Debriefing

Dealing with emotion after a violent day is always better when Starsky and Hutch are together.

“You ever think about words that don’t mean exactly what you think they do?” Starsky coated the top layer of his French fries with catsup.

“Not very often.” Hutch eyed the bright red condiment, shuddering. Too much like blood.

How could Starsky eat that when they’d spent half the day dealing with the aftermath a violent shootout between two rival gangs that had left one teen dead and another boy severely injured? As it was, although they’d been so involved that they’d gone most of the day without food, Hutch wasn’t sure he could do justice to the restaurant’s signature salad. He jabbed lettuce and onion with his fork, swirling it in the bleu cheese dressing, very aware that Starsky’s sudden interest in linguistics was his attempt to distract Hutch from the shooting.

“I looked up couple—as in, you’ve got a couple o’croutons on your pile of rabbit food.” Starsky waved a red dabbed fry at Hutch’s meal.

“I have three.” Hutch checked to make sure. He’d eaten two already, and usually only allowed himself five. Croutons were a garnish for the salad, not the main ingredient, after all. “That’s more than a couple.”

“Au…contraire,” Starsky declared in bad French.

Gave Hutch a grin, even so. He kept trying to teach his partner a smattering of the four languages he spoke with varied success.

“I looked it up in the dictionary.” Starsky chewed his fries and took a big chomp from his cheeseburger. “A couple of croutons—or whatever you got on hand, means two or three.” He smiled sweetly at Hutch, filching one of the crunchy morsels of dried bread. “A couple only means two when it’s people.”

“In a relationship.” Hutch nodded, understanding why Starsky would bring this up. He forked up more salad, unintentionally knocking the last two croutons together as if they were tucked up close in their cozy bed of lettuce. “You’ve been thinking about that a lot, have you?”

“Coupl’a times in the last couple days,” Starsky agreed, eating more burger. After two bites, he lay what was left beside the decimated fries on the plate and stretched his fingers across the table, just brushing Hutch’s wrist.

Hutch rotated his hand, entwining his fingers with Starsky’s. The most they could do in a public place filled with diners and busy wait staff. “Do we fit the definition of a couple?” he asked quietly, his heart lifting. Starsky did that to him every day of the week, and always would.

“Yeah.” Starsky pressed his fingers into Hutch’s before swirling two more fries in tomato catsup. “And I can think of more than a couple reasons why. But mostly, cause you were there today, Hutch.” He breathed out, a fleeting glimpse of incomparable sadness peeking through before he masked it with a brave grin. “That was a rough one.”

“Right back at you, Starsk.”

FIN