1976. BAY CITY, CALIFORNIA.
TIMELINE A. CHAPTER I.
Harold Dobey, Captain of Bay City PD's Department of Homicide, looked impatiently at his watch and glanced up at his door.
"What is taking them so damned long?" He muttered to himself, standing and marching over to the connecting door between his office and the office his men in the homicide department shared. He opened it and glanced around the room.
"Has anyone seen Hutchinson and Starsky?" he asked the officers present at their desks, who all looked up and shrugged or shook their heads.
His frown deepened and he closed the door behind him, walking over to the coffee maker and pouring himself a cup. He leaned against a nearby filing cabinet and glanced at his watch again. They were almost forty five minutes late. Dobey wondered if he should be worried about them, but shook his head, figuring that they would soon saunter in, pretending that they had no clue that they were late. He sighed and gazed solemnly at the door. Despite the occasional hiccup, they were still his best men.
When Dobey finished his coffee, he glanced at his watch again. In five minutes, they would be a full hour late. He sighed into his cup and set it down on the dirty tray.
Suddenly, the door to the office opened, and Dobey snapped his head up, prepared to let his best men know just how little he appreciated their tardiness, but he stopped short when a blonde woman in a plaid shirt apprehensively peeked through the door. Dobey furrowed his brows. She looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place her. Her eyes rested on him, looking him up and down as if she was trying to recognise him.
"Captain...Dobey?" she inquired.
"Can I help you, ma'am?" he answered.
She wrinkled her nose slightly at the 'ma'am', but she entered the room, followed by a shorter, curvy woman with a lush mess of dark curls falling over her shoulders. Something was familiar about her, too...but he was positive he'd never seen either of the girls before.
"We need to talk to you," the blonde said. "In your office."
"Who are you?" Dobey asked.
"That's why we need to talk to you, cap," said the dark-haired one. She sounded like she'd grown up in New York.
Dobey narrowed his eyes at the dark-haired one. Only his officers called him 'cap'. He opened his mouth to say something, but he stopped short when his gaze dropped to the girl's shoes. They were blue Adidas sneakers...just like the ones Starsky wore. He looked up at the blonde. She had a necklace with a half-moon and star hanging from it...just like the one Hutchinson had. He looked back and forth between the two girls' faces. He frowned and opened his door, letting them in.
"This one ought to be good," he muttered, following them into his office.
The second the door closed, the blonde turned to him.
"Captain—"
"Wait a minute!" he interrupted, holding his hand up. "Is this some kind of joke? Are you two gonna tell me you're an hour late because you were magically changed into girls or something?"
The blonde shook her head incredulously.
"Well, I'm not buying it!" Dobey continued. "Where's Hutchinson and Starsky? You can tell them that this is the stupidest one they've thought of ye—"
"Cap," the dark-haired one interrupted. "We're not your boys, ok? We don't know where your boys are. I'm Sergeant Detective Davinia Starsky, and this is Detective Kendra Hutchinson. We're trying to figure out what the hell is going on and possibly fix this whole mess, but we're gonna need your help with that."
Dobey narrowed his eyes at them.
"What do you mean 'this whole mess'? What whole mess?"
Kendra sighed. "Captain, we both woke up in somebody else's apartment this morning, and we have been trying to figure out what the hell happened to us since then."
Dobey shifted his gaze between the two girls as they spoke.
"We searched the apartments we ended up in," Davinia said. "We know they belong to your boys on account of the information we got from their pay-stubs and work-related documentation."
"They haven't been back there since we've been there," Kendra said. "I'm worried that—"
"Wait a minute," Dobey interrupted, pointing at Kendra. "Why didn't you return to your apartments after you figured out where you were?"
"That's the thing, captain," Kendra said. "Our addresses are exactly the same."
"Except somebody else is living where we thought we lived," Davinia added.
Dobey looked confused. He shook his head.
"No, that's impossible. Starsky and Hutchinson have been at those addresses for—"
"Two years?" Davinia finished the sentence for him. "Yeah, us too. You think we would have run into each other at some point, but I can assure you, that hasn't been the case."
Dobey opened his mouth to say something, then found himself speechless and shut it again. He thought for a moment, then narrowed his eyes at the girls.
"...Are you two jivin' me? If you're cops, where are your badges?"
Kendra rolled her eyes and nudged Davinia. They both reached into their pockets and produced badge wallets, opening them and slapping them down onto Dobey's desk.
"You don't have to believe us, cap," Davinia said. "We wouldn't believe this crazy situation ourselves if we hadn't been stuck smack in the middle of it."
Dobey picked up Davinia's badge and inspected it closely. It looked and felt real, and according to the ID card, her last name was indeed Starsky. He glanced up at her.
"Look, captain," Kendra said. "We know we don't belong here, but we have no idea how we got here and we want some answers. So we're going to use the resources available to us as Sergeant Detectives for the great state of California to figure out what the hell is going on here, and then we're going back to our department of homicide, with our female captain, and we're going to pretend this never happened."
Dobey sat speechless for a moment. He wasn't sure how to argue with that. Then he furrowed his brows.
"Then what do you two need with me?"
"Well," Davinia said, "Since this building happens to be sitting in the exact same location as the building we work at, and since this, uh..." She glanced around the office with a raised brow. "...picturesque little department of homicide just happens to be right where ours would be," she looked back at him. "We figure we're working for you this week."
He stared at them.
"Unfortunately," she added with another glance around the office.
Dobey pointed at Davinia.
"I don't know what you expect me to do! I can't just swap a couple of unknown girls with my best detectives and expect things to go smoothly!"
The girls gave him bored stares.
"Look! People expect Zebra 3 to be two men! I can't just put you in their car and give you their call sign! I don't know if you two have integrity! I don't even know if you two are qualified for this type of work!"
Davinia grabbed her badge and rapped it on the desk.
"Then what do you think these are, cap? Huh? Costume jewellery?"
Kendra put a hand on Davinia's arm.
"Davī..."
Davinia straightened up.
"Sorry," she said sharply, not taking her eyes off of Dobey.
Dobey was quiet for a moment. He was beginning to see the parallels between the two groups. Starsky would have acted the same way.
"Look," he said, his voice calmer. "I want to help you out, but I don't know how."
"Captain, me and Kendra are both living someone else's life, whether we like it or not. Maybe your men are too. Maybe they're having the exact same conversation with our captain. I don't know. But what I do know is that if we don't find a source of income soon, we will both starve."
"The way I see it," Kendra continued for her partner, "You're down two of your best detectives. You need detectives, and we need a source of income. We both have something the other needs."
"It would be mutually beneficial for us to locate your detectives, and for you to support us in that endeavour," Davī said.
Dobey was quiet for a moment again as he looked at the two girls. There were subtle differences, sure, but he could swear that he had seen his best detectives in nearly the exact same position...Starsky leaning on his desk and Hutchinson standing next to him with his arms crossed.
"How do I know you're not playing me?"
"You don't," said Kendra. "You can get us a babysitter if you want to, but we have nothing to hide."
"What you see is what you get," Davī added.
Dobey looked over the two women, standing in that vaguely familiar configuration, wearing their vaguely familiar clothes, giving him vaguely familiar looks. If he'd been told that they were related to his detectives in any way, he'd have believed it in a heartbeat. But their story...it was almost too much to believe. And yet...for some reason, some vague part of him wanted to trust them just as much as he trusted his two best detectives.
He looked between the two of them for a moment before speaking.
"Alright. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to report Starsky and Hutchinson missing, and call you two in as civilian witnesses—"
When they started to protest, he held up both hands.
"Let me finish!" He pointed at Kendra, then at Davī. "I'm gonna say that you two are looking after Starsky and Hutchinson's affairs while they're missing—their houses, their cars, their income—everything. Do what you have to do to find out what happened to them, but be discreet about it! I don't want the DA or anyone else breathing down my neck about you two snooping around where you shouldn't be!"
Kendra nodded. "That's fair." She nudged Davī.
Davī looked displeased, but she nodded.
"Fine," Dobey said. "Now get out there and find my detectives. And if you have to bend the rules a little, I don't wanna hear about it!"
The girls nodded and Davī turned towards the door. Kendra smiled slightly at Dobey before turning and following her partner out the door. Her captain would have said the same thing.
TIMELINE B. CHAPTER I.
Sergeant Detective David Starsky and his partner, Ken Hutchinson walked down the steps at headquarters...at least, it looked like headquarters.
"Boy," Hutch said, rubbing his eyes. "That was bizarre."
"This whole situation is bizarre," Starsky said, unlocking the door to his...well, it looked like his car.
"I know that, but..." Hutch shook his head. "She yelled at us just like Dobey does. I mean, it was exact."
"Well," Starsky said, starting the car, "If the stuff we found in the girls' apartments is anything to go on, she is Dobey."
Hutch shook his head again. "But...that's impossible!"
"So is living in the same apartment as someone for two years and never having met them!" Starsky said, gesturing a hand at Hutch as he pulled up to a red light. "The natural laws of physics don't seem to apply here."
Hutch scoffed. "Starsk, the laws of physics always apply—"
"Uh-huh, then how do you explain all this, huh?" Starsky said, reaching into the glovebox and grabbing a few bottles of nail varnish, then taking a tube of lipstick off the dashboard and dumping them all into Hutch's lap. He jerked a thumb backwards. "How do you explain all the bras in what is supposed to be my sock drawer?"
"Well, uh..." Hutch looked down as Starsky threw an eyebrow pencil into the growing pile of makeup in his lap, a smile threatening to spread over his lips. "Maybe...you're a...closet cross-dresser?"
Starsky gave him a disdainful glare before accelerating through the green light. "If I am, then the bras hanging in your closet right now tell me that it takes one to know one."
"Look, maybe it's an elaborate joke," Hutch said. "Maybe—"
"Oh, yeah," Starsky said. "Maybe everybody in the office decided it would be great fun to find a replacement of the opposite gender just so that they could put one over on us."
Hutch tried to say something, but Starsky continued, his voice growing louder.
"Maybe our landlords were in on it, too. Maybe they stuffed my sock-drawer full of bras and put makeup in your bathroom. Maybe everybody in this goddamned city has decided to play an elaborate trick on little-old-you-and-me," Starsky gave him a look. "I'll bet they've been planning it for months."
Hutch huffed out a breath. "Well, there has to be a logical explanation for all this."
"Oh yeah?" Starsky scoffed. "Like what?"
Hutch opened his mouth, then shut it again when he found himself speechless. He shook his head.
"I don't know. But, look, we'll figure it ou—"
"No, maybe the explanation is that there is no logical explanation," Starsky said. "The fact that we just met a real, living, breathing, female version of our captain tells me that the answer to this puzzle is far from being logical or natural."
Hutch sent an uncomfortable glance in his partner's direction, as if he knew where this was going.
"I read a science fiction story the other day where a guy gets switched into a parallel universe where he doesn't exist and he has to figure out how to get back to his own universe."
"Starsk— "
"I think we've been switched into an opposite version of our universe, and now we have to figure out how to get back to ours."
Hutch rolled his eyes and looked out the window. Starsky had a point, the entire city wasn't likely to be in on a prank that only affected him and Starsky, but it was easier to swallow than his 'parallel universe' theory. Hutch shook his head.
"You read too many of those cheesy science fiction novels, Starsk."
"You explain this situation, then," Starsky said, giving Hutch a glance. "Huh?"
Hutch was silent. He was at a loss. The apartment he was in had the exact same furnishings in it, down to the number of flowers on his plants, but it wasn't his apartment. The car they were in had everything Starsky's car had in it down to the number of bullets in the glove box, but it wasn't his car. The building they worked at had the same things in it down to the piggy bank on their desk and the flower-print mugs by the coffee machine, but it wasn't their office. Nothing made sense.
"I can't," Hutch said finally, defeated.
"Me either," Starsky said, causing Hutch to look at him.
"I thought you said we were in a parallel universe," Hutch said.
"I know what I said," Starsky sighed. "Hutch, it's just a story in a book. I don't know if there's anything to it, but it's the closest thing to a lead we have."
Hutch nodded. A few farfetched leads were still better than no leads at all.
"Ok," said Hutch. "So, where do we start?"
Starsky looked at him.
"How about where it all began?" he said, pulling up and parking in front of the apartment at Venice place.
AN: Davinia Starsky and Kendra Hutchinson are female characters I based on Starsky and Hutch. They came into existence when I got an anonymous ask on tumblr about how I thought Starsky and Hutch would look as girls. I ended up falling in love with the characters and wanted to round them out a little more and distinguish them from their namesakes, so I decided to write them into a story. Since they're technically from an alternate universe to the one the original Starsky and Hutch characters are in, I decided to take the science-fiction angle and bring the two universes together.
You know about as much as I do about how this story is going to play out, so I hope you'll enjoy watching what happens next as much as I do. Thanks for reading!