Little muscles are important.
And when the body is injured, and a body part immobilized, all the muscles, big and little, become dormant. A patient usually thinks about the big muscles when they start physical therapy. But they don't think about the little ones.
The ones that help you write your name clearly on a check instead of leaving a smear of ink on the paper and the countertop and the heel of your hand. The ones that help you gently pull an arrest report, say, out of the typewriter instead of trying too hard and ripping it in half...every...time.
The little muscles and tendons that control the fingers. Very important muscles for a cop.
Starsky had made a mistake. He'd put the Torino up on ramps that had been allowed to sit in a damp tool shed too long, and he had been under the car when the ramps decided to give way. The Torino had rolled, catching his left arm between the elbow and shoulder. He'd broken the bone, torn a half-dozen muscles and dislocated his shoulder in the span of two or three horrible minutes.
He'd forgiven the Torino since then, and his recovery of the use of the major muscle groups had been admittedly rapid. The nerve damage to the smaller muscles, and the brief period of time that circulation had been completely cut off to his hand and wrist, had created...little annoyances.
For example, an hour spent on the range, rebuilding his accuracy with his service weapon had almost ended in yet another catastrophe when he had dropped the aim of his gun to the ground, his finger had twitched, and he'd nearly shot himself in the foot. He and Hutch both could have sworn that his trigger finger was outside the trigger guard before he dropped his aim, yet the gun had gone off.
When it happened a second and third time, both with the barrel pointed downrange, the issue became more apparent.
The physical therapist that had helped him through the first month of recovery said he needed to work on his fine motor skills, which sounded great until Starsky was told that he should take up knitting, or cut coupons, or practice his typing skills. Long hand writing, the PT said, or a short list of exercises that looked more like shadow puppet shapes than something Starsky would be caught dead doing "at least once every hour."
There had to be another way, he protested, but the PT shook his head.
If it weren't for the fact that Starsky needed to qualify at the range to get back on full duty, and that qualifying on the range required that he not endanger the instructor, or anyone else, with uncontrollable, random misfires, Starsky would've tossed the exercise list out the window.
Hutch made a long distance phone call to a physician friend of theirs in Flagstaff and a week later a square package was delivered to Hutch's house. The return address, and the name on it, were the only things that stopped Hutch from immediately suspecting that the package would explode. Inside the box was a wrapped present, shaped like a squat cylinder, and tied with a bow. The tag said, "For Starsky, Love, Luyu."
The letter tucked into the side of the package was for Hutch, and amongst other things, contained her explanation for the gift. It was an excellent way to challenge the mind, and would require all the movements the PT had suggested, to operate. The best part was, Starsky could carry it with him and not risk the rest of the police force mocking him for it.
The following morning Starsky came in to work a few minutes after Hutch to find the wrapped present on his desk.
"What's that?"
"Luyu sent it." Hutch said, admittedly anxious to see the magical tool she had managed to conjure up so quickly.
"Oh!" Starsky said, then pulled at the ribbon, tore at the paper and pulled a Rubik's Magic Cube from the box. The 3-dimensional puzzle came with instructions, and was already scrambled to immediately provide the user with a challenge. Starsky fiddled with it for twenty minutes while Hutch left on an errand, sliding the pieces against each other until he had about three of the 54-faces, multi-colored faces, matched up.
Then Dobey breezed through the double door entrance to the bullpen and into his office and Starsky dropped the cube back into its tube, and tried to focus on the endless paperwork that Dobey seemed to be pulling out of his-
"Starsky! Where's that dictionary I gave you!? And why aren't you using it?"
"Right here, Cap. Right under the three dozen pages of notes, this deposition, the magna carta...and the second novel you asked me to write for Judge Haydn..." Starsky responded loudly, dropping his voice toward the end of the sentence and grumbling a few more things under it.
"Get in here and correct these pages. Your spelling stinks."
Starsky glared at Hutch's empty chair. His partner had gone out to Huggy's to check up on a few things. Tracking down the list of usual suspects and keeping an eye on their beat, while hopefully following the instructions he'd been given, to keep out of trouble. He didn't blame the blond for doing his job, but he blamed him for doing it during the longest and most thoroughly boring part of the day.
Out of sheer obstinance Starsky grabbed the cube before he walked into Dobey's office, fiddling with it.
"What's that?"
"It's a Magic Cube. It's for my physical therapy."
"Oh yeah?" Dobey asked, his temperament easing. He smiled and held his hand out. "Let me see that."
It was a distraction and it meant a reprieve from the paper work so Starsky happily handed over his new toy and watched Dobey look it over, flipping and turning it before he asked, "How do you-"
Dobey finally found a part that would move and managed to get another blue with the three that Starsky had aligned. "Physical therapy, huh?" Dobey said, completely focused on the puzzle until he realized Starsky was backing toward the door. "I seem to remember your physical therapist told you typing was good for your hand, too."
"Yeah, Cap, but if I do too much of that I'll get a fish disease."
Dobey's eyes narrowed on his officer, and the perfectly reasonable look Starsky had on his face. A look that said that Starsky fully believed that what he had just said was not only accurate, but a completely real and regrettable disease.
"Fish disease."
"Yeah. Carp tunnel. Court recorders get it all the time. I gotta be careful, Cap, too much typing will make my bones brittle...like a fish."
Dobey raised a brow and gave his detective a fishy look, not entirely certain Starsky was aware of the lie he was telling. Dobey slapped the cube onto his desk and watched the brunet snatch it up before the captain pointed at the pile of corrected papers. The pencil marks sent a shiver down Starsky's spine, reminding him of school, the police academy...every teacher that had ever hated him because he embellished the truth from time to time.
"Fix those papers. Then go down to dispatch and check in with your partner."
"Yes, Captain." Starsky said, twisting three rows and getting a fifth blue square in place. He gathered the papers, put the corner of the stack between his teeth, then walked out the door, working the cube with both hands, his foot hooking the corner of his superior's door and yanking it closed.
"Starsky!" Roared at him through the maple paneling, three seconds after the door had slammed shut.
Completely focused on the cube, Starsky shouted, "Sorreh, Caff!" Then took about a dozen steps to get from the door to his chair, ten feet away, sliding the sixth and seventh blue square into proper place.
He dragged out the dictionary then slipped the eighth blue square into place. He paused, scanning the cube, letting it turn in his fingers before he heard the door behind him start to open and he scrambled again for the dictionary.
The heavy tome pulled at healing, but still sore muscles, and he grunted at the unexpected weight, then shifted through the pages and corrected ten words with an eraser and the typewriter. The most studious typist that he'd ever been, until Dobey returned to his office and the door closed.
When Hutch returned to the station and his desk, their lunch in hand, nearly two hours had gone by since he'd left his partner to his own devices. The pile of papers on Starsky's desk hadn't gone down by much, but the Magic Cube sat in the tube it had come in, solved. And Starsky's chair was empty.
Hutch followed the path his partner had taken, asking personnel and other officers until he reached the firing range. He found his partner alone, in the cubicle at the far end of the range, firing an empty gun.
"Starsk...what are you doing?"
"Practicing." Starsky said.
Hutch glanced downrange at the pristine, man-shaped target and said, "You missed."
Starsky gave him an annoyed look then slipped the clip into the gun, set the gun on the small shelf in front of him and pulled the pair of thick headphones he'd brought with him over his ears. He glanced to Hutch until his partner had pulled on a second pair, then pointed his gun down range with both hands and fired the entire clip in three seconds.
While the sound of the shots still echoed both men were silent, looking at the target with a circle of holes blasted into the spot marking the heart. Starsky kept the gun in his left hand, while he hit the switch that would bring the target toward him with his right. In the process of setting the gun down on the small ledge, both men heard the click click click of the hammer impacting an empty chamber.
Starsky stared at his hand as if it weren't his own, the trigger and middle fingers pulsing toward his palm, completely outside of his control. Starsky pursed his lips, forced a frustrated huff of air out of his nose and took the thick, paper target down.
Hutch tugged it from his hand and said, "Starsk, your aim isn't what's in question."
"Neither is my puzzle solving skills. I finished it." Starsky said, checking the chamber of the gun, ejecting the clip and slamming both onto the table in frustration.
Hutch pursed his lips then said, "Once you solve it, you're supposed to mix it all up again."
"But I already know how to solve it." Starsky insisted.
"Right...this time you solved it, next time it may take a little longer."
"No...Hutch. I figured it out. I can solve the puzzle no matter how many times somebody tries to scramble it."
"Really?"
"Yeah." Starsky said, then looked at his marksmanship critically, trying to ignore the thousand yard stare that Hutch was still training on him.
"How much?"
"Hmm? About two inches. I'm still pulling down, and to the right.."
"How much do you want to bet, Starsk?"
Poking his fingers into the holes in the paper Starsky casually said, "One week."
"Of pay?"
"What do I want with your lousy pay? One week...off desk duty."
Hutch stared at him and demanded, "What?"
"One small benefit of being bored outta my mind and stuck at that desk...gave me time to go through the police manual." Starsky said with a grin, taking the paper target with him in one hand, the broken down gun in the other. Starsky swept around his partner and put the target on the desk of the sergeant who ran the gun range, signing it with exaggerated care, before he put his empty gun back together and slipped it back into his holster.
Hutch was still lagging behind and Starsky waved for him to catch up.
"Just….tell me." Hutch said, knowing he was regretting it. Knowing Starsky's plan was going to be a bad one. Otherwise why would he have tried to set up a bet. A bet that he knew Hutch would suggest based on the absurdity of Starsky's claim.
"Any sergeant can approve an officer as fit for duty." Starsky said, "It doesn't matter if they're your partner or the guy in supply or the kid with the weird BO in the motorpool. A sergeant is a sergeant."
"Yeah...Dobey'll go for that."
"Dobey won't have a choice. Come on, Hutch. I'm ready. I'm ready to go back to work." Starsky whined.
Hutch raised his left hand and made his pointer and middle fingers twitch, then raised a brow at his partner. He got a dirty look, then Starsky walked away, fuming.
Hutch stayed behind long enough to initial the target. The grouping was good. Starsky's aim tighter than it had ever been on the range, thanks to his over practice. The problem was, what constituted, almost literally, an itchy trigger finger, was a liability that even a technicality in the system wasn't going to cover. He wanted his partner back on full duty, but not at the risk of either of their lives.
When he got back to the bullpen he could hear the argument Starsky was rehashing with Dobey, through the closed office door. Hutch chose to avoid becoming a secondary target, and sat down, grabbing up the cube and twisting the tiny blocks over and over again until no three of the same color block were touching each other.
Then Hutch noticed something. Already, Starsky's over use of the puzzle had caused one of the colored stickers to peel away from the plastic. Hutch picked at it, then snorted to himself, and carefully peeled the sticker away completely, then found another one that was starting to come away.
With a little glue he reapplied the stickers, but in opposite spots. Then he put the cube back in its tube and waited for Starsky to come back out.
The rest of the conversation with Dobey went something like this.
"Captain! Hutch will vouch for me. I'm 100%, A-ok. I got seven out of seven right in the circle, Cap, the target's down on the range just waitin' for the sign off-"
"Did you finish those reports?"
"Cap-"
"This is a police station. It doesn't just run on hotshot cops, it runs on paperwork and files. You've been perpetually behind on your paperwork since I made you a detective and I'm sick of it. Get back out to your desk, clean up that pile, and don't bother me again about this until the sergeant at the range has cleared you."
"Captain-"
"Out!"
The door swept open and slammed shut again, but it wasn't the door into the bullpen. Starsky had gone out the door that lead to the hallway, then slammed through the doors into the bullpen and opened and slammed Dobey's other door for good measure.
Starsky had grabbed his coat and his keys and was most of the way out the door again when Hutch started to say, "Don't forget the Magic-"
Starsky stopped, took in a low, slow breath that promised to be the accelerant for his burning fuse. He stormed back into the office, picked up the cube and started twisting the pieces so rapidly, the plastic began to squeak.
The colors fell into place like the winning, triple cherries on a slot machine, up until Starsky got to the last two squares. His hands stopped moving, because the physical process that he had learned in less than a day, was done, but the colors didn't match.
Starsky stared at the cube, went back about ten moves, then rapidly pushed the pieces against each other and ended with the same problem. A white square where a red should have been. A red square where a white should have been.
The bizarre twist to what he had convinced himself was a sure thing, brought his blood pressure down, and with it the full on angry he'd been ready to unleash on the world. Starsky sat down in his chair and ran the puzzle back and forth an increasing number of steps until his thumb pad brushed against the colored sticker itself and the sticker came away with a string of barely dried glue.
Starsky stared at his thumb, then he stared at the blank black block, then looked up to his red faced, blond haired partner, who was suddenly very interested in a blank police report rolled into his typewriter.
Starsky slammed the cube down onto his desk, pushed the sticker stuck to his thumb, deep into the skin of his partner's forehead, then grabbed his coat and stormed out of the bullpen.
Hutch almost fell out of his chair laughing, then took ten minutes to remove the sticker, put it back on the Rubik's cube in the correct spot, then went to the restroom to clean his forehead of sticky glue. By the time he was done their shift had ended.
Starsky's car wasn't in the parking lot when Hutch got there, which was no surprise for Hutch. He drove out to The Pits, the Magic Cube tucked in his coat pocket, repaired correctly. The Torino was in the parking lot and his partner was beating the tar out of the pinball machine, a line up of dimes and the scowl on his face scaring any potential players away from the machine.
There was a full glass of beer on the end of the bar near Starsky, but it had gone flat and room temperature in the time it'd been sitting there. If Starsky wasn't drinking that meant he wanted to hang onto his mad. Hutch sighed nodded to the concerned look Huggy's latest waitress gave him, then sat at the end of the bar nearest his partner. He put the repaired and re-scrambled Magic Cube next to the stale beer then ordered a drink of his own.
He was halfway through the beverage when Starsky gave up on the suffering machine, collected his coins and shifted to the bar. He ignored the beer, picked up the cube and started solving it. Hutch waited, watching his partner flex stiff fingers as the cube shifted from his dominant left hand to his right, then back again.
Hutch should have timed his partner, but he guessed it took three minutes total for Starsky to solve the puzzle. Once the puzzle was finished Starsky set it gently a centimeter from Hutch's hand, then looked to the stale beer and pushed it carefully back toward the tender side of the bar and sat looking at his hands.
The left hand was vibrating slightly, responding to the exercise Starsky had just given it.
"What if it never goes away?" Starsky asked. Anyone else might have thought he was talking to himself, but Hutch knew he had just been asked a question. No...the question, that both of them had avoided thinking about.
Hutch picked up the Magic Cube and started scrambling it again, twisting pieces randomly at first, then following a pattern. "You've had this thing less than a day." He said at first, letting the statement hang out there until he caught Starsky nodding his head in his periphery.
The waitress, Silvy according to her name tag, came up and quietly dumped out the dead beer then waited long enough for Starsky to smile softly and wave her off. Hutch did the same at her glance then finished his scramble with a few extra, random twists, before he set the cube on the bar and slid it back to his partner.
"Give it another week, Starsk. Your body isn't going to heal faster, just because you're impatient."
Starsky didn't respond, spinning the cube on the bar.
"Thank Luyu for me?"
Hutch nodded. "Told her how fast you'd solved it too."
"Yeah?" Starsky asked, perking up a little.
"She said, "He's always been good with his hands.""
Starsky got a proud, if mildly lascivious look on his face, fingers already dancing across the cube, solving it again.
Hutch had taken in a breath to add to Luyu's comments, but was cut off by the soft click of the cube plunking down on the bar, solved.
Hutch narrowed his eyes shoved it back and said, "Scramble it."
Starsky's grin broadened and he went to work, sliding the plastic pieces backward and forward at twice the speed. The snick snick snick of the plastic was more and more ominous the faster Starsky did it and Hutch had to wonder how many of their fellow cops had become annoyed at the noise in the bullpen for what he suspected was two solid hours.
The scrambled cube hit his forearm a second later and he picked it up and started to work the pieces. While his fingers kept slipping against the plastic or the stickers every-time the joints locked, Hutch focused not on the colors, but on the math behind it. Limited numbers of moves, 54 faces, there had to be a finite number of permutations. A series of moves that would "prepare" the block for the pattern that lead to a solution.
Starsky was getting progressively closer to him, squirming while he tried to resist the urge to help, his fingers twitching...but not because of the previous injury. Hutch was doing it wrong.
He was thinking too hard. He wasn't looking at the cube like a 3-d jigsaw puzzle, he was turning the blocks into numbers, because that was what Hutch did. He was going too slow, Starsky thought, and fidgeted so much that the stool he was barely sitting on, tilted and slipped out from under him.
Starsky kept his feet, but the stool clattered to the floor, upsetting Hutch's focus and forcing the cube out of his hands and into the sink of bleach water beyond the edge of the bar top. Both men leaned over the bar watching the cube bob and turn, half the stickers already sliding away, and the other half turning the same dull shade of orange.
Starsky almost pouted. Hutch winced and whispered, "Sorry." And they both watched Silvy as she rushed to rescue the puzzle, only to see that it was already too far gone.
"I'll get you a new one." Hutch promised, then suffered through an hour of Starsky tapping on the bar, knocking his pinky ring against his glass and doing a hundred other annoying, fidgety things that made tiny noises and served no conceivable purpose. Worse yet, Starsky wasn't drinking.
Hutch had the feeling he knew why. Starsky had been so concerned about getting back on the street, and getting back in the car with his partner, he'd been overcompensating for his normal preparedness. In every aspect but the paperwork, he'd done everything in his power to be at peak performance, stopped only by the mystery of his twitching fingers. He'd covered more miles at a faster pace than ever before in his life. He was working out more with all the down time he had, his apartment was practically pristine, and he'd made leaps and bounds with his pet project of replacing the Torino's coolant system.
The more Hutch thought about it, the hours Starsky had spent with the cube in his hands had been the most peaceful the blond partner had experienced in weeks. But for the teeth-grinding snick snick snick of plastic on plastic, which he realized a second later, he was hearing again.
The cube had dried and even without benefit of the colors, Starsky was working the pieces.
"Starsk...I said, I'll get you a new one."
"I can mark this one." Starsky said, shifting the cube to his left hand and slowing his pace so that he could work the pieces with just that hand.
"Can you do it tomorrow? Can you do all of that tomorrow?" While I'm gone?
"I gotta practice, Hutch." Starsky said softly, completely focused on the cube.
Hutch put his hand out, pressed Starsky's wrist to the bar top and said, "Give it a rest. Your hand. Rest." He said, wondering if a third beer on a weekday was overdoing it.
Starsky sighed and put the cube back on the bar, quiet for ten seconds before he started drumming on the top of it.
Hutch stood, threw some bills on the bar then snatched up the cube and his jacket and headed for the door. Starsky gave him a confused look, but hopped off the stool just as happy to do something other than sit in a bar and not drink.
Once he was outside Hutch resisted the urge to throw the Magic Cube as far into the street as he could. It wasn't the cube's fault that his partner was a terrible patient. He had to admit that watching the cube explode under a tire would be immensely satisfying but...a flying black box might cause a traffic incident that he didn't want to fill out the reports for.
Hutch tucked the cube into his pocket, opened the passenger side door on his car and waited for Starsky.
"What-?"
"Get in."
"Why?"
Hutch glanced at his watch then said, "I can pick up a racquetball court in thirty minutes."
"Racquetball!?" Starsky blurted, his nose flaring over a curled lip.
"I'm gonna wear you out, then take you home and put you to bed." Hutch said.
Starsky's brow creased, blue eyes glaring, but Hutch could tell the promise of a challenging, if mildly violent game appealed to his bored partner. Starsky pulled his Torino keys out of his coat pocket, waggled them at Hutch, then promised to follow him to the gym.
Hutch waited til Starsky was out of sight before he put the Magic Cube under the front passenger tire, then rolled down the window on the passenger side.
He wanted to be able to hear the crunch of the plastic, and felt a sadistic sort of glee when he turned over the engine of the LTD and pulled slowly forward. Satisfying...one Magic Cube down. Millions, he was sure, to go.