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It’s not like Strahm expected to be spitting on Hoffman’s face. It’s just where he happened to end up right now.
Okay — maybe that’s jumping the gun a little. It’d make more sense to start from the beginning, wouldn’t it?
To make one thing clear right off the bat: Hoffman is infuriating. Strahm knows he’s suspicious. He knows there’s something he’s hiding. He just can’t prove it.
He spends a lot of late nights at the station, at the desk he’s been given while he’s working with the local precinct. It’s scattered with scrawled notes and fast food wrappers, a consequence of never wanting to leave for any prolonged period of time to take care of himself.
Did he shower a day ago? Two? Time is blurring together. The case is all that matters.
He’s knee-deep in files and VHS tapes and notes when he hears a knock on his office door.
He looks up.
It’s Hoffman.
Immediately, Strahm’s hackles rise. He hates the damn look of the man. There’s always a smug arrogance about him, like he’s just so clever, like he’s going to get away with whatever it is he’s doing.
“What?” Strahm snaps.
Hoffman lifts a plastic bag. The scent from it wafts into the office and makes Strahm’s mouth water.
“Thought you might need something to eat,” he says. “It’s late. No one’s seen you come out in hours.”
A quick glance at the clock shows it’s well past when everyone else has left.
So why is Hoffman here bugging him?
The food, whatever it is, does smell good, though. His stomach rumbles despite himself.
“...You eat it,” he mutters. “I’m busy.”
“Oh, I brought some for me, too,” Hoffman says, strolling into the office and closing the door behind himself. “Figured we could eat together. Talk about the case.”
Strahm raises a brow. “You couldn’t have come to talk to me during the day?”
Hoffman shrugs, setting the bag down on Strahm’s desk. “Got busy. You know how it is.”
God, he’s insufferable. Even when he’s trying to do something “nice,” Strahm can’t stand him. What’s he trying to prove? The people on his team keep dying, and he seems so unshaken.
“We’re not eating together.”
Hoffman pulls up a chair and sits across from him anyway. “I got steak.”
Strahm pauses. He’s had a lot of red meat recently, but more in the form of shitty chain restaurant burgers through a drive-thru window. Nothing fancy. Nothing special. Just fuel to keep his body pushing on as he works through mountains of sick, twisted evidence.
“...Steak. To go?”
Nodding, Hoffman reaches into the bag and pulls out two steak knives, clearly from his home and not wherever he got the food from. Strahm watches them glint with noticeable suspicion.
Hoffman scoffs out a chuckle.
“Veggies, too. Baked potato. C’mon, you need to eat if we’re gonna catch this guy.”
Strahm hesitates. He knows that Hoffman is right. The food smells delicious, too. Rich and filling. He reaches into the bag and grabs a plastic box branded with the name of a restaurant he’s never heard of. It’s heavy, and he opens it to see everything promised — a smothered baked potato, carrots and broccoli, and a fat steak leaking juices into everything else.
Hoffman smirks at him from across the desk, where he’s pushed some notes out of the way to open his own box. He passes Strahm a fork and a knife.
“...Don’t think this means I owe you anything,” Strahm says cautiously as he slices into the meat. Medium rare. How his dad used to make it.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Peter.”
His name rolling off of Hoffman’s tongue makes Strahm feel strange. He shoves a bite of steak into his mouth, chewing quickly, his body reacting to the taste and putting his hunger into overdrive.
He doesn’t say anything to that. They just eat silently for a while — until Hoffman ruins it.
“Got any leads?” he asks.
He knows Strahm doesn’t, and it pisses him off. With a huff, Strahm says, “Nothing new. Yet.”
“Yet?” Hoffman sinks his teeth into a slice of steak. The juice rolls down his chin, and he licks his lips, wiping his face with the back of his hand. Strahm follows the motion intently for reasons he can’t explain.
“Yet,” Strahm says, projecting confidence even though he’s in a constant spiral of hopelessness. “There’s something we’re all missing. Something I’m gonna find.”
Hoffman chuckles, slices off a big piece of potato, and devours it. “Bet you are. The feds always do, huh?”
There’s a resentment in his voice that Strahm is used to. No local cop likes it when he gets involved. Makes them feel useless. Bad at their jobs (which, in his experience, they often are).
But there’s something else hidden in Hoffman’s tone that Strahm can’t quite put his finger on.
“If you’ve got a problem—” Strahm crunches on a piece of broccoli. “—might as well air it out now, Detective.”
Hoffman taps his fork on the plastic of the now scratched-up container, crisscrossed with knife marks that don’t quite go all the way through.
“Not at all,” Hoffman says. “Glad you’re here to help.”
Strahm swallows his food. Already, his stomach is beginning to calm, thanking him for finally paying attention to it.
More silence, save for the sounds coming from their mutual devouring of their meals. Hoffman eats fast. Big bites, big like he is. Strahm wonders about his background, wonders if there was ever any food insecurity there that would explain why he eats like he’s afraid it’ll be taken away from him at any moment.
But he doesn’t know that much about Hoffman, and frankly, he doesn’t care.
When he finishes, Hoffman watches Strahm eat. It’s unsettling. He doesn’t like those eyes. Blue and piercing, so different from Strahm’s own analytical forest green.
Would those eyes peer through a peephole during a murder, he wonders?
He doesn’t say anything until he’s finished, only scraps left. Pushing the container away, he wipes his mouth and says, “You can go now.”
Hoffman most decidedly does not go.
“Talk to me, Peter,” he says, that damn name between his lips again. Pouty lips. Lips that are hard to draw your eyes away from once you truly start to notice them. “We need to work together on this. Humor me.”
“I don’t see what there is to talk about.”
Hoffman chuckles, leaning back in his seat.
“You hate me,” he says, plain and unaffected.
“I—” Strahm stutters, called out. “I what?”
“Come off it, Special Agent.” Hoffman’s smirk is light, but noticeable. “I know it. You know it. The whole damn precinct knows it. You’re not a subtle man, are you?”
That’s… true, Strahm supposes. His interrogation tactics are proof enough of that. Perez is the subtle one. She hides her disdain behind a smile.
Strahm’s never been one for that.
He sighs uncomfortably. “It’s not like I’m your favorite person in the world, either, is it?”
“I like you,” Hoffman says. “We appreciate the help—”
“Oh, shut up.” Strahm slaps a hand on his desk, and their silverware clatters. “This is bullshit. What do you want? I mean, really want.”
Hoffman is silent for a long moment.
Then he stands up.
Strahm’s eyes follow him as he walks around the desk. He turns in his chair until the back of it is pressed up against the edge of that desk, and then Hoffman traps him in with a hand on either side of him. Strahm feels like a cornered animal, the type ready to strike at any second.
“What I really…” Hoffman’s face closes in until Strahm can smell the remnants of their dinner wafting off his breath. “...really want?”
Strahm leans back as far as he can, grimacing. “I feel like I don’t want to know anymore.”
“Too late.” Hoffman’s cocky grin is infuriating. “You asked. I’m answering. Just tell me you suspect me already, Strahm.”
Oh, so he’s not Peter anymore? Interesting. Strahm narrows his eyes and bares his teeth.
“What,” he asks, “do you have a guilty conscience? Something you wanna tell me?”
“Just something I’m curious about,” Hoffman responds with a shrug. “Wondering what you might do. If I happened to be Jigsaw’s secret apprentice — the one you’re so sure exists.”
“He does exist,” Strahm says. “You’re always so quick to discredit me. Act like I’m insane for thinking it. What are you hiding, Mark?”
“Hiding?” Hoffman frowns with those full lips. “Nothing. All I want is to know what you have in store for me if your little hunch is right.”
Strahm could keep denying it. Keep pretending he doesn’t think it’s suspicious as hell how insistent Hoffman is on Amanda and Kramer being the ones solely responsible for the murders. He could play nice like he’s supposed to.
But he doesn’t want to.
“I’d arrest you,” he says. “Obviously. Make sure you rot behind bars for the rest of your life.”
“Wouldn’t kill me?”
“That’d be too good for you.” A beat. “If you were responsible, anyway.”
Hoffman chuckles, somehow smooth and rough all at once. “Would you come visit me? In prison?”
Strahm has no idea where this is going, and he’s tempted not to play along. But if Hoffman slips up, if there’s some clue hidden in his words… Well, he’d be a fool to let the opportunity pass him by.
“Why would I do that?”
“To gloat, I figure,” Hoffman says. “To lord it over me how you won and I lost.”
Strahm’s gaze flicks briefly between Hoffman’s eyes and his lips. “You think I’d waste my time doing that?”
“I think you might.” He leans a little closer — too close. “I think you might do a lot of things.”
Strahm’s mind blanks out like a computer that’s gotten too hot. He has to reboot. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…
“Are you flirting with me?”
“Is it working?”
“N—” Strahm is overcome with the sudden urge to push Hoffman away, which he tries valiantly. Unfortunately, it’s like hitting a brick wall for all the good it does. “—No, dipshit, it’s not fucking working! Get the hell out of here and go be a creep somewhere else.”
He watches Hoffman’s lashes flutter and the pink tip of his tongue swipe between his lips.
“What did you call me?”
Strahm sits up as straight as he can with Hoffman trapping him in. Squaring his shoulders, he says, “Dipshit. Ingrate. Total knuckle-dragging fucking idiot, what— what’s it take to get you to back off?”
Apparently not calling Hoffman names, because Strahm sees him shudder. It doesn’t look like he’s upset, though.
“Be honest,” he says.
“I am being honest,” Strahm insists. “You want the truth? Sure. I’ve hated you since I set eyes on your smarmy face. I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. If you turn out to be the sick fuck we’re looking for, I am gonna make sure you never see a scrap of sunlight for the rest of your life, and I’ll make sure all the guards and other prisoners know exactly what you did.”
Hoffman’s lashes flit closed. He lets out a soft moan.
That noise does things to Strahm that he refuses to consciously acknowledge.
“You’d do that?” Hoffman asks. “Set them after me like that? No protective custody?”
“Did you give people the luxury of protective custody before making them rip themselves apart?”
Hoffman’s eyes open half-lidded. His smirk is positively malicious.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“Oh, this is horseshit—”
Strahm yanks Hoffman by the tie, and then, when he has him caught off-guard and choking, shoves him back. He stands, eclipsing him in height by a few inches, and slams him against the nearest wall.
Post-its that had been hanging up flutter to the floor. The clock above them clatters as it comes close to falling.
Hoffman is panting.
“You like this?” Strahm asks. “You getting off on the idea that I’d wanna see you suffer? Huh? Sick freak.”
“I— I know you do,” Hoffman sputters, Strahm still holding his tie wrapped tightly around his fist. “Just don’t— wanna admit it.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“You know I’m right,” Hoffman says. “Wouldn’t be so mad if I wasn’t.”
The worst part about that? It’s true. Strahm’s always been a bit more inclined to thoughts of retribution than he should be. The thought of Hoffman getting his teeth kicked in by someone whose friend or family member was in a death trap isn’t at all a horrid one.
If that’s who he really is.
“...You’re pushing it,” is what he finally decides to say. He jabs a finger in Hoffman’s face. “Really fucking pushing—”
Hoffman grabs that finger between his teeth and sucks it into his mouth.
Strahm is so surprised that he just lets it happen. Hoffman grips his wrist and holds it, bobbing his head in a crude pantomime of something Strahm is trying very hard not to let himself think about.
He takes a second finger into his mouth. Then a third. The entire time, Strahm stares at him with that blank computer-bluescreen expression on his face. His other hand starts to go slack, Hoffman’s tie beginning to slip from it.
Hoffman grabs it, though, tightly holding Strahm’s hand closed. He leans back, freeing his fingers from his mouth, to breathe, “Harder. C’mon, Peter. Show me that fire.”
For some reason, Strahm finds that offensive. His brows stitch, and he glares, the anger lines in his forehead far more prominent.
“What, you want me to choke you?” he asks, tugging the tie, holding his fist closed against the wall so the fabric presses into Hoffman’s Adam’s apple. He raises his voice, unable to control his temper. “You that kind of pervert? Huh? Answer me!”
Hoffman nods as best as he can while being choked. His eyes are closed, and he looks like he’s drifted off into his own little world.
“...You’re disgusting.” Strahm resolves himself to performing whatever weird dance this is that Hoffman initiated. He’s sick to death of this smug bullshit. He knows he’s just doing what the bastard wants, but, god, he needs to blow off steam somehow. “Bet you think you’re so clever.”
Hoffman gives a shaky smirk. Strahm eases up some of the pressure on his throat to let him talk.
“Aren’t I?”
Strahm loses it. He just barely restrains himself from cold-clocking Hoffman in the jaw; instead, he settles for an open-handed slap. It’s hard enough to send Hoffman off-balance, which is all the opportunity Strahm needs to shove him onto his knees.
Hoffman crashes down hard. Bigger they are, harder they fall, right? He groans when his knees hit the ground, and he rubs his bruising throat now that his tie is loose and free.
“Strahm—”
Strahm grinds the bottom of his shoe between Hoffman’s legs. Just as he suspected, he can feel the outline of his rock-hard cock.
It’s really annoying how big it is.
He steps down with more force when Hoffman gasps. That gasp turns into a whimper, which turns into a groan.
“Oh, you like that too, huh?” Strahm snarls. “You better. I’m not gonna touch your disgusting cock otherwise.”
“Ah—” Hoffman is rapidly losing it, a strand of his hair falling over his sweat-slick forehead. He rocks his hips up, and god, that must hurt, right? “A-ah. Fuck. Tell me I’m guilty. Tell me I’m—”
Strahm grabs onto Hoffman’s chin tightly enough to bruise, and, well…
He spits in his face.
So now we’re all caught up.
Definitely not how he thought the night would go, with a glob of his spit landing on Hoffman’s cheek and dripping down toward his mouth, but he’s in too deep now to back out. His father told him, “Always see things through to the end, Peter.”
And who would he be if he disobeyed?
“You’re guilty as shit,” Strahm hisses through bared teeth. “I don’t fucking trust you. You have psychopath written all over you.”
“Do I?” Hoffman smirks. “Then what does that make you?”
He backhands him this time. There’s blood between Hoffman’s lips when he next looks up.
“Don’t try that ‘we’re the same’ bullshit, if that’s where you’re going with this,” Strahm says. “You’re just some psychotic pervert trying to get his rocks off while I want to bring some goddamn justice to the victims’ families!”
“Their families? Yeah?” Hoffman asks. “Not just to make you feel like the big man on the block? Do what no one else could? Get some valida—”
Strahm grinds the toe of his shoe into the spot between Hoffman’s cock and balls. He gets a satisfying shout in return. He gives in to the urge to spit on Hoffman again, and this time, the bulk of it lands in his mouth.
Hoffman swallows.
“Disgusting,” Strahm says. “You’re like a fucking dog.”
“You do this to dogs?”
Letting out a frustrated noise, Strahm barely resists the urge to kick Hoffman in the dick full-force.
“No,” he growls, “but dogs hump people’s legs, don’t they?”
He nudges the tip of his shoe under Hoffman’s balls, and the tent in Hoffman’s pants twitches.
“Go on,” Strahm says. “Take what you want, if you’re choking for it so bad.”
When Hoffman next looks up, his eyes are misty with desire. Dazed and far-away, he seems completely captivated by Strahm.
He grabs Strahm’s leg, sits up, and starts to rut against it.
Jesus fuck.
“Ew— Ew,” Strahm says, but, with his cheek up against Strahm’s thigh, Hoffman has to notice his pants are tented now, too. “Don’t do— Fuck. You’re vile.”
Strahm’s own spit soaks through his pants as Hoffman nuzzles his cheek against his leg. He gives in to the urge to take a fistful of Hoffman’s hair just to hear him whine.
“Y-you told me to,” Hoffman groans. “Don’t you want it? Ah— Like it when— when you’re in control, Special Agent?”
“Stop drooling on me,” Strahm says, because his pants are beginning to get filthy with Hoffman’s bloody spit. It doesn’t show much on his black slacks, but he knows the stain is there. “Goddamn mess. Ah— Fuck— I know what you want, asshole.”
“Yeah?” Hoffman looks up at him with those chilling blue eyes. “And what’s that?”
Oh, fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck Hoffman, fuck Jigsaw, and fuck this case.
Strahm grabs his cock through his pants with his free hand, and the one tangled in Hoffman’s hair forces his face against it.
“You want this,” he spits, and he feels Hoffman instantly start to lick him through his slacks. “Am I right? Huh? Say it. Admit it.”
“Uh-huh,” Hoffman groans, because his tongue is otherwise occupied. “Uh-huh.”
“I said say it,” Strahm says, yanking his head back hard. He watches Hoffman’s throat bob as he swallows, blood and spit smeared over his face.
“Want it,” Hoffman growls. “Want your cock. So are you gonna give it to me, or what?”
“Shit.” Strahm undoes his pants one-handed, cursing himself the entire time. This is wrong. This is fucked. This isn’t what a goddamn FBI agent should be doing with the person he suspects.
Maybe that’s what makes it so good.
“Sick cunt,” he says as Hoffman’s mouth drops open at the sight of him. “Better make this worth my fucking while.”
“Can do,” that insufferable bastard says, right before his lips close around the head of Strahm’s cock.
He’s— Fuck, he’s good at this. Hoffman strokes him, licks him, takes him down his throat with zero hesitation. Shit. How many other men has he done this with? Or is Strahm just special? Did he get Hoffman to practice on popsicles and hot dogs and dildos in anticipation of this? Does he naturally have no fucking gag reflex?
Whatever. He doesn’t care. What he cares about is holding Hoffman tight enough to tear some strands of hair from his scalp as he fucks his throat.
The sounds Hoffman makes are almost as disgusting as he is. Little half-gags and sloppy slurps and muffled groans. Drool drips down his chin, down Strahm’s balls, gets them both messy enough that they’ll need showers after this.
Strahm certainly will, anyway. He’ll need to scrub away this memory so he can pretend like it never happened. Knowing Hoffman, he probably won’t even brush his fucking teeth before he comes in tomorrow.
When Hoffman next peers up at him, satisfaction shining in his eyes, Strahm becomes aware just how much noise he’s been making. How embarrassing. Moaning from another man’s mouth, a man who he has every reason (and no reason at all) to suspect is the culprit of some grisly fucking murders.
God. What’s wrong with him?
But if Hoffman is Jigsaw’s apprentice. If he is.
Wouldn’t it be nice to ruin him?
It’s that thought that has Strahm once more grinding his foot into Hoffman’s dick. It’d be harder to keep his balance without Hoffman’s hands gripping his waist tightly. The mutt starts humping his shoe, making soft noises of pleasure whenever his throat isn’t too stuffed full of cock.
“D-disgusting,” Strahm pants, growing closer and closer to the edge the more he imagines Hoffman in prison orange with his hands cuffed to a table. Helpless. Vulnerable. Unable to escape.
Ah, fuck.
“You wanna come? Huh? You wanna?” he asks, aggressive with the promise of his orgasm, just a little while away. “On my shoe, like the animal you are?”
His whole cock vibrates with the force of Hoffman’s moan.
Strahm yanks him off of his cock. Hoffman whimpers, tries to put it back in, but Strahm has a hold of his now-messy hair and doesn’t let him.
“No, you’re gonna take it,” he says. “You’re gonna take it like this. Keep your mouth open, you fucking dog. Keep it open, keep— Augh—”
Hoffman pants hard, chest rising and falling rapidly as his eyes roll back in his head. A second later, Strahm shoots over his face, in his hair, in his mouth. He can’t remember the last time he had an orgasm that strong, that powerful. Feels like his balls are being drained of more than they could reasonably have in them.
As a final “fuck you,” he toes Hoffman’s cock so hard it’d go soft immediately if he were doing it to anyone but this total freak. As it stands, though, Hoffman just shouts, and a second later, his pants are soaked through.
He swallows what’s in his mouth. Strahm releases his hair just to push him away. Hoffman collapses into a disheveled heap against Strahm’s desk, cum dripping down his ruddy cheeks, hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. He looks up at Strahm like he came down from Heaven itself.
“...Get the fuck out,” Strahm tells him. “And watch your fucking back.”
As Hoffman chuckles and lumbers out (without even wiping his face), Strahm can’t help but think he just did something he won’t ever be able to take back.