Summer.

Hot, sweaty, dead with no breeze, summer.

In New York City summers had been great. The streets were hot but the alleys were cool. The edge of the city was lined with docks and piers where kids could swim and jump for hours. And when the weather got really bad sometimes the firemen would tap a hydrant and there'd be a cool spray of water for a half-an-hour turning the street into a beach front, and the sky into tiny rainbows.

You could learn to love the heat in New York.

In Bay City…

Starsky stared out the windshield at the waves of heat coming off the hood, fighting the headache that had started a week ago and hung on. He felt hot from the inside out and it didn't help that the Torino's temperature gauge was going haywire. The engine was overheating and worse, the one part he needed to take the car to Merle's and get his baby up and running at 100% again didn't seem to exist anymore.

"It's the fickle nature of the consumer that's done this to me." Starsky grumbled, watching a handful of two-year-old Fords roll by in the commuter lane. A lane that Hutch had annoyingly pointed out earlier that they could have taken. "They get a car and they drive it for two years and then a newer model comes out with flashy lights and twice as much chrome and they ditch a perfectly good horse and trade it in for…"

A brand new Ford Pinto rolled by and Starsky glared at it, from its recessed headlights to its rear window hatchback. "That.." he said, with as much venom as he could manage.

Hutch sat in the passenger seat sipping the last of his goat milk shake, surprised it hadn't curdled in the time they'd been sitting in the middle lane.

"It's a Ford." The blond said helpfully, then continued to sip.

"I know it's a Ford, Hutch, but it's a new Ford." Starsky argued, his voice rising faster than normal.

"New Ford, old Ford, what does it matter. It's all the same company, what's your beef?"

"What's my beef!?" Starsky asked, taking a moment to glare at Hutch for his wording before he glared at Hutch for his lack of concern. "Ford Motor Company will not continue to make spare parts for cars that no one is buying anymore. That's my beef."

"You want ol Henry Ford to go broke making Torino parts until this rotten vegetable dies?" Hutch snapped back, not a fan of Starsky's week-and-a-half long grump, or the heat, or the fact that they were in the Torino because his car was in the shop. Not to mention that the Torino was historically unreliable in hot weather.

"I want the Ford Motor Company to continue to provide replacement parts for a vehicle that will undoubtedly become a collector's piece in the distant future."

Hutch started laughing before Starsky even finished, practically snorting the last of his shake out of his nose, some of it splashing on the hot, black leather seats. Starsky didn't see it happen and Hutch covered the stain quickly, not interested in dying.

The traffic finally started to move and Starsky eased the suffering engine up to speed, transitioning into the commuter lane and getting past the long line of equally grumpy and sweaty people. He'd just about caught up with the Pinto when a teal blue streak flashed by on the gravel berm, cutting him off and nearly clipping Hutch's side of the car.

It was a brand new Ford Mustang convertible, stuffed full of teenagers probably headed for the beach. They were shouting encouragement to the driver for his supposed driving skill and laughing and pointing at the two cops sweating under the hot red roof.

Starsky's hands tightened on wheel.

Hutch saw the writing on the wall and went for a distraction. "Hey...what's the part that you need, there, buddy. Maybe I can find it in one of those old magazines at the station."

"It's the temperature warning gauge. It's what keeps the engine from burning out without warning and if Merle can't even find it, you lookin' in a magazine isn't gonna do any good."

The teal Mustang kept the Torino in sight, swerving on and off the berm, the kids in the back egging them on. Starsky'd been watching the heat gauge, stubbornly stuck below the normal line, knowing the drive to work alone was going to push what the engine could handle. Never mind the illegality of it, a drag race against a brand new Mustang would kill the Torino dead.

"That's what I'm talkin' about, Hutch. An entire generation of consumers that don't know quality when they see it. These rich little cheapskates are gonna grow up buying the next, biggest, flashiest thing on the market and leave real cars rusting in...weed-filled back alleys."

"Come on, Starsk. You're acting like the tomato's already passe. You'll find the part. What's so special about it, the fitting?"

Traffic had slowed again, the kids in the convertible turning around and focusing on other things.

"Yeah it's the fitting. Do you know how many Torinos I've already found in junk yards? It's depressing."

"Do you know how many Ford Galaxie's I've found in junkyards?" Hutch said, crossing his arms with the beginnings of a pout.

"What are you talkin' about, I found your Ford in a junk yard."

Starsky smirked softly at the glare Hutch gave him, then pulled the car forward the final twenty feet to the exit that would get them off this godforsaken tarmac and into downtown. The fact that the Torino made it at all was something of a miracle.

Starsky parked it under the relative shelter of the police garage roof and they dragged through the heat into a stuffy building full of sweating cops, sitting in front of whirring fans.

The day, like the past six, was full of three times the calls, most of them gigantic wastes of time. The heat made everybody crazy.

Most of the calls were husband and wife spats, school-age teenagers with too much testosterone and not enough to do, and the business owners that were very quickly tired of those teenagers rousting their shops.

Their last call of the day was the worst. A gang of teenage boys had been setting off firecrackers in an empty lot. Each explosion had given them the courage to get progressively closer to the backyard of an eighty-year-old man with an eight foot spite fence surrounding his prize garden.

The boys had decided it was a good idea to line the fence with firecrackers, winding the short fuses together. They had just set off the first fuse when the Torino pulled into the lot, answering the old man's frightened call. Starsky took off after the kid with the lighter and Hutch went after the kid with firecrackers hanging out of his back pocket, neither one of them realizing what was coming until it was too late.

Instead of the chain reaction the kids had been hoping for, the first burning fuse had set fire to the dry grass on the lot-side of the fence. All the firecrackers went up at once, blowing the bottom half of the fence to bits and setting the top half of the fence on fire. Starsky, Hutch and the two kids they'd managed to catch, hit the dirt.

When Hutch picked himself up again his left shoulder was bloodied, part of the broken bottle he'd landed on still sticking out of his arm. Starsky stood up with even more of a headache than he'd had before. An inch-long splinter from the fence had been driven into his forehead sending blood down the side of his face.

But the worst injury was to the Torino. Starsky dragged the brat he'd caught to his feet via his belt, and cuffed him enroute to the car that now had a hole in the front windshield. The hole had been created by a flying knot from the wood of the fence. The dense collection of sap and wood pulp had blown through the glass then landed in a smoldering heap on the driver's seat where it was currently burning its way into the upholstery.

The inside of the Torino reeked of burning chemicals and smoldering cowhide and Starsky burned his fingers getting the knot out of the hole it had made in the seat. Then he burned his ass through his jeans, sitting on the still smoldering hide too soon. He got dispatch to send an ambulance and firetrucks and took over watching the two criminals while Hutch went into the old man's yard to check on him.

Old man Harley was angry at them, of course, for not responding instantaneously when he had called and had nothing but negative things to say about Bay City PD. He was just as negative about the fire trucks that arrived after he, and his garden hose, had put out the fire.

He insisted on having Starsky and Hutch's badge numbers and promised he would report their slovenly appearance and behavior to their superiors. It bothered him, not that the officers were wearing jeans and sweat soaked t-shirts, but that Starsky seemed drunk and Hutch had bloodied himself and not had the decency to cover it up.

"These are the citizen's we're protecting?" Starsky had commented, seeing to it that the two boys found transport back to the station, before he joined his partner on the tailgate of the ambulance for treatment. "Ungrateful old coot." Starsky groused wincing as his head was doused with saline solution with little warning.

Hutch was trying to focus on not jerking every time a piece of glass came out of his shoulder. "It's the h-heat, Starsk. Once it breaks, the c-city can get back to normal."

"Look at my car…" Starsky sighed, his eyes watering because of the proximity of the pain in his head. He would've been crying over the Torino given the chance. The sun softened glass of the windshield had started to buckle toward the hole the knot had made and the driver's side door was open showing the pile of padding the firemen had dug out of the seat to make sure the interior wasn't still smoldering. "Do you know how hard that seat is gonna be to replace? Real black leather, bucket seats."

"Want me to start checking junk yards?" Hutch asked and he watched his partner fight the smile and lose. Hutch slapped Starsky's thigh, glad the David he knew was still there, if buried under the frustration and pain. "I'll buy you a beer once were off duty."

"No you won't." The EMT working on Hutch said.

"What!?" Hutch demanded.

"We're giving you pain killers when you leave here, and penicillin, you can't drink with that stuff."

Starsky snorted, "Give me a bottle of Jack Daniels, you get painkiller and antibiotic in one gulp-OW!"

The two very grumpy men that returned to the station an hour after they were supposed to have been off duty smelled strangely of wood smoke mixed with the noxious stink of burning flesh, saline, antiseptic and sweat. The part of Starsky's head that had been bandaged was clean, the rest of him dirt smudged and smoke streaked. Hutch was cradling his elbow, keeping his shoulder from impacting anything in his tired state, just as dirty as his partner.

They stumbled like zombies to their desks, Starsky automatically going for the coffee while Hutch rolled an arrest report into the typewriter and started at the keys. Dobey stepped out of his office and watched his men for a moment, baffled.

"Sergeant Starsky?"

"Yeah, Cap."

"Do you mind telling me what you and Hutch are uh...doing here?"

There had been only an inch of coffee left in the carafe, but that had only occurred to Starsky after he had poured it all into one of their cups. He studied the low level of coffee in his mug for a long moment, stared into his partner's empty cup, then worked at shifting the liquid back and forth between the two mugs until it was even.

"Finishing up our reports, Cap." Starsky finally responded, giving Hutch his sip of coffee and managing to make two sips out of what was in his own cup.

Hutch's head was practically touching the keyboard, his chin almost resting on the desktop, typing with only the forefinger of his right hand. The coffee cup appeared in his periphery and he straightened with a wince and drank.

"In that case what should I do with the reports you called in?" Dobey asked, his thumb over his shoulder.

Both Starsky and Hutch froze.

"We called in our reports?"

"Yep." Dobey said. "And then you told me you were going home."

Dobey decided to follow his men home this time, insisting, despite the impassioned pleas that they were fine. He and Starsky walked Hutch into his apartment, then he did the same for Starsky, only backing down the brunet's drive when he was certain that Starsky's apartment door was locked and his detective well on his way to bed.

He would watch them closely come morning and at the first sign of fever or heat exhaustion he would send them home, Dobey decided.

The city would be fine without them for a day or two; but not for a lifetime.

The following morning, when neither of them called, and neither of them showed, Dobey wasn't surprised. As exhausted as they'd seemed the night before, he could allow for them forgetting to set an alarm and sleeping in. He fought the urge to worry until noon, then was about to put in a call when his phone rang.

It was Starsky on the line. He'd slept in and since he was Hutch's ride, they were both going to be late getting on duty. They would be in, in an hour. Starsky was grumpy but he seemed coherent, and apologetic. Dobey gave the guff that was due, then set the phone back down and smiled softly. No need to worry.

"How's your head?" Hutch shouted over the wind coming through the car windows. The hole in the windshield had been covered with a piece of cardboard and taped down. A temporary fix until Starsky could get a day off and drop the car with Merle.

"I've had a migraine for a week. Looks like it's not goin' away anytime soon." Starsky shouted back, trying to focus on the temperature gauge and the hood of the car, but constantly distracted by the square of cardboard and the hole under his butt.

"How's your arm?"

"Tried to take a shower this morning…"

"Yeah."

"Shampoo and all that.."

"Yeah."

"Bad idea." Hutch said, shaking his head.

Starsky snorted, caught the narrowed eyed look from Hutch, then laughed and his blond partner joined him.

"What'd Dobey say when you called him?"

"The usual. 'This sort of irresponsibility won't hack it in my department. Don't you know what an alarm clock is Starsky!?'"

"Yeah? He's in a good mood today." Hutch said, smirking before he glanced out the window. "Uh oh."

"Uh oh, what?"

"Here come our friends." Hutch said minutes before a teal blue, top-down streak went by on the berm.

This time there was no reason for it, and the irritation and pain of the past week, the damage to his beloved car, not to mention the blatant flaunting of road laws, instantly made Starsky's blood boil. The Torino's engine went from a sedate growl to a high pitched whine as Starsky forced it through the gears and he shouted, "Put up the bubble!"

"Wha- Starsky, we're not even on duty yet."

"Put up the bubble!" Starsky insisted, cutting the distance between the Torino and the Mustang.

"This is a county highway, we don't have jurisdiction."

"The number of kids in that vehicle exceeds the manufacturer capacity, the top is down, and they're driving at speeds that are dangerous to themselves and others on the roadway. I'm pulling those little jerks over! Put up the bubble."

Hutch turned on the MARS light and snapped it onto the burning hot roof, singeing his wrist in the process, then braced himself on the hot dash and the hotter lip of the window, before he reached for the radio and called in the license plate.

Instead of reacting the way most kids would to a siren and a flashing light and pulling the car over, the driver of the Mustang seemed to think it was a gag. He slowed down enough for Starsky to pull the Torino up even, watching Hutch try to wave him to the side of the road. The kid was blonde with gold rimmed sunglasses and the kind of tan that promised he hadn't even tried to get a summer job. He gave the Torino a dramatic once over, and shouted, "God, you guys are too old to be cops!"

Then the Mustang spat smoke and took off. Starsky growled and pushed the Torino faster, ignoring Hutch as he called for additional pursuit vehicles. They were even with the Mustang again when the first spout of smoke came from the end of the hood. A spray of water from the radiator hit the underside of the hood next, water spitting out and over the windshield, wetting the tape and the cardboard.

The wind, at the speed they were going, was too much for the wet adhesive and the cardboard ripped away even as they slowed, the tunnel of air coming through the hole creating a low pitched moan. The Torino's last dying breath, before the engine cut out and Starsky slipped the car into neutral letting it coast to the side of the road.

They sat in silence watching two Highway Patrol cars scream by. Hutch stared straight ahead, saying nothing, waiting for Starsky to explode. Instead his partner set the parking brake and stepped out of the car walking down the road about a car length.

Hutch pulled the MARS light from the roof and shut it off, dumping it into the footwell before he stepped out of the Torino and joined Starsky.

They watched the HP cars until they were out of sight.

"Those kids are gonna kill somebody." Starsky muttered, angrier than Hutch had thought he'd be. Deeply angry. Righteously angry. The kind of angry that came from being rendered helpless and immobile. Hutch gritted his teeth and raised his injured arm, hooking his hand around the back of Starsky's neck and squeezing at the tension there.

He felt the set of his partner's shoulders relax a little and they turned together to look at the Torino. Starsky sighed and walked toward the car alone, muttering, "What am I gonna do with you?"

Hutch let him be alone with the car a minute, watching Starsky's hands go to his hips, his head shaking before he braved the heat of the hood and lifted it. He stepped back slowly from the steam, then stepped back in once it'd dissipated, touching and jerking his hand away from a few of the things under the hood.

The thought of his partner without the flamboyant car that he'd nursed for so long brought a sad pang to Hutch's heart that felt very much like losing a part of the team. It was a car, sure, a hunk of metal and rubber, but with Starsky behind the wheel it had become more than that. In every situation but a heatwave the Torino was a reliable, constant part of their partnership.

Hutch began to think about the path of investigation that he could take to figure out the temperature glitch in the Torino makeup. He waited until Starsky had opened the driver's side door and gone for the radio, calling a tow, before he rejoined his partner.

"Get a hold of Dobey?"

Starsky gave him a tired look from the shadow of the driver's side and shook his head. "Haven't worked up the nerve."

Hutch smirked then held out his hand and after a moment Starsky stood up, freeing the driver's side seat for his partner and handing him the mic. Starsky walked out of earshot, not yet ready to hear anyone actually say that his car was dead. Even temporarily dead.

"Dispatch, connect me with Captain Dobey, please."

"Hutchinson, why did I just hear Zebra 3 put out a call to highway patrol?"

Hutch's mouth hung open for a long time and he scratched at his head, hoping that might stimulate a good lie. "Uh…" Hutch cleared his throat then said, "It's a long story, cap. The Torino's...conked out."

"You two alright?"

"We're ok. Hot and tired. But we'll be fine."

"You're not fine. You're dead in the water. How long until your wheels are back up, Hutch?"

"Mechanic said I'd have it by Monday."

"Then you two are off duty for the weekend."

"Captain-"

"I should'a done it yesterday when you were injured. It's too hot to argue. Take care of the Torino. Take care of yourselves. Dobey out."

Hutch heard gravel crunch under a sneaker, heard his partner grunt and sigh softly and watched Starsky sit down in the shade of the trunk of the Torino, his back against the side of the car, eyes closed, head resting just under corner of the stripe.

"Dobey tell us to knock off for the weekend?" Starsky called.

"Yep."

"Sorry about this, partner."

Hutch stepped out of the car after replacing the mic and sat next to the brunet. "You wanna tell me somethin'?"

Starsky tilted his head toward Hutch, opened one eye, then closed it again and rolled his head back. "What?"

"Do you think they called us old...because we look old, or because we were driving this car?"

Starsky snorted, then giggled, then winced at the flare in his head and took a deep breath. "I think they're young punks who never had a beat down because they disrespected the wrong kid in the lunch line. That's what I think." Starsky's eyes opened again and he stared lazily at the highway. "They're rich kids, you know. They're pampered. They never-" Starsky cut himself off and glanced at his partner.

"Oh...go on, please. This is fascinating, Starsky." Hutch said, crossing his arms over his chest and faking a bruised ego.

Starsky gave a wry grin and slapped his hand down on Hutch's elbow and squeezed, before he folding his hands in his lap again. "It doesn't matter."

"Zebra Three this is HP Car 24. We have your blue bird in custody for multiple counts of endangering minors. Mom and Dad are pissed. Over."

Starsky grinned and Hutch groaned softly, getting back to his feet to answer the call with a, "That's the way we like 'em, Car 24. Owe you one. Zebra Three, out."