Archive of Our Own ^beta

“There’s not a single ounce of drinkable coffee in this entire precinct,” Perez sighs, sitting down at the edge of Peter’s desk. She’s got two paper cups in her hands, and she takes a long sip out of one of them, grimacing. “I think they just leave old beans to soak overnight and then heat it up on the burner in the mornings.”

“Then why are you drinking it?” Peter asks, reaching out for the second coffee. 

It’s been a long day on top of a long week on top of a long month, and he figures Perez is over-exaggerating.

They’ve spent weeks on cases in much worse precincts than this one, the coffee worse than the last every time. Peter had almost quit cold-turkey once on a case in Missouri, because the coffee they served at the station had tasted like what he assumes burnt mud might taste like. He’s not particularly picky at this point.

“Pure desperation,” she replies through a full-body shudder. “I gave up on trying to find anything decent on the fourth floor. At least the break room down there had sugar packets I could use to drown out the flavour of sweaty gym socks.”

Peter frowns at her over his cup, regretting his decision mid-gulp. He pulls the cup away from his mouth and blanches. Perez chuckles. 

“Jesus,” he groans, setting the cup down on his desk. “At least Quantico has the budget for proper coffee machines.”

“Don’t be such a snob,” Perez teases. “Now what’s up?”

Peter raises an unimpressed eyebrow at her. “You think I cracked the case during your fifteen minute coffee run?”

“Wouldn’t bet against it, I’ve seen you solve a case in less time,” she laughs. “Did you go talk to the detectives? Hear what they think?”

Peter’s left eye twitches. “No one in this building talks in multisyllabic sentences,” he complains. “It’s impossible to hold a conversation with any of them.”

“Monosyllabic answers are better than no answers,” Perez says, tilting her head forward at him with a smirk, one eyebrow raised, like she’s performing a tight five and is waiting for the audience to get the joke. If Peter wasn’t so incredibly fond of her, he might have found the entire thing tiresome.

“I tried to hold a conversation with Officer Rigg, but he wouldn’t even look me in the eye. It’s almost as if they don’t want our help with solving the case.”

“They probably don’t,” Perez says, shrugging. “You know how it always is. Cops are never happy about sharing their space with beauro folk. Makes them feel small, and if there is one thing police officers hate, it’s feeling small.”

“They’re gonna have to suck it up,” he snaps. “It’s gonna make everything a hell of a lot harder for everyone involved if they won’t cooperate with us.”

“Have you given any thought to what Detective Hoffman said during last night’s meeting?” Perez asks, picking at her nails, a tell-tale sign she knows the question will piss him off. Peter has known her long enough to be able to read her like that. “He seems to think an accomplice is out of the question, and he’s been on the case for months .”

“I watched him struggle with the copy machine for over half an hour this morning before he realised all he had to do was refill the paper drawer, so sorry if I’m not going to take his word on it.”

“And you couldn’t offer a helping hand? Just to appease him a bit?”

Peter frowns at her. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Don’t you think it’s going to make everything a hell of a lot harder for everyone involved if you don’t stop looking down your nose at the officers? I think Erickson might suffer an aneurysm any minute now if you don’t stop scaring people. I think he’s receiving complaints.”

“I’m scaring people?” Peter huffs. “How am I scaring people?”

Perez grins, like he’s just handed her a golden opportunity, and Peter knows he’s in for a teasing. “You do that thing,” she pauses to purse her lips and give him a hard, heavy lidded glower. “I’ve seen people turn on their heels and walk in the other direction when you come down a hallway.”

“I don’t look like that,” Peter argues. “At least not all the time.”

“It’s your resting face,” Perez laughs, eyes crinkling in the corners. 

Peter groans. “Don’t you have work to do?”

--

Peter is standing in front of the abysmal display of baked goods in the precinct cafeteria, wondering if he’s in the mood for a stale muffin or a soggy piece of banana bread, when someone bumps into him from behind. His hipbone slams into the side of the counter, and pain shoots up his side in violent bursts. 

“Fuck,” he hisses. “Watch where you’re going.”

“Apologies, Agent,” the person says, and when Peter turns around, he’s met with the smug look on Detective Hoffman’s face. 

Peter’s eyes involuntarily fall to where Hoffman’s tie is untied and hanging loose around his neck, as if he’s on his way home from his senior prom and not on active duty on a serial killer case.

Peter hopes his facial expression conveys the level of utter dismay he’s feeling.

“What are you having?” Hoffman nods towards the display. Either he hasn’t taken the hint that he’s not welcomed in Peter’s personal space, or he’s just persisted in being infuriating.

“I’m not hungry,” Peter grumbles, and steps to the side so he can pass Hoffman’s wide frame to get to the coffee machine. 

The pot is half-empty and bordering on cold, but Peter still pours himself a cup. He’s been up since five in the morning because a nightmare woke him up and then kept him up. He had given up trying to get any more rest and came into the office around six-thirty, looking so exhausted he suspects the receptionist must have thought him a ghost by the way she jumped behind her desk when she spotted him come through the door. 

Hoffman strides up next to him, grabbing a mug from the tray and waits for Peter to finish with the pot. 

“I just have to ask,” he says when Peter hands it to him and puts about two steps of distance between them, “what’s up with you beauro folk all being raging workaholics?”

Peter splutters into his coffee, and brings the cup away from his mouth to frown at Hoffman. “Sorry?”

Hoffman shrugs and takes a sip. Peter watches the way his throat works as he swallows. “Every time I come in, no matter the time, you’re here.”

“It’s not hard to be here when you come in considering you’re consistently tardy,” Peter retorts.

“Oh, my apologies . Wasn’t I in my office by the time the bell rang? Did I miss roll-call?” Hoffman laughs humorlessly. It’s clear he’s feeling a certain type of way about Peter questioning his work-performance. “ Tardy ,” he repeats to himself snarkily.

Peter rolls his eyes, tired of this conversation already. 

Out of every Detective at the precinct, Peter can’t fathom why Hoffman is one of the leading Detectives on the Jigsaw case. Hoffman, who came in still drunk from the night before last week, and spends most of his time locked up in his office doing seemingly anything but actual police work. Peter can’t comprehend the way the rest of the precinct seems to buckle under Hoffman’s charm like he’s goddamned James Dean reincarnated. The one morning he and Peter arrived at the station at the same time, the receptionist had blushed and greeted Hoffman with a little bit more excitement than Peter found strictly professional. Even Erickson seemed to like him, and Erickson was famous at Quantico for not liking anyone . Peter has been working with him for over a decade and has yet to receive one of the Erickson family’s annual Christmas cards. He only knows about the damn card because Perez received one last year, and hung it up on the wall of their shared office just to rub it in.

“You heading for the briefing room for the meeting?” Hoffman asks.

Peter sighs. “Obviously.”

“What a coincidence. Me too.”

“How is that a—” Peter pauses to run a hand over his face, resolutely not taking the bait. He’s too old for this shit. “I’m leaving now.”

Hoffman grins at him, pleased. “Go ahead.”

Peter walks down the corridor in large strides, hoping his long legs will give him an advantage so he can reach the elevator before Hoffman catches up. Turns out Hoffman is quick on his feet, and he slips through the doors before they have a chance to close, sealing them in together. Peter leans against the wall, slowly sipping his shitty, cold coffee and counts to ten in his head. Hoffman is standing perfectly still next to him, and even though Peter can’t see his shit-eating grin, he can almost feel it radiating off of him in the confined space of the elevator car.

--

The next weeks are a blur of mind-numbing paperwork and endless empty trails, bodies piling up, each more mutilated than the other. Peter comes home at night after twenty-four hour shifts that only end because Erickson throws him out of the building when he catches him dozing off by his desk, and the emptiness of his rented apartment threatens to swallow him whole. On the worst nights, when bloody corpses swim behind his eyelids, he finds himself tossing and turning until he can’t stand the feeling of the sheets against his skin, and ends up watching reruns of old crime shows on the couch until it’s time for him to go into the office. 

It’s something he and Perez used to do when they first got partnered up together, when Perez was straight out of the academy and Peter was lonely and desperate for someone to just exist in his space. They would spend exhausted nights watching cop shows just so they could comment on the inaccuracy of them. Perez would point at the TV and say, bullshit, that blood is too pink and it doesn’t splatter like that , and Peter would groan and say, they’re completely messing up the crime scene, why aren’t they wearing gloves? And some of that bone-deep loneliness would seep out of him, slowly but surely, until sleeping alone at night didn’t feel like such a punishment. 

--

“For the last time, Detective-”

“It’s Special Agent, actually.”

Lawrence Gordon sighs loudly into the receiver, clearly annoyed beyond measure. “My apologies, Special Agent ,” he corrects with the same air of mockery as the beat-cops around the office. Peter is too well acquainted with this dynamic to be bothered by it. “As I’ve told you, and possibly every cop in the tri-state area, I didn’t see anything.”

Peter runs a hand over his face, enjoying the way the sides of his eyes pull downwards with the motion. He’s going to have a plethora of new wrinkles and frown lines by the time they close this case. 

“I’m sorry, but I just find it a bit spectacular that you managed to make it to the hospital across town alive , after sawing your own leg off and crawling your way out of an underground bathroom through the sewer district. It’s a bit marvellous, isn’t it?”

“Thanks, I’ve been repeatedly told” Gordon bites back. “I don’t remember how I got out, but I’d be happy to fax you my medical records so you can get some insight as to how the hospital staff managed to save my life. And as I suspect you’re about to call Adam and ask him all the same questions, I suggest you don’t bother. He was unconscious the entire time, and would probably be just as helpful as I have been.”

Peter feels his eyebrows raise high on his forehead. “A little snappy there, Doc.”

“Special Agent,” Gordon grumbles, annoyance seeping into every syllable, “if there’s anything I can help with, any questions I can answer, that isn’t something I have told you guys a million times already, you’re welcome to call me back on this number.”

Peter, knowing he’s going to get nothing else from this conversation, and not really caring for social etiquette, hangs up without another word.

He finds Perez in the breakroom. She’s sitting with her head resting on her forearms on the table, a cup of coffee next to her elbow. There’s no one else in there with them, so Peter doesn’t bother keeping his voice down when he says, “I think we have to make a visit to Adam Faulkner-Stanheight.”

She looks up at him with bloodshot eyes. Peter doesn’t remember the last time either of them went home to sleep. “The third Jigsaw survivor?”

“That's the one,” Peter nods. He sits down across from her and reaches for her coffee. It’s slightly cold, but he drowns it regardless. “Does no one in this precinct drink their coffee hot?”

Perez shakes her head. “Doesn’t seem like it,” she sighs. “Why do you want to talk to him? We’ve already watched his statement a million times. I think I could recite it by heart, at this point. I could probably do a really good impression too.”

“Something Dr. Gordon said to me on the phone just now,” Peter says, rubbing at his chin. He needs to shave. Probably needs a shower too. He hasn’t looked himself in the mirror in a while. “He was very adamant about us not contacting Stanheight.”

“So?”

“Almost like he didn’t want us to,” Peter insists. “There’s something shady going on with those two.”

Perez leans her chin in the palm of her hand. “Maybe he’s just protective? The two of them did go through something uniquely traumatic together, and have both been subjected to a ridiculous amount of questioning in the past few months. Are you sure you want to bother him further?”

“To solve this case? Yeah.”

Perez sighs. “If you think it might be worth our time, I’m willing to try. But we’re picking up some drinkable coffee on our way over, and I want to go home and get some rest afterwards.”

Peter nods and gets up from his seat.

“You too,” Perez adds. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week. And you need a haircut.”

--

Adam looks dishevelled and surprised when he opens the door for them, clearly just having woken up and not expecting visitors. He’s wearing a Pansy Division t-shirt, and boxers. His apartment smells like weed. 

When Perez flashes her badge, he pales slightly, but opens the door for them without a word and walks over to a threadbare couch to sit down. 

“I’ve spent so much time with law enforcement the past couple of months it probably cancels out every rally I’ve ever been to,” he sighs, plopping his feet up on the coffee table. “Sit down, you make me nervous when you stand there all authoritative like that.”

Perez turns to raise an amused brow at Peter, but sits down in the armchair by the couch. Peter stays standing. The two of them have a tendency to immediately fall into the good cop bad cop routine.

“I’m sorry,” Perez says, keeping her tone pleasant and sweet. “I’m Special Agent Lindsay Perez,” she waves her hand at Peter, “and this is Special Agent Peter Strahm.”

Adam just nods at her. He is leaned back on the couch with his arms crossed over his chest. Peter, who has almost thirty years of interrogation experience under his belt, can tell that Adam is trying to seem nonchalant, but he’s failing miserably at hiding the way his legs are shaking. “Should we do some icebreakers? Fun facts?” he gripes sarcastically. “What’s the colour of your toothbrushes? Mine’s pink.”

Perez wisely chooses to ignore Adam’s weak attempt at gaining any sort of upper-hand over the situation. “We know you’ve probably had to repeat your statement a ridiculous amount of times by now.”

“Enough,” Adam agrees, “yeah.”

“Well, Agent Strahm and I only have a few questions for you, if that’s ok?”

Adam does a bad job at hiding his eye roll. “Do I have a choice?”

“Not unless you want us to bring you into the station,” Peter huffs.

Adam frowns at him, clearly antagonised. “Alright. Go ahead then.”

“We’re just interested in how you made it to the hospital, after you were released,” Perez says, smiling encouragely. “We’re not gonna make you walk us through any of the other parts of what you went through.”

“How kind,” Adam quips, rolling his injured shoulder. It makes a worrying crack echo through the room, but Adam doesn’t seem fazed. “There’s not much to tell. I passed out from the blood loss—must’ve been just a few hours after Lawrence left—and then woke up in a hospital bed with no recollection as to how I got there. The hospital staff told me I was just found propped up against a fire hydrant in the parking lot.”

“Yes, that’s what we’ve heard,” Peter says. He keeps his voice even. “We just find it a bit hard to understand how no one spotted the person who brought you there when they were dragging you out of a car and placing you there in a very public place.”

Adam scowls. “Well, Jigsaw was perfectly capable of abducting me and getting me into that bathroom in the first place.”

“Adanda Young,” Peter corrects.

“Sorry?”

“Amanda Young is the person responsible for kidnapping Jigsaw’s victims.”

“Yeah, but…” Adam pauses. His eyebrows are low on his face, and his expression is doing something complicated, shifting between confusion and frustration. “Isn’t Jigsaw just more of a concept, at this point?”

“Why do you think so?” 

“I mean, it was the public, journalists and—the people reporting on the cases—who made up the name? So it’s more a name for the… games. For what they are doing.”

“Games? Is that what you survivors are calling it?” Perez questions, whipping out her notebook. Adam glances at it and swallows nervously. 

“That’s what they are,” he shrugs. “I mean, that’s what they’re meant to be. You’ve seen the tapes.”

Peter finds that interesting. He knows Amanda Young had told Detective Tapp and Detective Sing that John Krahmer had helped her by putting her through the reverse bear trap test, but Peter hadn’t really thought any of the other survivors would share the sentiment. 

“Is that how you feel? That you were just playing a game?” Perez asks, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees.

“They’re not just games,” Adam argues, clearly frustrated. “But yeah, that’s the whole idea.” He uncrosses and crosses his arms again. “I’m not grateful to have been a part of one. If that’s what you’re asking. Not like Amanda.”

Peter raises an eyebrow at Perez, and she sends him a look he knows means she’s thinking the same thing. 

Amanda’s statement was never released to the public. 

“Ok,” Perez obliges. “You’re sure you don’t have any inkling as to who got you out? Not even the slightest idea?”

Adam hesitates, fingers tapping against his forearm in a repetitive rhythm. Peter suspects he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. 

“I was out cold,” Adam reminds them. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.” He doesn’t seem all that sorry. 

“Thank you,” Perez nods, getting up from the chair. “I can’t promise we won’t be in contact with you again.”

“Of course you can’t,” Adam sighs, rubbing both hands over his face. “Well, you know where I live. If you want hors d'oeuvres next time, please call ahead.”

--

“Are you thinking the same thing as me?” Perez asks as they’re descending the stairs of Adam’s shitty apartment building. 

“That Amanda was the one who saved Adam? Yeah,” Peter agrees. “I just don’t understand why. He failed his game. They’ve never let anyone go before.”

Perez stops outside the car, glancing at Peter over the roof. “It sure is interesting,” she agrees. “You don’t think Adam is the second accomplice, do you?”

“No,” he confirms. “He might have let him go, but Kramer would have never let someone who failed their test be a part of his team. But I do think Adam knows more than he lets on.”

--

The next day, Peter is sitting by his desk in the tiny cubicle the station has been kind enough to provide them with, glowering at the reports on the desk in front of him, when someone knocks on the wall next to him. He’s disappointed to look up into the exhausted face of Erickson. 

“Yeah?” Peter pushes his chair away from his desk so he can properly look at him without craning his neck too much. He’s getting too old.

“We just received an anonymous tip about a possible location for one of the Jigsaw warehouses.”

Peter groans, rubbing a hand over his face. “That's the fifth one this week, and it’s only Thursday. We come up empty every time.”

Erickson shifts his weight from foot to foot. “You know we still have to follow up on it.”

“And you’re telling me because you want me to go take a look at it, aren’t you?”

Erickson has the audacity to smile at him.

“Isn’t that a job more suited for one of the boys in blue?” Peter lowers his voice, afraid to be heard over the short walls of his cubicle. If he stands up, most of his upper body towers over the edge of it. 

“That’s why we’re sending a Detective with you,” Erickson says through a cough, like he’s afraid saying it outright will send Peter into a fit of rage. It almost does.

“Please tell me it’s Detective Kerry, or Rigg.”

“Both are out today,” Erickson says, sounding apologetic. “Detective Hoffman is going with you,” he says, and then holds up a finger to stop Peter’s inevitable protest, “and before you say anything, it wasn’t my decision. I know you don’t like the guy, Strahm, but please do your job.”

“You can’t go over the chief of police?” Peter groans, rubbing his fists into his eyes. “I have spent about five minutes one on one with the guy, and he didn’t do much more than grunt and look smug.”

“Maybe a bit more time spent with him will reveal him to be a perfectly respectable man,” Erickson offers, but he’s smiling like he doesn’t believe a word of what he’s saying. “He’s waiting in a car out front, so I suggest you get a move on.”

It’s not as if Peter is about to be completely unreasonable about this. He doesn’t know Hoffman well enough to dislike him too much. It’s just that he’s exactly the kind of cop Peter hates working with. Overly cocksure, condescending, and way too opinionated. He’s the kind of cop to mess up an investigation because he refuses to stick to the rules. If Peter voiced any of this to Perez, she’d laugh at him and call him a hypocrite. 

When Peter gets in the passenger seat, Hoffman is tuning the radio, trying to find something to listen to, as if they’re about to embark on a roadtrip, and not to snuff out the evil lair of a serial killer. 

Peter suffers through about two minutes of static and random bits of radio shows before he snaps. “Will you just drive already?”

Hoffman glances over at him, the corner of his mouth upturned. “You don’t want to set the mood?”

“What mood?” Peter sighs. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Feisty,” Hoffman murmurs. “Alright.”

The radio has been left at an empty station, so they drive in complete silence for a while. The white noise gnaws at Peter’s brain until he’s forced to lean over and switch the channel to anything else. It lands on some sort of 70s rock song he can’t place.

“Do you know where we’re going?” he asks, realising Erickson hadn’t given him any details. 

“Yeah,” Hoffman says humorously, looking inappropriately smug.

Peter can’t stand him.

They end up at a dilapidated abandoned building in the meatpacking district, and as soon as Peter gets out of the car he can smell the Hudson. 

“Lovely,” he grunts to himself. “Let’s start in the basement and work our way up,” he tells Hoffman.

“Roger that,” Hoffman nods. “Lead the way, Agent.”

Peter feels better with his gun in hand.

--

As expected, they find nothing. 

Peter gets rust on his suit jacket trying to squeeze down a narrow hallway, and Hoffman smirks at him as he offers to brush it off. They spend about ten minutes trying to get a door open on the second floor, which Hoffman ends up kicking open, much to Peter’s dismay. Hoffman is all shoulders and brute force, and it makes Peter feel a little insane. 

“You know we don’t actually have a search warrant for this building?” Peter grumbles when they find nothing but a fold-up chair and a newspaper dating back to three years prior.

Hoffman smiles like that’s funny.

They get back to the car, and Peter feels a bit defeated, but not surprised that the anonymous tip didn’t lead to anything useful. He’s gotten used to feeling like this entire case is like chasing ghosts; driving around a roundabout with no way of getting out; getting lost in a labyrinth of clues you can’t decipher. He wonders if Hoffman is feeling the same way, or if he’s sitting there, smug with the belief that he’s been right all along. 

Peter’s been in this line of work long enough to feel confident in his own inclings. Once he’s onto something, he chases it until the very end. He knows he’s right about the second Jigsaw accomplice, he just knows it.

There’s an air of exhaustion in the car, and Peter debates asking to be dropped off at his apartment, but he doesn’t, partly because the thought of walking into that cold, impersonal space he’s calling home for now makes him feel incredibly depressed, and partly because he would rather rip his own face off than ask Hoffman for a favour, so they drive back to the station in silence and Peter goes back to his paperwork.

Peter still can’t shake the feeling that he’s missing something.

--

Perez comes in an hour after Peter and Hoffman get back to the precinct, and she’s already got a smirk on her face when Peter enters their shared cubicle after his meeting with Erickson. 

“Have fun?” she asks, twirling a pen between her fingers. 

Peter sighs as he drops into his chair. 

“I’ve taken shits more exciting than that,” he replies, rubbing both fists into his eyes until stars spin behind his eyelids. His head hurts, and he regrets that sixth cup of coffee he had three hours ago.

“That was unnecessary,” Perez huffs, grimacing. “I take it you didn’t find anything.”

“What gave it away?”

“The look on your face,” she replies. “I know that look. It means I feel like I’ve failed somehow because everything didn’t go exactly the way I wanted it to. ”

“You are a menace,” Peter groans. 

She has the audacity to laugh. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. “If you’re feeling up for it, a few of the officers are going to grab a beer down the street and have invited us ‘round.”

“You just came in,” Peter points out, “isn’t that a little unprofessional?”

“As if anything that has to do with us is gonna happen at eleven on a Tuesday night,” she huffs. “We’re both overworked. We deserve a drink. Erickson practically told me to go when he heard. Plus, I’m not really on the night shift. I just get asked to come in to keep you in check.”

“Who’s coming?” Peter asks instead of acknowledging any of that. He doesn’t know why he bothers, because he already knows the answer from the look on her face. 

“Kerry, Rigg, Hoffman, a few other officers I don’t know the name of but should probably learn soon.” She rolls her eyes at his frown. “You don’t even have to talk to him. He doesn’t strike me as a conversational drinker. More of the: sit in a corner, drink five beers and stumble his way home without saying goodbye.”

Peter doesn’t want to comment on the fact that that’s exactly what he does unless Perez gets him smashed before they even arrive at the bar.

He must admit that a beer is exactly what he needs right now. He hasn’t had the time or energy to have a drink since the first week they relocated here. It was Perez’s first time in New York, and the agents on the case had all gone to a tacky nightclub, pretending, for a night, that they weren’t in the city solely to work on catching a prolific serial killer. Peter had gotten so hammered he had thrown up in the taxi, and came into the office the next day feeling like someone had run him over in his sleep and then tap-danced on his broken body. The only consolation had been that Erickson had been just as wrecked, and therefore couldn’t yell at Peter’s state in fear of being a hypocrite. 

He agrees to go with the longest groan he can muster, just to make it clear to Perez that he’s going to blame her if he doesn’t have a good night. 

“Good,” Perez grins, “because I already accepted the invitation for the both of us.”

--

They go to a dingy dive-bar a few blocks down from the station, and Officer Rigg offers to buy the first round. And because the universe has been against him from the second he took a step off the plane two months ago, Detective Kerry insists they all squeeze into a booth that was definitely not designed with eight adults in mind. Peter makes sure to sit down as far away from Hoffman as possible, and ends up between Perez and some junior officer who looks a bit out of place among his co-workers, and seems to be very aware of it. 

The first round goes down quickly, and Perez insists on getting the next one. Peter’s a hundred percent sure it’s to placate the obvious annoyance from the rest of the people around the table that they’re even there—not at the bar, but on the case. 

While she’s up at the bar, Kerry tries to ask him about Quantico, and Peter can’t help but feel like she’s trying very hard to like him, but can’t really make herself do it. 

“How are you finding the city compared to Virginia?” she asks, running a finger around the rim of her empty beer bottle. 

“I’ve worked on cases here before,” Peter shrugs. “It’s noisy and dirty.”

Kerry laughs. “Can’t argue that.”

When Peter looks over at Hoffman, he catches his eye, and wonders how long he’s been looking. Peter frowns at him, and Hoffman looks away.

Officer Rigg and the rest of the beat-cops leave around one in the morning. They all have spouses to go home to, and they say their goodbyes before dispersing one by one. The only reason Peter sticks around after it’s perfectly acceptable for him to leave is because Perez seems to be having fun, leaning over the table to chat with Detective Kerry, and he’s not about to leave her alone. He’s been nursing his third beer for over an hour, and after Officer Olson left, he was forced to scoot over to let her pass, and has ended up sitting next to Hoffman, who hasn’t said a word to anyone in about thirty minutes. Peter takes a deep breath and tries to catch up with whatever Kerry and Perez are talking about. 

Against Peter’s hopes and wishes, Hoffman breaks the silence. “Do you want another beer or do you like it lukewarm?”

Peter scowls down at his beer, which has indeed gone somewhat warm between his clutching hands. “I can get my own beer,” he replies.

“That’s not what I asked,” Hoffman points out, and Peter can see his upturned mouth in his peripheral vision. “I’m headed over to the bar, and if you want another, it would make sense for me to get you one while I’m already over there.”

Peter turns his head, narrowing his eyes. Hoffman has taken off his uniform jacket, and his light blue dress-shirt is tight across his chest. Peter swallows hard and tries to look at anything else.

“I shouldn’t have another,” he says. 

“Still not what I asked.” Hoffman laughs, like Peter is the most amusing thing in the room. “Do you want one or not?”

“Fine,” Peter gives in. “If you insist.”

Hoffman just nods, and slides out of the booth. Peter is annoyed to see that Hoffman doesn’t offer to get another drink for Perez or Kerry. He downs the rest of his beer while he waits and sets it back down on the table a bit harder than strictly necessary. Perez glances over, arching an eyebrow at him, but turns back to her conversation when he waves her off.

“What about you, Peter?” Kerry says all of a sudden, as if Peter has any idea what she and Perez have been talking about. Hoffman slides back into the booth and sets a beer down in front of him. 

“Sorry?”

Kerry smiles at him, a little pityingly. Hopefully she thinks he’s just drunk, and not socially incompetent. Both assumptions would be somewhat correct. 

“Do you have a partner, back in Virginia? Family?”

Perez gives him a nervous glance.

“Oh,” Peter coughs. “No. My mother and sister live in Maine.”

“That’s where you’re from?” 

“New Haven,” Peter nods. “But I haven’t been back since I left to go to the academy. I’ve been in Virginia for about 28 years now.”

Hoffman lets out a snort next to him. 

“Wow,” Kerry says. “I’ve never been able to stay in the same place for that long. I was born in Ohio, but I moved around a lot because my father was in the army. I moved to San Francisco right out of high school. Lived in Italy for a while before I started the police academy. New York is the only place I’ve stayed for more than five years.”

Peter nods. “Well. Travelling is a pretty big part of the job, so I don’t get too bored.”

“What about you?” Perez asks, leaning over Peter to look at Hoffman. 

“I’ve lived in New York my entire life,” he shrugs. “Never had a reason to go anywhere else. This is home.”

Peter glances at him, and wonders what that feels like. To have somewhere that feels like home, somewhere you belong.

He doesn’t know what happens after that. Kerry suggests shots, and Perez talks Peter into it, and then there’s three more rounds of beers and one more shot, and before he knows it the bartender comes over and tells them last call was twenty minutes ago and that they need to leave. Perez leans on him as they make their way outside, and he has to grab the doorframe when she stumbles so she won’t bring them both down. Hoffman walks behind them, and Peter pretends he didn’t notice Hoffman’s steadying hand against the small of his back. 

“I’m hauling a cab,” Kerry says, leaning against a pole on the sidewalk. “Mark and I are going in the same direction, where are you two going?”

“I’m renting an apartment on 92nd Street. Perez is on 77th,” Peter answers, his words slightly slurred. If he wasn’t as drunk as he is he might have been embarrassed about it. 

Hoffman, who’s leaning against the wall of the bar smoking a cigarette, chuckles to himself under his breath, and Peter doesn’t know if he’s laughing at him or if he’s just laughing.

“Wonderful,” Kerry grins. “Then we’re all going in the same direction! I live on Madison Avenue and Hoffman is on Park Avenue. I love when we only have to pay for one cab.”

Peter ends up seated in the middle of the backseat, despite being the tallest one. Kerry sits in the passenger seat, chatting idly with the driver, who seems a little annoyed by the journey they’re asking him to embark on to get them all home.

“Aren’t you glad you came along?” Perez asks, head leaned against Peter’s upper arm. 

“Sure,” Peter replies, patting her thigh. She’s going to have a hell of a hangover in the morning.

Kerry gets off first, climbing over the consoles to give them all hungs, which Peter doesn’t think is either appropriate or warranted for one night of drinking together. When they get to Soho, Peter helps Perez out of the car and up the stairs to her apartment. He offers to stay, but she waves him off and gives him a kiss on the cheek. 

“I’m not asking because I think you need babysitting,” Peter says through gritted teeth. “I’m asking because I don’t want to get back in that taxi with Hoffman.”

Perez laughs. “What, do you think he’s gonna rob you?” she asks. “Or worse, make a move?”

Peter stumbles down one step, gaping at her in utter outrage. “Keep your voice down,” he yelps. The back of his neck is slightly damp.

Perez glances over his shoulder to wave at Hoffman through the open door of the taxi. Peter has never wanted to strangle someone this much in his entire life, which says a lot considering his line of work. 

“He’s clearly into you,” Perez says, rolling her eyes. “Anyone within a twelve mile radius can tell. Besides you, apparently.”

“He’s not!” Peter protests. “You just want me to get laid. I’m not that desperate.”

“I think it would make you more tolerable,” she nods solemnly. “When was the last time you went home with someone? Or brought someone home?”

“That is none of your business,” Peter groans. “He’s not into me, he’s just smug. And I’m definitely not into him, because he’s so smug.”

Perez just grins knowingly at him. 

“You’re the worst person ever,” he grumbles.

“I’m just messing with you,” she laughs, leaning against the doorframe. “It’s a ten minute ride, what is the worst that can happen?”

Peter doesn’t want to say that she’s already mentioned it. “He might try to talk to me.”

Perez laughs and then shuts the door in his face, like a traitor. 

Peter takes thirty seconds to breathe, and then makes his way down the stairs and gets into the taxi. Hoffman is smirking at him, and for a panicked second Peter wonders if he had heard what Perez said. 

The driver has raised the partition, and Peter really wishes he hadn’t. 

“Your pants are very tight,” Hoffman says, apropos nothing. 

Peter whips his head to look at him in surprise so fast his neck cracks. “Sorry?”

Hoffman isn’t looking at him, staring straight ahead at the headrest in front of him. “Your pants,” he repeats.

“Yes, I heard you,” Peter groans. “I’m asking you what the hell that’s supposed to mean?” He’s regretting not just forcing his way into Perez’s apartment. There’s a blush making its way up his neck, and he hopes the low lightning is doing a sufficient job at hiding it.

“It means,” Hoffman drawls, “that your pants are tight. You can see,” he pauses to point at his own flanks. 

Peter keeps staring at him, wondering how he even got into this mess. He can’t help but think about what Perez said. “My… hips?”

Hoffman finally looks over, an unreadable expression on his face. “Well, sure.”

“You’re one to talk,” Peter huffs, his mouth working faster than his brain. “Your shirts leave nothing to the imagination.”

“My shirts are the right size. I just have a disproportionate chest.” Hoffman smirks. 

That’s one way of putting it , Peter thinks. His breath is coming in heavier, and his blush must be apparent by now. He’s so warm that his armpits are starting to feel damp. It must be because he’s drunk. Hoffman is looking at him with something a little too close to intrigue, heavy-lidded and open-mouthed. Peter wonders how many minutes have gone by as they drive through New York neighbourhoods he would never be able to place on a map.

“I’m surprised you’ve noticed,” Hoffman continues, when Peter fails to reply. “You’ve barely looked my way since you got to the city.”

And that isn’t entirely true. Peter is just good at looking when Hoffman isn’t aware of it. In the breakroom, when Hoffman is nursing a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper, slightly hunched over the table, dress shirt stretching over his wide shoulders. Or in his office, flipping through reports, licking his thumb to turn the page. Or in meetings, when he’s leaned back in his chair, only half-listening, as if the entire thing is below him. Peter has noticed a lot about Hoffman.

His chest feels tight, and anger surges up in his throat. He doesn’t know if he’s angry at Hoffman, or if he’s angry at himself for not being angry at Hoffman. 

“I’m just observant,” he says at last. 

Apparently it’s the right thing to say, because Hoffman flashes his teeth at him. It’s not entirely a smile. 

“I’m gonna kiss you now,” he says, matter of factly.

“Oh,” Peter says dumbly, feeling slightly off-kilter. “Ok.”

Hoffman reaches over the seat between them and grabs the back of Peter’s head, bringing their lips together forcefully. It’s almost desperate. Their teeth knock together and it reverberates around in Peter’s skull. The pain is almost pleasurable. Hoffman takes a hold of Peter’s hair, tugging to get Peter to lean his head to the side, and then licks into his mouth. 

Kissing Hoffman feels the same as he imagines fighting him would be like. It’s slightly painful—Hoffman pulling his hair harshly, Peter biting down at Hoffman’s lower lip—and it’s exhilarating. Adrenaline surges through Peter’s entire body and when he tastes blood on his tongue from where he’s bit down too hard, it’s all he can do not to moan into Hoffman’s mouth. 

Peter pushes their faces impossibly close, their noses pressed together painfully, and grabs at everything he can reach. Hoffman’s jaw, the back of his neck, his stupidly wide shoulders. Then, before he knows it, the car is stopping, and Peter is so disoriented he had forgotten they were in a cab to begin with. He feels slightly like he’s spinning on another axis than earth, slightly tilted to the left, just off-track, and when he leans back in his seat and looks at Hoffman’s face, Peter’s pretty sure he’s feeling the exact same way. 

Peter coughs to clear his throat, and feels desperate all of a sudden. Hoffman is staring back at him with a grin on his face, as if he knows exactly what is going through Peter’s head. 

If it hadn’t been for the fact that the driver is clearly waiting for Peter to get the hell out of the cab, Peter might have stayed silent for however long it would take for Hoffman to be the one to say something.

“Do you,” Peter pauses, grimacing. He’s a middle-aged man, for god’s sake, not some nervous teenager. “You wanna—”

“Yeah,” Hoffman breathes, looking slightly blurry around the edges. 

Peter nods, and resolutely doesn’t look the driver in the eye as he pays for the ride. He hopes the driver didn’t notice Hoffman’s uniform. Peter can imagine him coming home to his partner tomorrow morning, telling them, I was witness to a cop feeling up some schmuck in a suit in the back of my cab at three in the morning . It’s been decades since the last time Peter hooked up with someone in the back of a cab, and he’s pretty sure they’re not supposed to do so in uniform.

He gets out of the car, and doesn’t wait for Hoffman as he makes his way over to the gate to punch in the passcode. When he opens the gate, Hoffman grabs it and holds it open for him. Peter rolls his eyes while fishing his keys out of his pocket. 

He regrets every decision he’s made tonight as he closes his apartment door behind them. Hoffman takes in the room, both lounge and kitchen in one, and Peter hopes he doesn’t comment on how empty it is. When he moved in, Peter hadn’t seen any reason to decorate. It’s just a space for him to sleep, eat and relax. And most days he does none of those things. 

He’s just about to open his mouth to say something, just to break the unbearable silence, when Hoffman turns around and pushes him up against the wall, pressing his face into Peter’s neck and biting down on the muscle between his neck and shoulder. 

“Jesus,” Peter stutters, grabbing onto Hoffman’s shoulders to steady himself. Hoffman is sturdy and steady against him, his chest soft against Peter’s own. “I—”

“Shut up,” Hoffman mumbles against his neck, licking over the spot where his teeth had just been. Peter shudders. 

“Fuck you,” he retorts. 

He can feel Hoffman’s smile against his skin. “Yeah,” he breathes, and then pulls his head back to look Peter in the face. He’s got a sort of crazed look in his eyes, mouth shiny with spit and even pinker than usual, and his hair tousled from where Peter has been frantically running his hands through it. “Hopefully that’s where this is leading. I didn’t come in to watch a movie.”

Peter groans and surges forward to catch Hoffman’s mouth. 

He likes the way Hoffman kisses him like he wants to crawl into his mouth. Desperate and aggressive, teething on the edge of passionate. Hoffman’s kiss is the answer to a question Peter hadn’t known he was asking. Peter can’t remember the last time he had been kissed like this. 

Hoffman slides his hands over Peter’s chest and under his jacket, slipping it off his shoulders and letting it drop to the floor. Peter, feeling like he should be doing something other than letting Hoffman lick into his mouth, grabs the lapels of his stupid Detective jacket and pulls it off his shoulders, struggling slightly. Hoffman laughs against his lips, and Peter feels like he’s burning from the inside out. 

“Fuck you,” he repeats, pulling his face away so he can see what he’s doing. He gets the jacket off and throws it onto the armchair behind them. “Your shoulders are ridiculous.”

“Where’s your bedroom?” Hoffman asks, sounding out of breath. His pupils are blown wide, the blue of his eyes almost invisible. His lips are puffy and red from Peter biting at them.

As they stumble their way through the living room and into the bedroom, Peter once again gets the feeling that there’s something he’s missing. Something he should be able to put a finger to. He still pushes Hoffman down onto the bed and climbs into his lap, kissing him like he’s starving. 

-- 

Peter wakes up with a throbbing headache. His bedroom window is east-facing, so the morning sun is blaring down on him, blinding through his eyelids. He should really get some curtains soon. He rolls over towards his bedside table and grabs the alarm clock. It’s seven in the morning, which means he still has a good two hours before he has to be in the office for yet another mind-numbing day of paperwork and empty paper trails. It also means he got about two hours of sleep. There’s some sort of dried fluid on his stomach, and he knows what it is from the flashes of the night before rushing through his mind. Groaning, he runs his hands through his hair. 

It takes him a good five minutes before he musters up the courage to look to the other side of the bed, and the relief he feels when he sees that Hoffman must have sneaked out sometime while Peter slept is overwhelming. If he would have had to face Hoffman like this, sleep-rumpled and dried cum in his happy-trail, he might have handed in his gun and badge and jumped on the first flight back to Virginia. 

He feels sweaty and gross, and is just about to get up to make coffee when his phone goes off. The ringtone burrows its way into his aching head, and he hits reply on the third ring without checking the caller ID, just to shut it up. 

“Uhu,” he says, laying back down and slinging his forearm over his eyes to block out the sun.

“Good morning, princess,” Perez says. She sounds way too cheerful for someone who had about eight beers and two shots the night before. She’s too small to be able to handle her alcohol better than Peter. Or maybe she’s just still young enough to be able to pull it off. 

“Sure,” Peter mumbles. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Yes, I own a clock,” she replies. “Do you want to go get breakfast? If I have to eat one more soggy egg sandwich from the precinct cafeteria I will sue the entire state of New York.”

“You could get anything other than the egg sandwiches,” Peter suggests, already knowing it’s a losing battle. 

Perez gasps. “Egg sandwiches are the supreme breakfast food. Protein, fibre, grain, carbs. Don’t be blasphemous.”

Peter, who’s heard this a million times before, nods even though she can’t see him. “Where do you want to meet up?”

He can almost hear her smirk through the phone. “Sadelle’s? They put bacon on their egg sandwiches.”

“You want an eighteen dollar egg sandwich?”

“Yeah, and we are gonna share a plate of blueberry pancakes and a side of breakfast potatoes.”

Peter huffs, and sits up in bed. He really needs to shower. He smells like sweat and sex. “Anything else, your highness?”

“We’ll see,” she says, cheerfully. “How was last night?”

Peter chokes on his spit, and has to pull the phone away from his face to cough. “What?” he finally asks. 

Perez laughs. “Don’t choke, you’re paying for breakfast,” she says. “Did the ride home go over well? Did you kill each other?”

Peter grimaces. If by killing each other she meant fucked each other’s brains out, then sure. There’s no way he’s telling her that Hoffman gave him the best blowjob of his life. Or that he's surprisingly flexible for a man his size. 

“We sat in uncomfortable silence, and he made me pay for the ride,” he settles on, the lie thick like syrup in his mouth. 

He hates lying to her—but between his own embarrassment over sleeping with a man he really can’t stand, and the humiliating want to keep last night close to his chest like a treasure—he doesn’t have much of a choice. 

Perez laughs. “Well, he did buy you those three beers.”

“And what’s your excuse? I paid for your share of the cab too, and now you’re making me pay fifty dollars for breakfast when we could have been fed for free at the precinct.”

“My excuse is that you love me, and you still owe me from that shit in Iowa” she says. “Now hurry up, I’m hungry.”

--

Three days later, Detective Kerry goes missing, and after four days of scouvering the city for her, Hoffman and Rigg’s SWAT team find her corpse. When Peter and Perez show up, Officer Rigg is storming out of the building and Hoffman’s entire appearance reeks of defeat. 

“Where’s the body?” Peter asks him in lieu of a greeting. He’s already exhausted. Detective Kerry had been a good person and an even better cop. Peter had somewhat known her for months before they were even relocated to New York, as she had been working as the FBI’s informant. 

He is getting very sick of Jigsaw’s rapidly rising body count.

Hoffman leads them further into the underground walkways, where a crime scene photographer is busy taking pictures of the body. 

“Crime scene photographer’s flash picked up this bullet-casing,” another detective Peter hasn’t seen before but who must clearly be on Hoffman’s taskforce tells Hoffman when they enter the room. Peter finds it hard to make himself look at Kerry’s body, despite the gruesome things he’s seen during this case. “It was lodged between the body and the device.”

“Run it for prints,” Hoffman gruffs. 

The flash of the camera is blinding, and the room is getting too crowded with people for Peter and Perez to be able to see what they’re there to see. Peter asks the photographer to give them a moment, and she gives him a look of distaste as the leaves. Peter can’t make himself care about being disliked by the department anymore.

He forces himself to look Kerry in the face out of respect while Perez squats down to the floor. She takes in a sharp intake of breath, and glances up at Peter, eyes round and glossy. 

“The lock was open,” she sighs, “she couldn’t get out.”

Peter feels his jaw clench in anger. 

“It was constructed for her execution,” Hoffman says from behind, coming up to stand next to Peter, “betrayed the rules.”

“Not a Jigsaw trap then,” Perez says.

“No,” Hoffman agrees easily, as if he’s been thinking the same thing. “Amanda Young. The accomplice.”

Peter rolls his eyes, making his way to the trap to take a look from all angles. There’s something almost poetic about this trap, compared to the other ones they’ve seen. The positioning of her body almost makes her look almost like depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus. He can’t help but wonder how long the construction of this trap took, and if the intricacies of it was a sort of rebuttal for Kerry’s long-lasting involvement in the Jigsaw case.

“This wasn’t done by Amanda Young,” he says. 

“Excuse me?” Hoffman asks, clearly angry about Peter disagreeing with him. Peter doesn’t care.

“Kerry weighed approximately 130 pounds. Amanda Young’s arrest report has her at 107. She couldn’t have gotten her up there alone.”

Hoffman looks at him across from Kerry’s body, lips pursed. “John Krahmer was a—”

“Bed-ridden cancer patient? He’s brains not brawns,” Peter argues. He’s getting sick of this. There’s no way Hoffman doesn’t know better. 

Hoffman huffs in clear annoyance. “He was also an engineer. He could have have rigged—”

“Or,” Peter interrupts, looking away from Hoffman’s frustrated face. “Someone else could have helped him. Someone much bigger and stronger than Amanda.”

Hoffman looks flustered. “Agent Strahm,” he says, voice heavy with distaste, “you’re here to assist not—”

“We’re here to catch the person your department hasn’t caught yet. The person who’s helping Jigsaw and Amanda Young,” Peter retorts, making his way around Kerry’s body. 

Hoffman is looking at him like he wants to punch him in the throat. Peter can’t help but be reminded of the way Hoffman had looked at him a little over a week ago, trapping Peter between his body and the wall, nipping at his neck. 

“Excuse me,” Peter says, brushing past him to get out of the building. 

He’s seen enough.

--

The air back at the precinct is subdued, as one would expect, but it makes Peter’s skin crawl uncomfortably, and he ends up staying in his cubicle staring at the photos the crime scene photographers sent over until his eyes are dry and itchy. Perez left hours ago, and he knows he should check up on her, but he can’t make himself pick up the phone. A big part of him feels responsible for Kerry’s death.

There comes a knock on the cubicle wall around midnight, and when Peter glances over, he’s surprised to find Hoffman standing there, hands in his pocket. He looks dishevelled, even by his standards. His shirt is untucked, and his hair is a mess. 

“Hey,” Peter says, unsure how to react to Hoffman’s unexpected presence. “You’re here late.”

“Yeah, well, lots of things to take care of.”

Peter nods.

Hoffman coughs and licks his lips. “I don’t like being challenged in front of my men.”

Peter narrows his eyes at him. “I’m sorry, Detective , but we were called in to solve the case. I won’t hold back on what I think just so you look good.”

“Jesus,” Hoffman groans, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. “I’ll hear you out all you want, but I’d prefer it to be between us.”

“That’s not how this works,” Peter says, brows furrowed. “Look, I’m sorry about Detective Kerry. I know you two were close. But it doesn’t change how Perez and I do our job. I don’t know why you’re insisting on being difficult, because to me it’s beginning to look like you don’t actually want this case to be solved. Just let us do what we came here to do, and maybe we’ll be out of your hair as fast as possible.”

Hoffman cocks his head to the side, looking thoughtful. “Alright,” he says at last. “Whatever you say, Agent .”

--

The next day, Hoffman goes missing, the entire department goes on a wild goose-chase looking for Officer Rigg, Perez gets fatally injured, and Peter is forced to perform an emergency tracheotomy on himself while he’s stuck in a trap straight out of a superhero comic book. 

The time between stabbing the pen into his own throat and the cops finding him stretches on for what feels like forever, and Peter thinks about Perez, in a hospital somewhere in the city, fighting for her life; John Kramer and Amanda Young’s bodies back in the room where Peter had shot and killed a man in self-defence; Hoffman, missing and maybe dead. Perez’s last words before she passed out play on a loop in his head, and his anger grows like a bonfire within his chest.

When he’s escorted out of the building by the paramedics, his eyes find Hoffman’s in the sea of cop cars and officers, and the fire in his chest roars, because hadn’t he known all along? Hadn’t there been something, something in the back of his mind every time he looked at Hoffman? Hadn’t there been something odd about the way Hoffman was leading his team, the way he spoke about the case, his refusal to even consider a second accomplice? 

Hadn’t Peter known it, a buzzing in his spine, in the car when Hoffman had laughed after Peter asked him if he knew where they were going; at the crime scene with Detective Kerry’s body in between them, Hoffman’s eyes slightly nervous; when Peter took him to his bed and kissed him like a lover?

--

Sometimes Peter hates always being right. It doesn’t happen often that he’s not happy about it, but as he watches the precinct go through the emotional toil of three dead cops and the shock of Hoffman being Jigsaw’s second protegee, Peter can’t help but wish he hadn’t been right about this one thing. 

--

Perez makes it, and Peter thanks every higher power he can think of. He brings her back to her apartment, and they watch shitty cop shows, pretending everything isn’t falling apart around them. Peter wants to tell her. About the night he spent with Hoffman, about the touches that were too soft for just a one-night-stand, about the way Peter had stayed awake for as long as he could, watching Hoffman’s chest expand and deflate as he slept. 

He can’t make himself. 

“Did you know?” Perez asks, after an hour of silence. Peter’s throat still hurts, and Perez has a matching wound. Her voice is slightly wheezy. 

“No,” Peter replies. “I had a feeling though,” he admits. “But I didn’t know for sure.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

“Why?” He turns his head to look at her. She looks soft in the dim light, and she’s resting her head on the back of the couch as she looks back at him. 

“That you were right,” she says, shrugging. “I know you… liked him.”

“I didn’t like him,” Peter huffs. “He’s arrogant and wasn’t a very good cop. There was absolutely no reason for me to like him.”

Perez smiles kindly. “And yet you did.”

“What I would like,” Peter says to avoid having to look too hard at the feeling in the bottom of his stomach, “is to be the one to arrest him and make sure he rots behind bars.” His chest hurts. And when Perez leans over the space between them to grab his hand, he has to turn his head back towards the TV so she won’t see the look on his face.

--

“Hello, Agent Strahm,” Hoffman’s distorted voice comes through the tape player. Peter has spent too long listening to previous tapes to not recognise it. Has spent too long replaying Hoffman’s voice in his head not to recognise it. “If you are hearing this, then you have once again found what you are looking for.”

Peter’s breath is coming in heavy and panicked.

“Or so you think,” Hoffman says on the tape. “Your dedication is to be commended, but I ask you if you have learned anything on your journey of discovery. As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”

“The situation you find yourself in is about trust,” Hoffman says, and Peter catches his breath. As if he could ever trust Hoffman ever again, after he tried to kill Peter, and is most likely trying to do so again. Peter is staring at the coffin in front of him.

“So I ask you again, Agent Strahm, have you learned to trust me?”

“Fuck you,” Peter says out loud, on reflex.

“The only way to survive this room is by entering the glass box before you… Pain will be occured. But you have a chance of survival.”

The tape ends at the same time as Peter catches the sound of movement down the hall. Someone is approaching, and something in him knows who it is immediately, by feeling alone. Thinking quickly, he dashes behind the open door, holding his gun to his chest. 

Hoffman walks into the room, gun raised. He walks over to the coffin and squats down to where Peter had dropped the tape player. As he gets up, Peter moves from his spot to sneak up behind him. What he doesn’t account for is Hoffman spotting him coming through the reflection of the glass door of the coffin. Before he knows it, Hoffman whips around and knocks the gun out of Peter’s hand, and it goes off as it clatters against the wall. The door slams shut behind them. 

Hoffman grabs Peter's arm, just as Peter grabs his shoulder, and then Hoffman’s fist collides with his stomach, and Peter is doubling over, wheezing. The fist to his face seconds later sends him sprawling backwards. Peter regains his balance quickly and surges forward, grabbing Hoffman around the middle so he can tackle him to the ground. Hoffman’s head makes contact with the concrete with a loud crack. For a second Peter is afraid he’s killed him, but then Hoffman throws a punch that knocks Peter backwards off of him. Before he can get his bearings, Hoffman is on top of him, pinning Peter’s arms beneath his knees, grabbing his face to keep him still. His hands are cold against Peter’s sweaty face. Peter’s head is throbbing, and he can feel bruises forming across his ribcage and cheekbones. Hoffman looks crazed above him. His nose is broken, the bridge crooked, and Peter feels a surge of pride at knowing that is his doing.

“Please get in the box,” Hoffman begs, slightly gargled through a mouthful of blood. “Please.”

Peter snarls. “Why the fuck should I listen to you? That thing is a death sentence.”

“It isn’t,” Hoffman insists. “I was serious. It’s the only way out of here.”

Peter shuts his mouth and considers this. Hoffman’s grip on his face is so tight he knows it’s going to bruise. Blood is dripping down from his nose into Peter’s face. “I don’t believe you. Why should I?”

“Because I’m— I gave you an out. And I want you to take it.”

“You’ve never given your victims an out before,” Peter snarls. “Why wouldn’t this be an inescapable trap too?”

Hoffman turns his head to spit blood out of his mouth. When he looks back at Peter there’s a sort of manic desperation in his eyes. “Because I don’t want to kill you.”

Peter laughs, entirely hateful. He’s trying to wiggle his arms out from under Hoffman’s knees, but he’s pinned down. “You’ve already tried to kill me once.”

“True,” Hoffman says. “And I wanted to, tonight.  I should have known you were too stubborn to take the instructions on the tape seriously. It was a fifty-fifty chance, and I was happy to let you make that choice. But I’ve had a change of heart.”

That makes Peter pause. “Why?”

“Because I like you, and it would be a shame to see that pretty face be crushed to death.”

Peter feels his eyes widen in realisation, and anger surges up in his throat like bile. “You’re fucking sick,” he spits, using all of his strength to push Hoffman off of him and roll away. 

He gets up on his knees and pounces at a disoriented Hoffman. The punch he throws is so forceful he can feel Hoffman’s jaw crunch beneath his fist. 

Hoffman gets up and backs up against the wall. “Maybe,” he growls. “But I’m the only person who knows how we can both make it out of here alive.”

Peter springs forward to get his hands around Hoffman’s neck, slamming him back against the wall. He holds him in place with his forearm against Hoffman’s throat.  

“Why do you think I want you to make it out of here alive?” he asks, and the distaste is heavy on his tongue. 

Hoffman grins, his teeth stained red with his own blood. “Because you like me too.”

“I could never like someone like you,” Peter snarls, pressing his forearm harder into Hoffman’s throat. 

He imagines what it would feel like; to watch the life go out of Hoffman’s eyes. He wonders if it would be enough, to be close to him in this way, to be the one to end him. 

“You— you’re too transparent, Agent,” Hoffman wheezes. His face is going red from lack of oxygen. “You’ve wanted me for as long as I’ve wanted you.”

Peter’s grip on him slacks in surprise, and before he can regain his control, Hoffman slams his face into Peter’s and pushes him away. It knocks the breath out of him. 

Hoffman doesn’t move to punch him again. “Admit it, Agent. You don’t hate me and that makes you angry.”

Peter spits out the excess of blood pooling in his mouth. “I fucking hate you.”

“No,” Hoffman laughs, shaking his head, “you want me and it’s messing with your head.”

“Fuck you,” Peter huffs. His chest feels tight with an emotion he refuses to name. “You’re delusional and it’s gonna get you killed.”

“Aw, you’re gonna kill me even though I’m trying to save your life?”

“I don’t give a fuck. You don’t deserve to live after what you’ve done.” 

Hoffman has the audacity to look delighted. “I thought you were against the idea of someone deciding if a person deserves to live or not. Isn’t that how we got here in the first place?”

Peter is on him in seconds, throwing punches with more force than he’s ever put into fighting someone before. Hoffman gives back as hard as he takes, but Peter knew that already. 

Peter feels more alive than he’s felt in decades. Maybe ever.

Without thinking, he pushes Hoffman back until he trips and slams into the coffin. The look on his face is one of utter shock and panic. He tries to grip the sides to pull himself out, but Peter kicks him back in. Hoffman looks good in the blue light. Bloody and dishevelled. 

Peter feels unhinged. 

“Peter,” Hoffman begs, reaching for him. It’s the first time Hoffman has ever called him anything but his job title or his last name. “Peter, get in.” 

And Peter knows, deep down, that Hoffman wasn’t lying earlier. If Peter doesn’t get in with him he’s going to be crushed to death. He can almost imagine the walls closing in on him. 

“Fuck,” Peter groans, and grabs Hoffman’s outstretched hand so he can let himself be pulled into the coffin with him.

The lid slams shut behind them and the coffin begins to slowly tilt backwards towards the floor. Hoffman’s heart is beating hard against Peter’s chest, and when their eyes meet and Peter sees the pure relief on Hoffman’s face, he can’t deny that what happens next was always inevitable. 

Hoffman’s mouth tastes like blood and not knowing if it’s his or Peter’s makes Peter’s stomach churn. He can’t help thinking of the kiss between Judas and Jesus, and wonders if Jesus was feeling the conflicting dichotomy between betrayal and exhilaration that Peter is currently experiencing. 

Hoffman kisses him so hard it aches, and it makes Peter feel like they’re still fighting, which helps soothe the shame bubbling in the bottom of his stomach. The glass below them is stabbing into Peter’s knees, and he can only imagine how Hoffman’s back must feel. 

Peter feels like he’s drowning. He wants Hoffman to devour him whole. He wants to be submerged and consumed. 

Hoffman bites Peter’s lower lip, and lets out a shaky breath against his face.

“I hate you,” Peter says against his bloody mouth, trying to subdue the way his chest feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest.

Hoffman’s voice is painfully affectionate when he says, “Yeah, I hate you too.” 

And Peter knows what it really means. 

The coffin comes to a halt, and the lid pops open. Peter forces himself to let go of Hoffman’s mouth, warm and wet and metallic, and grabs onto the side of the coffin to haul himself up, trying to take the pressure off his knees lest he gets them sliced open. Once he gets his footing, he glances down at Hoffman. The lower half of his face is smeared with blood, and there’s a cut right above his right brow, and his nose looks crooked from where it’s broken. 

Peter feels physically ill. 

He grabs onto the side of the coffin again so he can lean down and grab a hold of the bridge of Hoffman’s nose. Before he has the time to protest, Peter snaps it back in place. 

“Fuck,” Hoffman hisses. “You asshole.”

Peter almost smiles. He reaches out to grasp the front of Hoffman’s shirt and pulls him up. 

They’ve ended up in some sort of workshop, tables littered with blueprints and devices meant to mutilate people. Rip them apart. Peter swallows hard, and has a hard time looking back at Hoffman. 

“Hey,” Hoffman says, grabbing Peter’s jaw harshly and turning his face towards him. Peter tries to open his mouth, but Hoffman pulls him in and kisses him open-mouthed and hot. He pushes Peter back against a table, knocking over a set of tools, a hammer clattering down loudly right next to Peter’s foot. Peter grabs the edge of the table, and lets himself be kissed. He’s too far gone, too deep in the feeling of Hoffman against him, to stop now. He’s already commited his sin, he might as well soak in it for a while.

He’s never before known what it feels like to want someone so bad it makes you disregard everything you’ve ever thought you knew about yourself. Someone who makes you reckless and stupid. 

“Peter,” Hoffman whispers against his cheek. His name, spoken against his skin by a man he should be putting in handcuffs right now but knows he won’t, sounds like a prayer. Peter wants to hear it again and again.

He hums, eyes closed to pretend he’s anywhere but a Jigsaw workshop. 

Hoffman runs his hands down the front of Peter’s chest, and it isn’t until his hands start working on his belt that Peter’s brain catches up with him. He grabs for Hoffman’s hands and stills them. Hoffman looks up at him, confusion and annoyance clear on his face.

“Erickson knows where we are,” Peter says, hating himself. “It won’t be long before they break down the doors. They’ll find me.” Us , he thinks. They’ll find us. And then I’ll have to own up to the way you make me feel. Then you’ll be taken away from me.

Hoffman snorts, like that’s the least of his worries. “Guess we’ll have to be quick, then,” he says, flashing his teeth at Peter. “You’ve got me all riled up.”

“You’re sick, you know that?” Peter groans, as if he isn’t painfully hard against Hoffman’s hip. “God, I— Fuck, come here.”

Hoffman surges forward, teeth clashing against Peter’s, and rips Peter’s belt clean off, throwing it somewhere across the room. Peter only hopes he’ll be able to find it before his colleagues arrive. 

When Hoffman sticks his hands down his pants, Peter can’t help but bite down at Hoffman’s lower lip to suppress his groan. His entire body hurts. He knows he must have at least one broken rib, and his knees are bleeding, and his lip is split. Hoffman’s hand around his dick is the sweetest feeling he’s ever experienced and the pleasure mixed with the pain is almost too much for him to handle. He has to tip his head forward against Hoffman’s shoulder to catch his breath. 

“Jesus,” he groans into the soft flesh between Hoffman’s neck and shoulder. “I’m insane, aren’t I?”

Hoffman laughs and squeezes the hand he has around Peter’s dick hard enough for Peter to let out a painful hiss. “What’s that Anthony Perkins quote? From Psycho.”

“Fuck you,” Peter murmurs. “This feels wrong enough already, without you quoting slasher movies at me.”

“No it doesn’t,” Hoffman mumbles, pulling Peter’s earlobe between his teeth.

“No, it doesn’t,” Peter agrees, and then lowers them down onto the cold concrete floor so he can grind his hips into Hoffman’s and kiss him like he’s never kissed anyone before. 

--

The sound of sirens in the distance comes only a second after Peter pulls out. Hoffman raises himself off the table with his hands, glancing over his shoulder at Peter with a slightly disoriented look on his face.

“Here comes the cavalry,” he says, trying for a grin but failing terribly. 

Peter’s heart is beating erratically in his chest, both from exertion and fear. 

Hoffman turns to him. His chest is glistening with sweat and littered with bruises. His eye is starting to swell slightly. “What now?”

“What?” Peter asks, his brain not quite back to working like normal. 

“What will you do?” Hoffman explains. “Are we gonna do that whole dance again? The one where you pretend you want to arrest me?”

Peter closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. 

When had he lost his morals? When had Hoffman become a man he was willing to break the law for? When had the fabric of his entire universe unravelled?

“I don’t know,” he admits. When he opens his eyes again, Hoffman is looking back at him with a mixture of hope and resolve on his face.

“You don’t have a lot of time to figure it out,” he points out. 

“How about we get dressed first?”

Hoffman smirks, and it unknots something in Peter’s chest. “Don’t want to be caught naked with me?”

“Absolutely not,” Peter huffs. “I think that would result in my immediate suspension. I’d have to run away with you.” As soon as he says it, he regrets it. 

Hoffman gets a distant sort of look in his eyes, but doesn’t comment on it. He just turns around and grabs for his underwear. Peter lets out a shaky breath. 

He’s barely gotten his belt through the loops when there’s sounds of banging upstairs somewhere. Probably the SWAT team breaking open a door. Peter’s gaze finds Hoffman’s. 

“Go,” he says, trying not to think too hard about what he’s doing.

“Peter—”

“Please,” he begs. “You saved me up there. Let me do this.”

Hoffman cocks his head to the side, and gives him a smile. Not a grin, not a hint of smugness, just a genuine smile. “Are you sure you don’t want to hit me, one last time? Just for good measure.”

Peter groans and pushes his shoulder. “You’re deranged.”

“Yeah,” Hoffman agrees. “Thank you.”

“Don’t,” Peter snaps. “Please just leave before I change my mind.”

Hoffman hesitates, a look on his face Peter can’t quite place. “Will you kiss me then?”

Peter couldn’t deny him that even if he wanted to. He puts everything he wants to say to Hoffman; everything he will never be brave enough to say, or might never get the chance to say, into the kiss. He holds Hoffman’s face like he’s something precious. Hoffman holds him right back. When there’s sounds of footsteps coming down the stairs, he breaks away and gives Peter one last grin and then he’s gone before Peter can say anything.

--

Perez is the first one into the room, and Peter has the suspicion she’s not even supposed to be there.

“Peter, thank fuck,” she breathes when she reaches him. She pats him down with gentle hands, looking so full of relief she’s near tears. “What the fuck happened to you? You look horrible.”

Peter should have spent a bit less time letting a man with calloused hands that build death traps touch him like he’s someone worthy of being touched, and a bit more time figuring out what he’s supposed to say about how he made it out alive and how Hoffman got away from him. 

“Uh,” he stutters. “Hoffman.” 

“Where is he?” Erickson demands, coming up next to them. He looks at Peter with a mix of horror and anger on his face, like he’s not sure if he should be worried or disappointed. “Did you see him?”

Peter shakes his head. “Not since he tricked me into a room designed to crush me to death.”

Perez takes a sharp intake of breath. “How did you get out? You look like you barely made it.”

Peter can’t even imagine how he must look. Bruised and sweaty and broken. He hopes Perez isn’t a good enough interrogator to be able to see right through him, but he suspects she may be. He needs to be careful about what he gives away. How much of the truth he’ll tell them. 

He points over at the glass coffin. “I played by the rules.”

Perez narrows her eyes at him. “That’s not like you.”

“He–-” Peter pauses. “He told me how to make it out. I guess he felt guilty about not giving me a chance last time.” 

“Didn’t peg him as a man with a conscience,” Erickson comments. “You sure you didn’t see where he went?”

“He closed the door to the room. Somewhere upstairs. I’ll show you,” Peter says, hoping Hoffman is already out of the building by now. 

“Jesus Christ,” Erickson breathes. “Let’s go then.”

--

There’s no trace of Hoffman anywhere. They search the entire building. Peter tries not to look too relieved.

--

Erickson insists Peter goes for a checkup at the hospital, and they keep him there overnight. Then he’s sent home for at least a month of paid time off to heal and ‘deal with the emotional toil of what he’s been through’. Peter doesn’t mind. His motivation to solve the case has lessened considerably the past twenty-four hours. Perez comes to drive him back to his apartment, even though he would be perfectly content taking a taxi. When he tells her that, she looks at him like he’s the biggest idiot in the world. 

“How do you feel?” she asks when they stop at an excruciatingly long red light. 

Peter lulls his head to the side to look at her. She’s biting anxiously at her lip, looking straight ahead. 

“Sore,” he replies. “Embarrassed.”

That makes her look over at him, eyebrows raised. “Why would you be embarrassed?”

“I couldn’t stop him from getting away,” he lies. 

He very much didn’t even try to stop him, in the end. He still doesn’t really know how he feels about that. While he no longer feels great about the image of Hoffman rotting away behind bars for the rest of his life, he still knows it wasn’t right to let him go. He knows that. He must have lost his mind sometime during the past month. 

“You were a bit busy trying not to die,” she argues. “No one blames you.”

Peter shrugs. “Still, it wasn't my best work.”

Perez snorts. “Ever the self-pressuring fool,” she sighs. “Peter, you’ve been killing yourself over this case. You’ve actually almost died twice. Let someone else take the lead for a while. At least until you don’t look like an oil spill.”

Peter pulls a face. “I don’t look that bad.”

“Your face is all the colours of the rainbow,” she laughs. “Have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately?”

“No,” he says. What he doesn’t say is that he’s scared of what he'll see in his own reflection. “The nurses’ expressions upon seeing me was all that I needed to get an idea as to what I look like.”

Perez clears her throat conversationally. “Can I— Peter…” She pauses, as if to collect herself. Peter’s heart has plummeted into her stomach. “What really happened when you confronted Hoffman?”

“You were there when they took my statement,” Peter points out, frowning. He’s sweating behind the knees. 

“What really happened?” she presses, hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel. 

“What do you mean?”

She gives him a quick glance, lips tight and eyes slightly glossy. “Well, first of all, you’ve got bite marks. I’ve been in few fights where the other person has bit me. In the neck .”

Peter swallows, and tries very hard to not let her see the look on his face. “The asshole fights dirty. Do you think I’m happy about it? Hurt like a bitch.”

“Pete—“

“What are you insinuating?” Peter asks, his tone way harsher than he has the right to use against her, considering the truth. “Seriously, what are you coming at?”

“I don’t know,” she admits tiredly. “I just keep getting this feeling that something isn’t what it seems. There’s something about this entire case that just doesn’t sit right with me,” she pauses with a grimace, and then adds, “aside from the horrid details of it, obviously.”

“I know,” Peter agrees. “We were really blindsided by it being an inside job.”

Perez hums. “You’d tell me if— If there was something you should tell me, right?”

“Yeah,” Peter lies, feeling like the worst partner and friend in the world, “of course I would.”

--

For the past three decades Peter has done little but work, sleep, eat and repeat. He’s spent more time in his office, on a plane, in motel rooms, in police stations, than in his own apartment back in Virgina. He doesn’t remember what his life was like when it didn’t revolve around his job, and he didn’t exactly predict having to learn what it would be like to suddenly figure that out, long before his retirement. 

He spends his time in limbo. He’s never been good with boredom. His first big case had been at thirty-one, a serial arsonist in Washington, and he had gotten his first taste of danger, and he hasn’t stopped chasing that adrenaline ever since. Peter isn’t good at standing still for too long. If you asked Erickson, he would probably tell you that Peter is pretty shit at any part of the job that isn’t exciting. He’s a great interrogator, he’s great under pressure, he’s good in a fight. He isn’t good at boredom.

Snow wraps over the city as a blanket, and Peter almost eats shit trying to go to the grocery store one morning, making the pain of his broken ribs flare up. He spends the rest of the day laying vertically on his uncomfortable window-display couch watching soap operas he doesn’t understand a word of and can’t find out how to turn on the subtitles for, until Perez calls to tell him that Amanda Young made it, and is being thoroughly questioned at her bedside in the hospital. 

“I know you want to come in,” Perez says after she’s done updating him. “But don’t. I think Erickson would fire you on the spot if he saw your face again before it went back to its normal colour.”

“Don’t worry,” Peter assures. “I’m having a blast actually. Yesterday I watched a full season of Friends.”

“Don’t tell me such sad things.” He can almost hear the grimace in her voice. “Read a book or something. Do anything else.”

He doesn’t listen, and watches yet another season. He hates every minute of it.

In the evening he eats shitty leftover take-out that has been in his fridge for way too long to be edible and takes a shower so warm his skin looks raw when he gets out. His bruises are healing nicely, the ones on his face are almost gone, just a bit of yellow left across his cheekbone and chin, and his split lip has scabbed over. There’s still a trail of blue, purple, green and yellow across his ribcage, but otherwise he looks fine. He’s rubbing his hands over his face as he exits the ensuite, which is why he doesn’t notice the person on his bed before he drops them.

“Fuck,” he yelps, reaching for the lightswitch. The light splutters for a few seconds before illuminating the room. 

Hoffman looks terrible. The skin under his eyes is almost the same colour as the bruises littering his handsome face. He looks like he hasn’t washed his hair in a while. He usually wears it pushed out of his face and tucked behind his ears, but now it's stringy and greasy across his forehead. He’s wearing a suit, which shocks Peter. He can’t think of many reasons why Hoffman, who’s a national outlaw, would have to be in business casual wear.

“What are yo— Is that blood?” he demands, striding over to grab at Hoffman’s shoulders. 

Hoffman gives him a crooked, tired grin. “It’s not mine.”

Peter hates the flood of relief he feels at that. That shouldn’t be better. “That’s worse,” he lies, exasperated. “Whose is it?”

Hoffman opens his mouth.

“Actually, don’t tell me,” Peter interrupts. “The less I know the better.”

“I’ve missed you,” Hoffman drawls, voice low. It makes Peter’s chest feel tight and warm. 

“It’s been three weeks,” Peter retorts, ignoring the feeling in his chest. “What are you doing here? I didn’t let you go for you to act completely recklessly.”

“Hiding,” Hoffman answers honestly. 

“Don’t you have somewhere else to hide? I suspect you have a million safe-houses, considering how hard Amanda Young and John Krahmer have been to find.”

“Partly because this is the last place anyone would look for me after…”. Hoffman reaches out a hand and runs it gently over Peter’s bruised chest. “Mainly because I wanted to see you. You look good.”

“You don’t,” Peter says angrily, but his body betrays him by leaning into the touch. “You need to leave.”

Hoffman clicks his tongue. “Why?”

“Because— Why? Did you really just— Because you’re a wanted man, and I’m supposed to be arresting you on the spot, and I can’t stand to look at you. That’s why!”

“Aw, I’m wanted?”

“Don’t be cute,” Peter snaps. “Seriously, Hoffman. What are you expecting from me? Do you want to play house with me? As if thinking about what you’ve done—what I’ve done—doesn’t make me sick to my stomach.”

Hoffman ignores him. “Little birdie tells me you’re not on active duty right now, so. It’s not really your job to hand me in.”

“Active duty or not, I’m still an FBI agent. Also who the fuck told you that? Are there more of you guys in the force?”

Hoffman regards him with amusement clear on his face. “You know I’m not gonna answer that.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Peter groans. “Get the fuck out. Stop acting like you sucking my dick twice changes anything.”

“You’re funny,” Hoffman remarks, cocking an eyebrow at him. It makes the scar Peter left there stretch. “Of course it changes things. It changes everything.”

Peter groans, rubbing both fists into his eye sockets. “How do you reckon that?”

“Because I would like to do it again,” Hoffman shrugs. “And because I know you would happily let me.”

“You sure are confident about what this is,” Peter groans. “You got a lot of nerve thinking I would do anything more to save your sorry ass after you tried to blow up Perez, and almost killed me twice.”

Hoffman opens his mouth to argue, but then seems to catch himself. “It’s— Peter, not everything is what you think.”

“I can’t believe you,” Peter hisses, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “Why should I trust a word that comes out of your mouth?”

“Didn’t we go over this already?” Hoffman groans. 

“Last time was a mistake. It was a result of the adrenaline I was feeling on account of almost being murdered,” Peter says, but he still reaches out to run his hand through Hoffman’s dirty hair. “You can’t be here.”

“Throw me out then,” Hoffman pushes back. Just like Peter knew he would. 

Peter wonders if any of this would ever happen if Hoffman wasn’t so adamant about it. If he didn’t go after what he wanted with no regard for his own self-preservation. 

Peter tugs at his hair slightly. “Go take a shower,” he surprises himself by saying. “I can’t stand you when you’re covered in the blood of someone who’s most likely dead.”

“Blood’s not a good colour on me?” Hoffman retorts, but he stands up from the bed regardless. “Or do you only like it when it’s my own blood?”

“Go, before I sock you across the face.”

Hoffman mumbles something that sounds very close to, wish you would , as he makes his way into Peter’s ensuite. 

Peter sits down hard on the bed, staring at the blank wall in front of him and wonders what sort of charges he would be given for his involvement with Hoffman. What would he say in court, if it came to that? Yes, your Honor, I did fuck him. No, I didn’t know what he had done. At least not the first time. 

God.

Peter had always been so confident he was a morally good person. He had worked really hard to be one. These days, he’s no longer so sure. He’s so torn between the feeling of utter disgust when he looks at himself in the mirror—when he remembers the things Hoffman’s hands have done, what he might have done tonight, before breaking into Peter’s apartment to make his feelings even more complicated—and the way he wants to hook his thumbs into the corners of Hoffman’s smug mouth and kiss him.

“Hi,” Hoffman says from the bathroom doorway. 

Peter’s breath gets stuck in his throat when he looks over at him. Hoffman is wearing nothing but a towel around his wide waist, and there’s little drops of water dripping from his wet hair and running down his surprisingly tan chest. Peter wants to bite into his pectorals and never let go. 

Peter coughs and blinks hard three times to try to clear his head. “Hey,” he says, a little too late for it to be casual in any way.

Hoffman smirks knowingly at him. “You’re so sexy when you look like you can’t decide whether to throw a punch or bend me over.”

Peter grimaces. “I usually lean towards the former.”

Hoffman laughs. “God, I’m obsessed with you.”

“Shut up,” Peter murmurs, trying very hard to not look pleased. 

“You wanna know the first time I wanted you in an entirely carnal way?”

Peter gulps. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me regardless.”

“Two weeks into you guys moving into the office, we were in a meeting, the entire task-force, and you were sitting across from me, and Kerry was droning on about something that I couldn’t make myself pay attention to despite Amanda biting my head off about paying close attention to how the case was moving along.”

Peter tries very hard to ignore the mention of Kerry, whom Hoffman had murdered despite being her friend, and Amanda, whom Hoffman committed horrible crimes alongside on a regular basis.

“And I looked over at you, and you were pulling a face at Perez to make her laugh. It was the first time I’d seen you smile, or show any human emotion at all, and I wanted to pull you aside in the hallway after and have my way with you.”

Peter takes a long breath and tries to get his heart under control. “That would have been insanely inappropriate.”

Hoffman lets out another laugh. “And you sleeping with me as your colleagues rushed in to save you was completely appropriate?”

“I thought I already told you it was a lapse in judgement,” Peter sighs. “Hoffman you can’t—”

“Peter.” It still throws Peter for a loop that Hoffman has started referring to him by his first name. He’s been thinking about Hoffman calling him Peter for the first time as he begged him to get into the coffin, desperate for him to live, so much since that night that he can almost hear it when he lays awake at night wishing the spot next to him in bed wasn’t empty. “You’re not the only one who’s risking a lot here. I’m really not supposed to be here. Amanda’s gonna rip me a new one when she finds out. And— I’ve gambled a lot by doing any of this too.”

Peter can’t fathom what Hoffman is referring to. “I can’t,” he repeats.

“Tell me to go,” Hoffman shrugs. “I will, if you tell me to.”

“I seem to remember me telling you to go multiple times.”

“Tell me again.”

Peter drops his hand into his hands and lets out a long groan. Then he gets up and strides across the small distance between them and pulls Hoffman in by the towel and smashes their lips together. He needs to stop pretending he can prevent any of this from happening. Maybe it was always supposed to end up like this. Maybe no matter which decisions Peter had made—if he’d have never agreed to come to New York, if he hadn’t gone to the bar that night, if he had been even slightly less dedicated to the case—they would have still found each other, some way or another. 

Hoffman grabs both sides of Peter’s face harshly and holds him in place as he licks into his mouth. Peter’s so hot all over he feels like he has a fever.

“The first time I wanted you,” he murmurs against Hoffman’s lips, as Hoffman tries to chase after Peter’s mouth, “was when you kicked that warehouse door open, when we went to investigate that old hideout together.”

Hoffman laughs into his mouth. “Really?” he mumbles, amused. “You’re into the whole rough guy thing.”

“You’re like a fucking caveman,” Peter groans. His hands fumble slightly with the towel around Hoffman’s waist, but it's on the floor shortly, and he takes a hold of Hoffman’s hard dick.

Hoffman hisses. “Your hands are cold,” he explains.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Peter says, biting down on Hoffman’s lower lips as he swallows the moans Hoffman lets out every time Peter twists his wrist.

Peter lets go of him to step back slightly so he can take his underwear off. He’s so hard it’s almost painful. Hoffman watches him with unfiltered lust in his eyes, chest heaving and dick twitching against his happy-trail. “You make me fucking insane, do you know that?”

Peter grabs him again and pulls them close enough to where their dicks brush lightly against each other. Hoffman’s height makes it slightly off, Peter’s dick sliding more against Hoffman’s stomach than anything else, but it’s so good it takes his breath away for a second.

“Perez knew we— I think everyone but us knew. Months ago.”

“I knew,” Hoffman teases, running his big hands down Peter’s side, grinding into him. “I've worked through my catholic guilt enough for me to be able to recognise when a man checks me out. You kept ogeling me.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Peter groans, exasperated. 

Hoffman laughs. “Fair warning, if you mention a woman one more time I will lose my momentum.”

Peter grins against his mouth, reaching between them to take Hoffman into his hand and run his thumb across the head to smear the drops of precum gathering there. Hoffman turns his head slightly and hisses against Peter’s cheek.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Shut up,” Hoffman says, thrusting into the circle of Peter’s hand. “I want you to fuck me,” he pants, “I need you to fuck me.”

Peter fights the urge to pounce on him, and instead pushes against Hoffman’s chest with his unoccupied hand until he’s laying on his back on the bed and Peter can crawl between his legs.

--

Peter’s thrusting so fast his leg is starting to cramp up from the strain on his thigh muscles, and Hoffman is chanting profanities under him like he’s reciting a prayer, and the room is hot and humid, and Peter thinks that if he died right not he wouldn’t mind going out like this.

“God,” Hoffman groans, looking up at Peter with glazed over eyes. He looks entirely wrecked, and Peter feels such a possessive rush of pleasure he almost collapses on top of him. “Fuck, that’s so good.”

Peter hums, not trusting himself to open his mouth.

“When I first— Fuck. Before that night after the bar, I kept thinking about how rigid and uptight you are all the time and I— Fuck right there, don’t fucking stop. I had no idea you’d be an absolute animal in the sack.”

Peter admires the way Hoffman is able to form a coherent sentence right now. “Fuck you,” he grits out, grabbing at Hoffman’s chest harshly. The soft flesh of his pecs will definitely be bruised in the morning from the attention Peter is giving them. Peter had never really considered himself a boob man, but he’d taken one look at Hoffman across the office that first day on the case and felt a rush of primal want so intense he had to go to the bathroom and splash water into his face to cool down.

“Yeah,” Hoffman agrees. “You’re fucking me so good.”

Peter can’t help but lean down and moan into Hoffman’s mouth, his thrusts growing frantic.

--

A while later—it might have been minutes, might have been hours—they lay side by side in the bed Peter had spent weeks wishing he didn’t have to sleep alone in, staring up at the ceiling, their hands almost touching in between them.

Hoffman is the first one to break the silence, when he rolls his head to the side and says, “Peter… For what it’s worth. We’re almost done.”

Peter wishes he hadn’t brought it up. It would be nice with a little more time to pretend they were just two normal men, spending the night together under normal circumstances. “What, is your contract running out?”

“Something like that,” Hoffman hums, and Peter jumps slightly when he reaches over to intertwine their fingers. “I’m gonna end things, and then I’m gonna go somewhere no one knows my name or my face, or the word jigsaw.”

Peter swallows, and imagines Hoffman on a beach somewhere, wearing shorts with a ridiculously short inseam and chest glistening with oil. “It isn’t worth much.”

“Maybe not,” Hoffman says, turning back to look up at the ceiling. “But it’s worth something, isn’t it?”

Peter doesn’t respond. A silence stretches out then, bordering on uncomfortable, and he listens to Hoffman breathe with an odd feeling in his stomach. He’s horrified by the way he knows that it’s going to be impossible to walk away from this- now that he’s had Hoffman like a lover three times, each time better than the last -and of the way he doesn’t want to let it go. Peter has never felt like this before, and part of him knows that when this comes to an end—it has to—he’ll spend the rest of his life chasing the things Hoffman makes him feel. 

“For what it’s worth,” Hoffman repeats, “I’m sorry about Perez.”

Peter pulls his hand away to drag both hands across his face until the skin under his eyes stretches painfully. “That’s worth a bit more, I suppose.”

Hoffman smiles at him in his peripheral vision. 

--

Peter is draped slightly over Hoffman’s back, who’s laying on his stomach facing away from him. Their legs are tangled together, and Peter can feel his blood pumping in his ears, and where skin meets skin is slightly damp. He’s staring intently at the bite mark on Hoffman’s shoulder, the red indents of his own canines, and his heart feels too large and too full. 

“Mark,” he breathes, the name on his tongue for the first time tasting bittersweet and delicious, heart in his throat. 

Hoffman takes a sharp breath of air. “Fuck,” he whispers, barely audible.

“Stay for a while,” Peter says, suddenly desperate.

Hoffman rolls around to face him, eyes searching. “You sure?”

“No.”

“Say my name again,” Hoffman pleads.

“Mark,” Peter indulges, leaning in to lean their foreheads against each other.

When Hoffman kisses him, it takes Peter’s breath away.