Authors: Rebelcat and Elizabeth Helena

 

Series: Starsky & Hutch

 

EH: It was peer pressure, I swear! First, it was all “come over and watch some episodes, read a little fanfic, it won’t do you any harm,” next thing I know I’m hooked on horse and--.

RC: What!?

EH: Er, nothing, Rebelcat. Ooo, look at the pretty men in immorally tight jeans.

RC: Purrrrr . . .

 

Codes: H/f, S & H (no slash, just “me & thee” friendship)

 

Rating: R, because of the very nasty stuff that occurs in the narrative past including a violent assault, and severe child abuse. Also, the coitus interruptus and naughty language that Aaron Spelling would never have allowed takes place in the narrative present. Now, the violence against furniture and massive alcohol consumption is canon, although we may have gotten a little carried away here. Furthermore, you will be carded before being allowed to view the appendix.

 

Spoilers: This story takes place during season three, between the episodes “Hutchinson for Murder One” and “Foxy Lady.” Any event before the latter episode is ripe for spoilage, babe.

 

Warning: If really nasty things happening to kids squicks you, stay away. For those who’ve read Elizabeth Helena’s DS9 fic “Condemnation” you know the depths to which she can sink. For those who haven’t, she’s got parental issues that know no bounds, so beware!

 

EH: Excuse me?!

RC: Don’t make me show you “The Crying Child” again.

EH: whimper

 

Summary: Response to self-induced challenge to write the angstiest fic we could without undermining Starsky and Hutch’s canon macho-man-ness. The rules we set up to follow are included in an appendix at the end of the story. 

 

Disclaimer: Everything we know about police procedurals and the law in the 1970s we learned from Aaron Spelling. Any errors are clearly his :-). What? Okay, we don’t own a tomato red Torino with racing stripes nor the guys driving it while wearing too-tight jeans. Oh baby.

 

Thanks to: Blue’s Starsky & Hutch Resource page, for the apartment layouts, character guide, and timeline, and shoot pretty much everything on that site. Thanks to you, we only had to be half as obsessive compulsive as we already were.

 

Apologies to: All nurses, because we really, really admire you guys and any depictions of nurses below are not meant to imply that you aren’t fun-loving, hard-working people who deserve better than coitus interruptus. Also, to Internal Affairs officers because we know no police organization could be run effectively without internal supervision. However, if every 70’s cop show or movie taught us anything, you were the baddies. Well, except maybe in “Serpico,” but “Dirty Harry” could (and would) kick his butt any day.

 

Elizabeth Helena’s Dedication: To Rebelcat, for tolerating my ongoing horror of adverbs, my occasional tactlessness when she asked ‘don’t you like this?’ my chainsaw approach to editing, my anal-retentive approach to editing, my inability to stop editing... ah, you get my drift. I never imagined that collaborating could be so much fun nor so darn... well, collaborative. :-) Thank you for your generous spirit and evil genius.

 

Rebelcat’s Dedication: Just ignore all that self-deprecating stuff up there in the previous dedication. None of it’s true. Getting together to work with Elizabeth on this story has been the highlight of my week these last couple of months. I feel like I’m back in high school again – except without all the bad stuff, just with the ogling of the guys and making bad jokes and naughty comments and . . . actually, maybe the person we really ought to be thanking is my poor husband who has had to put up with listening to us giggle for weeks on end.

 

EH: Oh, he got his own back by dubbing us the “Starsky & Hutch Hen Party.” Plus the time he paused and zoomed on the nipples of that really ugly guy in “Captain Dobey, You’re Dead.” And the time he said it was really gross how Starsky was hitting on the Kristy McNichol character in “The Trap” . . .

RC: That was you.

EH: Oh, right... er, never mind.

 

Beta: Nik Ditty. Without her, this story wouldn’t be anywhere near as readable nor as angsty. She fearlessly tracked down misplaced commas and wandering sentences, caught logical inconsistencies and tackled whole chunks of the story that just plain needed to be rewritten. Nik rocks!

 

Beta, Second Edition:  Rae.  What can we say about Rae?  She dedicated countless hours to correcting the grammar in this story.  She took this fic and turned it into something clear and crisp, and we hope she forgives us for fighting with her over all of RC’s ‘ly’ words and EH’s elipses.  And it’s not her fault that “akimbo” lives on!

 

RC:  Because we love “akimbo!”

EH:  They can take our lives, but they cannot take our “akimboooh!”

RC:  No more Mel Gibson for you!  Remember, you’re supposed to be staring at Starsky-butt, not Mel-butt.

 

Further thanks to: Adrienne, who was brave enough to read some of our earliest drafts. Her shrewd comments and suggestions were much appreciated.

And to all the feedbackers who gave us suggestions!

 

Feedback/Critique: Very welcome, as long as you don’t hold us to standards higher than the episodes themselves. Strike that, as long as you don’t hold us to standards higher than one of the good episodes. After all, if this story is no better that “Huggy Bear and the Turkey,” we deserve to have a heater thrown down the stairs at us.

 

Archiving:

Bay City, Me & Thee, my website (http://www.memoryprime.de/elizabethhelena), and Rebelcat’s website (if her husband with secret Hutch fetish ever lets her have one). Others please ask first, or we’ll have Dobey tear a strip off of ya. You can reach us at either Elizabethlovesherthesaurus (at) hotmail (dot) com, or myrebelcat (at) hotmail (dot) com.

 

RC’s hubby: I do not have a secret Hutch fetish!

EH & RC: Not anymore. :-)