i'll find a way to slip into your skin somehow

by wolverton

Summary:

“Need anything, Detective?” Strahm eventually grit out, voice harsh in a way that’d make Perez covertly jab her between the ribs, hissing ‘behave.’ Her partner wasn’t here, but she had no trouble picturing it, clear as day. “’Cause if not—”

“I’m just making conversation, Special Agent,” Hoffman cut in, no fucking manners. “If we’re to work together, we should establish a rapport, no?” And then, as if just to jab at her: “Your partner seems to agree with my line of logic there, by the way.”

Notes:

• For CassandraCaffrey.

maybe a mild cw for some minor lesbophobia on strahm's end, she's working through some things. worry not, the author is a big ol bulldyke with many years of lesbianism under his belt - these gals are in safe, loving hands.

ah, anyway ! i've come back from the yuri mines with this humble gift for you all.

(title from crush by cigarettes after sex)

Chapter 1: part the first

If tossing a key aggressively were an Olympic sport, Strahm would be a gold-medalist.

The way she’d hurled it at Detective Hoffman—her dislike of the woman already palpable and permeating the stuffy warehouse air—invited something of a reproachful look from Perez. Although a valiant effort, Strahm’s hackles remained raised.

The dislike—the hate at first sight—seemed more or less mutual.

“Where’s the body?” Strahm snapped impatiently. In her periphery, she caught sight of some fresh-faced boys-in-blue-to-be scuttling away, withdrawing into the safe, shadowy corners of the basement and away from the noxious fumes wafting off of yet another rabid fed.

The liaison, Detective Kerry, wasn’t a pretty sight. Unceremoniously strung up, the metal harness seemed to be the only thing keeping her half-decomposed body from coming apart in chunks. Strahm shooed away a rat nibbling at the rotten ribcage, tilting her head this way and to get a better look. Christ.

Her foul mood grew fouler yet.

She was certain the sole reason Hoffman hadn’t yet been booted for the sheer incompetency exhibited consistently by herself and her department was simply because there was nobody else left to take up the mantle. Tapp? Dead. Sing? Dead. Matthews? Missing, presumed dead. Kerry? Dead.

It took everything in her not to round on Hoffman right this second, grab her by the lapels of her stupid parka, and shake her ‘till her brain rattled.

But, mostly, Perez’s warm hand at the small of her back was the main deterrent.

Strahm, embarrassingly, jumped at the contact—not having expected it, not having even noticed her partner approach.

“You okay?” Perez’s voice was soft, her eyes questioning. Boring into her, it felt like. Strahm did her very best not to lean into the familiar touch, even if she would’ve really liked to. (Although, that bit of information couldn’t be waterboarded out of her.)

“Yeah. Fine.” Her tone was clipped and unconvincing. Perez’s look told her as much.

Luckily, Perez knew not to push. She pressed her shoulder before slinking back over to officers Hisk and Figg—or whatever their names were. Strahm hadn’t paid enough attention. Hell, way things were going—and this was an awful thought to have, no matter how sardonic—she’d learn if they stuck around long enough to make that worth it.

She needed some air.

Before anybody else could utter a word her way, she weaved her way to the stairs that took her to the exit.

The air outside wasn’t much better than the air inside, foul-smelling and heavy in a way that spoke of nearby factories and neglect. As if to make it worse, she fished a packet of cigarettes out the inner pocket of her suit, shaky hands dropping it twice before one thin white thing finally found its way between her lips. Reds, the kind she’s been smoking since her early teens—the only kind her old man had ever kept around the house. Strahm was a creature of habit, clearly.

The first gust of warm smoke to the lungs somewhat soothed all that irritation that had built up, like a balm over frayed nerves. She pinched the bridge of her nose, still, exhaling heavily.

Gravel crunched somewhere to her left. A voice, annoying and subtly accented, came from the same direction.

Just like that, Strahm was back to being keyed up.

“Not somethin’ you see every day, Agent?” Hoffman drawled, a swirl of smoke seeping out between her plush lips.

Between her plush lips? What the fuck? Strahm should ram her head into the brick wall behind her.

She cleared her throat, counted to ten in her head. “On the contrary. I see it every damn day. If only there were someone competent enough to stop it.”

Hoffman chuckled, undeterred. She stood at a polite, professional distance.

There was something deeply unnerving about her. Strahm couldn’t pinpoint it, though not for a lack of trying. Coming here, she’d expected a frazzled, sleep-deprived, on-her-last-leg Detective—the state most of them wound up in by the time the feds got assigned to their precincts, which is to say, by the time shit had really hit the fan.

Instead, there she was, in all her vainglory, Detective Something-or-Other Hoffman, cool as a cucumber, no skin off her fucking nose.

Strahm watched her run a hand through her hair, short and slicked back. Watched her fumble with the zipper of her parka, tug it halfway down her chest (and what a chest), then reach up to loosen the knot of her tie.

“You and Perez been briefed?”

“Yup,” Strahm nodded, jaw tight. She sucked at her cigarette with the vigor of a woman intent on frittering it away at a record pace, a soft crackling reaching her ears. A sudden gust of wind dispersed all that loose ash, carried it off to some faraway greener pastures.

Hoffman rocked back and forth on her heels, thumb hooked into a beltloop looser than the rest. A favored position, then. Strahm wished she hadn’t noticed.

She wished, also, that the other woman would skulk off whence she came. Strahm’s generally off-putting, unaffable demeanor and the aura of menace she perpetually projected tended to turn people away at a record pace. Though this was mostly a built-in feature instead of an active choice, it did work the way she’d wanted it to.

Well, it worked most times. Not so much for the moment.

In fact, she began harboring the sneaking suspicion Hoffman was getting a kick out of this, like ruffling Strahm’s feathers was a fun little extracurricular.

“Need anything, Detective?” Strahm eventually grit out, voice harsh in a way that’d make Perez covertly jab her between the ribs, hissing ‘behave.’ Her partner wasn’t here, but she had no trouble picturing it, clear as day. “’Cause if not—”

“I’m just making conversation, Special Agent,” Hoffman cut in, no fucking manners. “If we’re to work together, we should establish a rapport, no?” And then, as if just to jab at her: “Your partner seems to agree with my line of logic there, by the way.”

“Right.” Strahm deadpanned, incredulity palpable.

Hoffman tossed the butt of her cigarette to the ground, snubbed it with the heel of a big, stompy boot. Probably gave her an inch or so. Not that she was terribly short, really—like Strahm, she wasn’t far from bumping shoulders with some of the male officers. Unlike Strahm, who occasionally wished she hadn’t outgrown her father and brother both, Hoffman seemed the type to put height increasing insoles in, too.

Strahm couldn’t understand why the thought alone angered her.

With nothing but a knowing look, Hoffman turned and left.

-

“You're into that sort’a thing? She's kind of... butch,” Strahm sniffed. With a measured tap, she jostled the cigarette between her fingers, pointedly observing little grey flakes drizzling into the ashtray below before letting her eyes snap up to Perez’s.

Perez only raised an elegant brow, despite being engaged in the supremely inelegant activity of thumbing through a manila folder chock-full of Jigsaw-brand gruesomeness. Wasn’t even looking at her. “That a bad thing? You're kind of butch.”

Huh?

Was she? The thought drew her brows together in a small frown.

Her mouth opened—a small ‘o’, prepared to negate and deny—but clamped shut as the idea took root in her mind.

Strahm's never been the one to consider these things with any measure of seriousness, treading through life with a sort of detachment from that which she perceived as extraneous or frivolous. The first time she'd kissed a girl (a stupid, clumsy, behind-the-school affair), she'd been deeply—and moreover, very earnestly—shocked when the word lesbian began echoing in the hallways the day after.

Well, not lesbian. The unkinder moniker.

She looked down at herself, at the perfectly unassuming pair of straight-cut—maybe men’s—jeans she'd fished out of a clearance bin without much thought, at the shapeless sweater overlaid with a white button-down, at the bulky watch snug around her right wrist, at the reflection of her bare face in the back of a salt-shaker—all sharp, hard lines. She thought about the contents of her wardrobe—or, well, of her suitcase—and filtered through all the plain, unassuming, boxy pieces that hid her waist and squared her shoulders. Looking every bit like every last item of clothing she'd ever worn.

In her youth, she'd chalked it up to making good use of her dad's or brother's hand-me-downs; no sense in throwing away perfectly good garments that could stand a few more years of wear-and-tear.

But as it was, it's been a long time since that dreary shithole of a hometown had gotten even a whiff of her, and she hadn’t lived on her dad's nonexistent dime in decades. Hell, Strahm had more money than she knew what to do with, particularly now that she no longer had to sustain a pricey coke habit. So, why not a dress? Why not some lace? Why not a bra that didn't make her tits look like the world's saddest game of Where's Waldo?

A thought to ruminate over at a more opportune time, she decided.

“Honestly, I'm not sure where all this disbelief is coming from,” Lindsey set the folder down, giving Strahm something of a chiding look. “The way you were looking at her when we came down the stairs...”

Strahm flushed in a way that spoke louder than words. She’d stared. Badly. She knew that. Before Hoffman had had the opportunity to open that big mouth of hers and permanently take on the role of a big, fat thorn lodged deep in Strahm’s side, she’d stared. “Be serious, Linds. Just took me a second to figure out whether that was the lady detective everyone spoke so highly of.”

Perez looked deeply unconvinced. “Alright, P. Whatever you say.”

-

A week into this unfortunate assignment and Strahm was beginning to lose the grip on her sanity that had never been particularly firm to begin with.

And it was only half her fault.

She could admit that, yes, she’d backed her partner into something of a corner with her own rancid attitude. Perez was, more or less, forced to overcompensate for it—always having been the ‘good cop’ in the little routine they had going on, she was acting the part of one outside the interrogation room. Where Strahm would snip and snipe and snap, Perez would soothe and smile and subdue.

Where Strahm would chew Hoffman out in front of all her subordinates, Perez would invite the woman for a drink after work.

Strahm had seen them leaving together that evening, headed for the bar across the street—the precinct’s unofficial official watering-hole—smiling, laughing like old friends. She’d watched a careless biker, phone in hand, barrel down the sidewalk on a surefire trajectory towards Perez—and she’d gotten halfway out her car on instinct, only to watch Hoffman snatch her right out of the way, inadvertently shoving them both against the side of a building. Perez had looked up at Hoffman, chest heaving. Hoffman had looked down at her. (She wasn’t moving, why wasn’t she moving?)

Strahm had driven home with a lump in her throat and a pit in her stomach.

“Hey, you with me?” Perez breathed against her neck.

Strahm was about to say something, had the response at the tip of her tongue, but apparently wasn’t fast enough. Hands braced against the mattress, she pushed herself up, cock threatening to slip out between Strahm’s legs.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘course,” Strahm breathed, struggling to meet the other’s eyes.

Anyway, too slow. Perez was already sitting back on her heels, purple silicone bobbing obscenely between her legs in a way that made Strahm forcibly bite back a moan.

“You’re a dogshit liar, you know. Something’s up,” she assessed, hands on her hips, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Strahm all but groaned, knowing well enough ahead of time that it won’t only not work, but it’ll make Perez press on. Her hands were warm on her spread thighs, running up, up, and further up her flanks. Strahm shivered, arched into the touch helplessly. A more effective coaxing than anything. Suppose she should’ve seen it coming. “It’s just… you like Detective Hoffman?”

Perez paused. Strahm could almost hear the record scratch.

“Are you jealous?”

Wow. No preamble, no foreplay. Well, Perez’s never been the one to dilly-dally. She’d learned from the best, after all.

(Herself.)

“No, obviously.” Was it obvious? Hopefully. Maybe. “I just don’t think it’s… wise.”

“You don’t think it’s wise?” Perez echoed dryly, very valiantly suppressing a very warranted eye-roll. “Okay, hot-shot. Do tell.”

“There’s something not right about her.”

“There’s something not right about her?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed,” Strahm huffed, rubbing her face in the manner of a woman attempting to take it clean off, “All that mentoring, gone to waste.”

A sharp smack to the inside of her thigh worked instantaneously and very effectively, startling a yelp out of her before she could even think to contain it.

“I’d wager I’d know more about Detective Hoffman, being that I’ve given her the time of day,” Perez looked down at her incredulously. Strahm was mostly overtaken by the loveliness of her face and the pretty way her hair, bouncy and curly, draped over her shoulders like vines. “Unlike somebody. She’s perfectly affable, by the way,” she said, in the lofty tones of their supervisor down in DC, “and very… philanthropic.”

Strahm’s brows furrowed, “What? What’s that supposed to mean?” A beat. “Aw, Linds, no—you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”

“What?” Perez laughed, totally tone-deaf to the severity of the situation, “Was I meant to reject free drinks? In NYC? Are you crazy? Don’t answer that.”

“Great, now she’s gonna think you’ve got a thing for her,” Strahm sighed, tormented.

Perez cocked a brow.

“You don’t have a thing for her. No.”

“And you’ll be the end-all be-all of who I get to have a thing for? I don’t think so,” she snorted, “Besides, if you haven’t noticed—which is a dumb thing to say, I’m sure you haven’t—our Detective seems much more taken with you. I wouldn’t worry.”

“I’m not worrying, for Chrissakes. It’s not like we’re married,” Strahm pushed a few stray locks of hair out her face. Indeed, not only were they not married, this… thing, whatever they were doing, was about as big of a deal as sharing a toothbrush was. Which is to say, it wasn’t.

It wasn’t the prospect of Perez setting her sights on somebody that didn’t sit right with her.

It was the small fact that this somebody appeared to be Detective Incompetent.

Out of some three billion women in the world… Hoffman?

Just then, as though with a bit of a delay, the other half of that sentence sunk in. “Wait—what? No. You’re dead wrong.”

“You’d see it if you thought about it for three seconds,” she chided, and finally—finally—shuffled closer, bumped her cockhead against Strahm’s overeager cunt. Strahm exhaled heavily, about ready for her partner to stop fucking about. “It’s bizarre, if I’m honest—”

Strahm could say much to that—in normal circumstances, maybe. She was quite short for both words and breath, welcoming the small ache rippling through her that came with the smooth and rennetless press of the toy.

“—it’s like her day revolves around getting yelled at by you. You notice that? Probably not,” Perez kept talking, voice dropping low and sultry in a way that made Strahm want to scream. “And the way she stands there, just takes it… I mean, wow. Talk about dedication, am I right?”

Strahm keened, clenching helplessly around her cock, drunk from the slow, deliberate drag of it. The noises were obscene, every little squelch punching the air right out of her lungs, sending sparks zitting right through her very veins. Infuriatingly, she pictured it—had little choice in the matter, honestly: Hoffman, just the other day, letting Strahm rip into her—a whole mag of insults and then some—right there in the hallway; Hoffman, yesterday, poking and prodding and goading ‘till Strahm snapped, shoved her into a door and slugged her jaw with enough force to make her head bounce off the wood; Hoffman, today, strutting around with a fresh bruise, reddish-purple, in full view, like a goddamn teenager with a hickey.

Hoffman, staring so brazenly at her across the office, rubbing at the mottled flesh unabashedly.

Then, Perez did something truly evil.

“Bet she’d wanna see you like this,” she muttered, mouth on Strahm’s nipple, hand snaking down to tease at her clit. Strahm whined, pushed up against those fingers in a more or less desperate pursuit of friction, forced her cock deeper in by proxy—an action not without consequences. “Big bad Special Agent, stuffed beyond speaking?”

“Lin- Lindsey,” Strahm gasped, clutching at the other woman’s forearms hard enough to bruise. “Lindsey.”

“Think she’d jump on the opportunity to shut you up a bit? The way you’re always running your mouth around her…” Perez continued, heedless of anything she might have to say about that. Strahm might’ve been mortified by the gush of slick following suit, if she weren’t so far gone. Way it was, she curled her legs tight around Perez’s waist, felt something unravel in her belly. “Yeah, I think she would—turn you over and fill you up, way you need to be. I’d like to see that.” And then: “What I wouldn’t give to watch.”

That about did it—the visual; Perez hadn’t been specific, but she didn’t need to be. Strahm came—embarrassingly, mortifyingly—with the thought of Hoffman’s hands on her hips, Hoffman’s lips at the juncture of her neck and jaw, Hoffman’s fat cock all but splitting her in half, and Perez’s eyes on her as a cherry on top.

She sunk boneless, pliant into the mattress. Panting, eyes shut. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of the toy and its harness hitting Perez’s duffle.

Two warm hands cupped her face, brushed some hair behind her ears with all the tenderness in the world. She welcomed a kiss, soft and familiar.

Hoffman’s face remained etched into the backs of her eyelids.

Chapter 2: interlude

Notes:

this took a second, didn't it. sorry about that, but you'll see why. literally had to split the chapter into two. also, figuring out the logistics of a threesome where all the characters are "she" was kinda hard. but we're so back etc.

An anonymous tipoff about Eric Matthews sent the whole precinct into a tizzy. Strahm almost didn’t have the heart to point out that, much like every other anonymous tipoff they’ve ever received with regards to the Jigsaw case, this one could only end in a whole lotta disappointment and despondency.

Almost.

When she told them as much—delivering the bleak reality of the situation with all the tact and finesse she had to her name, which is to say, with none—it didn’t seem to deter anybody. Not a single member of staff gave her warnings (pessimistic, they claimed, but she’d call it realism) the time of day, perfectly content to fritter away valuable time and resources in the interest of engaging in some kind of collective delusion instead.

Strahm didn’t know what to do with that.

The silence in the car was worse than ‘awkward.’ Un-fucking-bearable would be more apt.

Rigg, chauffeuring them to the location, white-knuckling the wheel. Hoffman, biting her nails down to the quick in the passenger’s seat, back ramrod-straight. Perez and herself, cooped up in the back of a cop car like a pair of delinquent kids caught hopped up on some low-grade blow at a skate park.

Strahm was dying to switch the radio on. Too bad actual metal bars kept her from doing so.

As it was, she could only look out the window and ponder.

She’d never been under the impression Matthews was a great cop. His record was mostly clean, barring an instance or two of excessive force (which, all told, was every officer’s favored poison.)

Mostly, it was that starring role in a Jigsaw game that put his character to question.

Which, oh, that was something to unpack, wasn’t it?

Generally speaking, following a serial killer’s line of logic seemed a recipe for disaster. Not a very good thing to fess up to, which is why Strahm would never. Not on pain of death.

Still, she knew Kramer’s M.O. She knew his victims had to have done something to… not deserve it, no, that wasn’t the word (Christ.) Strahm pinched the bridge of her nose—she ought to abandon this train of thought right this second.

Kramer had to have had a reason.

That was it, yeah.

A reason.

The validity of that reason could certainly be up for debate, though not its existence. That there had been one at all—well. Matthews certainly couldn’t have been the precinct’s golden boy, even if the precinct seemed to earnestly believe the contrary.

And still, they missed him. The desire to see him alive and well and back among their ranks was palpable. Suffocating, even.

The thought swam unbidden into her mind: Strahm couldn’t imagine so for herself.

Embarrassingly, it wasn’t even a tough pill to swallow. The understanding was almost intrinsic. The sky was blue, the water was wet, nobody would really miss Strahm too badly if she were gone.

Well, credit where it’s due, Perez would—which might be a pleasant thought, if it weren’t overshadowed by the grimmer realization that one single person wasn’t exactly something to feel good about.

Not that Strahm cared. This was considered by her with an almost clinical detachment. After having put down hundreds of beloved pets, any vet would’ve grown numb to the tragedy of it all. Strahm had grown numb to the tragedy of it all.

“What’s up?” asked Perez. Her voice was low, hushed in the interest of privacy. This might’ve worked if it hadn’t so abruptly shattered the oppressive silence, and had thus become the loudest sound anybody could possibly hear.

Rigg briefly glanced at her via the rearview mirror. Hoffman’s head subtly shifted, ears all but perking up.

“All this for another dead end,” Strahm shrugged, figuring she looked ticked off enough to pass her foul mood for the usual precinct-induced annoyance. “We could—”

“—find a better, more sensible way of spending our time and resources?” Hoffman snorted from the passenger’s seat. Strahm’s mouth clamped shut with an audible smack, staring daggers at the back of the woman’s neck. “A life is on the line, Special Agent.”

“You went through academy training, Detective. I’d hope you’d know that the likelihood of a missing person being found alive decreases with time,” Strahm quipped, “The first twenty-four hours are crucial. After seventy-two... well. It’s been, what, six months since any of you have last gotten a whiff of Matthews? How many hours is that?”

“P…” Perez muttered under her breath, eyes darting to and fro between the two women.

“You’re suggesting we give up the ghost, Agent?”

“I’m suggesting you stop fucking about and get your priorities straight, Detective,” Strahm all but thundered.

“And if it were you?” With a twist and a slight shift in posture, Hoffman maneuvered her body, torso rotating so as to set her sights on Strahm behind her, eyes alight, “You’d want us to keep looking, if you were held alive somewhere, wouldn’t you?”

“No,” Strahm bit out. “I wouldn’t.”

The silence resumed.

-

The tipoff was a dead end. Go figure.

-

Strahm didn’t bother with a perfunctory ‘I told you so.’ With the reminder of Matthew’s most unfortunate fate fresh in their minds, she felt it’d be too mean and unfeeling even by her standards. The department remained incredibly put upon for the remainder of that week.

Normalcy—if you could call it that—returned by way of of Fisk’s engagement announcement. Strahm watched them, incredulous, clasp his shoulders and pat his back and ruffle his hair and wolf-whistle like kids.

Hoffman, similarly, stared from her own desk, expression inscrutable.

Chapter 3: part the second

Notes:

mm i'm not really a fan of feminising names (esp when these are butches we're dealing w here) so i made the executive decision to let mark be mark (maybe (like yours truly) she changed her name to be more masc, she totally would, do NOT tell me otherwise. how did she land on it, you ask? flipped open a fat phonebook on a random page and went with the first name she saw.) strahm, on the other hand, isn't "peter." it doesn't matter what she is though, but whatever it might be works with the nickname "pete." (for my own entertainment i've hit her with a slavic beam in my head - special agent petra strahm, who i'm going for kafica tomorrow. a gibanica, even. anyway that's not real lore i'm just fucking around.) yeah anyway pete and mark.

anyway. feel like i've been painstakingly putting this together for ages. it's unbetaed at the moment because i truly cannot keep looking at it, but yknow i'll go back and edit as needed eventually. anyway, i hope it's at all enjoyable :)

“Earth to Strahm?” Perez playfully prodded her between the ribs.

She rubbed at her eyes, achy with exhaustion. Whatever file laid open on the desk beneath her was becoming unintelligible at a rapid pace, perfectly normal-sized text shrinking into jumbled fine-print before her eyes, gnarly photographs reduced to blurs of bright and dark reds. “M’awake.”

“You need a refill?” Perez glanced at Strahm’s empty mug. She didn’t look much better herself. Slightly more chipper of the two of them, yet the deep bags beneath her eyes betrayed the same fatigue, the kind that took root during the thick of a case and reached down to the bone.

“It’s alright, I’ll get it,” Strahm pushed herself up to her feet, a heavy gust of air ruffling the loose papers cluttering the tabletop. “My turn, anyway.” And she could do with stretching her legs, besides.

The hallway was a somewhat welcome change of scenery, if only for its cooler air. Strahm trudged down it with all the liveliness of a woman walking the green mile, two coffee mugs clanking against one another in harmony with the click-clack of boots against linoleum. The station wasn’t empty, but it may as well have been; all those unfortunate enough to have been saddled with work late into the night were—much like herself and Perez—cooped up in their respective offices. Out of one another’s hair, as it were.

Nearing the break room, the soft whir of the coffee machine became audible even through the closed door. Strahm winced under the assault of bright fluorescents as she stepped inside. The corridor had been all but pitch black, with only the spill of moonlight through the windows there to guide her.

She adjusted quickly, at least.

In the room, brewing a fresh batch, Hoffman. Despite the neatness of her uniform—not a wrinkle in sight, annoyingly—she seemed just as downtrodden as the rest of them. Strahm could see it in her slouch, in the slight sway of her body, in the vacant look she kept affixed on the half-full pot.

In the absence of a sneer, too. Hoffman nodded tiredly in her direction, an action reciprocated.

Strahm set the cups down atop the counter, wincing at the thud that sounded much louder than it’d been.

“Late night again, Agent?”

Normally, questions of that nature were more thinly-veiled jabs than anything else, drenched and dripping with faux-concern. Strahm wouldn’t go as far as to say that there was anything approaching sincerity to it, spoken only to fill the silence, but the absence of ill-intent was palpable.

And weird.

“Someone’s gotta keep the place running,” she tried for sarcasm, though it fell flat. Splattered all over the floor.

Hoffman switched the machine off, lifted the carafe in a shockingly steady hand. Filled Strahm and Perez’s cups first, before getting to her own.

“Thanks.”

“Any progress?” Hoffman took a measured sip, face momentarily scrunching up; the coffee here tended to run a bit bitter.

“Same as always.”

“So, no?”

“None,” Strahm shook her head. The depressing reality of the admission deflated her. Felt like she shrunk an inch, and maybe that’s why Hoffman’s eyes appeared closer. (Blue. Very blue.)

“Call it a night, then. It’s already absurdly late,” Hoffman leaned forward, glanced at Strahm’s watch, bulky where it sat on her wrist. Strahm shifted where she stood. That felt… hm. It was perfectly inoffensive—so why didn’t it feel like it?

“Someone needs to take this case seriously,” she brought the cup of coffee up to her mouth, if only to conceal her face. Tried for a barb, normally effective. Wasn’t sure whether such was the case here, but whatever. “Clearly we’re lacking contenders for the role.”

Hoffman only chuckled, not rising to the bait. Strahm’s eyes, infuriatingly, glued to the side of the woman’s jaw, to the greenish-yellow patch of skin her knuckles had recently left behind. “You’re very competitive, aren’t you?”

Strahm’s brows furrowed, more confused than anything else. “Competitive?”

“C’mon, Agent, don’t tell me you haven’t heard it before,” Hoffman tilted her head, one hand on her hip. “You bitch a lot about incompetence and idiocy and carelessness, but really… I think you just get whatever fix you’re looking for—and you are looking for it—from the rush of a case closed. From the thrill of a puzzle pieced together. From the chase, but namely the tackle.”

“Just what are you getting at, Detective?” Strahm frowned, taut as a bowstring. The grip on her cup was vice-like. “If that’s your attempt at coping with the fact you’re not pulling your weight and everyone sees it, it’s a poor one. Try again.”

Some kind of tension hung heavy in the air between them. At face value, commonplace. But there was something a mite different about it this time around. Maybe all that exhaustion and exhaustion-induced irritability. Maybe something else.

Hoffman gave her a curious look, something difficult to describe. A wordless oh, is that right? “Maybe I’ve marginally missed the mark. You don’t quite sound angry enough.”

“Detective—” a twitch in her jaw, an almost imperceptible tremor to her hands, a sharp edge to her voice.

“Pete?” came a voice behind them—Perez, of course. For a moment, Strahm, pissed, was overcome with the desire to whip around and snap that she did not need a goddamn minder.

The moment, fleeting, was gone as soon as it had come, though left in its wake a smidgen of guilt she couldn’t quite choke down.

Strahm could pinpoint the exact moment Perez’s eyes landed on Hoffman, who’d been somewhat eclipsed by her own bulk. Inexplicably, a clumsy smile settled about her lips. “Mar- Detective Hoffman,” Perez cleared her throat, “Evening.”

“Agent Perez,” Hoffman winked.

Strahm was struck dumb.

What?

Strahm unpeeled herself form the counter, feeling inexplicably as though her tie was too tight around her neck, the seam of her button-down was too scratchy, her belt bit into her hipbones. She couldn’t account for this new hyperawareness, either. “Um. What?”

“What?”

“What?”

Strahm’s eyes darted from one woman to the other. “Don’t what what me. What’s going on here?”

At the same time, Perez: “Nothing’s going on here.” Hoffman: “What do you think is going on here?”

Strahm wasn’t stupid. She really wasn’t, even if some might claim otherwise. (Some being her ex-wife.) (And her dad.) For all that she wasn’t stupid, though, she simply… had a difficult time wrapping her mind around that which all pointed to.

“No,” she decided, very resolutely, “I don’t want to know, actually. Don’t tell me.”

“Pete, listen—”

“That ship has sailed,” Strahm lifted her hands, as if to emphasize, “This isn’t junior goddamn high, we don’t gotta talk about this. You’re adults with your own private lives—”

…and before she could finish that statement, she was unceremoniously yanked into a kiss. Hoffman’s grip on her tie was unrelenting.

It didn’t last long—really, a handful of seconds. Quite enough to perplex her anew, though, so much so she hardly had the time to get properly pissed off. She only blinked, bug-eyed, at Hoffman’s smug expression. The woman’s warm breath fanned her face, a reminder of the proximity Strahm was still doing absolutely nothing about.

Perez’s hand pressed against the small of her back (when had Perez approached?) and, it being her kryptonite, sent a pleasant little tingle all the way up her spine, snaking around each vertebra and leaving her slightly lightheaded.

She turned her head to look at her partner, an eyebrow raised. The movement wasn’t completely unrestricted, reminding her of Hoffman’s—albeit slightly loosened—hold on her tie. Something about the prospect made her cheeks flush.

“It was my idea,” Perez said simply, as though it would explain anything.

Well. It did, to be fair.

“Your idea to… to…—?” Why was she sputtering? God, embarrassing. Sure was starting to feel like junior high, fumbling her way through a d’you wanna go to prom with me?

“Mhm,” on the tips of her toes, Perez just about reached Strahm’s mouth. The kiss was short, sweet, reassuring. A little clumsy, over the shoulder. Strahm’s toes curled in her shoes. “If you wanna…?”

She shouldn’t, that much was obvious. Not even worth stating.

But Perez was persuasive. So were her arms, curled about her waist, and her fingers, dipping beneath the waistband of her trousers, tracing along the metal of the belt-buckle yet doing next to no unbuckling. Strahm’s hips moved on their own accord, moved on instinct, twitching with the promise of what was to come.

Normally, they would’ve rutted into empty space.

As it was, she very successfully managed to all but grind into Hoffman.

Strahm withdrew as though burned, the contact taking her by surprise more than anything.

Or, well, tried to. Would’ve managed it as well, if Hoffman’s hands hadn’t shot out in a truly impressive display of quick reflexes, grabbing hold of her. Warms fingers dug into the skin taut over her hipbones, Hoffman leaning in for another kiss just in time to feel Strahm whimper into it.

Light tugs at the hem of her shirt had her stumbling backwards, bumping right up against the edge of a counter; she realized belatedly that Perez had hopped up on it, now a warm body against her back, nosing into the side of Strahm’s neck, her smell grounding and familiar. Those deft fingers had finally undone the clasp and the buttons of her trousers, and Hoffman didn’t wait a second before tugging them down to her knees. Beneath, thankfully, a pair of plain black briefs.

“Y’know, Strahm, I kind’a thought I’d be wrangling Lindsey from you,” Hoffman needled, eyes dark as she hooked her fingers into said briefs, tantalizingly slowly sliding them down her thighs. Strahm let her head fall against Perez’s shoulder, gaze affixed on the ceiling, keenly and mortifyingly aware of the stickiness between her legs. She didn’t need to imagine the much darker patch on the black fabric to know it was there, and didn’t really need to imagine the smugness etched into Hoffman’s features at the sight. “Not the other way around.”

“Yeah?” Strahm breathed, all airy. She dug her fingers into the meat of Perez’s thighs in an effort to keep herself steady (in several ways.) “Kind’a- shit- kind’a fuckin’… not awful progressive of you.”

Hoffman chuckled, maybe earnestly. Her hands laid splayed atop Strahm’s fuzzy thighs, kneading into the not-so-soft flesh.

Strahm almost managed to feel real annoyed about that, almost managed to groan at the dull ache between her legs only exacerbated by the teasing touches, at the strain of every muscle below the belt. Would’ve managed it, had her train of thought not been cut off by the glide of another pair of hands, smaller, up her flanks, a veritable distraction. Even more so when they stopped at her chest, gave it an appreciative squeeze and rumpled her shirt in the process.

Strahm was made abruptly aware of the layers separating her from Perez’s touch. “Fuck- get this shit off me, right now—”

And Perez did, chuckling but undoing each button with a practiced efficiency. Her bra—one of them sports ones, with the zipper up front—followed suit. The fabric parted, revealing… well, not much, all told. No matter: Hoffman didn’t seem to mind, staring with such brazenness that Strahm was halfway to feeling coy all of a sudden—used to the way Perez’s eyes would appreciatively linger, but not something quite this… raw and unabashed. There was a new kind of want there.

It was thrilling as much as intimidating.

Before she’d regained enough control of her brain to form thoughts and of her mouth to speak words, a wet kind of warmth engulfed her nipple. She arched into it, pressed into Hoffman’s face, sensitive and helpless; gooseflesh rippled down her arms as Perez’s breathy expletives tickled the skin of her shoulders.

A leg was thrust between her own, a thick thigh clothed in denim; the rough fabric against her clit shot a jolt up her body, as though tearing through her insides and dislodging a shaky moan from her throat. High striker was called to mind, a thought which almost made a hysterical sort of bubble claw up her throat.

There’d be a wet patch left behind, something Strahm was acutely aware of. She knew she was soaking through those jeans for all they were worth, knew Hoffman was gonna walk out of here with the most damning evidence of her desire staining the fabric. Couldn’t quite bite back a moan about it, though.

“Sound a little wound up, Strahm—all good there, baby?” Hoffman’s voice crackled against her collarbone, nipping at the tender skin in a way that made her twitch. Her thighs clamped tight around the one between them.

“Shut the fuck up,” she panted, voice catching in her throat and coming out ragged, “fucking freak, keep fucking- running your mouth, just- fuck, please—”

Strahm was about ready to sob, and truly might’ve had Hoffman not finally deigned to take a little pity on her. She watched her get down to her knees, felt a furious flush creep up her neck at the sight. Her very ears burned.

At least, now that she could see her, her self-consciousness was somewhat dampened by the proof she wasn’t the only one barely keeping it together; breathless, blotted cheeks, tousled hair, Hoffman wasn’t exactly the perfect picture of composure. Strahm, who wouldn’t abide by completely ceding her grip on the reins for the moment, tangled her fingers—to the best of her ability—in Hoffman’s cropped hair, eyes affixed on the woman who graciously let her guide her head to where her thighs met, knowing where Strahm needed her most.

Her mouth was soft, warm, and incessant against Strahm’s cunt. She rolled her hips against that prodding tongue, body alight. Perez gasped somewhere behind her, grip tightening, and—oh, God—she hooked her ankles ‘round Strahm’s legs, spread them wider and kept them so. Her mouth was on her neck again, mottling the skin with each pass.

All the desperate little sounds fucked out of her bounced against the walls of the break room, and Strahm could only hope none of them made it past the door. With any luck, most stragglers would’ve gone home by now. Hopefully.

“Fuck, Pete,” Perez muttered, close to her ear, voice low and scratchy, “that feel good, baby? Looks like it does. Shit.”

“Uh-huh,” Strahm nodded frantically, mutely. Hoffman’s nose dug into her pelvis with every rock of her hips forward in a way that was maddeningly, absolutely insanity-inducing. From little kitten-licks over her clit to the broad strokes of tongue, lapping up all that dribbled out of her, Strahm felt distinctly drunk on it all. Her grip on Perez’s legs tightened, and it had to be uncomfortable by now, though no complains came.

Hoffman was no quieter than she, deep groans rumbling their way through Strahm’s body, zapping through her quivering thighs. She felt the outline of Hoffman’s ears where they bracketed the woman’s head, involuntarily clenching in a way that had to be painful.

Perez’s hands smoothed down the jumping muscles of her stomach, teased at the coily hairs at the base of her abdomen. Had to know Strahm was on the brink, had to know she was giving her all not to come on Hoffman’s tongue just yet.

And in the worst possible turn of events in recorded history, said tongue pulled away.

With Hoffman at eye-level again, Strahm had never felt that close to earnestly crying.

“Shh,” she soothed, voice soft as though spoken to a spooked animal. “You’re alright, doll, here—” and with that, a brush of fingers where her mouth had been; all at once it turned more forceful, pressing in ‘till knuckles bumped against her clit. The sensation was akin to that of flint striking steel, sparks and heat and all.

Strahm keened, openly, pushing down as though she could at all force them any deeper. Hoffman’s fingers were thicker, more substantial than Perez’s. It was new. She heaved.

Hoffman’s mouth latched onto the side of Strahm’s jaw, brazenly sucking a mark into the skin. She pulled back, stared at the blooming red blotch before her eyes flickered to Strahm’s, “You like that, Agent? I’ve heard all about it.”

Strahm should’ve felt mortified. Well, she did, though it didn’t overshadow a new wave of arousal, sweeping through her and leaving her even more jelly-kneed. That Perez had apparently talked about… well. Well.

And with Hoffman, of all people?

She couldn’t look at the detective, not just then.

And then Hoffman leaned forward, squishing her between two bodies with all the force it took to reach Perez. Strahm moaned unabashedly, unsure what it was that she felt watching the two kiss—at first, a flutter of jealousy, a remnant of some stupid, animal, territorial instinct. That lasted about a second, and was then forever banished from her mind by the realization it was fucking hot.

Could Strahm come watching them?

Yeah. Yeah, she could. She was.

Her hand shot down to the smallest little gap between their bodies, wrapped around Hoffman’s wrist, kept her fingers in place—just there, firmly against the spot within her actively scrambling her brain.

Somebody was shaking—it didn’t immediately click it’d been her. Her head fell forward to Hoffman’s shoulder, hands shot out to grip her by the lapels of that stupid suit, clutching and clinging as she rode it out, weakly fucking herself on those fingers ‘till her body sagged with exhaustion.

Strahm was confident it were Hoffman’s arms that wrapped around her, held her up because her own legs surely wouldn’t. A kiss here, a kiss there, to her cheek and her shoulder. She hummed. A pleasant thrumming still coursed through her veins, receding in intensity as seconds passed.

Perez must’ve seen it fit to swap places, as the next thing she knew, Strahm was being hauled up on the counter. She leaned back into the wall, took a deep breath. Damp with sweat yet no longer ablaze, gooseflesh dotted the exposed skin of her thighs, her stomach, her tits. She’d cover herself up—eventually.

In front of her, Perez’s knees hit the floor in tandem with Hoffman’s trousers.

Strahm watched.

Notes:

alright yall we've set the stage. sorry if i blueballed anyone !!!!! strongly felt like this would benefit from being split into two, though. next chapter coming literally tomorrow, yay <3