't, Starsky began his stock intro. His background, training, theoretical approach. Insurance. Cancellation policy. Confidentiality. And because he knew why Dan was there, he also told him without emotion why he'd left the force.

"But you survived." Dan stared at him like he thought Starsky should be ashamed for being alive.

"Yes."

"My partner . . . his name's Patrick . . ." Dan stopped, and his hands drew together like they were magnetized. "His name was Patrick."

"I'm sorry, Dan." Starsky leaned forward. "I'm so sorry."

"What the hell are you sorry for? It wasn't your fault."

"No. Was it yours?"

"You know it was."

"No, I don't. Tell me what happened."

"I . . . it was . . . shit." He sat back. "Hey, you're good."

"Not that good. You didn't even start."

"I don't know where to start. What to say." He drew his arms tight across his body, pressed his legs together. Lowered his chin.

"Well, how about if I tell you what I already know, and you can fill in the blanks."

Dan didn't look up, but he gave a small nod. Starsky didn't really know much at all about what had happened to Dan's partner other than what he'd read in the papers, that Patrick had been shot and had died in the street before the paramedics had arrived.

"You were in foot pursuit," Starsky said, inventing, "and split up, right?"

"Yeah. Fucking Dickie Benson, a lowlife we'd been after for weeks, and we finally nailed his ass. He went out the back window. Fucker thought he could outrun us."

"So Patrick went out the window and you went out the front—"

"No, I went out the window and down the fire escape and Trick shouted something at me. I didn't hear what he said." Dan rubbed at his face. "I didn't even hear what he said."

Starsky stayed quiet, giving him time. When he finally looked up, Starsky said gently, "Then what happened?"

Dan closed his eyes, then opened them again wide, unblinking, like he didn't want to see what he was describing. "I ran down the alley. I heard a shot. I shouted for Trick, but he didn't answer. I kept yelling for him, but he never answered me. I couldn't breathe. I think I already knew . . . I came out of the alley, and he was . . . he was . . ."

"He was down."

Dan's eyes snapped open. "Yeah, he was down. It was all I could see, just him on the sidewalk, nothing else. There was nothing else there but him." He swallowed. "Benson took off. I let him go. I just let him go."

"What else could you have done?"

"I don't know. Trick was down, and I didn't give a shit what happened to Benson." He looked inward again. "I think I fell onto my knees. Next to Trick. I don't know, I don't remember. Someone must have called for an ambulance, but it wasn't me. His eyes. He blinked twice. I knew what he was trying to tell me. He wanted me to go after Benson. But there was blood everywhere. I couldn't leave him." He looked at his hands, turning them over and over. He rubbed them on his thighs, looked at them again. "I couldn't leave him."

Starsky cleared his throat, and tried to breathe past the sudden acceleration of his own heart. He'd blinked twice at Hutch, too. He'd never remembered that before. Get him, he'd tried to say. Go. Hutch had dropped down beside him, and all Starsky remembered after that was his overwhelming relief that Hutch hadn't done as he'd asked.

"I think he was glad you stayed with him."

"Your partner, he stayed with you?"

"I told him to go, too, and he stayed." Self-disclosure. Frowned upon, but sometimes it was therapeutic. But for who? Cop to cop—it was a different ballgame.

"I thought I was letting him down. I let him get shot, and then I didn't get the guy who did it."

"You didn't let him get shot any more than my partner let me get shot." And yet, Hutch had blamed himself just as much as Dan did. It kind of came with the job. "A bad guy shot Patrick, and your partner wouldn't blame you any more than I blamed my partner. If you'd gone out the front instead, it would have been you. And I know you—"

Dan looked straight at Starsky, into his eyes. "You don't know anything." His face reddened, and his eyes glimmered. He blinked hard and shook his head. "You don't know."

"Tell me, then."

"I . . . can't." He pulled his arms in again. He looked like he was trying very hard not to bolt.

"It's okay, it's okay. You don't have to tell me anything unless you want to." Starsky looked down at the folder on his lap. He closed it up and set it on the small table between the chairs. "Look, let's just forget about all this psych shit. Let's just talk."

Dan put his hands back down on his knees. "I'm sorry, man. It's just that I don't know you, you know?

"I do know. But you and me are the same. I've been where you are, and I've been where Patrick was. The only difference between him and me was a fraction of an inch. A split second." He stopped, trying to find a way in. "How long were you partners?"

"A little over a year. We knew each other a long time though. Since the academy. He was, I don't know, beautiful. He was beautiful." He swiped at his eyes, one and then the other. "We had this thing, this instant thing, like we knew each other right away."

We're more alike than you know, Danny boy.

"You loved him."

Dan froze. "I—"

"Remember what I told you before? You can say anything to me, anything at all. Nothing you tell me goes anywhere. I'm not even taking notes." He pointed at the abandoned folder.

"Unless I tell you I want to kill myself, right? Or someone else."

"Do you?"

"I knew you'd say that."

"Yeah. So do you?"

"Honestly, if I found myself alone with Benson, I don't really know that I wouldn't kill him, not without Trick there to stop me. But myself? No. That's not for me."

"I'd feel the same way in your shoes. And have."

"You never lost a partner."

"No." Not the way you mean, anyway.

"I dream about Trick all the time. I tell him how life's so overrated. He tells me to pull myself together. That he's fine and I should let him go."

"My partner told me once that it's always worse for the one left behind."

"He was right. How long am I going to feel like this?"

I don't know. A hundred days? A thousand? I don't know. "I think it gets better as we go. We find new ways to think about them, to live without them." It sounded good in theory.

"We?"

"Everyone."

Dan looked disappointed. Starsky knew he'd let him down in some fundamental way, that man to man—cop to cop—he should have told him "we" had really meant "me," but there were boundaries. Standards of conduct. He hadn't fallen apart enough to abandon all his training.

"How does 'everyone' do it, then?"

Starsky heard bitterness in Dan's voice. "How have you made it this far?"

"I don't know. I don't even remember most of the past three months. It's been a hundred days since he . . . since the last time I saw his face." He turned away, to the window. "I keep thinking I see him. On the sidewalk. In a passing car. Everywhere I go, he's there."

A hundred days.

"Death doesn't take away your love." Neither does distance. "It gets hard sometimes, but nothing can take away what you had with him."

Dan was silent for so long that Starsky had to struggle not to let his mind drift. But finally Dan looked back at him, away from the window. The low sun's rays cast his hair in gold, and for a moment he saw the man as Patrick might have seen him. It was the way Starsky always saw Hutch. Had seen him.

"He's gone, isn't he?" Dan's hands began to shake. "He's dead. I've never said that before." He looked at Starsky, his eyes like distant black holes. "And I'm here without him. How did that happen? I don't know how this happened."

Starsky wanted to reach out to him, take him in his arms, rock him like a child. Tell him he'd be okay. That someday it would just be something bad that had happened a long time ago.

That's what you want for yourself, you moron. You want someone to hold you and rock you, to tell you that you'll be okay. Ain't gonna happen, pal. Pull yourself together. At least Hutch isn't dead. But you have to let him go.

What if I can't?

How could he help this man when he couldn't even help himself? What could he possibly offer him? Well, there was still one thing. He didn't even need a fancy degree for it.

"Tell me what Patrick was like. Would you do that?"

Dan began to tell him, and Starsky listened.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••

By the time Starsky left his office, it was almost dark. He stopped outside the stairwell, and, for the first time, turned to the elevator instead. It was a kind of defeat. One among many. He loosened the damned tie and pressed the down button.

The elevator had a glass outer wall. He'd never noticed that. He rode down, hands in his pockets, staring out at the last of the sun as it set behind the Bay City skyline. There was some kind of metaphorical cliché there, something about slowly sinking to the depths, hitting bottom. There was nowhere to go but up. He hoped.

At least he still had the other love of his life waiting for him. The Torino, parked facing out—a habit he'd never bothered to break. But the car was old and getting senile, even with the new engine transplant Merle had given it. Soon he would have to face letting her go, too.

He patted the hood as he walked around the front end. "Well, it's finally Friday, and tonight, girl, it's just you and me." He opened the door and climbed in, his exhausted joints creaking in a duet with the near-shriek of the door's hinges. There was probably a metaphor there, too, but he was too tired to pursue it.

He left the garage and made his way onto the 405, but twenty minutes later he suddenly realized he'd missed his exit. He looked up at the next marker. Hell. He was almost to Venice Boulevard. Jesus, Starsky. What the fuck are you doing? He took the exit, meaning to turn around and head back toward home, but instead he found himself driving up Venice toward Ocean Ave. He hadn't consciously meant to go there. It was like the car was following a well-known path all on its own. Then he realized he was driving like a maniac, compulsively searching the faces on the sidewalk, in the cars, instead of watching the road. He knew his behavior was crazy. He wasn't going to find Hutch on this street, or anywhere else in Bay City. Why did he keep looking for him?

Flashes of memories one after another made it even harder to watch the traffic.

Hutch . . . help . . .

I'd give you my boots . . .

Starsky! You're awake!

Oh, yeah, oh God, Starsky, that's right, like that . . .

He scrubbed at his face with one hand. How was he supposed to get through this? Maybe if he looked at it a different way, reframed it.

He turned south on PCH. He could head west on 90 and get back on the 405 and be home in half an hour.

And then what?

The sign for Route 90 loomed and then disappeared behind him. You crazy son of bitch, you don't know what the hell you're doing anymore. There were headlights ahead, huge, and too high. Red lights and green, revolving, flashing. A plane, lifting off right over his head. A few seconds later he heard the roar of its engines. The roaring didn't stop after the plane had passed. It was in his own ears, in his head. He turned right onto West Century, and drove another mile or so until it dead-ended and he could go no farther. Bay City International Airport. Long term parking, domestic flights.

So, Dr. Freud, what would you have to say about a man who drives himself straight to the airport, and doesn't know he's doing it?

I vould say, Dr. Starsky, zat zis man has been very, how you say, stupid, yes, for a very long time.

And I would say, Dr. Freud, that I concur with your diagnosis one hundred percent.

TWA had a flight to O'Hare departing in less than an hour. It was already boarding. Did he wish to check any baggage? I got more baggage than all your planes could ever carry. But all he had with him was a heavy shearling jacket, a wallet full of credit cards, and the keys to an ancient Ford Gran Torino.

In his slacks and loafers, he sprinted for the gate.

Hutch stayed late at work. Only the junior lawyers were still in, trying to pad out their billables. Even on a Friday night, work was more important to these kids than having a life. Families could wait. They had no other interests, just the work.

Hutch wished he could focus like that. Like he used to.

I had a life. I lost it.

No, Hutchinson, you threw it away.

He looked at the file cabinet that masqueraded as an antique mahogany sideboard. The light from the glass-shaded floor lamp was enough to let him see the framed photo on it—one of only two personal items he'd brought to this office—the one Huggy had taken when Hutch had bet him half a buck he could still pick Starsky up. He didn't know why he kept the photo. Maybe he should put it in a drawer. And that phone, that old black rotary phone. Everyone who came in commented on it. Picked it up to see if it worked. It didn't, but that wasn't why it was there. It was only a useless link to a whole lot of memories.

Did he think if he kept the telephone nearby that maybe one night it would ring again? It wasn't even plugged in.

Hutch . . . help . . .

Nobody here called him Hutch. The men he worked for and the ones who worked for him called him Kenneth. His secretary, his assistant—whatever he was supposed to call her now—called him Mr. Hutchinson.

He turned away from the picture and went around the desk to his chair, meaning to make some last calls, check on the investigators who were still out in the field. He had some paperwork to finish. A couple of hours more and he could go home.

And then what?

Maybe he'd actually work on getting his new apartment fixed up this weekend. Play some music. Hang the rest of his watercolors. Try to make it feel like he actually lived in it. Most of his stuff from Venice Place was still in boxes down in the basement of his fancy Lake Shore Drive highrise. There was a metaphor there somewhere—the whole of his life in Bay City packed away out of sight, buried at the lowest level of the structure that was supposed to provide him with a sense of home. It didn't feel like home. He wasn't sure it ever would. Maybe if he took his brand new bed down into that storage locker, down there with the memories, maybe there he could at least dream about Starsky. At least there maybe they'd still be together, if only in his dreams.

He wondered what Starsky was doing. Probably home by now, maybe getting ready to go out for the evening.

Are you thinking about me? Do you think about me at all? I'm here without you, Starsky, and I think about you all the time. This whole thing, this job, this city. The people. I'm sorry, Starsky. I'm so sorry. I don't know how I let this happen. Why I made this happen.

The phone on his desk rang and made him jump.

"Detec—" Shit. "Uh, Hutchinson here."

It was one of his investigators calling in from his car. Hutch listened to the report, made some notes, thanked him, hung up. He wished he cared about the case. About any of the cases. Nothing he did helped any of those people. Everything he did just caused some unknown defendant some big-ass trouble. He wasn't helping anyone other than the fat cats upstairs who raked in the bucks. And he was no better. He had on a three-hundred-dollar suit and black Italian loafers, and a silk tie whose cost alone could have fed a family of six. A fucking tie, for godsakes. And a salary and perks that not that long ago he and Starsky would have despised as decadent and meaningless.

This was a big mistake, Starsky. One big mistake in a long line of them.

I think about you all the time, buddy. Anywhere I go, anything I do. I keep thinking I see you on the sidewalk, in a car. Everything I know is gone and it gets harder every day. How long am I going to feel like this?

He was a mess. Maybe he should find a good shrink.

For what? For some kind of Starsky surrogate to pat you on the shoulder and tell you it'll be okay and you'll feel better soon?

He suddenly thought that if Starsky had died on the floor of the Parker Center garage, by now he'd be over the loss, it would just be something bad that had happened to him years ago, like Dobey losing his partner. Dobey had always talked about Elmo with regret, but not with pain. If Starsky had died that day, none of the rest of it—of what they'd become together—would ever have happened, and the loss by now would be some small ache at the back of Hutch's heart, a secret ache that he'd long-since learned to live with.

I'm Mr. Hutchinson, how do you do? . . . I used to be a cop . . . My partner's name was Starsky.

He rubbed at his eyes.

Are you completely and utterly insane? You'd wish him dead? You'd give up everything you had with him just so you wouldn't be feeling like the world's biggest piece of shit right now? You did this, not him. You deserve everything you're getting now. He's not dead, but you have to let him go.

What if I can't?

His assistant knocked and stuck her head in without waiting for him to answer. For a second he couldn't think of her name. Oh, it was Yvonne. She looked like an Yvonne.

"It's just past six, Mr. Hutchinson. Okay if I head out?"

"Yes, of course. Have a good weekend, Yvonne."

If she said anything else, he didn't hear it. He stared at the stack of files on the desk next to the computer terminal. They meant nothing to him. He sat there, unmoving, and watched the memory of that last night play itself again inside his head . . .

"What is this," Starsky said. He held out a letter. "You were gonna tell me about this when?" He'd unbuttoned his shirt and Hutch couldn't take his eyes off the invitation it offered. The scars were faded now, almost invisible.

"Tomorrow. I was going to tell you tomorrow." Then why had he brought that letter, left it out where Starsky might see it? Would have to see it.

"How long have you known about this?"

"Does it matter?"

"Are you serious?" He brandished the paper in Hutch's direction, and then began to read bits of it out loud. 'We are pleased to learn that you have accepted the position of Lead Investigator with our firm . . . Enclosed is your copy of the contract . . . We look forward to welcoming you next week . . .'" Starsky threw the paper at Hutch, and glared into his eyes as it drifted to the floor. "You son of a bitch. This is your idea of a weekend getaway? You take us to some goddamn fancy hotel and then what? You were gonna wine and dine me? Fuck me all night and then tomorrow morning with the coffee and the pancakes you were just gonna say 'oh by the way, see ya, buddy.'" He stood in the middle of the room and looked around at the lavish furnishings, the table set for two, the candles. He turned back to Hutch, his eyes dilated, stark and cold. "That law firm is in fucking Chicago, Hutch." Then his shoulders dropped and his eyes filled. "You're leaving. Why would you do this?"

Hutch couldn't stand the look on his face, the pain in his eyes. He could almost see the beat of Starsky's heart under his skin. If he reached out he could touch the spot, feel the pulse. He wanted to feel the beat of Starsky's heart. He turned away.

"I thought it would be better for both of us."

"No, you thought it would be better for you. You know that isn't what I want."

Hutch turned back to him, fast, and pointed a finger at him. "You want a goddam picket fence and a dog and, and, and a wife. You want to work all day screwing around inside people's heads and come home to a wife and kids and a goddam fucking dog."

"Jesus, Hutch, no! It's just an old dream I used to have. I think about that sometimes, but it's not what I want anymore. I want, I thought I wanted what you want."

"What's that, exactly? Separate apartments? Taking dates to Christmas parties? Trying to find an hour free at the same time once a week if we're lucky? Lying every day of our lives?"

"Things have changed, Hutch. We don't gotta do that anymore. No one cares anymore."

"You know that's not true. As long as I was still on the force, you know that wasn't true."

"And you couldn't think of a single way to deal with that except by moving two thousand miles away from me?" He pulled out one of the chairs by the dinner table and sat heavily on it. "This has nothing to do with any of that, does it?" He looked up. "You've lied to me, haven't you? For how long, Hutch?"

"I didn't lie to you."

"What do you call that?" Starsky kicked a foot toward the paper on the floor. "Every day since you applied for that job has been a lie."

Hutch's own pulse increased. He heard a strange roaring sound in his ears. "You're the one lying. Not just to me. To yourself." He wouldn't do it, wouldn't say it, the truth of why he had to go. But Starsky was no fool. Not usually anyway.

And Starsky proved him right. "This is about Angie, isn't it?"

Yeah, that's exactly what it's about. "No. This is about you and me."

"So was Angie. I thought we were done with that."

"You were done with that."

"And you weren't? What else was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do? How many times could I say I was sorry? It happened. Shit like that happens. We fought through it. It was three years ago, Hutch. I've been yours all this time. There's no one else. You have to let it go."

"What if I can't?"

"I did it. I did it a long time before there even was an us. Why can't you?"

"Oh my God. You can't compare Kira to Angie."

"I don't see any difference. Shit happens. We deal with it. We won't do the same shit again."

His eyes. His eyes will take me down.

"I don't think I can look at it the same."

"You go then. You go do what you want. I guess I've been very stupid for a long time. Stupid and blind. Oh, wait, no. That was you."

"Starsky, don't—"

"What, you want me to stay here tonight? Have some mind-blowing break-up sex? Kiss you goodbye in the morning?"

"Come with me, then."

"What?"

"Come with me. To Chicago."

Starsky stood up fast and the chair fell behind him. "You wait until I'm done with rehab, done with school. I start building a practice and my life is exactly what I want it to be, and you say nothing all those years until we finally have time for what we wanted all along." It looked like every muscle in his body vibrated. He put a hand over his heart like he was trying to keep it inside where it belonged. "What is this really about? Huh? What are you afraid of? Of finally getting what you wanted?" He was breathing too fast. "Or maybe—how could I not see this—maybe you never really wanted . . . me."

"Oh, God. No, that isn't it. I'm not afraid of anything. I thought, if I left, you could have—" Your dream. Your picket fence. Where would I have stood in that dream of yours?" I just thought it was better this way."

"What way? Get as far away from me as you could? Why now?" His eyes narrowed. "Because now I'm free of all the stuff that kept us apart before. It was fine when I was only around for the occasional fuck, but now—that's it, isn't it? All that time I thought we were . . . something else. It was all a lie, wasn't it?"

"No! Starsky, no. It wasn't. I wanted us to be—"

"What? You wanted us to be what?" He turned his back and when he spoke, his voice was flat and bitter. "How many Angies did you have, Hutch? How many nights when I was busting my ass to get done so we could finally have a life? Why did I think you'd just sit home alone and wait for me?"

"No. It wasn't like that. There was no one else. Not for me."

Starsky turned to him so fast that Hutch took an instinctive step back. He saw that Starsky knew it was just one more lie.

"It is me, then, isn't it?"

"Please, let me try to explain—"

"No." He looked around the room, at the table, at his jacket flung on the bed. "I think you've already explained everything perfectly well." He picked up his jacket. "Have a good life out there in fucking Chicago." He crossed to the door in three fast strides and yanked it open, and threw one last look into Hutch's eyes. "See ya, buddy." The door slammed behind him with a heavy solid thud.

Hutch stood there, stunned. What else had he really expected though? A bon voyage party? He went to the door and put a hand up to it, they way he'd wanted to put his hand on Starsky's heart. He thought he could feel its beat through the door. Was Starsky still out there? Was he standing there, his hand on the panels just on the other side, waiting for Hutch to come to his senses? Only inches separated them. Starsky was right: Hutch was the fool.

He opened the door.

"Starsk, you're right. I was—"

But the hallway was empty.

Hutch looked up. His back ached and he stretched, trying to ease the cramp. It was after eight. He'd been sitting there staring at nothing for two hours.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Hutch's bedroom was too dark, too silent. He still missed the sounds of people just below his windows, the lights from the streetlamps and the late-night restaurants and pubs. The ocean and the beaches. Lake Michigan was no substitute for Venice Beach.

To be or not to be.

This life is overrated. Even Hamlet thought so.

To sleep, perchance to dream.

If only he could sleep. And dream.

A hundred days. Thirteen weeks. Twenty-four hundred hours. One hundred and forty-four thousand minutes. Eight million six hundred and forty thousand seconds.

He blinked in the dark.

Two thousand one hundred and fifty miles. How far was that in kilometers?

Fuck it.

He turned on the light and squinted at the clock. One fifteen. He had an early tennis game with one of the senior partners in less than six hours. And by then it would be a hundred days, six hours, thirteen minutes, and twenty-seven seconds. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine.

Face it, Hutchinson. You got exactly what you asked for, and he made it pretty damn clear you were welcome to it. It's time to let him go.

I can't.

He flung off the sheets and got up, thinking of late night talk shows, of dusting off his guitar, of starting one of the few books he'd bothered to unpack. Maybe he could find an old Bogart movie running on some local station. Instead, he went to the window and pulled back the filmy drapes. What was he looking for? There was nothing to see. Nothing he cared about, anyway.

He began to wander around the apartment that would never feel like home, his thoughts flitting in and out too fast to make any sense of them. Back to the window—maybe Starsky would come flying up Lake Shore Drive in the Torino, leap out, race up the stairs.

His hands were sweaty. He rubbed them on the thin cotton of his new sleepwear. It didn't make much difference. He looked out at the almost-empty street.

He'll never come to you. You made sure of that.

Three a.m. He was wearing a path in the new carpet. He went back to the window.

He's not going to come here. If you want to fix this, you have to go to him.

It took Hutch less than ten minutes to get dressed, to gather his overcoat, his wallet, his keys. He didn't need any luggage. Everything he needed was already there where he was going.

He opened the door.

The only car the rental agent had was a beige '86 Ford LTD. Starsky couldn't believe it. If he were still superstitious, he'd have considered it an omen. Good or bad, though, that he couldn't speculate on. The yawning attendant brought it around, handed him a complimentary map, and woke up fast when Starsky handed him a twenty and told him to keep the change.

The LTD wasn't all that different from the Torino. It handled better, though, and the heater worked, and it actually stopped when he hit the brakes.

Could they have stuck the airport any farther out? An hour to get into the city. He was glad it was two in the morning. And not snowing. If he'd had to contend with traffic and weather he might have ended up in Minneapolis or some damn place. Fucking Chicago, Hutch? What were you thinking?

Lake Shore Drive. Once off the freeway it wasn't hard to locate Hutch's building, though he'd had to track down a telephone booth with a new—and intact—phone book to get the address. There were spaces out front marked Visitor. That's what I am now. A visitor. His flight instinct kicked on and revved up his adrenaline. He wiped his palms on the front of his slacks. It didn't help much.

He got out of the car and looked up. Standing that close to it, he couldn't even see the top of the building. Hutch's place was on the seventeenth floor. Starsky thought he would probably take the elevator. He went in through the double glass doors.

A uniformed guard sat behind a big curved desk that held a bank of security monitors. He was reading a People magazine, but he set it down immediately when Starsky came in. He gave Starsky the eye, taking in his rumpled slept-on-a-plane appearance, but he was ultracourteous and alert, even at three in the morning. Starsky had meant to just show up at Hutch's door. He hadn't counted on a moat and a portcullis.

"May I help you, sir?"

Sir? Jeeze, Hutch, you got a butler, too? He didn't think trying to bribe the guy would work too well.

"I'm Dave Starsky, here to see Ken—"

"Oh, yes, Dr. Starsky."

Huh? Sure, he was tired, but that just didn't compute.

"Uh, yeah."

"Mr. Hutchinson has left standing orders to send you right up if you should visit."

Mr. Hutchinson has done that, has he?

"Well . . . uh . . ."

The guard smiled. "Apartment 17C. The elevators are right over there." He pointed to his right. "Have a nice visit, Dr. Starsky." Incurious, he went back to reading his magazine.

"Uh. Yeah, thanks." Not your most articulate communication, Dr. Starsky. He crossed the marble-floored lobby and pressed the button. The doors opened almost immediately. No glass wall, though. The elevator carried him up without any sense of motion. It was better than going down. He hoped.

The lift stopped smoothly, and the doors opened with a genteel ping. He stood there, hands motionless at his sides, unable to take that step out into the hall. Maybe he couldn't do it. Maybe he should just head back down to the depths, because maybe up here on the seventeenth floor there was a lot more, and worse, below the lowest point he'd ever sunk to before. He didn't want to find out.

Dan had told him about Patrick, about his life and his death. He'd said, "I'd give anything, anything, to have one more minute with him." Starsky had listened, and had understood somewhere way down in the depths that he had the chance to do what Dan couldn't.

I have to see Hutch one more time. Even if it's only for a single minute. I'll never be okay if I don't.

The doors started to close and he put a hand out to hold them open. He could feel himself breathing faster, deeper—the body's response to danger, to make him ready to run if he had to.

He stepped out onto the tasteful gray carpet and peered down the gently-lit hall at the nearest doors. Opposite was 17D. Left or right? A fifty/fifty guess.

Maybe Hutch wasn't even there. It was Friday night—why had he assumed Hutch would be home? And alone.

Oh, God. What am I doing here? He turned right. The next door down was 17C. A small brass frame held a printed placard: Hutchinson.

That roaring sound again in his ears, and the beat in his chest a fast counterpoint. He took a deep breath and laid his hand flat on the door, resting it on the panel. He didn't know what he was doing. Maybe he thought he'd feel Hutch on the other side, that he could feel what was in his heart. He closed his fingers and lifted his hand away to knock. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life.

Before he touched it, the door opened.

Hutch had had the wind knocked out of him more than once, but he'd never experienced such a complete shutdown of his entire life support system. In the seconds while he stood in his doorway without a heartbeat, without a breath, all he thought was that the planet had finally shifted off its axis and spun him out into the vacuum of space, unprotected.

But not alone.

"Starsky?"

Starsky had his arm raised to knock. It stayed in position, frozen there. Starsky nodded once, like he knew Hutch wasn't sure he believed what his brain was telling him.

Hutch reached out to touch his face, and at the same moment Starsky reached for his. Their hands met, touched and clasped, and then they were pressed tight together, all the miles that had separated them compressed to nothing. Hutch held onto him, afraid he wasn't really there, afraid he would go. But he could feel the race of Starsky's heart right next to his own, feel Starsky's face under his fingertips, the warmth of his body . . . the heat of his mouth . . .

He pulled away and saw Starsky's exhausted eyes. "Oh, God, Starsk, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Starsky put his head back and blinked at him. "I'm sorry, too." He lifted one eyebrow. "Gonna let me in?"

Hutch stepped backward, Starsky still tight in his arms. Starsky kicked the door shut behind him and they stood there together in the dark apartment, shaking and silent.

Starsky finally spoke, his words muffled in the collar of Hutch's coat. "I can't let you go. I tried."

Hutch pressed the side of his face to Starsky's. "I thought I'd never see you again. I kept thinking, if I could just have one minute, so I could make you see how sorry I am, maybe . . ." He took a breath. "I was going to see you. To tell you. I opened the door and you were there." He felt Starsky's arms tighten around him. "I can't let you go. I was going to go tell you."

Starsky's arms fell away as he stepped back. Hutch reached out for him, to keep him from leaving, but Starsky said nothing, just tipped his head sideways. He took off his coat and flung it over the back of the nearest chair.

"You and me, we'll figure this out. Later." Starsky pulled at Hutch's coat, let it fall to the floor. "But right now, there's only you and me."

The moonlight from the window reflected in his eyes.

Your eyes. Your eyes will take me down.

"Come with me." He reached out his hand.

The moonlight on Hutch's skin made him look ephemeral, dreamlike. Starsky watched him undressing slowly just above him in the shadows.

"A hundred days," Hutch reached down to touch Starsky's face. "How could I have thought I could be here, be anywhere without you? I must have been crazy. I don't know what happened."

Starsky reached out, too, and their hands drew together as if they were magnetized. "I didn't see what you were going through. I didn't realize I wasn't really there with you. For you. We both screwed up." He pulled gently at Hutch's hand until he yielded and sat beside him on the bed. "It'll be okay, Hutch. Someday soon it'll just be something bad that happened to us. We'll be okay."

"You're really here?"

Starsky put Hutch's hand over his own heart so he could feel its beat.

The feel of his hands, the smell of his skin, the beat of his heart . . .  Oh God, Hutch. You and me. There's only you and me.

Later, wrapped in the warmth of Hutch's body, in the shadows cast by the moonlight, Starsky slept.

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